Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Today is Bridget's 38th birthday. She sure doesn't look 38. The gals at her jazzercise class were a little amazed, they figured she was a lot younger than that. It's fun having a hot wife. Monday, February 27, 2006
Sometimes even *I* think we're insane. I felt surprisingly good on Saturday consider how much whiskey I drank. B invited a friend and her three kids over for dinner on Saturday, since her friend's husband was out of town on a business trip. I spent part of the day building a tall desk for a corner of the kitchen, with a shelf above it for the photo printer. It's sorta ugly, needs paint, but B was very pleased with it. On Sunday we had a dinner party for B's birthday which is Tuesday. Since that's also Mardi Gras, B did it all cajun-themed. Etouffee, jambalya, and red beans and rice. We wanted to serve Hurricanes, but the only recipe we could find on hand required Passionfruit syrup. Where the heck were we going to get that? B thought we'd have to find passionfruit juice and reduce it to a syrup, then I thought of Torani's syrups. A local company that every barista seems to use to flavor espresso drinks. I knew that United Cash & Carry stocked the entire Torani's product line for espresso cart vendors, so we went there, and sure enough, they had passionfruit syrup. Wooo! The food was great, the king cake failed, the hurricanes were tasty. I think three dinner parties over a weekend is excessive. Saturday, February 25, 2006
Some friends of mine are doing a huge Europe trip in a few months. Fly to London, take a train up to Scotland, bike the Whiskey Trail, do some wreck scuba diving, take the train back to London, dump off scuba gear, take a ferry across to France, visit the cliff in Normandy where his uncle assaulted a german gun, head to Paris, visit Berlin, Prague, Neuschwanstein, Munich, ski across the Alps from Italy into Switzerland, head back to London to take the QE2 back to NYC. All in a week. Just kidding, I think it's 3 or 4 weeks. Anyway, as preparation for the Whiskey Trail, they asked me to give them a Scotch bootcamp. I invited them and some other scotch-loving friends over for a dinner party last night. The menu was ribeye steaks, made-from-scratch cresent rolls, garlic mashed potatoes, artichokes, and grilled zuchini. (As an aside, if you would have told myself as a teenager that I would *ever* choose to pay for zuchini I would have been aghast.) When I was getting ready to grill the ribeyes, I was at a loss for what to use as a spray bottle to cut down on grease fire flare-ups. Left unchecked they can ruin the steaks. Necessity being the mother of invention, I took an empty half liter water bottle, refilled it, and poked a tiny hole in the lid. A squeeze and I got a perfect stream of water. The steaks were grilled to juicy perfection. I think we ended up sampling about 15 whiskeys. My friend's wife doesn't even drink but by the end of the night had an appreciation for scotch and had several favorites. A good time was had by all. Thursday, February 23, 2006
Uff-da. At some point in the relatively distant past, someone gave us a tin with 4 decks of kid card games. War, Crazy 8s, Go Fish, and Old Maid. I think it was when Isabel was an infant or maybe 1. It was way too advanced so it got stashed and forgotten. Recently I came across it looking for something else, and decided I'd give Go Fish a try with Isabel. Holy cow it's tough playing with little kids. She decided she couldn't hold all the cards, so she plays them all face up. Then, even though she can see every card, she still asks for things I don't have, or that have already melded. Sigh. Tonight we added Harry to the mix, I figured it couldn't get any worse. I was right, it's just as bad with three. We were down to two sets left, ones and sixes. Harry had three sixes. He asks if I have a seven. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! Just freakin' kill me. I've got to hide those decks for another two years. Man oh man are they the cheapest cards I've *ever* felt, cheaper than baseball cards, I mean they're almost made of construction paper.
I love how the human brain works. I've had my iPod (4Gb mini) for almost exactly a year. I've got something like 630 songs on it. I mostly play it when walking or biking to and from work, always on shuffle. In that time, a few songs have played a dozen times. Almost 50 songs have yet to play. For the songs that have played once or twice, when I hear them a second or third time, I very very often get a mental image of exactly where I was when I heard it the last time. It makes me laugh every time it happens. Actually, it mostly happens when I'm walking and when I was walking when I heard it before. I guess when biking I see too much for anything to fully imprint. Wednesday, February 22, 2006
I'm a weird guy, I know this. I'm happy with myself. B wonders about me sometimes, but she knew what she was getting into when she married me. I get into kicks where I eat something very frequently for a while, then drop it. I've been through grapefruit kicks, apple kicks, peanut kicks. Well, I've loved corn nuts for most of my life, but usually only buy them to snack on while driving on road trips. I got some both ways last time, and while I was driving through the snowy pass with my whole family zonked out, I got to wondering where I could get bulk cornnuts cheaply. I typed Corn Nuts into google, and got Nutsonline.com. Sure enough, they have corn nuts, and in serious bulk. I immediately ordered a 25lb case. That's a box 10" by 12" by 16" filled up, basically the same size as a 20lb case of paper. They arrive next Wednesday, I can't wait. Great reading snacks. Twenty five pounds of toasted corn. Yum!
Last night NotMe came over with WOPR and twelve packs of WizKid's game "Pirates". It's a strategy game where you make little pirate ships that snap together out of credit card plastic and then sail around, shooting each other and getting booty from islands. It was pretty fun. We played with 40 points each. NotMe choose two big giant ships, a navigator for one to make it even faster, and a small ship. WOPR had 4 ships with lots of guns. I went for six of the cheapest ships around. I ended up winning, but only because I was lucky and some of the treasure I got was worth 3 and 4 instead of just 1. WOPR had total domination of the sea at the end, I was basically down to 1 ship, but I managed to sink a few derelict hulks that had treasure onboard before WOPR could tow them home. Monday, February 20, 2006
We went to Spokane this weekend (where the temps hit the single digits, BRRRR! In case you missed that, it was frickin' freezing, Mr. Bigglesworth!) for B's great uncle's 90th birthday party and 60th wedding anniversary. It was fun, tons of B's relatives from everywhere. The kids behaved amazingly well everywhere we went. I was trying to think of a good reward for them, but they have a shitload of toys already and I didn't want to give them candy, so I finally decided to take them to a bookstore and let them pick out a book. We did that tonight, going to Barnes and Noble because the U bookstore was closed for President's day. Isabel picked out a book with a dry-erase pen and wipe-off pages for learning letters and words, and Harry got a big picture book of dinosaurs. On the way home I explained that since it was President's Day the library was closed, so we'd have to go tomorrow instead. Isabel started talking to Harry, pretty much like this: Isabel: "Harry, did you know that the President of Seattle is George Bush? His name is like Curious George's, but it's George Bush. Can you say 'George Bush' Harry?" Harry "George Bush: Isabel, in full school teacher mode: "That's RIGHT Harry! George Bush. His name is like Curious George, but he's not a monkey. He kind of looks like a monkey, but he's not." Meanwhile, I'm absolutely DYING in the front seat trying to drive. Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Isabel felt fine yesterday. Man, that girl talks perfectly normallly sometimes, like she was 8 or something, and then she goes in these phases of talking babytalk that drives B and I crazy. I don't know where she gets that, possibly a friend at preschool. Gah! Last night while I made some pasta for the kids B had roasted up a big garlic clove we'd gotten from one of her friends who's grandma has a farm. Damn it carmalized up nicely and tasted great on bread. After I put the kids to bed we had a nice romantic valentine's dinner together with a bottle of wine and some crab and shrimp pasta. We were supposed to have artichokes as well but we forgot to cook 'em and they take 45 minutes. D'oh! B and I have been together for 9 awesome years now. Holy crap, I've been blogging for almost exactly half our relationship. Dang. I'm still smooth faced. B is getting used to it. I asked Isabel which she prefers and since she knows she's going to try and get a car out of me when she's 16 she said "I love you either way Daddy!" Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Yesterday Isabel had a fever so I picked Harry up from preschool. He was super duper excited to see me. "DADDY!!!!" Very cute. He had an appointment with the ENT doc for them to go over his latest cat scan of his sinuses last week, and this time they're totally clear. Wooo! She said when he gets a cold, if the first round of antibiotics don't clear him up, he gets steroids with the second round, that seems to be the only thing that works for him. While B was taking him to the ENT Isabel slept on my lap. She's very cuddly when she's sick, poor thing. Last night I did a marketing research study. You sit in front of a computer and bitch about an annoying ad for ~20 minutes and get $40. Unfortunately, the lady ahead of me was some form of mouth-breathing moron. She took over 50 minutes to do it, so I had to sit there for half an hour waiting, reading a 2003 copy of Money magazine. Nothing like 2 year old financial advice. Oh well, the whole experience would have been worth it if she hadn't taken so long. Normally I get into focus groups where we talk for 2 hours and I get $100, which I'd prefer. Monday, February 13, 2006
The dinner party went off without a hitch. B made fried chimichangas, which involves putting a pork roast and some pinto beans and spices in the crock pot the night before, then shredding the meat the next morning, mixing it with the non-tender pinto beans, and stuffing flour tortillas with this mixture, then deep fat frying them. Mmmm, everything tastes better when fried. Poor Isabel has a fever today. Sunday, February 12, 2006
Some parent humor: You can tell that Harry has been watching too much FoodTV with his grandma. The other night B made a salad with lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and red onions. Harry was fairly upset, saying "Momma, you forgot the yellow peppers! Next time the salad needs yellow peppers Momma!" Isabel has taken to saying freakin' all the time like her parents. The other day she was going to take something upstairs, and she exclaims, "I do not know WHAT to do about all these freakin' stairs!" It's been a pleasant weekend. Beautiful warm sunny weather. Friday night B went to a "candle party" with some friends, basically a tupperwareque multi-level-marketing scam disguised as entertainment. I went to bed at 11:30pm and she didn't get home until after midnight. She slept in on Saturday, so the kids and I went to the farmer's market, no cheese curds sadly, then we went to Magnuson park so the kids could throw rocks into the lake and pick little yellow flowers in the grass. B went to lunch yesterday with some friends, and our built-in babysitter (aka Peggy aka mom-in-law) is out of town for two weeks, so I was stuck with Harry when Isabel was at dance class. No going to the bar for me, so I took the truck with Harry and we loaded a truckload of stuff out of my sister-in-laws' garage. Down to two truckloads left there that is still there from the move last September. For dinner last night we broiled a few ribeye steaks and had baked potatoes as our token valentine's day celebration and 9th anniversary of our first date. This morning we dropped Isabel off at a kids gym for a birthday party, went to a friend's for a valentine's day sunday brunch, picked Isabel up again, and now B is taking them to the mall to get their pictures taken. I got the lawn mowed, and we're having three couples and seven kids over for a dinner party. Sunday, February 05, 2006
Friday, February 03, 2006
I finally got some Firestone Affinity LH30 tires for my Kia last night. They are way nicer than the piece of shit OEM tires that came with the van. After a short hiatus when the evil laundry machine claimed his Seahawks tshirt, Harry is back to wearing it 24x7. Go Seahawks! I had a second dream where the Hawks killed the Steelers. Wooooo! Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Well, Costco called back to say they can't even special order the tires we need. I looked up that H rating, it means they're speed rated to 130mph. Well, I'm not sure I really need that, but if it was what Kia wanted, who am I to argue? It's better to have tires rated way higher than I'm going to take the van. Dunno where I'm going to go now. Les Schwab's web page was Les than helpful. They bought out the independant tire shop near my rental house that I liked. It sure is nice being healthy again. Wooo! Go Seahawks! We bought the kids Seahawks t-shirts. Harry has been wearing his 24x7. I mean that, he puts it over his jammies when he sleeps. He yells out "GO SEAHAWKS" all the time as well. I think he's working on getting me to buy him a car. |
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