Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Monday, May 31, 2004
Boy howdy do Texicans love their pickup trucks. I'd guess that at least a third of the vehicles on the road are pickups.
One thing I do like about Texas besides beer at mall food courts is state pride. There is the texas outline, a star, or the word Texas all over, on just about everything. Lots of pride, I like that. You don't get nearly as much up in Washington. Holy smokes, we went to Whattaburger to buy some milkshakes for the kids. The kids size was 16oz, and they had a freakin' 44oz milkshake for $3. 44 ounces?!? That's the size of a super big gulp.
Yesterday B got the bright idea of letting the kids run through a sprinkler. Since Buddy has automatic sprinklers I went to walmart to buy one, they had a frog shaped one for $3 with a spinner as a head. Three of the four kids loved it, Buddy's boy Ryan (15 months) wasn't so sure about it. Harry just can't keep his pants on, and he kept leaning over to play with the sprinkler, giving us a shot of his plumber's crack. It was pretty funny. Sunday, May 30, 2004
Boy howdy do they have humidity in Texas. Glub dang. Steamy.
It only took me 3 freakin' days of being here before I started to use "y'all" all the time. Gah. On the plus side, it's one place my saying "howdy" fits right in. A hell of a lot of pickup trucks here. I bought that latest Bujold "Vorkosigan" book two days ago and finished it today. Good book. Last night Buddy (B's brother) and I went next door with some lawn chairs to sit in the neighbor's front yard and drink with the neighbors and some friends they had over. It was pretty funny, the neighbors were hilarious. Very much not what I encounter in Seattle, I tell you what. Funny being outside at midnight drinking blended scotch straight (they were impressed.... ha!) on the front lawn. One of the neighbors was having a high school graduation party. About 300 high school kids were cruising the neighborhood, coming and going from this party. Most had nice cars with subwoofer sound systems. Uff. Saturday, May 29, 2004
Man oh man I now officially love Texas. We took the kids to a mall this morning for some exercise and to get them out of the house, and the freakin' food court sold BEER. Yes, BEER. I don't think they sell beer in food courts even in Vegas... Anyway, while it felt weird walking around a mall food court with a beer, it was glorious. The crazy look B gave me was priceless as well.
Man, it's sure nice that one of B's brother's neighbors has a linksys wireless access point hooked to their fat pipe and entirely unprotected. Having wireless access everywhere in the house is WAY nicer than using dialup.
Heh, when we were at the cafe at the zoo yesterday having lunch, I saw "frito pie" on the menu. I was like, "wtf is frito pie?" but I figured, hell, I'm in texas, damn right I'm going to order frito pie. I guessed it'd be fritos with chili on top, but thought if it was fritos with marshmallow creme or something else, if it was on the limited menu there it much be something people eat so it has to be at least OK. Turns out my first instinct was right, and it was good. After we got back from the zoo my not-brother-in-law Bill and I took off to find something to do. I went to a Barnes and Noble to pick up a copy of the latest Lois McMaster Bujold "Miles Vorkisigan" book, which had slipped under my radar. Excellent series, excellent author. She truly deserves the two or three Hugo awards she's won. Speaking of the Hugo, I finished freakin' Hyperion but the mother %&Y$ book didn't have an ending, it was a pig %&$#$ cliffhanger. I have the next book, but I am SO not happy, and I mean not happy to the point I may not even bother with the next one. Gack. After the bookstore we wanted to find a bar, but not the freakin' red robin right there, I wanted something more Texas. I mean, I hate going to Red robin in Seattle, why go to one here? That's like when I was in Munich and my friend wanted pizza hut. Few things drive me crazier. Anyhoo, we found a mexican place called Chuy's. I'd lost all sense of time, so I didn't quite get that we were at a popular place at 5pm on a Friday afternoon. We had to stand at the bar since the bar was full, but my insticts were good. I didn't want to order a Corona because I have that at home all the time (my friends have it at their places a lot) and while normally I order Negra Modello, I have a halfrack of that back at B's brother's house (B had bought it for me, man do I love that woman) so I went with plan C, which was Dos Equis. Turns out it was the happy hour beer, $2. Plus being happy hour, they had a chips-n-stuff buffet in the bar for free. Some cheesey dip, meat, beans, salsas, and excellent fresh chips. Just the thing to take the edge off. Friday, May 28, 2004
It's hot, sticky, and overcast here in San Antone. We went to visit B's dad at the VA hospital. He looks like hell, but he's doing better than yesterday. I think he'll last at least a few more months, but B's not so sure since he wasn't as responsive as yesterday. He did get to see all his grandkids which is good.
After that we went to see the San Antonio Zoo. Unfortunately they didn't recognize our zoo memberships from Seattle like some other zoos do. (Our friends got in free at the Phoenix zoo with their Woodland Park zoo membership) but it was pretty fun if a bit sad. Bizarre, I'd forgotten about old school concrete zoos like that. Ours is nearly completely changed over to "natural" exhibits, this one was concrete squares mostly. The elephants were particularly sad, just rocking back and forth. They had different animals, however, which the kids loved. Heh, found out Sea World is free for kids 2 and under. Isabel is still two until Wednesday, so if we go it'll be before that. Thursday, May 27, 2004
Ugh. In San Antonio. Hell of a lot more trees here than any mental image of Texas I had, which is brown dry plains.
Hot. Sticky humidity. No sleep. Flying with babies sucks. Saw a "Red Robin" burger restaurant on the way from the airport to B's brother's house. Funny, it's a chain that started in Seattle and I didn't have any idea it had spread this far. Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Well, B's dad has taken a turn for the worse, doesn't look like he'll last more than a few days if that.
We've just booked 4 tickets on the redeye to San Antonio tonight. My first trip to Texas. Joy. Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Alright, uff, never a free moment to breathe.
Let's see, when I left the poker tables on Weds morning the rest of the gang was finally awake so we got our car from the valet and headed off to find some breakfast. First stop was Krispy Kreme donuts. I was just going to have a pair of Original Glazed as an appetizer, but the lady behind the counter asked if I wanted a sample. Duh! Of course! The sample was a hot cinnamon bun off the line, mmmm. That plus two Original Glazed took the edge off. (oh, and the gatoraid I'd stashed in the styrofoam cooler in my room. Sweet sweet hydration!) Next, we went to Arizona Charlies again. It was noon at this point, so some of the gang wanted hamburgers or other things, but heck if there is $2.99 NY steak and eggs on the menu, I'm going to order it. I supplemented this with the $2.49 Ham steak and eggs, a healthy cut of ham with bone in the middle. That way I got a steak, a slice of ham, 4 eggs (over hard), and 4 pieces of rye toast with butter and jam. The hash browns were marginal, so I ignored those. My friends think I'm some kind of freak eating two meals. Eh, it was damn good. I washed it down with a Bud Light purchased from a very large breasted cocktail waitress. After breakfast we went downtown to go to Binions. A friend and I wanted to enter their "Turn $50 into Millions" tournements. 10 people sit at a table, each paying in $50. You get $200 in chips, the blinds start at $5 and $10, raising every 10 minutes. No Limit Texas Hold'Em, final two players win a $225 buy-in to a super satellite for the World Series of Poker $10k buy-in No Limit Texas Hold'em main event. Man, that format is so fast paced that it's basically a total crapshoot. Either you get lucky quickly or you're out. I folded about 10 times until I finally got Ace-Five of diamonds, and went all-in. Two players called, one with a huge stack, and he had A-10. Flop included an Ace and a 10, so my only shot was to hit a 5 on both the turn and the river. Didn't get one on either, so I was out in 6th place. My buddy went out in 5th. After that we wandered around Fremont Street and downtown Las Vegas while waiting for our ride back. I found a quick-e-mart to sell me a 16oz can of beer to whet my whistle, and one of the casinos had a special I'd never heard of, deep fried twinkies for a buck. Even after having just ate two full meals, I had to try that. They took a Hostess Twinkee, shoved a stick up it's butt, dipped it in batter, and fried it. Then they coated it with powdered sugar and chocolate sprinkles. (Mmmm, sprinkles). The best part was the creamy filling stayed cool. Drool. After our buddies showed up with the car we went back to Mandalay Bay, it was maybe 2:30pm. I and one friend decided to take advantage of the 13 acre swimming pool complex at the hotel. It was pretty nice. They had a large wave pool with a big wave every 90 seconds, and a lazy river that goes around a circuit at 2mph, but the bastards charged $20/day to rent a tube to float the lazy river on. We spent about 45 minutes in the wave pool having fun and body surfing the waves, then went maybe 6-8 circuits of the lazy river, and headed for the bar for some margaritas. Mmmm. After that was time for some more poker. We played until about 8pm, I won another $30 or so, until the whole gang arrived for some prime drinkin'. We went to a bar in the middle of the casino at Mandalay Bay, since the bar at the Luxor had a band and was WAY too loud to converse, and the other bar in the Luxor only had tables for 4, and we had 5. Unfortunately, the bar at Mandalay Bay had a band setting up, plus the waitress was totally ignoring our thirst. She ended up getting a 5% tip for deplorable service. I was sent to find a new bar, plus I was drunk and craving some sushi. I hadn't eaten since noon at it was like 9pm so I was finally hungry again. Unfortnately for my friends, sending Drunk Me on a quest isn't a great idea, I get distracted easily, like at the Davidoff cigar store where I bought a lovely Arturo Fuente. My friends laughed as I wandered back with a lit stogie. Some help I am. At least the Mariners lost while this was happening, so my $20 bet earlier paid me $42. Woo! We finally found a sushi bar in the mall between Mandalay Bay and Luxor. At first the service in that bar was terrible as well, but the manager overheard us bitching and came over to take our order. Service after that was excellent, and the sushi was totally freaking awesome! I was drunk, had a great cigar, great food, funny friends, I was having the absolute best time. One reason we needed a bar where we could hear ourselves think was a very funny story. My one friend found a picture on the internet of a guy sitting in a Mustang convertible getting his cock sucked by some stripper-looking chick. The guy in the picture is an absolutely dead ringer for our friend, who used to hang out with a lot of strippers and even married one who subsequently rolled him by maxing out his credit cards, pawning all his shit, and moving to California one day while he was at work. We didn't even find out he'd married her until years later. Anyway, we wanted to get him liquored up and fess up to being the guy in the picture. He said that when he first saw it, he did a double take, because it 100% exactly looks like him. (I'd post it if I had safe webspace somewhere...) He thought at first it was him during some mental blackout or something, but nothing else looks familiar, so he thinks it's just somebody who looks just like him... Around midnight we broke up and half of us went to play more poker at Luxor. I was drunk as hell, and still won $69. I finally staggered off to bed around 2am. Waking up the next morning at 7:30am, I was suffering from a near-fatal hangover. Uffda. Worth every bit of pain, let me tell you. What a great Vegas trip. By 9am I headed to the airport, and was back at work before 2pm, and home by 5pm. Sunday, May 23, 2004
Ok, for the record, UFF FREAKING DA! Roughly 2600 people paid $10k each to play in this years main event of the World Series of Poker. Last year they had 840, with first paying $2.5 million. This year first will pay $5 million, and FIFTH place pays a million. Dang.
Ok, back to our regularly scheduled blog. After we got to Vegas, we went to the rental car place. Sean travels a lot for work so he's a VIP at all the rental car places, they let us pick any car we wanted. WIth five guys, we tried a test sit of 3 across in the back of a Jeep Cherokee, but it wasn't as big as the Chrysler 300 we wanted anyway. What a cool looking car. Unfortunately, the rental car had a nutless v6 instead of the available 5.7 liter Hemi. Our first destination after that was a Quick E Mart so I could buy some beers and a styrofoam cooler. I've grown to appreciate how nice it is to have my own minibar in my room, since I can walk around anywhere drinking and if I'm not actually gambling it's way cheaper to buy beer at a store. A word to the wise: If your room lacks a churchkey (aka bottle opener) you can carefully put the lip of the bottlecap on any flat surface like a counter, tap the top of the bottle a few times, and the cap will come off. If most of the flat surfaces in your hotel room are fancy wood or marble/granite, the hinges on the backs of doors is a safe place. Next up was a stop at Leatherbys. This place has no windows facing the parking lot, and is pink and white. This was the first trip for one of our friends, and he was like, "What the hell is this?" "Gay strip club" we answered. Curiously, he came in with us. It's actually an icecream parlor. A few years ago one of the guys got a craving for a peanut butter milkshake and proceeded to call every place in town until he found a place that would make one. We've been returning ever since. We then proceeded to Arizona Charlies for $2.99 NY steak-n-eggs. Not the best steak, but a damn good price. Thus fortified, we went to Mandalay Bay to check in. After checking in, we went downstairs to begin gambling. Three of us went to play blackjack while two others played mini baccarat. I was getting cleaned out in blackjack but finally worked my way to broken even, so called it quits. I grabbed the other two who play poker and we went over the the Luxor to play some poker. The Luxor floats a $2-$4 limit Texas Hold'Em poker game. That means before and after the flop, the max bet is $2, and after the turn and river (the 4th and 5th community cards) the max bet is $4. I bought in for $100, and in two hours was normally up about $20-$30 or broken even, but finally I looked at my two hole cards and saw Ace Ace. Pocket Rockets. American Airlines. The best possible starting hand. I figured I was just going to ram and jam the pot, raising the max as much as possible. No subtley there. I raise before the flop, another guy re-raises, another guy re-raises, and when it gets back to me I re-raise the last one. Flop sez A K Q rainbow. (rainbow means 3 different suits, so little chance of a flush. I've flopped a set of Aces (a set is 3 of a kind) but there is a possible straight that can beat me if someone was playing J-10. I bet, same two re-raise, I re-raise. $8 each again from everyone who stays in. Turn was a 4. No real help. I bet $4, the other two call this time. I'm hoping for the board to pair up so I make a full house and can beat straights. River is another Queen. Wooo! I've got a full house, Aces full of Queens, and the second best possible hand. The only thing that can beat me is if someone has the last two queens in their hand for 4 of a kind, in which case getting a Aces high full house beat would win me a $500 Bad Beat jackpot. I bet, the other two each raise, I re-raise. $16 in from each of us. At this point I can't help smiling, the dealer is a little freaked at the size of the pot. It was huge. I flip over my pocket rockets, the one guy flips over KQ for two pair, and the other guy flips over J10 for a straight. Whoa, he had me beat until the river. Pot value was nearly $170, of which nearly a third was mine. Crickey. My $100 was now $220. Shortly after this it was after midnight, and running on stress and 4 hours of sleep from the night before, I decided I needed to turn in. On Wednesday morning I woke up around 7 like I normally do and after getting dressed, we went down to play some more poker while we waited for the rest of the gang to wake up. My sleeping-in muscle is sadly atrophied. I only had time for 90 minutes this morning, and was ahead again until I got AA again and it lost to a guy who made a flush off two running hearts on the turn and river. What he was playing on I'll never know, but that's why low-limit Texas Hold'em is called Texas No Fold'em. Never play on crap and you'll do well in low-limit casino poker. More later, the kids want breakfast. Saturday, May 22, 2004
Uff.
Well, I was supposed to fly out on Tuesday for my annual Vegas trip with the boys. However, last Friday I found out that my main server had been hacked. We set up a box to capture all network traffic to and from that machine all last weekend, and Monday around 4pm the campus security folks called me up saying they had what they needed and we needed to completely rebuild that machine from scratch. 400+ user accounts, all needed their passwords changed and SSH keys deleted. Well, I and my two student assistants got cracking. By 6pm we had a new box with Red Hat Enterprise Server 3 Update 2 installed, and by 9pm we'd created 400 random passwords and added those accounts. We took the machine over to the server room, and pulled the plug on the compromised server. Taking the disk out, we mounted it read-only to preserve any forensic info and started copying all the user directories off it. We then made signs telling everyone what had happened, and I started a Word Print Merge to print up 400 pages, each with the full name, user name, and new password, for the secretaries to distribute to everyone. Crickey, 400 pages takes forever on a 16ppm printer, I really need to upgrade the secretaries' printer. Finally, at about 12:30am, I figured that the data copying was going to take a long time so we went home. I got in bed just after 1am, then got up at 6am to head back. GAHH!! NOT GOOD! The stupid copy job hadn't finished. Turns out the forensic boot CD (Fire) we'd used to mount the disk read-only didn't recognize the disk controller on the new hardware, so it was defaulting to some slow-ass ancient generic driver that probably used accoustic coupler modems to transfer the data. Anyway, I immediately halted that (and with the unix dd utility giving no feedback, glub only knows how far it was, could have been 5% or 99.9%...) and started doing it another way. My flight left at 1:30pm, so I knew I was doomed. However, we got the user files transferred in about 2 hours, another half hour for the mail spool, and by 11am we had the new server up and running. Wooo! At 11:15 my boss let me leave (my students are great and able to handle many things) and I made it to the airport in time, the whole way down muttering like Homer Simpson, "I'd kill everyone in this car for one drop of cold sweet beer". Did I say drop? I meant liter, cuz that's what I got at the airport bar. Mmmmm, beer. One friend walked into the bar right as the waitress was leaving with my order, and told her "I'll have whatever he ordered". He said "holy shit!" when the huge liter beer arrived. It's one of my rules. If a place sells larger-than-pint-sized beers, I order one. Got to encourage that forward thinking. Plus, ask any German, the liter is the only civilized pour of beer. One of my buddies had a first class upgrade, so I asked him to smuggle me back a couple of scotches. He said sure. Heh. Sure enough, halfway through the flight he comes back into couch and hands me a glass with ice and two bottles of Johnny Walker Black. Wooo! What a friend. I had a window seat, and the business dude next to me gives me a grin and says "Nice smuggle!" If you can't sit in first class, it's nice to know someone who is. ugh, gotta go, details about the most awesome Vegas trip ever later. Monday, May 17, 2004
The latest on B's dad is he started chemo today, and the oncologist said patients on chemo lasted an average of 20 months and those who didn't do chemo lasted about six. This is stressing her our bigtime, and I'm not a lot of help. I try, but this type of support isn't my forte.
Plus I'm stressed out due to some stuff happening at work. If work wasn't so busy, I could take the day off and watch kids and let B relax but I can't even leave early today. Plus I'm supposed to leave for Vegas tomorrow for my annual trip with the boys. It'll royally suck if I don't get to go, but regardless it won't be as much fun due to all the stress. It's supposed to be a stress reducer, gah. Oh well. Saturday, May 15, 2004
It's been a rough week for B. Her father, who lives near Dallas, had to go to the hospital. Apparently he'd been sick for a month but hadn't seen a doctor about it. Well, after not telling us any real details for days and days, he finally called yesterday and told B that he had cancer. A big tumor in his colon, plus they think it had spread to his liver and lungs. B isn't close to her father, but it still makes her cry a lot.
I was very busy with some important issues at work so I couldn't go home to comfort her, and every time she'd break down in tears it would freak the kids out. Isabel kept bringing out stuffed animals and dinosaurs and dolls to give B a kiss so she'd feel better. She's just the sweetest little girl. We had a big fondue party last night with six guests. It was a ton of fun, the cheese fondue was made with gruyere instead of cheap swiss, and it was fantabulous. I mean, normally a batch of cheese fondue gets about half eaten, maybe a tad less. This batch got entirely eaten. The chocolate fondue for dessert was excellent as well, it had some kahlua in it too. Mmmmm. The guy in charge of bringing drinks to the party brought a bizarre assortment. He starts pulling things out of bags, "For the ladies, we've got bartles & james wine coolers" (lord knows what I can do with that, nobody I know will drink it...) "for the pregnant lady, haaake beck" (non alcohol beer), "for the homies, Old English 800" (jeez, Thom, if you're going to buy OE800, at least get tallboys or 40s) and then regular tasty beer for the non homies. What a nut. Now I've got a six pack of OE800 malt liquor. Joy. Thursday, May 13, 2004
One of the fun things with small kids is taking them to playgrounds. They love 'em. Last night after dinner B asked if I could take the you-know-who to the you-know-what so she could clean, and when I said, "you mean magnuson?" Isabel immediately said "magnuson is the PLAYGROUND!" D'oh! I should have spelled that one. Ah well. Last time we went to that park Isabel wouldn't say the name, so I guess I figured she didn't know it. Never assume that, their minds are like steel traps.
Anyway, so I took them to the park. They were very happy and had a great time playing on the slides, swings, climbing on things, digging in the sandbox, playing with the dangerous rusty old hulk of a 30yr old Tonka truck they've got... Until Isabel decided to run across a parking area to climb a hill of landscaping bark that was in a large pile. I told her to come back, but she laughed and kept going. When I finally got her, I told her it was time to go, running away especially where there might be traffic isn't tolerated. She freaked out when we started driving away. B figured out she thought she was getting a timeout in the van and didn't know she was getting at time-out at home. Poor little girl. Anyway, afterwards during poker I went to the bathroom and heard her crying at the door of her room after she'd gone to bed. I went in to see what was the matter and she was sobbing so I picked her up and comforted her for a while. She then said her tummy was grumbly and she needed some food. I got her some warm milk which she sucked down, then she laid down and said "daddy, thank you for taking me to the playground tonight". Awwww. Such a sweet girl. Not yet 3 even. Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Alright, for those who want more pictures, here are some pictures of Harry's Second Birthday Some are pictures of us at the zoo, some are him with cake smashed on his face, or Isabel helping him open presents... Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Ho! My TiVo recorded the movie "Sergeant York" for me. 1941, B&W. It kicked butt. I hadn't seen it before, either. I love TiVo. Monday, May 10, 2004
Any parent of a young child knows that one of the joys of parenting is sneaking into their room right before you go to bed to peek at them sleeping. They're so cute when they're asleep. Even though you know they're plotting to overthrow their evil overlords.
Lately, being relatively, well, lazy, when asked to change Isabel's pullup, I make her take it off and put the new one on, since the %&$*$ girl should be potty trained anyway. She wears dresses mostly anyway, so she just hikes up her dress, sits down, and take the pullup off. Then she reaches down with both hands grabs her vagina, and cranks it open as far as possible. Looking down, she giggles and says, "It looks just like my tongue!" Crickey. Nothing you can do about that... (by the way, B told me not to blog about that) For Mother's Day, I bought B some roses, and we took her to our friend's mother's day brunch. We've been going to that brunch for about five years now, it started out with just our friend's mom being the only mom, but now there are four more moms. In fact, all the women who come have become moms in the last five years if they weren't already. Hrmmm. That bears thinking about. In the afternoon, we got babysitting so we could shop for Isabel's birthday at Toys Backwards R Us and then go out to a nice dinner. I laugh because B gave me a hard time about spending $60 on presents for Harry, making me take back one $25 firetruck, when we spent more than that on Isabel, without returning anything. heh. I told her I wasn't going nuts. There were lots of other fun things to get the kids, I love buying them toys, but have to resist. They're going to love me when they're older. heh. "Don't you think Isabel needs this M1A1 Abrams main battle tank?" "I'm sure we'll get a tank eventually, but not now" For dinner we went to Chinooks. It was packed with Mother's day groups, but the bar was nearly empty so we sat there. It has a nice view over all the fishing boat piers. After dinner we walked down one of the piers looking at all the boats. Amazing how some of those tiny boats go up to Alaska to fish. Uff. Better them than me. The babysitter was B's friend who lives in our basement. She just bought a house so she'll be moving out soon, end of a 4.5 year era. Ah well. She was laughing about feeding Harry. She's a vegetarian, and we'd left some meat lasagna for the kids. Harry takes a huge forkfull, raises it up, eyes aglow, and says, "MEAT!" then shoves it into his mouth with gusto. Ha! Way to taunt the vegetarians, kiddo! Sunday, May 09, 2004
Yesterday we had a birthday party for Harry. He'll be two tomorrow. It's hard to believe that he's already two, and since he's so big, it's hard to believe he's just two.
The party was low-key, just relatives. Two aunts, grandma, two great aunts. My two brothers who live just down the street never have anything to do with my kids. He was in hog heaven. Isabel opened most of his presents, which he didn't mind the help, and then he'd say "Truck!" because most of what he got was trucks. A pack of 25 hot wheels cars, a metal Tonka dumptruck with hard hat (that he wore most of the rest of the day, SO CUTE) a bunch of fire trucks. And a height-adjustable basketball hoop. Oh and a cement mixer. And a large T-Rex. Trucks and dinosaurs. His comment was "Truck. Car. Happy!" His language skills are coming along pretty well, he's got a large vocab, he just needs to work on using more than two words in a row. I made a killer lasagna for dinner. Mmmm, lasagna. Heh, that's been the name of my laser printer at work for the past 11 years. Go to the Chooser, click on Laserwriter, select "Mmmmmm Lasagna!!!" from the list. I'd made a double sized one so there would be leftovers. (drool) We watched the movie "Secondhand Lions" last night. I'd faintly kinda sorta heard of it. It's about a kid spending the summer with his crazy older uncles. I enjoyed it quite a bit, it was a great rental. Saturday, May 08, 2004
My favorite mispronounciations from my daughter Isabel, nearly 3:
Micromave instead of microwave. "Please heat my milk in the micromave, Daddy." Jun-glin instead of jungle. "Tigers live in the junglin." Pianyo instead of piano. "Oh look, a pianyo!" Yogrit instead of yogurt. The hard part is not using them all the time. All my friends and I love calling it a micromave, but I don't want to fuck up her language skills. Friday, May 07, 2004
Alright folks. Let's just sit down and talk about a subject that is near and dear to all our hearts.
Beer. Yes, Beer. We all love it. Anyway, tonight's topic of conversation is Road Beer. Namely, filling an insulated travel coffee mug with beer for the purpose of drinking while one's wonderful uber spouse is driving. Road Beer is a glorious thing, second only to Road Head. The best thing if one isn't driving. Big Time's Fire-something IPA is very very good. They always know how to apply hops with a judicious hand. I've also been drinking Moosehead lately. Those canucks in Eastern Canada have quite the tasty product for summer heat. At least the halfrack I bought and the one that came with my 10-pack beer sampler at christmas were very good, much fresher than the typical canadian beer. "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy"- Benjamin Franklin
I think I may have set a new record for how long it took me to watch a movie. Back in February, I set my TiVo to record "The Last Emperor", which won the Academy Award for Longest (err Best) Picture in 1987. I guess there wasn't that much competition that year. Anyway, B wasn't interested, so I watched bits and pieces of it as I had time, sometimes only watching 3-4 minutes of it. I finally finished it this week, several months later. Uff-da.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Finally had poker last night for the first time in a month. Various people travelling or down with plague resulted in us not getting a quorum the past few weeks. That sucked. It was fun to play again. I won $7, not bad.
Playing a World Series of Poker 2002 format tournement on the computer, I got 3rd place, which was good for $550,000. I need to polish my single-table tourney game. I have almost no head's up experience. Wednesday, May 05, 2004
While asparagus is a buck a pound, we've been buying it like crazy, having it pretty much every other night or so. Mmmm. I tried grilling some on the BBQ, it worked well. Oil them up, skewer them to make a raft-like structure, cook 2-3 minutes a side. Delicious! We also tried this recipe where you cook the asparagus, puree it in the food processor with some oil and parmesean, and use it as a pasta sauce. That was yummy as well.
It had better get back to $3 a pound soon or I'm going to overdose. Ok, so I'm playing No Limit Texas Hold'em on the computer. I get dealt pocket rockets, aka Ace Ace. The flop is 267 rainbow (aka all different suits). I go all-in, and one fuckwad calls me. He's got Ace Ten unsuited. The only way he can win is to pick up a 8 and a 9, or a pair of tens. Sure enough, the turn is a 10 and the river is a 10. Gah! Talk about your bad beats!! I was watching 10.5 (the NBC mini-crappy-series from last weekend) on my TiVo last night, and it starts off with a large earthquake in Seattle. They %&$* made the Space Needle out of concrete. It was cracking, and then it shattered. Um, no. The Space Needle, as is obvious from the shape, is made of steel. Concrete doesn't go 600 feet into the air in pieces that skinny. We've watched the first half of 10.5, and BY FAR the best part of that crap fest was when Bo Duke (aka um, whatever the aactor's name is) is driving his SUV off road through brush he can't see through. He yells "Yeeee haww!!!!" and then says "Man it feels good to say that again!" Ha! At least there was one funny moment. Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Aw, crickey, I better get off my ass and blog before I forget everything.
Friday night I went with my not-brother-in-law to a market research dealy. We sat in a conference room that has one wall composed of one-way mirrow like a police interrogation room for two hours talking about computer games and what we thought of a new proposed new ad campaign from Intel for P4s for gaming. Paid $100, which is why I go to market research dealies whenever possible. Usually they call me once or twice a month for things I don't qualify for, "Do you suffer from hemmorhoids?" so it was fun to have one actually pan out. $100 is $100. I think I should put it down on red on roulette in Vegas in two weeks. Saturday evening our friend threw a 10th annual Cinco De Mayo party. We started that party 10 years ago when he lived with me at my old place. It was a pretty fun party, a slightly different crowd than just the usual. He's dating this tall leggy 23 yr old blonde Russian chick. She seems nice enough, but without watching every season of the Simpsons 2-3 times over you can't get enough references to really understand my peer groups conversations. Heh, he's 14 years older than she is. On Sunday we went down to Olympia to visit B's aunt and uncle, and her other aunt from Colorado Springs was in town, and her sister and boyfriend (the not-brother-in-law) came down as well, and a cousin. It was a fun family gathering. B has a nice family, that's alway a bonus in a marriage. Every other week B hosts her mom group and their kids for a craft day. It was the day we had dance class, but that got too expensive so she wanted to do something cheaper yet artsy. Each time one of the moms is in charge of the craft, and this week was B's turn again. She needed to go to the craft store to figure out what to do, so she did that last night after dinner. I got shoes on the kids and took them to the big playground at the park at the former naval air station near my house. They had a blast. Isabel kept calling me "mommy", as in "mommy, I need a push on the swing. Oh, I mean Daddy". Heh. Saturday, May 01, 2004
Crickey. At 3am, I woke up to sirens everywhere. Constantly, sirens approaching and driving off. You know, a few minutes of sirens is one thing, but this eventually lasted at least 25 minutes. I mean, what the fuck requires that many emergency vehicles?!? Of course, there's been nothing in the news. It woke up the kids and B too. Gah.
Isabel came into the kitchen this morning to "help" me do dishes. It's pretty funny, she was able to tell me where everything in the dishwasher belonged. "That goes over there daddy". Then she decided that maybe I'd never heard of angel food cake. "Daddy, this is Angel Food cake. Can you say Angel Food?" "Angel food", I replied. "Very good Daddy! That's right! It's very good cake." I could barely breathe I was laughing so hard. After breakfast the sunny weather is so lovely that we loaded up the double stroller with food, beverages, a blanket, some balls, and the kids, and went for a long walk down to the water near Husky Stadium. Today was the local yacht club's annual "opening day" of boating season, with a bunch of crew boat races then a huge boat parade. To the east of campus is a large swampy area that was a landfill for something like 70 years and is now capped and a wildlife area as well as a ton of atheletic fields and Husky Stadium. We walked through this, stopping to see some baby geese "Aren't they just adorable, Daddy?" before eventually working our way over near the Montlake cut where the boat racing/parade was. We found a patch of lawn to roll the blanket out on, fed the kids some snacks, watched some boats racing by (it amazed me to see on the show Mythbusters that those crew sculls can actually pull a waterskier, if the waterskier is good) then the kids and I went to find some empty lawn to throw the wiffle balls around on. Eventually we went back to B and the blanket, and a little girl who was probably 5 asked Isabel to play with her. Isabel got all shy and ran back to B for about five minutes, then finally figured out that playing might be fun. They ran all around the people, playing tag, rolling down a grass slope, picking flowers, laughing and squealing, it was pretty cute. The push home wasn't so cute, uff-da. That was a loooong walk. After we'd gotten most of the way back we stopped off at Ben and Jerrys for some ice cream cones and fruit smoothies for the kids and I figured out that pushing over 80 pounds of kid in a stroller with one hand uphill while eating an ice cream cone sucked, so I left them to wait in the shade while I hauled ass home and got the van. And then I napped. :) |
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