Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Last night after dinner B was going to do jazzercise at the community center, and since there is a playground right next to it I figured I'd take the kids there and we'd play. B forgot to mention that when her thing gets out it's 7:30pm, which is dark out. D'oh! Still, the kids had a great time playing for 45 minutes, then they played inside the van until B was done.
Crickey Isabel has an enormous vocabulary. Going through a book of pictures, she's like, "And that's a toucan, and that's a lemur, and that's a cockatoo, and that is a artic fox, and that's a kookaburra..." forever. Crazy. My current favorite is she calls guinea pigs "skinny pigs", and won't believe my correction. "No daddy, they are SKINNY pigs!!" So I finally got my new dual-proc 2.5Ghz G5 at work. This thing is fast as blazes, and eerily quiet. It makes the PC in my office (which I'd never heard before) sound like a 747. That mirror-drive-door dual 1Ghz G4 was loud as hell. Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Goodness. Normally we have friends over for Monday Night football, order some pizzas or takeout or something, and watch the game. Most or all of them leave by halftime. Well, yesterday I'd forgotten that I'd agreed to host my drinking (err, investment) club meeting, but it didn't start until about halftime, so B figured we could just do both anyway.
Turns out she was right. I ordered six Dominoes pizzas under their $5 each deal, and watched the first half of the game. Brunel vs Testeverde, talk about battle of the ancient QBs. I couldn't believe all the bad calls. The investment club meeting went well, but man can those guys drink. After I kicked them out at 11pm (meeting ended at 9pm) they went down to the bar down the street. I said fuck it and joined them, drank for another hour playing shuffleboard, and then at midnight when one of the remaining guys ordered yet another pitcher of Guiness, called it a night. Needless to say, I woke up with that not-so-fresh feeling. Monday, September 27, 2004
An, another fun weekend.
On Friday night, B was sick, so I took Harry to the store with me and bought ingredients to make boboli pizza, which I made with the kids. They *love* to spread ingredients, and anything they help make they eat with extra vigor. We then watched Star Wars on DVD, which is always fun. Saturday morning I let B sleep in, and got up with the kids. They wanted scrambled eggs for breakfast again, like they always seem to, so we made that together and had a great breakfast, then I got them ready and we went to the Zoo. We were meeting up with my friends whose baby B watches, they had to get out of their house because they are selling it and need it available for people to see. It was a great morning at the zoo, the kids had a blast as always. On our way home from the Zoo we stopped at the farmer's market and I bought some more fresh cheese curds, which were just as yummy as always. The kids and I had cheese curds and ritz crackers for lunch. We started watching the Husky vs Notre Dame football game. With the score down 7-0 in the first quarter, my friends called. They'd put offers on two houses, and both offers had been accepted, so they wanted my opinion on which to take. I put the Husky debacle on TiVo and went over to see these two houses. The first one was two years old, but in a really crappy neighborhood by Northgate mall. The street is the first east-west through street north of Northgate Way, which is so crowded as to be a parking lot much of the day, so while we were there there were tons of people zipping up and down this supposedly residential street. One guy on a motorcycle was literally racing by, I'm sure he was doing over 50mph. Crickey. It was a beautiful house, but had zero yard, they had taken a large yard and chopped it into two, and built two identical houses one behind the other. It also had this crazy feature I've never seen before, there was one bedroom on the main floor, but it could also be used as an office. The closet had doors on both sides of the closet, so you could use it as a bedroom closet, or from the hall you could use it as a hall closet. Or you could go through both doors instead of using the bedroom door. Never seen that before. The other house was built in 1959, the original owner just died and her son was selling it. It was in an awesome neighboorhood, and had a huge 8000+ square foot well kept yard. The decor was very 1960s, so it'll take some work, but it has so much potential. Big house, huge kitchen, great location, great yard. 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2800 square feet, $430k. I helped convince them to get this one, but they knew it all along. Now they just need their current house to sell ASAP. After that I went home to watch Notre Dame score 2 more touchdowns within like 45 seconds at the end of the first quarter, and paste on another and a field goal before the half. We did a lot better in the second half, limiting them to only another touchdown, but I don't know where that defense was the first half. Final score, 38-3. The Huskies are 0-3 for the first time since 1969, when they went 0-9 before winning their last game. After that we went over to a friends house for home made pizza. Thom went crazy, making dough for 13 pizzas, and he had a lot of toppings to go with them. Pizza sauce, pesto. Sun dried tomatoes, salami, pepperoni, sausage, whole roasted garlic cloves, olives, cashews, diced bell pepper, ham, pineapple, ricotta cheese, diced peppercinis, chicken, thai peanut sauce, I'm sure I'm missing ingredients. Yummy. We left that early to head home, I was dropping B and the kids off and driving over to Bellevue to meet up with one of my brothers and sister-in-law. They were taking a Seahawks tour from Spokane, first with a booze bus ride over, then a booze cruise on Lake Washington, now after dinner they were catching the acts at the comedy club that was part of the hotel bar. Man, the first comedian was kinda funny, but the second one was just dying on stage, totally bombing. He was an Indian geek named Rajish or something, and his jokes about X Boxes, breakdancing, and D&D were just terrible, and most of the crowd didn't get them at all. Jokes about viruses destroying your MBR (master boot record) on your PC just aren't good club material. He finally admitted he worked for Safeco, a local insurance company. Ah-ha! I'm sure he's the funniest guy there by a long margin, but when you work with insurance adjusters, that's a pretty low bar. Fortunately the third comic was much funnier. Finally about 11pm my brother and his wife went to bed, and I drove back to Seattle. I went to BigTime Brewery with two half-gallon glass jugs, known as growlers. I had them fill one with Coal Creek Porter, and the other with Bhagwhan's Best IPA. I love beer to go. Sunday Sunday Sunday I got up early because we were having a pre-Seahawk game brunch. I made two pounds of bacon, B made cinnamon rolls, and I made my mom's egg loaf. It's a dozen eggs, a pound of shredded mozzerella, 16oz of cottage cheese, two cups of misc meat and veggies (I use sausage, onions, red bell pepper, and mushrooms, all chopped fine), a half cup of flour, and a teaspoon of baking powder, plus some salt, pepper, and a glug or ten of tabasco. Pour into a greased 9x13 pan and bake at 450 for 15 minutes, the 350 for 20-30 more until it's done. It's damn tasty, and an easy way to feed a bunch of people. With all that cheese, it's really a cheese loaf... A bunch of my friends had gone in with us on 9 seahawks tickets, since almost none of us had seen the new stadium yet. After we'd devoured the brunch and drank a bunch of mimosas, we loaded up a cooler with ice and the two growlers of beer, and I'd made a 7-layer bean dip for a tailgate snack, and headed down to the game. Man, what a game that was! We pounded them offensively, and our defense totally blanked them. We're starting to really look like contenders, but last year we started 3-0 and barely limped into the playoffs by going 7-6 after that. We'll see in the next few weeks, but it's nice to have a 2 game lead in our division after only 3 games. The stadium was really nice, but our seats were ALLLLLLLL the way freakin' up. We were like 5 rows from the top, on the 10 yard line, but they actually weren't bad seats. My friend Jack brought his uber $300 binocs, they were unbelieably good. Speaking of unbelievably good, the Sea Gals this year are totally hot. Uff-da. Usually they're pretty mediocre. While I was in line to pay $6.25 for a beer, the guy ahead of me was bitching about the price. I just told him, "hey, I don't like it either, but it beats being sober!". I hate it when people whine about concession prices at stadiums and movie theaters. If you don't want to pay, don't buy anything, but keep your pie hole shut. Sunday, September 26, 2004
A:) Eating whole roasted garlic is totally yummy, but later my body emit unholy scents.
B) The Seahawks game kicked ass today. Shutting out the 'Niners for the first time since 1977. Saturday, September 25, 2004
Ok, B and I watched the new Star Wars DVD last night. I've got a few beefs with the movie that I just didn't appreciate when I was 9.
In no particular order: • If you've got landspeeders and flying craft, why were the Stormtroopers using giant lizards to find the droids? Why would anyone ride something with such a jerky gait, anyway? • How did a monster get into a brand new space station's trash compactor? • Why was there that much metal in a trash compactor? • Why did most of the metal float, anyway? • I've always loved how OSHA non-safe the Death Star is. Vital controls are on narrow ledges over vast chasms, with no safty rails. Doors fly closed at Mach 3. • The FX added to Mos Eisley in the special editon just look dumb, they totally don't fit the rest of the movie. • Why fly down the canyon, if you want to hit the exhaust port, why not fly straight at it? They should have said it was shielded from above. Wednesday, September 22, 2004
I took the kids to Costco last night to pick up the new Star Wars DVD set. I still can't believe Lucas keeps monkeying with them. I mean, I'm sure he gets ZERO extra sales because of it, and definitely loses some sales. It's just nuts. Han shot first!
:) Sunday, September 19, 2004
Man, my Huskies just suck. This week, instead of the offense being a problem, it was the defense. The first play from scrimmage that UCLA made was an incomplete pass. Their next two plays were 50+ yard TD runs. After the first quarter, the score was UW 24, UCLA 14, but we let them rip off 20 unanswered points in the 2nd quarter.
Near the end of the game, with just under a minute to go and the score UCLA 37, UW 31, UCLA had the ball on our 40 yard line, 4th and inches, and the QB just takes a knee. What the hell!?! I will never understand that. Punt it out the endzone, so we have the ball on our 20, sure. Lunge forward to make the 1st down and end the game, obviously. Take a knee?!? NO freakin' idea what that was all about. We drove down, and as time expired we made a 26 yard pass completion to the friggin' 1 yard line. Not quite enough. One freakin' yard and a defense short of a win. Their tailback ended up with 320 yards, 5 TDs (3 of which were 50+ yards) It's going to be a long painful year, good thing the Seahawks look good. Saturday, September 18, 2004
WooO! My youngest brother Kurt is going to the Husky game with me. That's going to be awesome, unless of course we lose. Heh.
Last night my friend has his No Limit Texas Hold'em tourney. We only had 13 people, but some of the newbies furiously used the re-buy option to put the total take to $425, $245 for first place, $120 for second, $40 for 3rd, and your $20 buy-in back for 4th place. I was doing awesome, taking two people all-in and winning, and pushing people around, building my initial 100 chips into 349, but then I got dealt a pair of queens. An awesome hand, and the flop was 8 8 8. Holy cow, I've flopped a full house, the only thing that can beat me is if someone has the 4th 8, or a pair of kings or aces. Anyway, the guy had a jack, and caught running jacks on the turn AND the river, giving him a jack-high full house, which totally demoralized me. Uff. Anyway, shortly after that I lose a few not-well played hands and was out of the money, not even making the final table. Ah well, at least I didn't spend any money on re-buys. I don't know who won yet, since my ride also busted out early and he had to be at work at 6am. This morning I woke up at 6am, hung over and needing alka-seltzer. It was going to be my morning to sleep in, but I couldn't sleep, so I got up with the kids. We watched a little tv, then made some fried eggs and toast for daddy's hangover. Oh, and Isabel told me this gem: "Daddy, you're just like an eagle!" "Oh really?" "Yeah! Eagles are bald, and so are you!" After that I got the idea to take a nice long walk with the kids. It's threatening rain, so I loaded up the stroller with some blankets, coats, and some snacks and water, got the kids loaded, and away we went. Our destination was the local farmer's market, but the route took us down the ravine, a strange little slice of wilderness in the middle of Seattle, just north of the University. It's a little park with trails through it, and it's about 40' below the surrounding neighborhoods, with a creek running through it. It used to have huge old-growth trees (like this one but not anymore. It still has a bunch of cool trees. Here is a link to a history of the park and more pictures. The kids loved the creek and waterfalls, and since lots of people jog along the trail, the kids got out and jogged too. Very funny. At the far end of the ravine is Cowen Park, with a playground including swings. These swings aren't your normal swings, I swear the crossmembers are like 18' off the ground, resulting in the swings being able to take HUGE freakin' arcs. The kids loved it. After the park we went down the the farmer's market, buying some fresh onions, carrots, a huge bunch of basil, a couple pints of rasberrys, some potatoes, and I found some cheese curd. Yummy! When B and I visited NYC back in 2000, her uncle had all these tasty cheeses, one of which I didn't get identified but I loved. Little odd shaped marble-sized chunks, kinda sour flavor, very delicious. I could never find anything like it, then last week at a party somebody gave the host some cheese curd, and sure enough, that's exactly what it was. Then today at the farmer's market one of the cheese booths had cheese curd! The kids loved it too, but B didn't want Isabel eating any more since she's already got constipation issues, no need to bind her gut up any further. It's fun blogging on the couch while watching Hi Def college football on TV. Michigan vs San Diego State, and for a while SDSU looked like they'd pull off an upset. The announcers were saying "Sometimes it's hard to be the favored team" Yeah, cry me a river for poor helpless favored Michigan, having to play big bad San Diego State at home with 110,000 fans rooting you on. (Heh, speaking of which, I always laugh when I use or hear the word root, thinking of the Aussie definition of root to mean having sex) Friday, September 17, 2004
Dang. B and I were watching a documentary from the History Channel on the War of 1812 that we'd recorded on our TiVo. Unfortunately, with 45 minutes left to go, something went wrong with the feed and there wasn't any sound for the program, just for the commercials. Gah! Fortunately we watched it soon enough that there are still two more showings to record, so we can get the last 45 minutes re-TiVoed. It was a bummer, however.
I'm totally stoked for tonight, it's another no-limit Texas Hold'em tourney at Thom's house. I'm 3 for 4 reaching 2nd or 1st in these, so I'm hoping I keep doing well. The one time I didn't make the money I was cold sober, so I plan on drinkin' heavily too. Tomorrow my hapless Huskies play the UCLA Bruins. UCLA has given up more ground yards than any other college team in their first two games, but our QB sucks, so hopefully we'll see some good old fashioned smash-mouth football. Woo! If we don't win this game, it's going to be a long painful season. Now I just need to find someone to take with me. Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Monday was fun, we had five people over for Monday Night football. Took advantage of Domino's $5 pizzas if you buy 3 or more.
Last night B and I watched "Reign of Fire" that I'd recorded on my TiVo. Glad I didn't pay to rent that stinky monkey. Holy smokes that plot was bad bad bad. Dragons that eat ash. Riiiight. That makes OH so much sense. "magic" is a much better answer. Dragons that can be killed by the last few humans, but all our armies were helpless. Riiiiiiight. That makes OH so much sense. NOT! Gack. Just a complete and utter crapfest. Monday, September 13, 2004
Fun football weekend. Watching the Cougs lose to the Buffs was funny. I was actually rootin' for the Cougs, but they have the same flaws my Huskies do, no QB and no kicker. Heh.
Watching the Seahawks win was awesome. Watching Dallas lose always makes me laugh. Saturday, September 11, 2004
Gah! What a totally worthless morning. Other than getting up early to watch the kids and make breakfast, that is. That was the highlight of my morning.
My friends who switched from oil to gas heat still have some oil left in their tank, and they're planning on buying a new house and selling this one, so I needed to go get most of the rest out. First off, of the four 6 gallon gas cans I have, I couldn't find two of them. Gah! So, I go to GIJoes to see if they're cheap there. Nope, they want $10/can. Gah! Then, I drive to Home Depot, and they have them for $7, so I buy four more. Head over to my friends house. The %&*$ drill pump I used last time no longer works. Apparently the diesel rotted out the gaskets or something. Gah! So, back to %^&$* Home Depot. Fight the crowds in the parking lot, and the morons inside the store. Motherfucker! They're sold out of drill pumps. Gah! Off to %&#$* Lowes. They've got one, so I buy it. Go back, %&$&*#$*# new one doesn't work either. I gave up, went to 7-11, bought a slurpee, and went home to watch football. Stupid %&$*$# mother%&$*($. Gah! Friday, September 10, 2004
Holy smokes. I just got a new Apple 20" display here at work to replace the 19" ViewSonic I've been using for the past 6+ years. NICE. 1680x1050 vs my old 1280x1024 gives me another 400 pixels wide, just enough so my terminal and my web browser fit nicely side-by-side. Not the 23" or 30" I really wanted, but still a very nice upgrade.
I have NO idea what I'm going to do with the 4 square feet of desk space I've recovered. Thursday, September 09, 2004
Man, I've been watching way too much poker on TV. The World Series of Poker coverage on ESPN has been excellent, I'm down to just a few hours left, which is good because a bunch of new TV starts soon. The show Hawaii is pretty mediocre.
Ho! Pro football starts tonight. Mmmm, football. I sure hope my Huskies figure out the QB situation, but I also hope the Seahawks do well, since I've got money on them. Speaking of poker, I was down to my last few bucks a couple of times last night, but finally got back to even with a half hour to go, only to lose $9 and end up down. Bah! Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Isabel has been wanting to go "camping" constantly lately, so finally I took a dining room chair and a blanket and made a "tent" for her in a corner of the family room. She's been loving it, but she wants me or B to sit in it with her for hours on end. Ugga.
She did another cute thing last night, she rolled her blanket up into long roll, and called it a snake, and used it to attack my stomach, complete with hissing noises. Heh. "Ahhh! The blanket snake got me!" I'm a little bummed that Lance and Deann are gone. I don't get to see them nearly often enough. I hate that they live in Albuquerque. Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Fun weekend.
Friday I loaded the truck up with myself, my hippy brother Dan, his hippy girlfriend Liz, and our 10-yr-old neice Josie from Spokane who'd spent a week with Dan and Liz, and we headed down to the airport Friday afternoon. We picked my brother Lance and his wife Deann up at the airport and spent the afternoon power-touristing, since Deann had never been to Seattle before. We went to Alki Beach, looked at the nice views of Seattle across Elliot Bay from West Seattle, drove downtown, ate fish-n-chips at Ivars on the waterfront, fed the seagulls, stopped at Ye Old Curiosity Shoppe, which has been in business down on the waterfront since 1899, and watched the guys toss salmon at the fish place at Pike Place Market. Bought a 12lb chinook for dinner. Didn't stop into the original Starbucks there, since we were running out of time. Drove north, stopped at the Ballard Locks, watched salmon in the fish ladder, watched boats getting raised and lowered by the locks. Drove to the Wallingford neighborhood, stopped off at Bottleworks and bought a flaming metric buttload of beer. Drove home, cooked up yummy salmon dinner with corn-on-the-cob. Drank a bunch of beer, washed out a half gallon glass jug (called a growler) and went to BigTime Brewery to fill it and play shuffleboard. Drank a few pitchers there, got the growler filled with Coal Creek Porter, and went home. Had some scotch, decided we'd had too much to drink, crashed. Saturday Got up early, loaded up the back of the truck, drove halfway across the state to the Columbia River Gorge near Vantage, to a place called Frenchman's Coulee. It's a big rock climbing site, plus it's the closest place to camp free near the Gorge Amphitheater. It was chock full of pot-smokin' frat boys since the Amphitheater had Dave Mathew's Band playing sold-out shows Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Gah. Met up with my older brothers, so we had all six brothers together. That was fun, but the high winds (crickey, like constant 35+ mph winds) sucked. We went hiking in the rocks there, with awesome views. I should have brought my camera, but didn't think of it. We drank lots of beer, spending a bunch of time sitting inside my truck to get out of the wind. I finally crashed at 11pm, and when I woke at 2:20am to pee, noticed that my youngest and oldest brothers were STILL up drinking and playing loud buttrock on their boom box. Ha! They were drunk as monks with skunks, and excitedly thought I was re-joining them. Damn, they looked funny sitting around with tons of empty bottles everywhere. Too funny. I went back to sleep. Sunday Got up early, only mildly hung, drove home. Showered, got ready for the home opener of the my beloved University of Washington Husky football team. They got their butts kicked by Fresno State, 35-16. We did pretty good other than committing 5 turnovers. Gah! Monday B and her mom and sister went to see a movie, so I went with all my brothers and my kids to the UW campus to place frisbee golf. The kids loved it, and we all had a great time. When I got home I made six racks of jalapeno jelly-glazed baby back ribs for dinner. We sat around and BSed until 11pm. Oh yeah, and Lance used a heat gun to strip some white paint off my brother's fireplace mantle, revealing pretty wood. He was all excited for us all to start stripping all our trim, etc. Crickey. He just bought his frist house, we'll see how excited he is about home renovation in 2 years. Tuesday Drove my brother and his wife back to the airport, they're on their way back to Albuqueque. Thursday, September 02, 2004
Ugh. Well, the ENT doc didn't know what it was, he put Harry back on antibiotics and referred us back to the uber-specialist ENT at Children's Hospital who did Harry's surgery last year to both get a better look in his nose, and compare with what it looked like last year. Seems his tonsils/adenoids/sinus stuff is regrowing, which I didn't know about but after mentioning it, other friends who've had similar surgery report similar results. Gah.
One good thing, his neck lump is now gone again. Whew. Yesterday when I was at Safeway getting the prescription, B called me and asked me to pick up a couple of steaks for dinner. Just then over the store intercom they were talking about this new uber grain-fed beef they've got, with ribeye steaks on sale for $5/lb. Wooo! I'm there dude. Plus it's corn-on-the-cob season (cheap and yummy!), it made an awesome dinner. My brother and his wife are flying up from Albuqueque for the weekend, they've got a wedding to attend on Sunday. I can't wait. B's sister and brother from Spokane are also coming, it's going to be a full house. |
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