Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Friday, October 31, 2003
Holy freakin' cow! It's frickin' freezing out there, Mr Bigglesworth. BRRR!
Beautiful clear sky, however. Too bad we have too much city light to see the Aurora, if it is as spectacular tonight as it has been. I'm gonna freeze watching my Dawgs lose tomorrow night, 7pm start in this weather is COLD! Thursday, October 30, 2003
Last night after dinner we took the kids to the local mall so I could visit the Barnes and Noble there to see if they had a copy of "Plan B" by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. It's the 4th of the Liaden universe books. The first three came out in the late 80s, and I missed them. Sometime later I jotted down a usenet post about them being good, and when I was in NYC I found "Carpe Diem", the 3rd in the series, but hadn't found the first two, but recently they're all back in print. After reading the first three I'd agree with whomever recommended them in the first place, they're good.
The only reason I went to Barnes and Noble was I tried my local independant bookseller where I normally buy everything, and they were out, and sometimes I'm not willing to wait, especially I just finished the 3rd in the series. I did well at poker last night, winning $20. It was a good time. I really enjoy my poker group, I wish we'd meet more regularly. We're having another $20 buy-in No Limit Texas Hold 'Em tournetment a week from Saturday. I dobut I'll do as well as last time! Wednesday, October 29, 2003
I finally updated my links, adding Jeff Schell's funny page which desperately needs comments (just auto-add a comment from me each entry, Jeff, a simple "Loser!" would do!) and updating Koric & Felicity.
On Monday B's mom got knee replacement surgery. She now has a new titanium knee, and is undergoing rehab. B feels terrible that she can't be down there with her, so yesterday after work I took the kids and she drove down to Olympia to visit her mom. The kids and I had a great time, starting off with their favorite babysitting dinner, fish sticks and tater tots, and after dinner we read some stories and horsed around, then Isabel and Harry helped me spread newspaper in the kitchen and we took all their clothes off so we could carve up the pumpkin. At first Isabel was very resistant to the idea, so I wasn't going to do it if she was going to bawl all night, but she came around and decided she didn't want a face on the pumpkin, she wanted a seahorse. Heh, that's a little beyond my artistic capabilities, we ended up with a classic triangle-eyed smiley single-square-toothed jack-o-lantern. Neither of my kids liked the inside goop one bit, which was a little sad, but understandable. They LOVED the jack-o-lantern, especially after we added a candle. Afterwards I gave them a big old bath with hair washing, they splashed around for about 20 minutes. Then it was time for more stories and bed. Isabel came into the bedroom while I was putting Harry down, announcing, "I'm tired daddy. It's bedtime" Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Ah, my Huskies got pounded by USC. Damn that is one good football team, and they are mostly freshmen and sophomores. I would not be at all surprised to see them win a national championship next year or the year after, or even this year. Gonna be a while before my Huskies are good again.
Speaking of not good, my Seachickens rolled over and played dead against the freakin' Bengals. Uff. 4 turnovers to 0, that's hard to get past. We went to a Halloween party on Saturday, I finally used the Saudi headrag/rope thingy I bought 12 years ago during Gulf War 1. Of course, being totally politically incorrect, I had a airplane ticket jacket sticking out of my pocket, carried a box knife, and yelled "Allah Akbar" all night. Friday, October 24, 2003
Apparently somebody with a key is going into the admin office after hours and using one of the secretarys' computer, and has done some other stuff. In an attempt to figure out who, I'm taking a USB webcam and a laptop and will set up some covert surveilence, we'll find the culprit!
B's sister Annie arrive last night for the weekend with her little boy Brooks. He was born on St. Patty's Day, so he's just over 7 months old, but he's crawling really well and has been for weeks. Damn cute little guy. A spittin' image of his father. He's got the same nose and mouth as Harry, but brown eyes and hair. Thursday, October 23, 2003
My current project is to turn one of my 3 PDAs into a programmable universal remote for my cable box, TV, DVD player, TiVo, and stereo.
I've got an old Palm Pilot Pro, originally 1Mb with no IR, upgraded with the Palm 2Mb upgrade to give it PalmOS 3.3, 2Mb of memory, and an IR port, apparently a relatively powerful one. It's been sitting in a desk drawer for about 3 years, since I got a Palm IIIx cheap from a friend to replace it. The Palm IIIx has 4Mb of RAM, Palm OS 3.5, but apparently a weaker IR emitter. I use this as my normal PDA, but I really don't use it as much as I used to. Mostly it stores my weight (via eatwatch) and I use it for games. I also got a nice deal on a Toshiba E335 last summer from Office Depot. $300 price, $100 Toshiba rebate, $150 in Office Depot rebates, net cost was like $74 after tax. I mostly got this to play with since it was ludicrously cheap, I don't use it much. Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Two beers I've had in the last two days:
Alba Scots Pine ale. This scottish ale is brewed in the old-school style. Before hops, they used pine as the flavoring. It's actually pretty damn good. After I drank it cold from the beer fridge, I noticed it recommended serving room temperature in a wine glass. Huh. I'll try that next. Rogue Brutal Bitter. This bitter was made with 4 different malts and only a single hop, but they used plenty of that hop. Mmmmm! A very good beer. Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Wooo! After Rich Gannon got taken out right before halftime last night on Monday Night Football, the Raiders started former Husky Marques Tuiososopo as QB for his first real NFL playing time. Wooo! He took them from down 10-zip at the half to 10-3, and then when a Raider dropped a punt and let the Chiefs score again. Down 17-3 with about 4 minutes to go, he lead a drive down the field to score a touchdown, and the defense held KC to 3 and out, so they got the ball back on the 4 yard line with less than a minute to go. He drove down the field, completing pass after pass, until finally time expired as he threw to Tim Brown who was on the 1 yard line. Unfortunately Tim failed to get into the endzone as he was tackled, so the Raiders didn't get to force overtime, but it was still an amazing performance. He always was a great 4th quarter comeback QB.
Yesterday I got to prove my new "waterproof" REI biking gear. It was raining, and I don't mean normal Seattle drizzle, but your Old Testament-style 40 days and 40 nights "Wrath of God" type rain. I thougth it was raining awfully hard all day, but to find out we got 3 and a half inches of rain in a day, a Seattle record, was pretty impressive. My rain gear DID work, I was damp from sweat inside it (it was nearly 70F) but basically dry. Amazing. Ok, for any science geeks out there, this is pretty freakin' cool if you ask me. A group here in my department makes what they call "Seagliders". They're basically 1.8m long, 30cm wide torpedo shaped objects with short stubby wings that "fly" through the water. No external moving parts. Here's how they work: They are nearly neutrally bouyant. They have a small balloon inside the rear fairing outside the pressure vessel that they expand or contract to make them float or sink. As they sink, water flowing over their "wings" makes them move forward at half a knot. Not fast, but they use so little power that they can do this for 6-9 months straight, traveling 6000km. When they reach a designated depth up to 1000m, they inflate the balloon, making themselves float, so they rise back up. When they reach the surface, they can tip their long antenna tail into the air because the battery pack inside the pressure vessel is on a long screw and they can move it forward and aft. Sticking that antenna into the air, it uses GPS to figure out where it is and where it should try to go, and using Iridium satellite phones to call in, telling where it is, what the battery and other status is, what data was gathered, and asking for further instructions. Way way freakin' cool. If you have a fat pipe, download the 194Mb Quicktime movie. Monday, October 20, 2003
Wooo! My Huskies went from a weekend where they lost to a WAC team to beating a ranked Pac-10 team Oregon State. I don't know why, it's going to be a weird season.
I didn't see the game, because I was out of the country on a lovely weekend getaway with Bridget to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. It was supposed to be a secret, but her friend accidentally (cough stupidly) let the cat out of the bag so I knew we were going to Victoria, BC. B's mom arrived Friday night to babysit the kids for the weekend. This would be our first trip without kids, and we were pretty excited. The weather forecast was for rain, but that wasn't going to slow down a pair of Seattlites. On Saturday we had to get up at 6am to get dressed and out the door, drive down to the waterfront to check in on the Victoria Clipper by 7am. The Clipper is a small fleet of high-speed passenger ferries that go 30knots, making the 70 mile voyage in 2.5 hours. Unfortunately we weren't on their big new one that does 40 knots making the trip in 2 hours, but ah well. We checked in and sat around while they were preparing to board us. After the line didn't move for quite a while I figured out something had to be up. They then announced that due to bad weather, they were delaying the departure from 8am to 11am, claiming the weather in the Straits of Juan De Fuca would improve in the meantime making the trip "more comfortable for passengers" aka less of a puke-a-tron. I think there was something else up, but regardless, we were boned. At least we got up at 6am to get boned. Gah. We walked along the waterfront to the Edgewater Inn, a moderately famous hotel on a pier over the water. The restaurant there got slammed with fellow passengers, but since we had tons of time to kill it wasn't bad. The food was awesome, I was most impressed. Eventually the friggin' ferry left and we were on our way. We brought our portable DVD player and headphones so we could watch some DVDs on the trip, it was nice. B can't read on a boat, it makes her motion sick. She was taking dramamine as well, I on the other hand am pretty good with motion, boats don't make me very sick unless it gets really bad, and the Clippers never get that bad since they have a catamaran-style double hull. We got to Victoria at about 2pm, but the line at Customs was insanely long. Took over an hour, ugga. The drunk ladies in front of us kept exclaiming, "It's just fucking Canada! What's the deal?" We finally got out of Customs and decided to walk to our hotel, since it was only a few blocks away. The weather was pretty clean, no rain at all, which was great. Our hotel room was awesome, very large and with a huge marble bathroom. I mean the bathroom alone was probably 200 square feet, with a large soaking tub and a giant walk-in shower. Very nice. We also had a balcony overlooking Victoria's Inner Harbor. We went into town to get B a snack and went to the Royal BC Museum to see their visiting Dinosaur exhibit, but we got boned again, it had left a week before. Still, it was nice buying a donut and a juice, giving them a US $20, and getting a $20 bill back plus $2-3 in coins. After the museum we went walking through town, looking for someplace nice to eat later and to see what we could see. We stopped off at a very cool Victorian style tobacco store that hadn't changed since it was built in 1890, they still had a large marble statue with flame coming out two sides to light your cigar with. I bought my favorite cigar, a Partagas Series D #4, to smoke "later". We then stopped off at the Elephant and Castle for some High Guiness. (I'm not much for High Tea, so we made do). We also had some tasty calimari as a snack at the E&C. We found a cool tapas bar down an alley, but they were booked, no reservations available, and after walking further, we found the tasty italian place we'd eaten at six years ago when we went to Victoria when we were dating, but they were booked as well. Finally we stopped off at a beer&wine store and I bought a large bottle of a bitter I hadn't tried bofore, "for later". Back to the hotel. I stuck the beer in the minifridge hidden in one of the closets. We showered and dressed and got ready for going out. Walking back to that tapas bar, we went into the bar part and snagged the one seat left at the bar, and I stood around in seat-vulture mode. I haven't exercised that skill in a long time but we're both really good at swooping down upon tables as someone departs. As luck would have it, the guys next to us left in less than five minutes, so we had two adjacent spots at the bar! Reservations bah! We were set. B ordered a margarita, and I had a mojito. The marg was great, my mojito was pretty mediocre, and was either deadly or just plain low on booze. After those we had a pair of sour apples martinis, which was vodka and some sour apple liqueur. Tasty, until our food started to arrive. Our first course was cream of roasted garlic soup and mussels with garlic and chilis, and foccacia to go with it. The soup was damn tasty, but really rich and garlicly. The mussels were to die for, small, tender, oh so flavorful. MMmmmMM! However, let me assure those of you paying attention, while a sour apple martini might be tasty on it's own, it DOES NOT GO WITH GARLIC. Bleh. Down the hatch, and I ordered a glass of merlot to help right that palate faux pas. The next two courses were new york steak with a peppercorn sauce, and prawns in coconut curry sauce. The steak was dissappointing, a little tough and gristly, but the prawns were yummy. I love curry. For dessert I orderd a drink with chocolate liqueur, strawberry-tequila liqueur, and cream, plus a caramel flan. Ah, decadence. Have I mentioned I love Canada's exchange rate? All of that came to like $80 Canadian. After dinner we headed back to the hotel, we sat on the balcony while I drank my very nice bitter and smoked my awesome cigar. Mmmm! It did turn out that most of the drinks I had earlier much have been pretty weak, since I should have been pretty drunk after four drinks. On Sunday we started out the day with the hotel's complimentary breakfast buffet. I had the omlette chef make me one with spinach, bacon, smoked salmon, and jack cheese. Mmmmm. Fooooood. That plus some grapefruit juice and english muffins set me straight. We then visited the hotel business center to use the internet-access PCs to check the Husky football score, amazingly we kicked ass. There is no telling with this team. After that we walked along the waterfront around the hotel grounds. It's right on the point seperating Victoria's inner and outer harbors, very coool. We watched the giant car ferry from Port Angeles come in in the morning fog, which cleared off soon enough. At that point it was time to check out of the hotel, so we gathered everything up, decided what we needed for the day and gave the rest to the bellboys to store. Off to town again. We were planning on spending part of the afternoon seeing a movie, so we decided to shop for gifts beforehand, but not buy them until afterwards so we wouldn't be carrying bags around all the time. We found some earrings for B, a ring for myself, some books for the kids, some christmas thing-a-ma-bob for B's mom. We also found these funny beer charms. I've often seen wine charms, they are little things you stick around the stem of a wine glass at a party so you can tell which glass is yours. This was the same concept, except each charm hung off a large rubber ring that fit over the neck of a beer bottle. Funny, and useful, since one friend's wife is *always* forgetting which beer is hers. Now that problem is solved! We had an hour to kill before the movie, so we went to another nice pub and I had a pint of guiness. It being sunday afternoon, they were playing NFL football games, and had appetizer specials. For $3 B ordered chili fries, and I got some fried cheddar balls. We got to watch the failed opening drive of the Seahawk game before it was time to leave. The movie we went to see was terrible but entertaining. It's real name is The Rundown, but I'd call it Romancing The Rock, cuz it was a pretty bad Romancing the Stone ripoff. Well, honestly, it ripped off anything it could. Fun to have watched once, but no great shakes. Nice to see a movie with my wife, however. Afterwards we went to the pub to watch the 4th quarter of the seahawks game, and have some more guiness. The Hawks were up 17-9, but the Bears drove down, got a touchdown, and made a two-point conversion to tie the freakin' game. Gah! Fortunately with three minutes left the Hawks drove down and scored their own touchdown, giving the Bears back the ball with 52 seconds left. They nearly immediately threw an interception, ending the game. Wooo! The Hawks are 5-1, a feat they have never accomplished before. We then went to buy the stuff we picked out, and headed back to get our carry-on luggage and get checked in for the ride home. The trip home was uneventful. When we finally got home, Isabel was pretty excited to see us. Harry was already asleep, I can't wait to hug him tonight. It was an awesome weekend. Thursday, October 16, 2003
I'm still laughing at the Cubs losing last night. Too damn funny. That poor bastard fan who interfered would be well advised to move away from Chicago.
I got cleaned out at poker last night to the tune of $35. I had an amazing run of really good hands that came in second. Bah! Tasty Fullers 1845 bottle conditioned ale. Mmmm! Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Funny. I just got email from Ubisoft basically saying, "Um, yeah we know Shadowbane used to suck, but it sucks much less now! We've given all former players a free month to see for themselves!"
Of course, I've deleted all my Shadowbane installations, lord only knows how long it'd take to re-install.
Mmmm, after my trip to Bottleworks on Monday night, I've got a fridge full of tasty beverages. Last night I enjoyed a delicious St. Peters English Ale which was truly outstanding. Not as hoppy as I generally prefer, but it has a certain je ne sais quoi that was was amazingly good. I'd rate it excellent.
I also had a bottle of Beck's Oktoberfest, which was very good. I think it had a leg up on the normal Beck's problem, which I am pretty sure it age. By the time it get bottled, shipped to a European seaport, stored in a warehouse, loaded on a ship, crosses the Atlantic, sits in a Jersey warehouse, and gets trucked/trained across to a local distributor, then sits on a grocery store shelf, a bottle of Becks has got to have passed it's prime, which is sad. I mean, what's the point of air transportation if not to ship tasty beers from Europe to my mouth while they're still fresh? Speaking of European beers, someday I'm making it back to the Andorfer brewery in Passau. I've been playing Fallout and Fallout 2 at lunch lately. They're pretty fun old-school RPGs from 1997 and 1998, but I never got around to playing Fallout when it was new and Fallout 2 only came out for the Mac relatively recently. Funny to think they were ported by the Omni Group, which I bike past every day on my way to work. One of the few Mac game porting houses is right here. Anyway, they have a strange post-apocalyptic setting, it's half 50s and half future. Like if we'd had fusion tech in the 50s and then had a huge war. Lots of cool background details, and the game itself gives a zillion ways to accomplish any particular task. Humbaba is going as a deadly sniper attack first ask questions later, but you can be a sneaky theif or a pacifist diplomat if you want. The engine and interface suck, however. It's hard to control and hard to see what is in a particular room. Tuesday, October 14, 2003
I went to Bottleworks last night and stocked up on many a fine malty beverage. First order on deck was for Fraoch Heather Ale from Scotland. Kinda funny how I can get beers from Scotland easier than beers from Pennsylvania. Anyway, it was an eminantly drinkable beer. A tad low on the hops, but no heavy on the malt, so it was quite tasty. Definitely some herb flavors as well, like they use something in addition to or instead of hops, or maybe just a really obscure hop. Fortunately for me, I picked up two bottles, so I have a spare. I'd rate it as "very good".
I also had a bottle of Stone brewing's "7", seventh anniversary ale. Now, Stone is a balls-to-the-wall brewery. Their motto is "You are not worthy", and they go all out to be extreme. Sometimes this works awesome, like in the case of their IPA, their smoked porter, and their aptly-named "Ruination IPA". (So named because it pretty much drops the hop bomb on your palate). All excellent beers. However, in the case of their Arrogant Bastard, Imperial Stout, or their "7", it results in a beer than it seriously malty, without enough hops to cut through. I felt like I was drinking Mrs Butterworths. Good for pancakes, maybe, but not for drinking. As a result, Stone is one of those bizarre breweries where they make both very good and very bad beers. Most brewerie's entire product lines are pretty close on that scale, like Bridgeport makes all good to excellent beers, or Pyramid, which makes all poor to OK beers. Or Budweiser, which makes poor beers. Very few are as diverse. Hey, speaking of beer, I forgot to mention Tommy Spurr, the official Hero of Scotchtoberfest 2003. Here is a little news article about him from news.scotsman.com Free Beer for Pub�s Most Loyal Drinker By Ben Garside, PA News A 90-year-old war veteran has drunk in the same pub for the last 72 years, his landlord confirmed today. Tommy Spurr has supped an estimated 52,000 pints of beer and the same number of glasses of whisky over eight decades � popping in almost daily for his never changing order, two pints of bitter and two glasses of whiskey. Pub locals and Mr Spurr�s family gathered at the White Cross Pub, Pudsey, West Yorkshire, to celebrate his birthday yesterday, where current landlord Colm O�Neill presented him with a cake and a certificate for a free pint of beer every day for life. The retired warehouse manager first walked into the White Cross on his 18th birthday in 1931. He ordered two pints of Tetley�s bitter and two glasses of whisky, and he went back virtually every day since, to the same pub, with the same order. �He�s part of the fixtures and fittings,� said Mr O�Neill. �At quarter-to-five every day he walks in, regular as clockwork. You can set your watch by him. He�s a lovely character. �If he�s a bit late we think there�s something wrong, so we give his daughter a call to check.� Mr Spurr said: �I like the bitter and I have two �wee ones�. It�s a nice pub and I like my spot at the bar.� The father-of-one, who has two grand-daughters and three great grandchildren, only missed out on his drinks when he was serving his country during the Second World War. Mr Spurr was a soldier in the Burma campaign. �I missed having a drink at the local while I was a soldier, apart from the day our officer brought a bottle of whisky and we managed to get our hands on some,� he said. Tetley spokesperson Donna Cresswell said: �We�re delighted to hear Mr Spurr is such a fan of our beer. It�s clear our product has stood the test of time.� Monday, October 13, 2003
Well, while my Huskies suck, at least my Seachickens are 4-1 after their second narrow escape victory over a division rival. This will be the Huskies first losing season in longer than any current player has been alive.
Friday I couldn't think of anything to buy B as an anniversary present. Stupid me, I forgot she wanted flowers. D'oh! Sometimes my brain is just plain defective. I'd have been happy to get her flowers if I'd remembered. On Saturday, after getting rained on while watching my team get destroyed by a team that hadn't beaten a Pac10 team since the 1940s, I went home to clean up my house for my annual Scotchtoberfest party. The party was a lot of fun. There were only a dozen guests, but we ate, drank, and were merry until 12:30am, which is much better than some of my recent parties where everyone left at 10pm. One of my friends suggested that I make scotch eggs, which is a pub snack I've only seen at the Horse Brass pub in Portland, it's a hard boiled egg, completely encased in sausage meat, covered with bread crumbs, and deep-fat-fried. I didn't want fry oil smell permeating my house so I baked them instead, but they were awesome. I don't have them often since I don't make it to Portland that often, but I love 'em. B thought I was crazy making 8 of them, she figured 4 would be more than sufficient, but all 16 halves were consumed and I bet if I'd made 4 more they'd have gone as well. I'll definitely be making those again. I tried to find a recipe for them on my primary recipe source online, foodtv.com, but they had nothing. A google search came up with many recipes, all with BBC or UK in the url. Heh. Saturday, October 11, 2003
Oh man, it sucks to be a Husky fan lately. We just lost to freakin' Nevada. 28-17. Man oh man do we suck.
Eh, at least it's Scotchtoberfest and I'll be plenty drunk tonight. Friday, October 10, 2003
Oh, duh! Happy fifth wedding anniversary to us! The best five years of my life. B only had to spend 40% of the time pregnant. :)
So I tried to get tickets to the Lord of the Rings trilogy on December 16th, but got totally boned. No lube, even. The Cinerama, Paul Allen's personal theater, was the venue for Seattle. Their web page listed "Tickets go on sale Thurs Oct 9th at 10 online, and at the box office Friday Oct 10th at 10am".
For three hours I tried to buy tickets online, no joy, they were reported as unavailable. For a half hour, they were available, and would take my info and credit card info, but on the last step it would always report failure to connect to the Cinerama's credit card system, which was required to finish the deal. For the next few hours, movietickets.com reported "Down for routine maintenance", and after that they were reporting nothing for the Cinerama in advance. Finally, at some point late in the afternoon, the Cinerama's web page announced "Oh, you know how we said no tickets at the box office until Friday at 10am? We lied, sorry you got fucked!" I got down there as fast as I could, but they'd sold out of the trilogy a half hour before. Pustule-licking pigfuckers. I've been so excited about this for the last few months ever since it was first rumored. After that we went to the mall because B wanted to eat at California Pizza Kitchen. Damn but that place is expensive. $4.69 for a draft beer? It doesn't even come with a blowjob. $10 for a tiny 10" pizza? Crapweasels. The food was OK, but no better than several of my friends homemade pizzas. The kids were not behaving very well, which pretty much sapped my will to live. B wanted me to go to get a passport ID photo taken at the mall, but I was totally not up for it, or going to Trader Joes to get cheese for our Scotchtoberfest party this weekend. To top it off, I'm coming down with a cold. Plus it's going to rain on me at the football game tomorrow, which we'll probably lose. Thursday, October 09, 2003
Ooo! In two short hours tickets go on sale for the Dec 16th geek-a-thon: All three Lord of the Rings movies in a row, with the first two being the extended previously-only-on-DVD versions. I am SO there. Only one of my friends is willing to go with me, interestingly he's the friend I've had the longest, since the 4th grade, nearly 75% of my life, and the one who first introduced me to The Lord of the Rings in the 5th grade. Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Ok, I've tried a bunch of apples recently. I like apples, and I live in Washington, which is a huge apple producing state. My criteria for a good apple is mostly texture, I can't stand a mushy apple, and then taste, I prefer a slightly sweeter apple, but appreciate a good sour one as well, but I have to have them crisp.
Granny Smiths are a popular choice for crisp, but they often lack flavor. Red Delicious, the only apple I ever ate when I was a kid, can be fabulous, but I'm convinced they're only ripe for a few hours, and it's really hard to get them before they're mushy and nasty. My current two favorite apples are Fujis and Cameos. I make sure they feel very firm before buying them, any give in them and you know it's a nasty mushbomb. I feel a little traitorous buying the imported NZ Fuji apples. You should be able to find either at a Whole Paycheck, er Foods, they usually have a huge produce selection. The student health center here at the university I work at has cheap deals on bike and ski helmets, $12 and $30. I went up there today to take advantage of this, since my bike helmet is 10 years old and they recommend replacing them every 3 years, and everyone really should be wearing helmets while skiing. I got a new bike helmet, but unfortunately, they don't have ski helmets in size gargantuan, so those of us with big melons don't get the subsidized deal. Ah well. Looks like I'll need to buy one at REI. I still can't believe the Monday Night Football game last night. I turned it off at halftime because it looked like the Colts were getting destroyed and I have a few errands to run, but it turns out to have been "one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history", coming back from a 21 pt deficit with 4 minutes to go. Uff-freakin-da!! Gaaa!!! I should always let the TiVo record it if I am not watching. Sheesh. Monday, October 06, 2003
Man, what a terrible weekend for football. Both my teams went home at halftime, neither scoring in the second half. Bleah.
I always used to sleep on the right side of the bed (if you are at the foot facing the headboard) and B on the left, at her apartment when we were dating, at my house after we were married, and at our current house for two years. It's always ended up being the side that is closest to the door, and always gave me a feeling of being able to protect her. (I no longer sleep with a loaded .45 under my pillow, but it's close by. Anyone who invaded my home during the night is in for a hostile reaction.) When she got pregnant the first time, she had to pee all the freakin' time, so we swapped sides so she'd be nearer to the bathroom. It's been that way for three years now. I normally sleep on my left side, and she sleeps on her right side, so before we both faced outboard, which is great if you want to roll over and spoon, but the new arrangement wasn't so great, it's sorta annoying to sleep face to face with someone breathing on your face and limbs everywhere make it hard to snuggle. Last night we finally went back to the old arrangement, and it worked great so far. Friday morning my front doorknob broke off, so I had to replace it. Unfortunately for me, modern doorknobs require a 54mm hole in the door, and the old hole was more like 40mm. Thus, I needed a hole bit for my drill, plus those always use a pilot bit so they don't work for expanding existing holes. I didn't want to buy a tool I'd probably only use once, and didn't have a solution to the pilot hole problem anyway, so I was thinking I was doomed to either hand-file it wider or use my dremel for ever. Ugh. Fortunately, I called my poker buddy Dee, he's got a zillion tools and is an engineer. He had the 54mm hole drill, and had had the same problem I had one time, so he'd made a metal jig the pilot bit fit into, perfect! I borrowed it, clamped the jig onto the back of the door with the hole in the jig lined up with the center of the hole, and was able to drill out a nice nearly-perfect 54mm hole. A little filing later, and I installed the new doorknob. A locksmith is coming today to make all the locks off the same key. Sunday, October 05, 2003
Boo hoo hoo! My Huskies played a great first half against UCLA, going into the locker room up 16-7. I have no idea what happened, but in the second half, we received the kickoff, and our first play from scrimmage was a fumble in the endzone recovered by UCLA for a touchdown. It went downhill from there, we never scored, and they scored often. Final score, Huskies get their sorry butts kicked 46-16. I have no idea why UCLA keeps beating us, that makes 5 of the last 6.
Well, maybe my Seahawks will do well against Green Bay today. Friday, October 03, 2003
This morning I had to stay home and watch the babies so B could go see a neurologist about her migraines. He said that her brain MRI looks great, no problems at all, so they're going to try upping the dose on the Indoral she takes from 20mg to 60mg, he said 60mg is where he starts migraine sufferers. Hopefully it'll help.
Part of watching the babies on Fridays is taking them to their tots dance class. It was actually pretty fun, Isabel gets all shy but after a few minutes warmed up to it. She really likes running up and down the dance floor, dancing freeform, and hopping like a kangaroo. She did great. Harry mostly stood there or I helped him, every few minutes he'd want me to pick him up, I'd do so, give him a big hug, then put him down again, he'd be OK for a few more minutes. He's nearly done cutting a set of 8 freakin' teeth, hopefully he'll be happy soon. Ok, so people want to read more about beer and less about babes and the boy, eh? Well, this week's beer is more of a summer beer, but I still have a few left over. It's Red Stripe, a lager from Jamaica. Ya mon no problem! I can't confirm this, having never tried hippie lettuce before, but apparently it's great when you're high. Personally, I find it as a crisp, refreshing lager, good for what ales ya. Err, good for what doesn't ale ya. Or when you don't want to drink an ale. Or um, nevermind. That joke died horribly. I love the stubby bottle, and regret that the local Olympia brewery got bought out by Miller, sold to Pabst, and then shut down this summer, since they aren't moving the "stubby bottle" line down to Irwindale, CA, where they brew Olympia beer now. Something about the stubbie just feels right, I vastly prefer it to the longneck. I first drank Red Stripe on my honeymoon in Jamaica, and thus have always had a fond spot for it. It used to be hard to find locally, I had to go to Beervana, aka Bottleworks. Then it started showing up at Trader Joes. Then the local QFC grocery store had it, as well as Whole Paycheck err Foods. Finally, I knew Red Stripe was getting popular when freakin' Costco started stocking it. Thursday, October 02, 2003
We've been working on starting Isabel's potty training. She's got a couple of books on how big girls use the potty, and now she has some big-girl panties to wear instead of a diaper for part of the day. She's been doing pretty good, and is very proud of herself.
So far, her only accident was in the kitchen, thankfully, and she told B "I hurt myself momma". "What? How did you hurt yourself?!?" "I had an accident". Ah! I guess she only knows the word accident to mean getting hurt. Heh. She's so smart. Ha! I made Felicity's "Kraft Dinner Shit Casserole" last night because B's migraine was bad and I didn't want to have to think about dinner. I prefer to call it "White Trasherole", it's not bad. Not great, but not bad. I was laughing my ass off while making it. |
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