Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Wednesday, November 30, 2005
I've still got this glub-damned cold. Musinex is my friend. Last night B and I went out to dinner with some friends. We were taking advantage of the "25 for $25" deal they have going on again this November. The local paper swung a deal with 25 of the fancy-shmancy restaurants, in November and March, they have $25 price-fixed menus Sunday thru Thursday, including appetizer, entree, and dessert. Booze and tip is extra. We went to Brasa, and it was quite nice. I had fried squid for my appetizer, B had mussels with Pernod. My entree was "Portugeuse Stew, with fin fish, shell fish, chorizo, and roasted garlic". Now, my entree was delicious, but the liquid base was watery, not thick like I'd expect a "stew" to be, and I saw no hint of chorizo or roasted garlic. I can't complain much because it WAS delicious and I'm an uncultured pagan, but it wasn't what I mentally pictured. B got some kind of chicken dish which she liked as well. For dessert I got an awesome cheesecake and B got a cheese platter. Very yummy. It's nice getting babysitting and getting to go out someplace fancy, and having the bill only come to $70 with tip. Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Last night after my drinking club meeting (we're buying $1k worth of Google, that's barely more than 2 shares, and another $500 worth of TGEN, since apparently it's faster than just flushing the cash down the toilet) I went over to my brother's house. He's still on his two-month vacation to Columbia and Bali, and his renters had called me with a problem that had them stymied. They're not much for home repair. Anyway, in one corner of the basement a huge mushroom had been growing inside. D'oh! Rotting wood for sure. It's perfectly dry there, but the downspout outside that wall goes into a drain that's backing up. We jury-rigged a re-route of that downspout with some stuff I found in the basement, but he'll need to do a permanent fix when he gets back to the States. Monday, November 28, 2005
Wow. The Seahawks had a heck of a game yesterday against the NY Giants. The Giants mostly shut down our vaunted offense, and they did alright on offense except scoring. We had a 21-13 lead with under 5 minutes to go, but let them drive down, score, AND make the 2 point conversion to tie. Gah! We then had 2 minutes of clock left, so of course we go 3 and out. Gah! They drive down again and make it to within a 40 yard field goal, which they missed as time expired. Holy cow! Overtime was rediculous. We won the toss, went 3 and out, they drove down, and missed a 55 yard field goal. Some time later they had the ball back, and missed a freakin' THIRD field goal. After that miss we made a 38 yard completion to set up the winning field goal. Dang. It was ugly, but the Giants are a good team, and I'll take an ugly close win over an ugly close loss. In the Houston-St Louis game, the Texans had a 10 point lead with 2 minutes to go, and gave up a touchdown, lost an onside kick, and gave up a field goal to go to overtime, then gave up another field goal to lose the game. If they hadn't Coug'ed it so hard, Seattle would have clinched a playoff berth after only 11 games. Now any Seattle win or St Louis loss and we clinch. If we can keep winning, we may even have a first-round bye and home field advantage, something we'd sorely need since we're not a dominant football team. Yesterday I was feeding the kids breakfast while B was taking her mom to an appointment, and I spilled a few drops of grape juice. Isabel says, "Whoa, watch what you are doin', dude!" Heh. She's growing up so much. She colors inside the lines really well now, and last night she decided she'd prefer a shower to a bath. She had a great time in the shower, it was cracking me up to watch her try to squeeze past the shower stream to get to the front of the tub. Sunday, November 27, 2005
Other than having a nasty cold, it's been a good week. B's sister and her husband and two kids came over from Spokane on Tuesday to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with us, and stayed until yesterday. They'd have stayed until today but there was a rockslide in the pass that restricts the freeway to 1 lane each way, and it backs up bad enough with 2 lanes. I've been using my laptop to play a bunch of World of Warcraft in the family room while watching football. My new pet is a crocolisk, a six-legged crocodile-like beast. I've named him CrocoStimpy. Happy Happy Joy Joy! Harry loves to watch me play, and constantly says "Where's CrocoStimpy? THERE's CrocoStimpy!!" over and over. Um, duh, he runs right behind me. Sigh. Over and over and over. And over. Uff-da. Monday, November 21, 2005
Saturday B and I went to the Apple Cup, the annual showdown between our two college football teams. This year was in Seattle, and it's B's only chance to see her team play. The UW student paper had the headline: "Apple Cup 2005: Battle of the bottom of the barrel", which is so true. UW was 2-8, with only 1 conference win. WSU was 3-7, with zero conference wins. The winner would get 9th place in the Pac-10, the loser would be in 10th place. Of course my Huskies sucked more than the Cougs, and we lost, 22-26. I was happy for B, and at least it was an exciting game, with the lead changing multiple times. B was sure her team was going to lose, and I was equally sure mine was. Sigh. What a sad state of affairs. We'll see how things go next year. At least the Seahawks are fun, winning on Sunday to go to 8-2 on the year. Saturday night B started painting the kids' room. She used the same light yellow and light green she'd used in their old room, but instead of bottom-half and top half, this time it's two walls one color and the other two the other color. She's really happy with it, and I admit, our house is starving for color. All the exact same shade of real estate beige. Yesterday morning I finally yanked out the kitchen sink, put in the new kitchen sink that B likes so much, as well as a new garbage disposer and a new faucet. It's nice having a deep sink again, and a faucet that doesn't splatter water all over everything nearby when run. The new sink (in blaze white) has a drain that is offset, which was a slight problem because that was where the drain is under the sink, and the garbage disposer was seriously in the way. I still need to rewire under the sink, the power to the old one won't reach the new one. Sigh. B was very very happy to have that done, and it's good to have another monkey off my back. Saturday, November 19, 2005
Wooooooooooooo! Last night B and I had an Apple Cup party to attend. It was small but pretty fun. One of the Cougs there was talking with B and it turned out they both graduated the same year with the same major, and knew people in common. Funny. The Apple martinis were pretty strong, 100 proof vodka with a splash of sour apple liqueur. Funny, 3 of the 4 guys there were named Eric, so we were well represented. After some people left I mentioned to my friend Chuck that until 10pm we could still make the cutoff for the end of the rebuy period at my friend's No Limit Texas Hold'em tournement, he had said earlier that he had 26 rsvps and 10 maybes. Our previous high was 18 players. ($20 buy-in, $15 rebuys the first hour). Somehour Chuck and I talked our wives into going out somewhere together while we went to play poker. Wooooo! We got there just in time, and there had been 29 players, apparently with some copious rebuys. Fortunately at least one player decided not to re-re-buy, leaving me with a seat. There were 3 tables of 10. I have been reading some poker stories lately, first "The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King" then Amarillo Slim's book of gambling tall tales, and had just read the tale of Amarillo Slim's World Series of Poker victory. (Against 7 opponents, when it was down to 3 Doyle Brunson was allowed to claim diarhea and resign, actually cashing in his 25% of the chips.) Anyway I was pretty excited and felt like I was sort of in the zone. I got dealt 2c-3c, suited connectors, so since there was a small pre-flop raise and several callers, I called too. Flop was 2-3-A, giving me two pair. Guy next to me with just barely fewer chips bets, I re-raise him all-in, he calls. He's got A-Q, and the turn and river are no help. He was furious to be beat by a guy holding 2-3, and didn't give me credit for them being suited connectors. That gave me a nice stake of chips. I made the final table, and mostly started folding my way forward, not contesting hardly any pots. I wanted to make the money. Soon enough we were down to 4 players, then 3. I got dealt J-9, and made a large bet. Guy re-raises me, I go all-in. He's got a K and some low card. Flop contains a king. Gah! I'm doomed, but then the turn was a 9, and the river another 9. I win a huge juicy pot on a runner-runner bad-beat hand, almost making up for busting out of the last 3 tourneys on runner-runner bad beats. The guy was flat-out stunned. Head's up now, and nearly 2am. I look down, and was dealt Ad-Kd. Suited big slick! I go all-in, get called. He's got A-J! A king comes up, I win the hand and most of the chips. A few small battles later and I win the tournament. The payout for first place is $522, a tidy $502 profit on my $20 buy-in. Uff-da! Between that and Vegas last March, I've now won over a thousand dollars on poker this year. Thursday, November 17, 2005
Holy cow. I was playing my alt character in World of Warcraft, decided to see what the auction house was all about, so I popped into the one in Orgrimar. A guy walked up and gave me 54 gold. (That's 540,000 copper, for someone who earns a couple thousand copper a day if I work at it.) Anyway, I stopped being cheap and started buying the beefiest armor I could, which cost me maybe a gold and a half. I'm rich, at least until I get up to level 40 or so. Last night a bunch of us went to Chinooks at Fisherman's Terminal for a birthday dinner for one of our friends. The kids were very cute, behaved very well, and ate neatly. It's nice having kids who behave in restaurants. I had the "all fried all the time" platter, with fried salmon, cod, mushrooms, shrimp, scallops, zuchinni, onion rings, and calamari. Damn tasty, but I felt like crap later with a gutfull of grease. Ugga. Today I had my dentist appointment. Got my teeth cleaned, then the dentist found a cracked filling. One good thing about going to the same dentist forever was I was able to ask if he'd done that particular filling, and sure enough, it was 10 years ago this month. Ha! Do better work this time, Doc! Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Monday night football was fun last night. B has jazzercise on Mondays so she leaves me alone with the kids, and I invited 5 of my friends to come over and eat pizza and watch the game. We use the dominoes 5-5-5 deal, 3 pizzas for $15. It's terrible pizza, but you get what you pay for. The game was funny. Philly had a 20-7 lead over Dallas with like 4 minutes to go and totally blew it, first not making a 3rd and 1, then punting and giving up a TD 4 plays later, then immediately throwing an INT for a touchdown. Ha ha! I always make a point of watching the end of MNF games, they very often have improbable results. I finished "The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King" (or something close to that title), a book about the highest-stakes poker game of all time. Several days of $100,000-$200,000 limit Texas Hold'em, played head's-up between a consortium of poker professionals against a rich and smart and crazy Texas billionaire banker. I got it from the library after it was on hold for a long time. It was a fun read, but I think it was a magazine article fluffed out. It would have been just as effective for me at half the length. Monday, November 14, 2005
Wooo! The Seahawks thumped the Rams yesterday, giving us a 7-2 record and an effective 4-game lead in the NFC West. With most of our remaining 7 games against teams with *bad* losing records, we have a good shot at securing a first-round bye in the playoffs and home field advantage. That'd be awesome, but that's a long way from now and we were 8-2 to start 1999 before dropping 5 of the last 6 to end 9-7, so I don't want to count any seachickens before they hatch. I'm an unmitigated bastard. Two of my friends in the World of Warcraft sunday night group are afraid of spiders, one so much that he admits to being afraid of fake spiders. I of course got rid of my pet crab "Pinchy" and went to the other continent to get a pet giant black widow spider "Bitey", just to freak those two out. I have to admit having a pet is pretty sweet, other than feeding the damn thing. My other character is also a troll hunter, level 15 now, and his spider pet is named "ChubChub". My kids love to sit around me while I play, saying "Hi!" to ChubChub, and pointing out things for him to kill. Of course, it has to be a complete coincidence that Harry woke up screaming the other night, having a nightmare about a giant black spider getting him. D'oh! Once again, there goes my shot at "Parent of the Year". Sunday, November 13, 2005
Thursday night was the 230th birthday of my beloved Marine Corps. We had a 12.2lb rib roast for 8 people. Mmmm. I tried a new recipe for 1775 rum punch (old recipe is 4 parts rum, 2 parts lime juice, 1 part maple syrup, splash of grenadine, dash of bitters, new recipe was 1 part lime juice, 2 parts maple syrup, 3 parts rum, 4 parts water, splash of grenadine, dash of bitters). The new one tastes a lot better, but everyone complained it was for wusses, so we won't be making that again. We'll stick with the classic from the Marine Corps NCO manual, the one that tastes like cough syrup. The birthday message from General Lejeune from 1919 was read, as well as the one from the the current Commandant, General Hagee. A good time was had by all, with half the guests staying until midnight. Fortunately, the day after the Marine Corps birthday is always a holiday. I had the day off, and used it to get the cooktop installed in the mother-in-law apartment, just in time since our renter was moving in that day. I finally got smart and looked at all the circuit breakers in the panel and wrote down the makers, so I was able to find a correct breaker (it's a Bryant panel but Seimens breakers fit) and get everything wired up. Saturday I finally built a cheap desk for my computer in my den. I cut a 4'x8' sheet of 3/4" MDF to 3'x6', and built a frame of 2x4s with 30" 4x4 posts for legs to hold it. It's extra beefy but very utilitarian looking. I also got a bunch of boxes of books unpacked and shelved, but I need more shelves. I also was VERY excited about my Huskies finally winning a Pac-10 game. With the WSU Cougars dropping their 7th straight, we move out of the Pac-10 cellar into 9th place, leaving the hapless Cougs in sole possesion of last place. Next week is both of our final game, playing against each other in the Apple Cup here in Seattle. I've been playing a Troll Hunter on the Warsong domain in World of Warcraft, he's up to level 15. I need to figure out where the former Clan Lord players are hanging out. Monday, November 07, 2005
Friday I was still on dinner duty, and had been planning on having fishsticks and tater tots, a kid favorite that we haven't had in months, but B fed that to them for lunch that day, derailing that plan, so we went to Johnny Rockets instead. Saturday morning while B was at jazzercise the kids and I sat around having breakfast. Isabel decided they wanted to go to the Farmer's market. I told them that was a good idea but for the fact that it was raining. They said, "That's OK daddy, we'll just wear our rain jackets!". Huh. That actually made sense. Off we went. On the way we drove by Top Pot donuts, and seeing they didn't have a huge line going out the door we stopped in and each had one. I had an apple fritter, Harry choose a chocolate frosted one with sprinkles, and Isabel choose a cinnamon sugar sprinkled one. We then proceeded to the farmer's market, which was cold and rainy, with very few customers. We got a breadstick and some cheese curds, and passed on the $5 per half pint for raspberries. Saturday afternoon B's mom watched the kids, we had a football game to attend. Before every Husky game they have a party inside the indoor practice field, with bigscreen TVs, a for-pay buffett, a for-pay bar, the band plays, half the practice field is available for kids to play on, etc. My work had reserved some tables to try and drum up some donations from alumni, and all the faculty and staff who have season tickets were invited as well, with free access to the buffet. It was supposed to be a brunch, but Fox Sports got them to move the kickoff to 3:30pm so they had awesome BBQ ribs. B and I had a good time talking to some of the emeritus faculty wives. The weather was damn cold, and raining cats and dogs. Constant drizzling downpour. Not the normal light misty rain, nosir. To make it even more lousy, it was very windy. Our seats are in the front row of the upper deck of Husky Stadium, which means were were completely exposed to this rain. We sat for 3.5 hours watching our team suck ass against a terrible Oregon State team, while being rained on the whole time. Uff-da. I had fun, but B wasn't so happy. Until garbage time at the end of the game only field goals were scored, six of theirs to one of ours. We had the ball first and goal on the 9 earlier, but fumbled it away, and we dropped a long TD pass with the receiver wide open. Sigh. I'm pretty certain we'll go 1-10 again this year. Later that night when we were wrassling around with the kids I noticed a big bruise on Isabel's leg. I asked her about it, she'd run into one of the end tables downstairs the other day. She said, "Daddy, I tried putting tongue water on it, but it didn't help any!" "Huh? What is 'tongue water'?!?" She opens her mouth and points inside. Aaaah. Saliva. Never heard it called tongue water before. Sunday we had our housewarming party. I think we had over 40 guests, it was the biggest party we've thrown in a long time. I had the Seahawk game on HDTV in the family room, and we did awesome. I can't believe we won after the bye week, maybe we ARE better than our curse. I'm not sold yet, we were 8-2 in 1999 before blowing 5 of the last 6 to end 9-7, and we were 6-2 in 2003 before splitting the rest to go 10-6. Let's see us win a playoff game sometime... Sheesh. Last night was our World of Warcraft group's first meeting. Five of us noobs on the Bonechewer server as Horde members. I'm Goraj, a troll hunter. We've got a orc warrior, a troll warrior, an undead rogue and an undead warlock. It was kind of a clusterfuck at first but we got things settled down quite a bit. A few more weeks and we won't totally suck together. I've made a seperate character on the Warsong server, a troll hunter named Nurg. I can't play Goraj without the group because we have to keep their levels close. Friday, November 04, 2005
One of the stocking presents I gave Bridget last Christmas was a coupon for me planning and making all the dinners for a week. She finally cashed it in this week. I should put 3 month expiration dates on those things. Sigh. So last night I decided to make spaghetti and meatballs, mainly to have fun making meatballs with the kids. They were very excited about the project. We got their hands washed up good, and they helped dump the ingredients in the bowl while I mixed it. Once we had the meat mixture ready they had a grand time rolling it into balls. I baked them at 425F for about 12 minutes, then dumped them into the (jar) sauce. They turned out pretty tasty, and the kids loved them. I started playing World of Warcraft. My first character is a level 9 Troll Hunter on the Bonechewer (PvP) server. It's OK so far, it will be a lot more fun when we play as a group. Solo it's a lot like like Shadowbane was. At level 9 I died for the first time, to a solo Alliance raider who was fighting some lvl 35 Horde guy. I fired a few shots from long distance, he ran over and one-hit killed me. Ha! Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Apparently Harry has a thing for Rachel Ray. B had a rare moment of peace the other day with Isabel at preschool and Alex and Katie both napping, so she sat down for a little TV with Harry. When Food Network came on, Harry goes "Rachel Ray? Oh... That's not Rachel Ray! That's Emeril! I want Rachel Ray!" Then when Emeril was over, he excited said, "THERE'S RACHEL RAY!!" Crazy boy. I was curious how he even knew about her, but apparently he watches her with his grandma up in the parlor. I got my paperback bookshelves upstairs secured to the walls, and unpacked 8 boxes of paperbacks last night. Things are coming right along. One of my friends drank the Blizzard koolaid and started playing World of Warcraft. He wanted to get a bunch of us playing with him. When he presented it as we should all block off just 2 hours a week to meet up and play together, I said I'd do it if someone else would. Three more bit, so now we'll have 5 playing together. In tracking down the cheapest price, I found that Fry's had it on sale for $35, but the nearest Fry's is waaaay down in Renton, maybe 15 miles away. Let's see, that's about $6 worth of gas. Circuit Shitty had it for $40, but they're waaay the hell up in Alderwood. Gah. Fortunately, one friend works up near the Circuit Shitty, so I had him grab me a copy. He even got them to price-match Fry's, so I get it for $35 without anything for gas. Score! We'll be playing 9-11pm PST on Sundays. I'm going to start with a Troll Hunter, but if I figure out what server the Clan Lord folks are I'll create a Human or Dwarf there too. Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Isabel's costume this year was the same as last year, per her request. A princess dress and butterfly wings, for a "butterly princess" as she calls it. Harry had his Darth Vader shoes on, a black cape, and some random lines drawn on his face with DV on his forehead. B's version of Darth Vader. Harry loved it. I was tempted to call him Dork Vader, but he was so happy I wasn't going to go there. It was cheap, I have to admit. After work we took the kids to the local mall for some trick-or-treating, where they got a bunch of stuff. Those cheap bastards at the Apple Store were not giving out iPods or even iTunes store gift certs, not even candy, they were giving out Apple stickers. Ah well. The kids got a bunch of candy plus saw lots of other kids in costumes, Harry was very excited everytime he saw a kid in a real Darth Vader costume. When we got home it started raining but that didn't deter me or the kids, we went trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood. I think we hit maybe a dozen houses, over half of the ones we passed were dark so we skipped them. Of the houses we visited, a bunch said they don't get many so they gave each of the kids a big handful of candy. Uff-da. They've each got waaay too much candy. It was fun, the kids totally loved it. They did great, saying "Trick or Treat" and "Thank you". Everytime a smartass asked for a trick they'd freeze up however. We only got five trick-or-treaters at our house. I'm hoping it was the rain that did it, not many people go out in cold drizzling rain. We did get to meet some of our neighbors which was nice. |
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