Babes and Beer |
||
|
Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
Family Pictures Active blogs: Carpe Datum Cognitive Dissonance Dubious Quality Joe Delta Fishpimp A Clan Lord Journal Fun Turns to Tragedy! A Stitch In Time Free Market Fairy Tales Timmerov LJ & her dog The Phone Booth Chuck Pierce T-Homo The Brad Hole Greg Costikyan Phil Steinmeyer Ty Robin Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools Mostly inactive blogs: WOPR Spring Tide The Tangential Jeff Schell Clan Lord blogs: Fierce and Furry: The Adventures of Hor |
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Apparently I'm a bad dad. Our friends got "The Incredibles" from NetFlix and loaned it to us after they were done, so after B left for jazzercise, we ate, had baths, and started watching it. Turns out B wanted to watch it first to make sure it was OK for them. Crickey. They've got to learn to have nightmares sometimes. GREAT movie, I had a blast. The kids got a little scared sometimes, but they snuggled up with Dad so things weren't as scarey. They laughed a lot too. Neither was up in the middle of the night with nightmares. Funny, on the walk into work I go the direct route up and over instead of the bike trail around, it's almost 1/2 mile shorter, but it means I walk past a bunch of student apartments and through part of the Greek system. This morning next to a dumpster outside an apartment building was a mirrored closet door, with a head-shaped hole smashed into it. I'm guessing either someone tripped *hard*, or some drunkards got into a fight. Wednesday, March 30, 2005
B and her mom went to see "The Pacifier" last night, based merely on seeing trailers for it, not bothering to read any reviews. They both thought it wouldn't have been worth renting on DVD. Heh. I figured since they got to go see a movie that the kids deserved to see one too, so I fired up "Snow White" for them. Funny, the evil witch told Snow White that it was a magic wishing apple, take one bite and your wish will come true. She wished she'd meet a handsome prince, marry him, and live happily ever after, took one bite, and the next thing she knew, she was being kissed. It *did* come true for her. Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Lots of issues at my drinking club last night. First, one of our long-term members (the only non-drinker) wanted to resign, so we had to figure out the optimal way of buying him out. Turns out that we can pay him off with his share's worth of our highest-gaining stock, thus avoiding a huge capital gains tax hit, yet at the same time his basis is what he paid in, so it's a win-win situation. The other main issue, which is a killer, is our treasurer is quitting. Taxes are a freakin' nightmare, let alone collecting the money every month and keeping track of the numbers. He's been our treasurer since our group was founded, over five years ago, so it's only fair that he resign, but we're pretty low on possible replacement candidates. By low, I mean completely out. If some solution isn't found, we may have to fold this "drinking club with an investing problem". The ideal solution is for us to recruit a new member, preferrably a CPA or other accountant, and shanghai him into being the new treasurer. However, lacking that, I've taken the bull by the horns, and channeled my Information Systems college classes and formed a working group to break down the Treasurers tasks and see how we can simply and automate them. I'm also sure we're going to have to agree to suck it up and pay a CPA to do our taxes annually. I'm thinking that a web form with some database backend will do wonderfully to replace the "Spreadsheet of Doom" the current treasurer is using. My working group includes the old Treasurer, the Secretary, a spreadsheet massuer, and a webmonkey, as well as myself. Monday, March 28, 2005
First off, to be more clear, my birthday is still another two weeks away, Kurt just brought me to the beerfest as an early birthday present. On Saturday, it was pouring rain, but living in Seattle we can't let that stop us so we still took the kids the the zoo's egg hunt. Very funny how few people were there in the driving rain, but with raincoats and boots we stayed fairly dry, and the kids had a great time. Isabel spent a lot of saturday afternoon hiding her plastic easter eggs and having Harry find them. Very cute. Saturday evening we had our family easter dinner since we were invited to one on sunday already. Very tasty, I made a spiral-cut ham and a great gratin potatoes (didn't use a recipe, just winged it and it was awesome). Before bed on Saturday night we hid eggs everywhere in the living and dining rooms, and B stuck a pair of these pink teddy bears that Isabel was coveting from the window of the Hallmark store last week in their room. Sunday morning we go down there and Harry is quietly playing with his toys, and Isabel has both of their bears in bed with her, and the comment, "Look what Grandma brought me!". B was like, "Um, no, the Easter bunny brought you that!" even thought it actually was grandma. That girl is too smart by half. Their egg hunt was funny, Isabel is like a reaping machine, sweeping the area clear of eggs in no time. She easily got 4-5 times as many eggs as Harry. Very cute. I was thinking we had at least a dozen eggs in the fridge as well as some leftover ham and some cheese, we could make a tasty scramble for breakfast, but I didn't communicate it well so B thought I wanted to go out to breakfast, and I thought she wanted to go out to breakfast, so out we went. The kids behave so well in restaurants, it always impresses me. They got "mouse pancakes", a big pancake with little ones for ears, huge suckers the size of a plate. Isabel spread fresh strawberry preserves on hers, then got some syrup to dip into and went to town eating this thing. At about the 2/3 mark, she stopped, grabbed her stomach, moaned a bit, then grabbed her fork and continued stuffing herself, eating over 3/4 of the dang thing. Uff-freakin'-da! Boy howdy that girl can eat. We spent a couple of hours on Sunday driving around going to Lowes and Home Depot looking at dishwashers. I'm going to tear out some cabinets, tap into some plumbing and wiring, and install one in two weeks when my Dad comes to visit. I've installed dishwashers from scratch twice before, once at my old place during the kitchen remodel and once at my brother-in-laws house, so it shouldn't be too tough. Funny that I've never replaced a dishwasher, that'd be a dream come true comparatively. Easter dinner at my friend's house was fun, more spiral ham (I'd had leftovers with swiss cheese for lunch too! MMMM!) over 40 deviled eggs, taters, asparagus, lots of wine. Uff-da, lots of wine. Great cheesecake too. Sunday night my friend Chuck who had the tongue cancer surgery came over. He talks slowly and deliberately so you can understand him, but he's looking pretty damn good. He's got like 50+ staples in him where the incision from ear to collarbone is, but it's sorta under the jawline and not too noticable. Unfortunately the process of removing all those lymph nodes involves cutting a bunch of nerves there, so he doesn't have much feeling in his shoulder, but it's better than the alternative. He gets the biopsy results on Weds. Me and another friend told him that if he has to go through chemo, we'll shave our heads too so he doesn't have to be bald alone. Of course, all three of us are half bald anyway, so it's not a huge sacrifice. It was great to see him doing so well. I loaned him my Stargate SG-1 first season DVD set so he'd have something fun to do. Saturday, March 26, 2005
Uff-da. Ever wake up with that "not so fresh" feeling? Ugga. Last night, for my birthday, my brother Kurt took me to "Hops on Equinox", a spring beer festival. Our entry ticket got us a little ghetto plastic 5oz tasting cup and 9 tasting tickets. Most of the ~40 breweries there gave a full cup for 1 ticket, but a few wanted 2 or even 4 tickets for a 5oz taste. Now, tasting tickets are 4 for $5 or 9 for $10, so 4 tickets for 5oz is $14.22 per pint. Your beer had better come with a blowjob for that price. Needless to say, we didn't try any of the 4 ticket beers. Even though it was a benefit for Northwest Folklife, a local music and arts program, there is a point where you are just deluding yourself at how fancy your beer is. At the organizers booth we got a free ticket for signing up for their mailing list. The lady was asking if I'd ever been to their "big father's day brewfest". Um, yeah, I've been going for about 10 years now, back when it was at the Herbfarm, back when the Herbfarm was an actual herb farm with a fancy restaurant, instead of just a fancy restaurant. She hadn't been around that long. Later we were talking with one of the brewers at Fish brewing in Olympia, and he was asking if we'd heard of his beers, and I raved about their stout that was cask conditioned in merlot barrels, and he laughed that that was before his time there too. I guess I'm just an old fart anymore. Anyway, 9 tickets plus 9 more plus a freebie meant 19 tastes of beer, and that fairly well keelhauled me. Ugga. Thursday, March 24, 2005
Last night I made dinner since B was at jazzercise. I asked Isabel how many fish sticks she wanted. She told me 10. I'm thinking to myself, "riiiiiiight". I made like 4 for each kid and 8 for me. Obviously, Isabel ended up eating nearly 10 of them. Crickey. I may not have mentioned it before, but it sure was nice when I figured out that tartar sauce is basically just mayo and sweet relish. One less condiment I have to stock. Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Funny, Isabel has started to deliberately deceive Bridget. Isabel is obsessed with brushing her teeth ever since she went to the dentist, but if you let her put toothpaste on by herself she uses a huge glop of it, not the tiny dab that she needs. Anyway, she asked B if she could brush her teeth while B was busy elsewhere, and B told her "sure, you just can't use the toothpaste". Well, B came back to find that Isabel had closed the bathroom door. Inside, B found Isabel had used her stool to climb on the counter and get the toothpaste out, and had a huge glob of it on her toothbrush. Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Ugga. Today we're having a potluck at work and I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what to bring. I'm about the only guy in the office, and I've never been one to do the stereotypical guy thing of either having his wife make it for him or just buying something at the store. I ended up staying up until 11:30pm making pea and cheese salad, juiced up a tiny bit with my favorite spice, cayenne. It's supposed to sit for 4-24 hours, so overnight should be just right to get the flavors to mingle. MMmmmmmm. On the Patrick O'Brian front, I'm down 7, 13 to go. I was having a dickens of a time figuring out the name of the 7th novel, "The Surgeon's Mate", until it hit me in the middle of the night, and I laughed. Good stuff. I'll be a little sad when I finish this 20 book series, but man is it good. My Husky basketball team made the sweet 16, as a #1 seed, and the #2 and #3 seeds have already fallen. If we can beat Louisville on Thurs we have a great shot at making the final 4. Monday, March 21, 2005
Uff. I've got to get back to blogging. Crickey. The biggest news this past week was that one of my good friends has tongue cancer. He grinds his teeth at night, and one part was getting sharp and he got a wound on his tongue. He went to the dentist to have it looked at, and she sent him to an oral surgeon, who sent him to an ENT doc, who said it looks like cancer. Last week, on his birthday Weds, he got a biopsy of his tongue and a CT scan. The CT scan was clear, but the biopsy confirmed that he's got cancer. Happy Birthday. Today he underwent surgery to have part of his tongue removed as well as being gutted from ear to collarbone to have all the lymph nodes on the right side removed. They are going to biopsy the lymph nodes, if they are clear he might not need chemo. Sunday was his first wedding anniversary. A bunch of us were meeting at Salty's, a local restaurant on a pier across from downtown, for their hoity-toity $28 sunday brunch. Our power went out at 5am, and the carbon monoxide detector started chirping to let us know it wasn't working, followed by the baby monitor beeping it's error code to tell us it couldn't contact the base unit. It was very windy and stormy. When we finally got up at 8am, the power was still out. B's sister Judy was coming over at 9am to babysit for us so we could go out to breakfast, but without power we don't have heat or TV, so we brought the kids over to Judy's house. On the way we passed the linemen working frantically where a tree had knocked the power lines out a few blocks away. The brunch was pretty freakin' amazing. Big oyster bar, peel-n-eat shrimp, dungeness crab, tons of breakfast stuff, I had a crab and shrimp omelette, lobster ravioli with pesto, crab, and artichoke hearts, prime rib, raspberry crepe, about a half dozen desserts, a couple of eggs benedict, uff. There was a molten chocolate fountain with tons of fruit, marshmallows, rice crispy treats, etc on skewers to soak in chocolate. Yum. I ended up going back for 5ths, eating way too much. In fact, on the drive home I had a hiccup that nearly caused me to vomit. Ooops. Too much lunch. Two hours later I had a lovely crab nad chocolate flavored burp. Sunday was also my friend Corey's birthday. We went to the local Apple store to get him an iTunes Music Store gift cert, and instead of buying him a card to go with it, I just paperclipped the $3 to it. I know almost all guys would rather have the three bucks than a card. Dinner was at Corey's mom's house, a lasagna feast, washed down with a bunch of test-batch wine from Corey's cousin who works for a winery. I don't think I'll be hungry again until Weds. Last week B cashed in her "one week's dishes" coupon from Christmas, and today is my last day. I sure won't miss doing all the dishes, but B's loved it. Monday, March 14, 2005
Oh yeah. At Costco on Saturday I finally bought a new electric shaver, so the beard I've been growing since mid-January when my old shaver died got shaved off Saturday night. I still have a goatee. Nobody has commented yet, it took B until almost noon on Sunday to notice.
Hoo boy am I tried. The residual cough from my cold woke me up at 2am, and I couldn't the tickle in my thoat to settle down until almost 5am. I sat in the family room watching movies on TV. I watched parts of three movies I saw in theaters (Another Stakeout, Moonraker, and Red Sonja) and one I saw on tape, Clerks. Obviously none were as good as I remembered them, because they all pretty much suck. At poker on Thurs I got cleaned out of $30 in 30 minutes. Two $10 hands in 3-5-7, one in the 3 round where my trip Jacks lost to trip Kings, GAH, and another in the 5 round where four 8s lost to four 9s. Double-GAH! That sucked. On Friday the kids failed to nap, and for the first time had an epic meltdown in the evening. Wooo-nelly. Not good. Saturday we decided to do a bunch of errands. I'd bought some really awesome $110 walking shoes at REI on Feb 27th, then the next week got a coupon from them saying "Hey, you never used last year's dividend, here's 20% off anything if you use your dividend", so we went there, I plopped my shoes on the customer service counter, and the lady tried to give me some guff since the 20% off coupon didn't start until Feb 28th. I was like, "Um, ok, how about if I just return these and rebuy them then?". I mean, really. REI is a membership co-op, I can return these shoes for a full refund in 20 years if I want. Anyway, with the coupon I saved $22, and had $23 in dividend from last year, so I saved $45. Woo! I ended up spending $30 of it on a spiffy wide-brimmed mesh-top hat to keep my poor bald head from burning. After REI we popped into Toys R Us to return a torn rubber dino that I'd bought Harry for xmas but failed to notice it was damaged, then I noticed it was noon and Isabel had ballet at 1pm. B figured we could make it to Costco and back, I thought she was smoking crack. We flew through Costco, but made the fatal mistake of buying lunch there, and the kids are %&$*$ slow eaters. Gah! Adding to that traffic back was hellish, so Isabel ended up 15 minutes late to her 50 minute ballet class. I went next door to the bar as is my custom and my non-brother-in-law Bill was there. We were BSing and he mentioned again this big14-16" holly stump in his front yard that he needed to remove. He was going to drill it and pour the stump-rotting stuff into it, but I told him hell, we can take that sumbitch out no problem. After dropping Isabel back at home, I went over to Bill's and we started digging. Man, that sucker had a bunch of 4-5" roots that had to be hatched apart, then we wrapped my tow rope around it and attached the other end to my truck, I put it into 4Low, and tried to pull the stump out. No go, didn't budge, so we went back to digging and hacking at roots. Unfortunately, my tow rope was nylon, and Bill managed to chop 70% of the way through it with a missed swing of the axe. D'oh! Minus one tow rope. We went to Fred Meyer, got a new one, went medieval on the roots, and the next try pulled that big old sucker out of there. I'd guess the rootball weighs around 200-300 pounds, the two of us couldn't lift it. Afterwards B and the kids came over for dinner, and we watched the last 5 minutes of the Pac10 men's basketball tourney, where the Huskies beat Arizona for their first Pac10 tournement championship. Wooo! I still can't believe they got a #1 seed into the NCAA tourney. Crazy. On Sunday we went to Carkeek Park, one of Seattle's many parks with Puget Sound water access. The kids had a blast, but it was VERY windy, and although sunny, it was only warm in places protected from the wind. After we got home and got the kids fed and napped, B's mom came back from Olympia to watch the kids while we went to an afternoon combo baby shower/housewarming party our friends were hosting. Woo! I managed to toss down half a dozen Coronas, a nice way to spend a sunday afternoon after spending 3 hours wrestling a stump the day before. Sunday night we started catching up on the half dozen Battlestar Galacticas on the DVR, got two of them watched. It's not bad. Not great, but not as bad as I'd feared. Still a bit bizarre. Funny seeing Richard Hatch old. Thursday, March 10, 2005
I've mentioned before that I've been walking ~10 miles a week to get healhier, generally I walk 2 days a week (2 miles each way), bike the other 3, and do one walk around Portage Bay ~3 miles) at lunch once a week. Well, yesterday I get a call on my cell when I'm about halfway around, it's B saying that Isabel's dentist called, and they want her there an hour early to give her some loopy drugs, so B needs me home at 1:15pm so she can get there at 1:30 instead of 2:30. Crap! It's 12:30, I'm a good 20 minute walk from my office, then a 15-20 minute bike ride home. Uff. The EricMan Biathalon, walk 3 miles then bike 2 miles. Heh. I made it, whew. Katie was taking her nap, Harry was in his room playing with his toys, and B and Isabel left. Isabel was very excited, "I get to go to the DENTIST Daddy!" You go girl! I went inside, looked in on Harry but he didn't see me, and sat down in the living room to read my book. (Bk 6 of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series, page 2000 or so since they numbered consecutively). After about a half hour I farted pretty loudly, because Harry noticed, and came running. DADDDY!!!! He ran up and gave me a giant hug. From that point on he sat on the couch next to me, talking to me, looking throug books, or playing with his leappad. B and Isabel got home around 3:30, before Katie had woken up, and while Isabel was a tad offkilter from the loopy drug, she was very happy. I asked how she did and B said "Oh my gosh, she was SO great. The dentist said she was probably the best 3yr old he'd every worked on", which is saying something since he's a pediatric dentist. Apparently she was awesome, getting a novacain shot, getting her one tooth capped and a mini root canal on the other. All fixed up now. Amazing. Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Wooo! I've wanted to get a wall-mounted bottle cap opener for years, probably 5 years, but never see them for sale, and the only store I know that has them I never make it to. (Woodworker's Store over on Stone Way). Well, a friend had to get his license renewed, so he stopped by there on his way back and picked me up one. Sweet! Unfortunately it says "Drink Coca Cola", but it's still awesome. I mounted it to the kitchen wall near the beer fridge right when I got home, and had to test it. It works great. Isabel was itchin' to try out her new bike, so while B and Harry went to the grocery store, we walked up to the school. She did 10 laps around the paved track around the playground, and learned how to use coaster brakes. (Something I haven't used in probably 25 years myself) Two University of Washington things I noted on my walk home yesterday. The first is they finally have the bell tower on Denny Hall back on, and boy howdy is that thing shiny. It's all copper, but it's always been green. For some reason they shined the crap out of it, it's pretty. Of course, in 5 years it'll be green again, in this rain, but for a short while it looks awesome. The second is the cherry trees in the Quad are in full bloom, and holy crap, I bet 10% of the people in the Quad had digital cameras out taking pictures. It was totally funny looking. Tuesday, March 08, 2005
B has started watching baby Alex (2 months old, Katie's little brother) in the afternoons this month, going to full time with 4 kids next month. Everyone who hasn't tried it seems to think this is a totally impossible task, which sorta baffles me. I mean, if *I* can handle it, most any halfway organized mom should be able to. Isabel thinks she's got the world pretty much figured out. She knows babys are breast-fed, so she asked B, "Momma, are you going to drink a glass of milk so you can feed Alex?" Ha! That must be how they're loaded. Heh. Yesterday Isabel was SO happy. Her grandma took a square of colorful polka-dot polarfleece, cut a hole in the center for her head, and they snipped the edges to give it a fringe. Voila, a fuzzy poncho. Apparently several of her friends at preschool have them, and she's wanted one. Huh. One of the things I didn't know about kids. When I got home last night, I has Isabel and Harry sit down on the porch with me and we took the back wheel off Isabel's bike, took the tire off the wheel and got the tube out. There was a hole, but unfortunately the valve stem was also cracked so our patch didn't matter, it was going to need a new tube. For my bike I just go to the local bike store and pay them $10 to fix flats, it's not worth my bother, but I doubt they stock 12.5" tubes, it's a high-end bike store that sells hand-made titanium bikes. During dinner I'd heated some frozen corn to go with the meatloaf and garlic mashed taters, and Isabel was very excited since we don't have corn very often. When she saw it she wailed, "I don't like this kind of corn! Aaaaa!" "What's the matter, Isabel? You like corn. Corn is tasty!" "I only like corn with bones!" "Sorry, Isabel, I know we normally have corn on the cob, but it's not summer yet. Try it" "No! It's yucky. If it's not off my plate, I won't eat any dinner." "Ok, but you won't get any food later. I guess Harry and I will go to the library without you. No library for kids who won't eat." "Ok, I guess I'll eat. I'll try one corn. Ok, I'll try three more corns." chomp smack chomp "daddy, can I have more corn?" After the library we went to Fred Meyer, found and bought a 12.5" bike tube, and took it home. The kids "helped" me fix the flat tire and get Isabel's bike into shape. Harry had to go take a bath, but Isabel asked if we could go for a walk. Sure, what the heck, it's dark out, but it's nearly 60 degrees, and she's got that fuzzy poncho. We had a great little walk. Crickey, this cute little brick house with a castle turret down the street is for sale, asking $475,000. 2 bed, 1 bath, tiny. B woke me up at 4am, she was having a massive heartburn attack and needed some freakin' maalox, which we were out of. Sigh, ok, no problem. Get dressed, go out to the car, drive to the local Safeway. D'oh! Freakin' place is open 5am to 1am. Denied! Ok, no problem, head to the local 7-11. D'oh! No maalox there. Gah! Fine, the U district is only a mile away, there's a Walgreens, those are 24hrs, and that Bartell Drugs on the Ave was 24hrs as well. Double D'oh! Both are closed. Gah! Freakin' fine, looks like I get to hop onto I-5 and head towards downtown, I know one of the drugstores or grocery stores on Capital Hill or lower Queen Anne are open 24hrs, in fact there's a 24hr pharmacy on lower Queen Anne that we've had to use in the past. I finally find the capital hill QFC is open, park, walk through the gauntlet of homeless people and weirdos outside, find the maalox, buy it, and the checker is like "awww, do you have a widdle tummy ache?" "not me, it's for my wife". The checker freakin' nearly dies laughing, saying "oh man, I've got a wife, I know exactly how you feel. Good luck!" It was 4:45am before I got home, and then it took a while to get back to sleep. I suppose I really don't miss the sleep deprivation part of having new babies. On the Clan Lord front, I've only ever played fighters, and yesterday I decided to nuke my 2nd character and try being a healer. My 2nd character was a Zo fighter named Nurg, who I had never once gone OOC with. He made 4th circle last week, with lots of darkus and regia so he was a reaping machine for things he could hit. Being a dumb Zo, he couldn't count, so he'd hand his whole purse to people asking them how much money he had. He was very rarely ripped off, I guess most people in Puddleby are fairly honest. Anyway, I gave away all his stuff and he's now reset as a Thoom healer. I wish renaming was easy, oh well. Having never been a healer, I had no idea where to find the candle, bell, and book. Ok, I knew where the one in east town was, but not the other two. Fortunately Hex hooked me up. Right now he's fighting in the rat towers, completely broke, and training Spiritus. Once I get 10 spirit I think I'll train 10 fastus, then maybe 10 eva and 10 skea. It's hilarious vanquishing scavenger birds. Monday, March 07, 2005
Friday was sad. Free kegger at work, and I felt too sick to drink. Gah. *Hate* that. Saturday was busy. I bathed the kids in the morning since I'd forgotten to do it the night before, then I took Isabel to her ballet class and met with my not-brother-in-law at the bar next door for a pint, afterwards we went to a birthday party for a 4yr old, there were well over 20 kids there, it was madness. After leaving that, we headed down to Olympia to B's aunt and uncle's new home for a bithday dinner. B, her mom, her aunt, and her uncle all have their birthdays within 2 weeks of each other, (B's uncle shares B's birthday, 10 yrs earlier) so we get together for a dinner sometime around then. We got home around 10pm with the kids fast asleep in the car, toted them into the house and into bed without a problem. Wisely we'd jammied them up before we left. On Sunday I got the idea we should let Isabel ride the bike she'd been given late last year, so I pumped up the tires, raised up the seat to fit her, and off we went to Toys Backwards R Us to buy helmets for the kids. We got to Toys R Us at 10:30, and they don't open until 11am on Sundays, so we went to a nearby Target and bought helmets, but their tricycle selection was pretty lame (we want one with a push handle in back because Harry is still a spaz) but by the time we got back to Toys R Us they were open. Got all that set up and went to the local schoolyard, Isabel LOVES riding on her bike, but unfortunately the back tire was flat again. Funny, the training wheels hold up the bike so if she pedals on any upslope, the back tire just spins in place leaving a skidmark. Harry wasn't so happy with his helmet or his tricycle, but he was OK with it for a while. Lots of fun. After lunch was the big Dwarven Militia meeting in Clan Lord. We had 19 DM members online at once, and with only 89 players online that was over 20% of the online population. We had a blast drinking kegs of beer, then headed to Camp Dred where we did great for a while, then our healers outran the fighters, got killed by large death vermine, and there was mass destruction. Before the rescue could be organized, I was ported to the Orga Village, where I racked up my 100th depart. Still, a good time was had by all. A picture of a bunch of drunken Dorfs. Sunday night B was going to have a dinner with a bunch of her mom friends, but one by one they all dropped out except one of her friends, who said she didn't care if it was just the two of them she needed to get out and have a margarita. B was of course game for that. Her friend's husband came over with his two kids, a 4yr old girl who Isabel plays with and a 4m old boy who is cute as a button. Ok, buttons just aren't that cute, but he was. We had a good time eating pizza, drinking beer, and watching some basketball while the girls played with Isabel's dressup clothes and then spent an hour doing watercolor paintings. Friday, March 04, 2005
Man, at poker last night, Jack couldn't freakin' lose. I ended up five bucks, but besides Jack the other five guys ended up down, and Jack ended up $92. Twice I saw limit Texas Hold'em hands that I can't really complain about, but the winner was playing wrong. Once Jack had a pair of 8s, the flop was KKQ, he stayed in, the river card was an 8 giving him a full house. Two freakin' outs, and he was owned by anyone with a K or Q until he got lucky. Bad play. In another case, I had A8s, but didn't catch anything on the flop. Everyone checked after the flop, showing weakness, so I bet on the turn and river. I ended up losing to a guy holding pocket dueces. What the heck? You pay for the turn and river when you lose to ANY pair?!? He did win it, but man that kind of play will cost you in the end. Thursday, March 03, 2005
Ugh. I've been sick lately. At least my third cold this season. Saturday night we had dinner with an old friend of mine from college and her husband. They've had a bunch of fertility issues, and have reached the point where they are in the process of adopting a baby or twins from China. Sunday night we went to a dinner party with B's mom group. The new baby was there, she's like 10 days old and very cute, and there is also both a 4 month old boy and a 6 month old boy. The two boys are bald, fat, and super cute. I love babies at that age. I sure miss them. I hate phlegm. Monday was B's birthday. I stayed home from work to watch the kids and let her sleep in, and helped out around the house for her. I finished ripping our CD collection. Turns out we have right around 225 CDs, about 50% more than I would have guessed. There are only a few I know I own that I can't find, including "Who's Next" and two of my Rush CDs. Tuesday I was achy and stayed home from work. I slept 8 of the 16 hours between awaking and going to sleep. Last night B and I had a date to go to dinner with another couple. The local restaurants have a special every November called "25 for $25", 25 of the top hoity-toity restaurants have a price-fixed menu, for $25 you get an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert. This year they are doing it in March as well, so we went to a new seafood place, the Oceanaire, which was really nice. I had a watercress salad with crispy rock shrimp, a skate wing, and strawberry shortcake. B had the same salad, a fabulous halibut, and a chocolate mousse. I insist that mousse is just fluffy pudding, but I get berated for my heathen views. Anyway, it was damn tasty and a decent price, especially compared to the rest of the menu ($$$$). |
|
