Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Monday, April 30, 2007
Well, you can take the trash out of the trailer, but you can never take the trailer out of the trash. Some pictures of Saturday's bonfire. No pictures of me chainsawing things up, the cameraman was busy doing the real work of raising logs off the ground so the chain wouldn't hit dirt or rocks. Good shots of the fire, however, and some idea of the scale. Good glub was I shitripped. I mean, I'm a guy who likes to get his drink on, and that was excessive even for me. Ugga-hooba-dooba. Sunday morning I was a seriously hurtin' unit. B left me alone until noon, and I got up at 6:30am for an alka-seltzer, then woke up again at 10am, had another Alka-Seltzer, and spent two hours in bed watching Mega Movers on History Channel while drinking the emergency hydration kit I keep by the bed (a few bottles of talking rain fizzy water). After lunch I still felt used up, but after sitting outside in the beautiful sunshine for a while I got up enough energy to go with the family to the mall. At Isabel's last dentist appointment, the dentist gave us a chart to help her quit sucking her thumb. The chart had 5 weeks on it, and twice a week she'd get a small reward, and after 5 weeks she'd get to go to Claire's and pick out something for herself. Well, she did it, and so off we went. B took her, while I took Harry to Toys Backwards R Us. I figured if Isabel got a reward for stopping thumb sucking, Harry deserved a reward for not starting in the first place. Harry and I went to the dinosaur section, and he picked out a big rubber Pterodactyl. He's super happy about it. I was sure Isabel was going to get a dress or some jewerly, but she picked out a toy dog with fancy collar. Afterwards we went to Home Depot so B could get a pair of strawberry pots, the big clay pots with holes in the sides and strawberry plants growing out of each of the openings. By dinner time I was feeling downright human again. Sunday, April 29, 2007
Yesterday morning we got up and went to a pancake breakfast fundraiser at Isabel's school. The fundraiser was for a new playground for the school, and they were expecting about 200 people at $5 each, but over 600 people showed up, and many donated more than $5, so they raised over $4,000. B volunteered, and was one of the cashiers. The pancakes were donated by Great Harvest bread, and Starbucks donated coffee. The pancakes were really good, there was some instant oatmeal flakes in them, I'm going to try that next time I make pancakes. After breakfast the kids and I went across the street from the school to the park so the kids could play while we waited for the end of the breakfast so we could all go home together. Once we were home, B took Isabel to her dance class while I stayed home with Harry and played World of Warcraft. When they got back at noon, we loaded up the kids, grabbed a quick lunch from McDonalds, and went to Husky Stadium for the spring scrimmage game. It was MUCH more crowded than I've seen in years past, almost the entire student section was filled. The format was the 1st and 2nd stringers were the purple team, and the 3rd and 4th stringers made up the gold team, at least for the most part. Thus, the score ended up 44-7. There were a lot of good things, like the QB performance and the wide receivers, but the kicking was terrible both punting and field goals, and our depth isn't good. With arguably the toughest schedule in the nation this fall, it will be interesting to see if they can pull off a winning record. Shortly after we got home, my friend showed up with his kids he was dropping off with B for babysitting. B took the kids up to Kenmore to drop Isabel off at a friend's birthday party. Another friend showed up and the three of us went out to Fall City for another friend's annual bonfire. He had his chainsaw ready, and I got to cut up a whole lot of down wood into chunks that were tossed onto the slash pile. This is the friend who had a tree crush his house in the huge windstorm last December, and it's still covered in tarps because they decided to expand the house and are awaiting permits. He had a wagon with a cooler of beer and a collection of booze bottles that all were down to the dregs. I drove his lawn tractor with trailer next to the wagon, reached down and got a bottle of Craggenmore 12yr single malt scotch to swig from, since driving a lawn tractor around is thirsty white trash work. One hand to steer, one to swig. The slash pile was about the same size as last year, but there was probably 4x as much wood in it, with lots of thick log chunks instead of brush and branches. Oh, and a large amount of old cedar fencing from someone. I had 10 gallons of accelerant, one 5 gallon jerry can with about a 50-50 mixture of old skunky gasoline and used cooking and motor oil, and the other just old gas. Let me state for the record that 10 gallons was perfect, much better than the 5 we usually use. I also had an old gallon milk jug filled with a mixture of old gunpowders. I poured about a quarter of it into a pile at the bottom of the slash pile, and made a thick trail of it in an S pattern heading away. I had brought an old white sock with a hole in it that I tied to the end of a long branch, soaked in gas, and used to light the end of the powder trail. It burned bright and cool, but very slowly, which was a little anticlimatic. I ended up using my torch to light the fire in several places, and the gas-soaked cedar planks went up with a roar. Holy cow, normally I get a 20' column of flame to last a few minutes, then it dies down to something a lot more reasonable. Not this year, that 20' column of flame lasted a good half an hour, it was pretty spectacular. There is an old mostly dead tree in the middle of that field right near the bonfire, and this year we managed to get some of the dead branches up high to catch on fire, a good 20-30 feet above the top of the flames. Most impressive. Uff-da, I did get drunk as a monk with a skunk, I must say. Lordy lordy. Extra deluxe shit-ripped. Fun bonfire party, and I didn't get burned or damaged. Saturday, April 28, 2007
Yesterday was one of my friends 38th birthday, and his wife is out of town at a conference leaving him stuck at home with the kids in the evenings, so he decided we should go out to lunch to Jak's grill for steak. We drove up onto upper campus to pick up WOPR from the copy center he works at, but we'd forgotten it's Washington Weekend, the annual UW open house on Fri/Sat/Sun. Campus was totally buried in groups of schoolkids going to the various college open houses. Uff-da. I'd like to go see some of the Engineering open house stuff sometime, but haven't had the time. The lunch was delicious. They both got the $25 NY strip steaks and fries, but for $10 less I ordered the NY strip sandwich. Ha! I got the exact same steak, just slapped onto a hoagie roll and with a bowl of au jus. Mmmmm. I had a pair of Maritime Pacific IPAs, WOPR had a pair of double manhattans, and Mr Birthday Boy had a glass of red wine. WOPR and I picked up the tab in lieu of giving him a birthday present at his birthday party next weekend. He normally has a luau party, but since the party is on Cinco De Mayo, now they're going to call it Cinco De Luau and make a combo mexican/polynesian party. All the tropical and tequila drinks you can ask for. As we were leaving WOPR asked the bartender if they had any rye whiskey, and amazingly, he had a bottle of our favorite, Old Overholt. He said he was in his mid 30s, and had only discovered rye two years ago, and he'd bet most bartenders in their 20s had no idea what you were talking about if you asked for rye. They also had Lagavulin, but I could see that from across the room. It's nice that my favorite scotch has a distinctive label scheme that I can recognize from 50' away. Last night we took a walk after dinner, up the hill into Windermere. Man, at the top of the hill is a sorta funky looking new construction mansion. There is what's basically a large gazebo up on the roof, a covered rooftop deck. Dang, I'm pretty sure that from that deck you'd have just over 180 degrees of Lake Washington view. I checked the bird's eye view shots in Zillow.com, but they are of the house that was there before, so I can't show you how strange it is. Damn, just about every house we walked by was between 1 and 2.5 million. Holy uff-da. Theoretically one of my friends signed up a work buddy as our new 5th for sunday night World of Warcraft. He's got a level 32 warlock on our server, but we're all level 54 or 52, so we'll have to help him level it up before he can really contribute. It'll be worth it if he actually shows up on sunday nights, since much the content is designed for 5 man groups. Friday, April 27, 2007
Harry, playing Wii bowling, flubbed his throw and the ball barely rolled down, then knocked over six pins. He gave us the comment: "Six!?! That angers up my blood!!" Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Yesterday at dinner, Isabel say, "daddy, in one of momma's songs, they say that it gets hotter after the sun goes down, but it gets colder after the sun goes down. I don't understand." "Well, honey, what they're talking about is kissing and smootching." "OOOOOOOOOhhhhhhhh." Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Fun weekend. Friday night was my "book club". Most of the guys weren't available, just WOPR and Thom, but we had a good time drinking and playing cribbage for three hours. WOPR was still under the weather from being sick earlier in the week, so he went home and Thom and I went to Goldies to play poker for 3 hours. I did alright for a while, then caught a pair of bad beats, then a long streak of cold hands, and ended up down $100. Had a pretty good time anyway. Saturday night we had a "Casino Night" party to go to. It was offered at our school auction, some parents hosted it and you paid $25 to sign up. It was held at this 1.1 million dollar home on top of View Ridge, a very nice house. B wore a sexy cocktail dress and was slightly worried that she'd be overdressed, and I teased her that all the other women would be wearing jeans. Turns out I was right, they *were* all wearing jeans, but not Levis, they were all in $200+ designer jeans. I have to admit, I was pretty impressed, this group of moms were all pretty hot, not a single heifer. I don't know why I'm surprised, guys with money have hot wives, it's that simple. They had a ton of tasty appetizers, the booze was flowing (specialy of the house is a blue drink, 1 part Absolute Citrone, 1 part pineapple juice, and 1/2 part Blue Curacao. They had a craps table, a roulette wheel, and a blackjack table. Everyone got 100,000 worth of chips, and whoever had the most at the end of the night won a nice bottle of wine. I immediately put all my chips on roulette, on red. Wheel spins, hits black. D'oh! "Hello Vegas? Gimme a hundred bucks on red. D'oh!! Oh all right, I'll send ya a check." I did win a prize for going out first. (Bag with 500ml bottle of polish wine, a coffee cup, and some SUCKERS). The main reason I did that was because there was a side cash-buying Texas Hold'em tourney about to start, and that's what a bunch of the guys did. I never once held even a pair after the flop, but made it to 5th place, but only the top 3 paid. After that we started a $1/$2 no-limit cash game. I was doing excellent at that, turning $20 into over $150, but then caught two really bad beats to get cleaned out. The first one I had A-Q, other guy had JJ, I took him all-in after a flop had an ace and garbage, I caught a second queen on the turn, and he caught a third jack on the river. The other time I had QJ suited, the flop had a Q and garbage, the guy who called me had A-nothing, and an ace hit on the river. Still, it was a really really fun party. Very funny group of people. After the casino shut down, the gals had music playing loud on a Bose ipod stereo in the kitchen and were dancing. One of the guys had brought a Borat swimsuit, and they were trying to get one of the ladies to model it. They were offering $500 for it, but none were quite *that* drunk, but one of the guys ended up wearing it. Good glub. Oh crap, I almost forgot. Captain Husky was one of the hosts! Wooo! I got to party with Captain Husky! He is a Husky football game fixture, sitting in the endzone section right next to the visitor section. Every Husky game in the 3rd quarter after a Husky score, he throws a little skit where he sits on his friend's shoulders, and tears up a stuffed animal that's the mascot of the opposing team, scattering the stuffing all over the visitors, then leads the whole stadium in a spellout cheer. "H! U! S! K! I! E! S! HUSKIES! HUSKIES! HUSKIES!!!!" Then he does a finger-waggling bad-juju hex on the opposing team to much cheering. Picture and info on Captain Husky. We ended up going home after 2am, and it started at 6pm, so 8+ hours of partying. Uff. On sunday I mostly sat around doing nothing. B had decided that she doesn't get to spend any alone time with each kid, so on Saturday she took Isabel clothes shopping and out to lunch, and on Sunday she took Harry to the Burke Museum to see the dinosaur bones and bug exhibit and then out to lunch. Sunday night we went to a friends house for a dinner party, lots of fun. We were in charge of the appetizer so I roasted up a huge elephant garlic in butter and olive oil, and it was served on bread with cambozola cheese. Last night I got home late after B had left for jazzercise, so I mowed the lawn with the kids up in the planter formed by the new retaining wall, watching. Isabel had a sippy cup of water in her chair cupholder, she said she was pretending it was beer. I also edged the lawn, then got dinner going, fed the kids, took them to the library, and then to the nursery at Fred Meyer to buy a new hibiscus, but they didn't have any. Ah well. Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Ah, talapia, the bane of B's existence recently. B bought some "fresh" tilapia filets at Costco last month, intending to freeze them. I explained that they were from China, and had been frozen already and thawed, and thus couldn't be re-frozen. The next day my friend passed away, and we didn't get around to using them in time, so they got tossed. Saturday we went to Costco and B bought a 2.5lb pack of frozen tilapia filets. We got home, she put them in the freezer, then took them out and set them on her desk next to the freezer to put something else in, and forgot about them, letting them thaw out. D'oh! B isn't having great luck with tilapia. We cooked them up, invited some friends, ate most of them, and used the leftovers for fish tacos last night. Yum! I'm a big fan of fish tacos. Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Sunday morning B wasn't feeling well, and I was awake at 6am, so I watched the kids and let her sleep in. We've been watching "Mail Call" recorded off the History Channel, with host Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey. Ooo-RAH! I've got the kids doing a fair "Oooo-RAH" as well. They may never join the military, but they will have respect for my beloved Marine Corps. We went for a hike in the ravine as well. They were very well behaved. Sunday, April 15, 2007
Saturday morning we took the kids with us on a Costco run. B found a tahitian black pearl ring that is the exact shade of greenish black as the tahitian pearl she got in Hawai'i on our first anniversary, and it was only $329, but since she's got a problem buying stuff for herself she refused to let us buy it. It's not like it was a ton of money... I've almost got her convinced. Last night B's peace corps friend who used to live in our basement came over with her husband to babysit the kids while we went to a friend's housewarming party. The party was a lot of fun, the house is very nice. It's got a climate-controlled 700 bottle wine storage room off the garage. They had two large-breasted 18 year old gymnasts from my friend's wife's gym as bartenders, but they didn't know very much about tending bar. I got probably 3 shots of vodka in my dry vodka martini. Belvedere is a very nice vodka, however. I mostly stuck to scotch, Glenmorangie and his 15 yr old Laphroaig. Saturday, April 14, 2007
My party last Saturday was fun. We'd bought 15 pounds of flanken style beef ribs, cut across the bones so each piece has 4 disks of rib and they're all the same thickness, makes them much easier to cook. Just slap them on the BBQ for a few minutes, flip and coat heavily with your favorite BBQ sauce. They seemed to be quite popular, i had maybe a pound and a half left over. I also grilled up some johnsonville brats and a bunch of hebrew national hot dogs. I swear hebrew national hot dogs are 50% better than the 2nd best hot dog I've ever had. B had invited a ton of her friends as well, so even though a bunch of my friends couldn't make it, we had over 20 adults and about 15 kids. It was kind of a madhouse for a while. I was just starting to come down with a cold, so I wasn't feeling super great, and wasn't an active or animated as I'd normally be, but it was still a really fun successful party. My bottle of scotch is heavenly. SOOOO damn good, such a great present. I also got two "The Dude and Catastrophe" pint glasses from my favorite webcomic Achewood, and a the poster of the strip when Ray gets sort of stoned. I also got a very cool-looking bottle of Port from 1998, but the port turned out to be on the low end of mediocre, sadly, and a bottle of Belgian ale that I'll save for my brother reunion this summer, along with the bottles of Chocolate and Vanilla Michelob that I got at Christmas. We had damn near forgotten Easter was on Sunday, since we weren't in charge of dinner, and that meant we'd nearly forgotten the Easter Bunny was supposed to come. D'oh! B snuck out around 4pm and got two new baskets and stuff to put in them. After the party we loaded plastic eggs with jelly beans and she hid them in the family room. The kids were super excited when they woke up. They found their baskets, and took a tour downstairs before coming into our room to loudly tell us the Easter Bunny had came! They had a blast finding the plastic eggs. Afterwards they were opening them up, and Isabel was a bit disappointed to keep finding just jelly beans, and not some toys and stickers like last year, but I tell you, the Easter Bunny damn near forgot entirely. Harry was so cute, when he'd have trouble opening a plastic egg, he'd hold it in one hand, shake his other index finger at it, and go "Oh you egg!!!" and then hand it to B for opening. I laughed hard. That's going to be my new catch-phrase for anything difficult to open now. "Oh you egg!!" After breakfast I was a man with a mission. I've been meaning to grow hops for nearly the past decade, and decided this year I wasn't going to just be lame about it. I called up Bob's Homebrew Supply ("Bob's Homebrew Supply, Bob speaking!", lol!) to confirm they had 4 varieties of hop starts on hand, then drove to Home Depot, got 2 large pots, a bag of crushed lava rock, two bags of pottting soil, and a 3' by 8' wooden lattice, went to the homebrew store to pick up the hop plants, and also dropped the van off at the stealership for new brakes and to get the emergency brake handle fix since it had fallen off. Oh, and we had to go to Dick's Drivein for burgers since B had a wicked hangover from partying too hard at my party. When I got home I put the two pots in the middle of the south-facing back wall of the house, put some rocks in the bottom of each, added the potting soil, put 3 hop rhizomes in each, put the lattice up, and then from my bathroom window about 16' up I put a crossbar and 4 strands of twine for the hops to climb. Mmmm, can't wait for them to grow and bloom. Easter dinner was awesome. We went to our friends house, the ones who B daycares their kids, and the four of them had another easter egg hunt in the backyard in the rain. (Mind you, at 1pm it had been beautiful and sunny). They'd hidden some real dyed hardboiled eggs, and one came up missing. D'oh! That'll smell wonderful in a few weeks. Not as bad as a raw one, but still. My friend's brother is not all there in the head, a card-carrying member of the tinfoil hat brigade. He can hold down a job like janitor or auto-parts driver, but can't manage to pay bills. I'm not sure exactly what's wrong with him, some form of autism or the like I guess. He just needs a little help, if you talk to him you might just think he was a conspiracy theory nut. Anyway, he was there with the rest of their family, and we unfortunatley got into a political discussion about oil, then when I brought up biodiesel he started with claims that it was WAY worse for the environment, his claim being that without the sulphur as a lubricant the biodiesel causes way more wear on the cylinders, meaning you are burning steel and filling the atmosphere with steel vapors, which are horrible carcinogens. Hahahahahha. Anyway, I poked him a bit about that, and went into the kitchen to steal some more deviled eggs while his aunt and mon argued a bit more with him. Apparently he got flustered, and not having coping skills, decided everyone was against him and he left before dinner. Not the first time, and not the last time. I ate waaay too much ham at dinner. It was delicious. Monday was my 39th birthday. My cold had progressed to suck, and I spent the day in bed. I had leftover ham and taters for dinner while B went to jazzercise. Theoretically only 1 years til I get to have my midlife crisis and buy a convertible. On Wednesday, I didn't have a quorum for poker, but B's mom was back from two weeks in San Antone, so to take advantage of babysitting B and I went to go see "Shooter" with Marky Mark. For a stupid action movie, it was fun. I love snipers, but I kept expecting Marky Mark to explain to Colonel Troutman "They drew first blood, not me Sir! They drew first blood!". 20 years ago it would have made a perfect Rambo 4. Or with Bruce Willis another Die Hard movie. Speaking of which, there IS another Die Hard movie coming out this summer. Super. The first was great. The second stupid, there is no way he's going to just luck into a situation like that. In the third, at least his involvement wasn't random. Last night we went out to dinner (mmm, tasty thai food) with Jeannette, our recent widow friend. By the way, Adobe pulled InDesign in CreativeSuite 3 out of "locked down gold master" to change the About dialog box to dedicate it to the memory of Charles Lasseter. After dinner I took the kids and mom-in-law home while B and Jeannette went shopping. Friday, April 06, 2007
Holy crap, my friends kick ass. Normally a bunch of them buy me bottles of booze for my birthday. The problem is nobody knows what scotches I already have, and nobody wants to pay $60-$80 for a nice one by themselves, nor should they. One of my friends took up a collection to buy one *really* nice bottle, and they got $240 together. Checking liq.wa.gov, I found the state had 3 bottles of Port Ellen 22yr old Islay single malt. The distillery was shut down in 1983, so the few you can find are all there is. It goes for $240 a bottle here. The most expensive scotch I currently have is a St. Magdelene 12yr worth about $110. To be able to taste an Islay scotch that I've never had before and is basically unavailable, and one that I would *never* buy myself, is cool beyond words. I've very very excited.  Thursday, April 05, 2007
Last night I went to play poker at Goldies again. Bought in for $100, and probably would have won half the first 10 hands if I'd been stupid enough to play them through, making crazy full houses on the river with crap hands. Not being brain dead, I wasn't in those hands, so after a while I was down near $30 after not yet winning any hands, nearly pulling a WOPR. Fortunately, I slowly worked my way back up, and finally reached $220. One one hand I had Q8 suited, and the board flopped two queens, and I picked up the 4th queen on the river. That qualified me as the High Hand for their $500 jackpot every two hours, but then I got beat by someone at another table making a king high straight flush. Damnit! Second time in a row that I got second place in the high hand jackpot. Gah! They give out little tickets every hour, and draw the numbers for a prize. Both my friend and I each managed to get drawn, woo! The prize is $50, or reach into a box full of plastic eggs, open one, and see what's inside. Those range from $25-$900, and stupidly I drew instead of taking the $50, and won $25. I managed to bleed away my winnings on some great 2nd best hands, and ended up up $13. Not great, but not bad considering how far down I was at one point. My old friend who taugh me scuba diving many moons ago (um, 170+ moons ago?) has been dating a doctor for a few years. Well, it turns out she wasn't the only one that scumbag was dating, he recently proposed to another girlfriend in Boston, and apparently has girlfriends in San Fran and DC as well. Super. Some guys are real dicks. I feel sorry for the gal he proposed to, that can't end well. If you're considering dating a Dr. Frederick Cobey, you might keep that in mind. Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Dudes, dudes: Holy crap, you've got to check this shit out: Ok, so that scotch dealy last Friday was co-hosted by the Robb Report. Duh, it was chock full of rich folks. Anyway, they were giving out free copies of various versions of the magazine, of which there are apparently dozens now. I grabbed a few on luxury homes and cars for fun and to upscale my guest bathroom reading material from Newsweek, and on the back cover of one was something that blew me away. Regalia Miami is a 40 story building in Miami being built that looks cool as hell, very non-square. It's 38 floors of 1 condo per floor. Yeah, 6000 square foot condos, with 1200 square feet of decks. Prices range from 5 to 9 million. Gahoobadoobah. Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Last Tuesday B and I went out to dinner at Campagne, our first time at a fancy French restaurant. The place had hoit and toit in spades. We were there because of the March "25 for $25", 25 area restaurants offering $25 price-fixed dinners, with appetizer, entree, and dessert. The food was good, the bread was amazing, they had 2 types of pastis that I hadn't tried before besides Ricard and Pernod, and they had a cheese plate on the dessert menu. Mmmmm. On Weds I managed to get a quorum of my poker group together, and I won $31. A great night, but not the profit available at a poker room. On Friday B had a hen-fest with a dozen moms from Harry's preschool. I was supposed to watch the kids and put them to bed, but that morning I got an invite from a friend (he's the lawyer in my drinking club with an investing problem) that he had an extra ticket to the Single Malt Whisky Society's spring scotch event down at the Rainier Club, so I bailed on her. I did agree to feed the kids and not have her drive me downtown, so I threw some Trader Joe's cod filets in the oven and boiled up a bag of edamame. To noone's surprise, I'm the only one in the family who likes edamame. Sigh. I ate too, since while the event includes a fancy dinner buffet, it's only from 7-9pm and eating food cuts into the scotch-drinking time. I bummed a ride downtown from my sister-in-law and met up with my friend and his wife, and we went in. The event started at 7pm but they let people in early. We wisely grabbed a table and started in on the scotches. First up was the Johnny Walker Blue. If they're going to pour a $200 bottle scotch, I'm going to sample it. It was VERY nice, not nice enough to make me pay $200, but very very nice. The event is really nice in that it's all-you-can-drink, and the vendors bring lots of higher-end product for you to try. I tried a lot of very nice whiskeys, including the range of Ardbeg, and a really nice Laphraig. |
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