Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Monday, July 30, 2007
Saturday evening we went to a friend's house for dinner, they have 3 kids and the five of them played pretty hard. It's funny to see how much larger our kids are. Uff-da. Isabel and the other six year old girl roped me into holding onto their ankles while they hand-stand-walked across the yard, then I'd hold one ankle on each up and race them across the yard until they collapsed laughing. Pretty fun. We ended up not going to see the Seafair Torchlight Parade this year. On Sunday I woke up around 8:30, the kids were in the parlor watching TV, I snuck downstairs and made them pancakes. They were thrilled. B slept in until 10am. B and I got most of the framing done for the floor on the shed, I'll get the last three joists in one evening this week. After that was done we loaded up the bikes in the truck and drove to a local bike store to rent Trail-A-Bikes and go for a ride. Next month when we're on vacation with my family my brothers want to do the Hiawatha trail, a bike trail that is a converted railroad, including a mile long tunnel. They want the kids to go, but B wanted some idea of what we were getting into beforehand. The first store only had one, but luckily the store across the street had one as well. We took a 7 mile roundtrip ride up the Burke-Gilman bike trail. At first it's a little weird and wobbly, but they got the hang of balance pretty quickly and loved it. I'm glad we got the practice in. It ends up being a lot more stressful than biking solo, but it's great to have the kids along. Hopefully we can find some decent used ones on Craigslist. Amusing that I can buy a kid's bike for $35, but half of one costs $200. Saturday, July 28, 2007
This morning when B went to jazzercise, I took the kids to a different lumber store to get the rest of the parts I needed for the shed today. Afterwards, we went to the Farmer's market for some cheese curds and a pint of fresh raspberries. The raspberry guy loved my Trogdor t-shirt, he said he almost wore his Strong Bad t-shirt that morning. When we left there, Isabel asked if we could go to 3-2-1-Bounce!, a place with large inflatable kid toys. I told her there wasn't much chance of that. She said, "Oh, c'mon. Just for a hour? We need to burn off some excess energy!" Ha! Afterwards we dropped off at the library to pick up the two books i had reserved, Bruce Campbell's book "Make Love!* *the bruce campbell way" and the second Transmetropolitan collection, "Just for life". The first Transmetropolitan was really good, I'm tempted to buy them. Friday, July 27, 2007
Last night I tried to fry up some chicken legs. Turns out the themometer I used was nowhere near accurate, the oil was WAY too hot. They ended up just barely blackened, and not the good kind. Certainly edible, the kids and I liked them a lot, just not something you could ever serve to a guest. I need to work on that, or just buy an electric deep fryer that controls the temperature well. Thursday, July 26, 2007
Damn, I have got to stop watching Good Eats. This week he had an episode about coconut cake. Holy crap it looked so awesome, I am almost tempted to make it. After watching it, I ate a half cup of shredded coconut from the kitchen, and tonight when B and Isabel went to return some shoes to Nordstroms, I took Harry to Whole Foods, where they used to sell coconut brittle. Sadly, they didn't have it, and the only peanut brittle they had was sugar-free. (shudder). They did have some damn fine coconut macaroons, which helped get that monkey off my back, plus I bought 3 tasty beers, and a bag of freshly-made marshmallows. Wow! I'd never been willing to make them myself, but the ones they make at Whole Foods are damn nice. Heavy, way more flavor, and much better texture. After four months on the waiting list, we finally got the new Janet Evanovitch 'Stephanie Plum' book, "Lean Mean Thirteen", I picked it up on Tuesday with the kids, and got Isabel signed up for a library card. B has already finished it, they're quick reads, I'm half done already myself. As soon as I finish it I'll loan it to WOPR, then turn it back in. On a lark I checked out how long the waiting list is at the library for the new Harry Potter book. Only 1600 people on the list. They've got 190 copies. (There were about 500 people for 69 copies for Lean Mean 13). Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Last night after I got the kids to bed (we're on chapter 14 of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) B and I watched "The Departed", I'd borrowed the DVDVDVD. Pretty good movie. Worth seeing. Lots of death. I don't know about it winning Best Picture, I guess there wasn't much competition last year. Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Recently we started Isabel on a weekly allowance. She gets a buck a week, and if she does her chore (setting the table at dinner) without complaining, a second dollar. She told us she was going to save $20 so she could by a Littlest Pet Shop toy, but after saving up $8 she went to Toys R Us and spent $6 buying herself a much smaller Littlest Pet Shop toy and buying a Hot Wheels car for Harry. What a sweet sister. She'll slowly learn the value of a dollar, however. Yesterday I finished the first Rex Stout "Nero Wolfe" mystery, "Fer-de-lance". Very very good, and interesting to see how things in New York were in the early 1930s. Stout wrote Nero Wolfe stories until he died in the mid 1970s. Monday, July 23, 2007
Yesterday we went out for brunch with our friend Jeannette, then B and her mom took the kids to the mall. I stayed home, and soon my friend WOPR called. He lives in an apartment that makes package deliveries difficult, so he has his stuff sent to my place, and wanted to come over to get his new Harry Potter book. Once he got here we talked for a bit, then since it didn't feel like beer weather, we decided to try some sazeracs. This quintesssential New Orleans cocktail is one I started drinking over a decade ago. I first encountered it in the WEB Griffin's "Honor Bound" series, the ones set in Argentina. I had some really great ones when B and I went to New Orleans in 1998 and got engaged, but afterwards I moved on and hadn't really thought about them for most of the decade. WOPR asked me about them recently, having just discovered the idea, and wanted to try it since he's big into rye whiskey these days and a sazerac is often made with rye. We first tried a recipe from my wood and leather-strap-bound "Here's How" drink recipe book, copyright 1941 from North Carolina. The recipe there was simple, just a shot of bourbon, a dash of pernod or absinthe, a dash of sweet vermouth, and a dash of bitters. It was OK, but not great. My Bartenders Bible and my Mr Boston bartender guide both had similar recipes, coat a glass with pernod, pouring out the excess, then take some sugar, water, bitters, and rye, blend it, and pour it into a the glass, garnish with lemon. So far neither method was great, and I remembered the drink being a lot better. Next we tried modifying the recipies. We coated the glass with Pernod or Ricard, made some simple syrup, added two shots of rye, a splash of vermouth, 4 dashes of bitters, and a drop of lemon juice concentrate. That ended up being close, and a mighty fine drink. Mind you, it was like 2pm and after 4 drinks we were rapidly approaching getting hammered. D'oh! Plus, we'd run out of Beam Rye. I called up a friend, then his wife, neither was willing to drive to the liquor store for more. B wasn't answering her cell, but finally WOPR's brother NotMe said "sure!". Wooo! Booze delivery on a sunday, no less. Mind you, it's only been just over a year that you could buy hard liquor on sundays in Washington State, and there are only 20 stores that sell on sundays, but that's supposed to expand by 30 soon. Meanwhile, WOPR and I fired up my DVD set of The Ventures Bros, Season 2. Holy crap that show is funny. Here's a quote from the Season 2 opener, "Powerless in the face of death": The Monarch: Hey! Hey! Are you raping me?! King Gorilla: No... well, I was gonna. The Monarch: Gonna?! What the Fuck, King?! King Gorilla: I couldn't get it up. The Monarch: AGH! [Holds hands to Ears] Lalalalalalala... King Gorilla: You're built too much like a girl! I couldn't get into it. The Monarch: [stops 'la' -ing] What... What a... this isn't even my cell, What'd you do, take me to your place? King Gorilla: Well I got porn here... it helps. The Monarch: AAIGH! [Puts Hands back to Ears as he leaves the Cell] Lalalalalalala... Damn near kills me I laugh so hard. Sunday, July 22, 2007
First off, I'd like to state for the record how awesome my life is. The kids have now reached the age where both B and I get to sleep in on the weekends, when they wake up they go into the parlor and watch TV quietly by themselves. Yesterday B was hung over from going out drinking Friday night, yet I felt fine. Clean concience, I always say. Heh. I loaded up the kids and first went to Home Depot, where we bought a tire fill tool for my new (to me) air compressor. I was looking for Simpson Strong-Tie connector HUC46 for holding the 2x6 beams that will make up the edges of the floor joists on my new shed, but they didn't have any. Next, we went to Costco. It was lunch time, so first we tried to get some pizza, but there wasn't anywhere to sit, so we went inside and bought the 3-pack of nail guns. They were the reason for the whole trip, a set including a framing nailer, a finish nailer, and a brad nailer. Oooo! Baby with a nail gun! (Sorry, obligatory Simpsons quote). Once we bought that we got 3 slices of pepperoni and 3 drinks. I get root beer and the kids get lemonade. They both gave my root beer a few tries, but only Harry liked it, proclaiming us to be a pair of root beer buddies. By the way, I think we were the only ones in Costco who were NOT buying the new Harry Potter book. Crazy. After filling up on Costco gas we drove to the Farmer's Market, where they were out of cheese curds but we picked up a pint of fresh raspberries, half of which were eaten on the way to the truck, and the other half got eaten by the kids before we got to Dunn Lumber. At the lumber yard we bought four 8' 2x6s, five 12' 2x6s, the only two HUC46s they had (need 6 more), and a box of 2000 hot-dipped galvanized 3.25" nail-gun nails for the framing nailer. OoooO! I love having a nail gun. Schunk schunk schunk! RrRrRRRrrrr! I also spent the day failing to talk either my friend or B into driving down to Portland for the Rush show that night. Heh. Earlier in the week B told me I need to plan out a date night for Saturday. I decided that since it kept getting great reviews I'd take her to see Ratatouille, and eventually decided we'd try Cactus, an upscale mexican restaurant down in Madison Valley. It was pretty good, we each had a mojito, B had enchiladas, I had fajitas. It wasn't as crowded as we'd expected, so we got out in time to see an earlier show downtown. After the movie (which was pretty good) we walked back through Barnes and Noble on the way to the parking garage, and I picked up a copy of Glen Cook's "Sweet Silver Blues", the first of his Garrett, PI series. I've owned the rest of the series for years and years, but the first one has been out of print for a decade and I hadn't seen it when browsing used book stores. I laughed to see that Alan Dean Foster wrote the novelization of the new Transformers movie. Man, I knew he used to write tons of novelizations back in the 70s and early 80s, but thought he was past that. Funny. He was one of my favorite authors in the 1980s, not so much anymore. Afterwards we drove to the Wedgwood Ale House for a nightcap, I had a mojo IPA and she of course had spire mountain dark and dry cider. It was a fun date. Saturday, July 21, 2007
Oh man, the Rush concert last night was SO freakin' awesome. My second favorite of the nine Rush shows I've seen, the favorite was my first one since it was my first one. I took the afternoon off yesterday, biked home in the pouring rain, and spent some time with B and Harry. Isabel spent the day at her friend's house. My friend Zach picked me up at 2:30pm, we hit a ton of traffic but made it to CJ's house down in Auburn around 3:30pm. CJ's wife had made a crock pot filled with roasted peppers and sausage chunks and other stuff, and we took hoagie rolls, split them, put some provolone on them, and roasted that in the oven until the cheese was nice and bubbly. Slather on a ton of ribs and onions and peppers, and add a lot of fresh basil, and wash it down with cold Pyramid India Pale Ale while cranking Rush on the stereo. After a few beers and a snort of 18 year old Talisker and a snort of 12 year old Glenmorangie portwood finish, we headed out towards the Muckleshoot casino, which is near the concert venue. The concert was held at the White River Amphitheater, which was built and is operated by the Muckleshoot tribe on their reservation down the road from the casino. Apparently they normally have a free shutle between the casino and the venue, but not last night. The casino is huge, rivaling anything I've seen in Vegas. Their poker room had over 25 tables, floating everything I could imagine, and nearly 20 of them were running. CJ had loaded a 16oz Nalgene bottle with some Stroh 160 proof butterscotch liquor "made from rum". Holy hell on a handbasket, that stuff is nuts. We stopped off at a Quick E Mart where he bough a large fountain drink cup, packed it with ice, and topped it up with diet coke, as well as two 1l bottles of diet coke. A healthy snort of the Stroh made it very strange butterscotch-n-cola flavor, deadly. The ultimate Atomic Thigh Spreader. If you ever need to convince a 15 year old to have sex with you, this is the foolproof method. Dayum. Once we got to White River Zach and CJ tried to get into the VIP parking lot, but it was sold out, so we had to park with the commoners. A huge thunderstorm poured rain down on us, but we had at least 20 minutes to spare before the show so we put paid to the Stroh and a liter of the diet coke. So much for the "no alcohol in parking lot" signs. The minivan next to us had like 6 guys in their 30s and 40s, they were drinking wine. The rain stopped when we ran out of booze, so we walked over to the entrance. Basically no search if you didn't have a bag, so we went in and CJ and I hit the beer garden while Zach went to buy a t-shirt. I was going to buy one as well, but I had my priorities. $11 later I had a 24oz Pyramid Hefeweizen, which I quickly pounded. CJ was talking with the couple standing next to us, telling them stories about when he did security for concerts in college. At 8:05pm Zach still hadn't shown up, and I figured it was time for me to get to my seat, since the show would be starting soon. I got to my seat with a few minutes to spare, fortunately we were right on an aisle, in row 5 of the 2nd section, which is elevated above the first section. Rows 1-3 were smaller than our row since there was a large stair going down right in front of me, I had a perfect unobstructed view of the show. The show itself was amazing. Superb set list, the band was having a blast, and I had SO much fun. They totally rocked! Zach showed up with an XL longsleeve t-shirt for me, a XXL one for CJ, and a short sleeve baseball jersey-type shirt that says Rush across the front, Tour and the numbers 07 on the back, and an official tour patch on the sleeve. Awesome!! He didn't want to give it up, but he took it off and left it when he went to smoke a bowl so I snagged it and never gave it back. Woooo! He ended up taking both the long sleeve tees back after the show since CJ needs triple XL, and I think he got himself another of the baseball-style jerseys. After the show we were stuck in traffic for a while, but I'd brought some DVDs to watch in the car, his Lexus has a DVD player built into the back of both front seat headrests, so I watched the first half of Heavy Metal. I love that movie. We stopped off at the Muckleshoot casino again, and CJ went to go gamble but Zach was starved so I went with him to a sushi joint in the casino. He got spider rolls (soft-shelled crab) and a big bowl of fried oyster and shrimps in a cream sauce soup, and I got a pepsi for caffeine and some california rolls since I was nearly dead exhausted and it was late, oh plus they were cheap. Finally we dropped CJ off and headed back to Seattle, Zach dropped me off a few minutes after 2am. Tuesday, July 17, 2007
A few weeks ago when I was cleaning up in the garage, I found the packaging from Isabel's Santa present. Inside was a large fold-out map of the entire "Littlest Pet Shop" product line, as well as a set of stickers for her pet shop. D'oh! Santa missed those. I put the map in Isabel's room, and left the stickers in my computer room to apply later. This morning Isabel wandered into the computer room and spotted the stickers. She was SUPER excited! "Daddy! LOOK! Stickers for me! Just the other day I found a Littles Pet Shop poster, and now this!!" "Oh yeah?" "Yeah!! I know who did it, too." "Um, who is that, Isabel?" "Mrs Nobody! She's invisible, and leaves things around the house for me, and sometimes pulls on my sheets at night." "Oh really" Monday, July 16, 2007
I took the day off on Friday since we were going camping. It was the annual campout with B's relatives. We got the truck loaded up and were ready to roll around noon. We were on our own for dinner, so my idea was to pick up some Ezell's friend chicken (Oprah's favorite) on the way out of town. I got 7 legs and a dozen of their damn fine rolls, two legs for each of the kids and three for me. B can't eat the chicken, it's chock full of MSG which triggers her migraines. This year the location was a RV park off highway 97, just north of Blewett pass. Sigh. I knew we were going to a friggin' RV park, so I figured if I was going to a white trash place I'd drink appropriately, so I'd picked up a case of Miller LowLife in cans (the "champagne of beers"). Sure enough, it was a lawn with RV hookups right off the highway. Sigh. It was also 99 degrees and a bazillion percent humidity. Uff-da. It was fun, since all of B's relatives were there, and there was a pool there. Sure it was packed (at one point I counted 35 people in a small kidney-shaped pool) but the kids loved it. We had brought a tent for the kids and B's mom to sleep in, with B and I sleeping on foam pads in the back of the truck, but when B said she checked the bin with the tent and it was all there, she really meant it was all there except for the tent poles. D'oh! I jury-rigged the tent with the frame from our self-standing awning, which looked crappy but worked. On Saturday after lunch my not-brother-in-law and I drove up to Leavenworth for some beers. I had either forgotten or didn't know for sure if the Leavenworth Brewery was closed. I knew they'd merged with the Olymia-based Fish Brewing, but thought the brewpub was still open, but it wasn't. Leavenworth is a strange place, a little town that decided in the 1960s that the only way to save itself was to turn itself into a mock Bavarian village. They've got all-out, let me tell you. Bavarian-themed gas stations, Safeways, the whole nine yards. Very amusing. We went to Munchen Haus, which had a beer garden, for some beer. I forget who made the first one we tried, it was a german smoked lager, pretty nice, but not super great. Next, I finally tried a pint of Hofbrau. I've been in the Hofbrauhaus in Munich twice, but never had their beer, and actually never had it at any of the places I went in Germany either, they either served local beers or Lowenbrau. Anyway, it was fine. Beastly hot that afternoon, thankfully the beer garden had misters to cool things off slightly. After dinner we packed up and took off, since our sunday was already booked. My parents had bought tickets to the 1pm sunday showing of "Walkng with Dinosaurs, the live experience" at the Tacoma Dome for the kids' birthday presents. Holy crap it was coool. They made life-sized robotic dinosaurs and had them running around. Awesome. No better way to get a sense of the scale. Isabel was a little scared, but Harry loved it. Afterwards he told me "Daddy, that was my very first dinosaur show!" Yes boy, it was. Mine too. Dinosaur shows don't come around that often. Sunday, July 08, 2007
The kids didn't get pancakes, we were out of pancake mix. :( Yesterday morning we went to Display and Costume up on Roosevelt at Northgate, to buy pirate stuff. We were going to a Pirate themed party in the afternoon, and we needed costumes. We also went to Toy's R Us to buy a nature-themed present for a birthday party that Harry was going to. Lastly, we went to Costco to look at air compressors and nail guns. I need a nail gun to build that shed. Sadly, the compressor at Costco was bundled with a bunch of stuff for garage use, not things I need. I didn't end up buying it. The pirate party was tons of fun. Arrrrr! I wish we had a picture of the four of us dressed up as pirates, we looked great. We were there from 3:30pm til 7:30pm. Saturday, July 07, 2007
The 4th was fun. In the morning we went to the hardware store to buy some lumber, then after an early lunch we drove to Carkeek Park for low tide. Man oh man was Carkeek packed, we barely got parking. The heat wave blasting the western US has us with lovely high 70s low 80s sunny weather. Just awful, I tell you. In the afternoon B took a nap, the kids played, and I built a 2' by 8' storage shelf above my arcade cabinets in the play room. I also went to the store, got some big ass 1oz shrimps, stuck them in a ziplock to marinate, and got some king crab legs because they were $7/lb, *way* under my strike price of $10/lb. I can't resist king crab when it's on sale. I grilled up the shrimp for a light dinner, since we had a 4th of July party at 7:30. B didn't want to take the kids, but we didn't have babysitting and I figured they were old enough to stay up until 10pm for the big fireworks displays. They were really excited, and had a blast. My friend NotMe has a 2 story deck on his house, the upper deck has a view of both the Lake Union and the Elliot Bay fireworks shows, the two major ones in Seattle. Man work on Thursday was weird, it felt like Monday the whole day. Thursday evening after dinner we took advantage of the "museums are free on the first Thursday of the month" to go visit the Museum of Flight. I hadn't been in a few years, and recently they'd expanded, adding a huge new wing with two floors of WWII and WWI fighter planes. AWESOME! The museum is way better than it used to be, and it used to rule. They've got an SR-71, a Concorde, they've got the 3rd Viking mars lander from the 1970s, the one that wasn't launched, they've got a life sized mockup of an ISS module you can walk through, the first 747, the pre-747 Air Force One, the spare Gossamer Albatross, tons of great stuff. The museum buildings are built around a 90 year old red barn that was the original Boeing offices and factory. Yesterday we invited a few friends over for tacos, then when they left my friend came over for some drinking. He was kicked out because his wife was hosting a jewerly party henfest, and B was going. We sat around talking for a while, I put the kids to bed, then we pulled out my DVD of Kelly's Heros and watched that. Such a great movie, it is what "Three Kings" should have been, a great war caper movie. Ah well. Gotta run, the kids demand pancakes. Wednesday, July 04, 2007
What I did on my summer vacation (from blogging), By Humbaba Aw crickey, I'll never remember it all. One day B was hurling in the night, so I had to stay home and watch the kids. I decided to play SuperDad, and did a huge amount of house cleaning, went to Isabel's 2hr kindergarten graduationish thing, and got ready for the 40th birthday party BBQ that we were hosting that night. I grilled up veggies, made two side dishes (pea salad and baked beans) as well as both lamb and beef shashlik. B was mostly better by dinner time, but I was a grillin' master, getting everyone's food cooked perfectly. Very fun. Speaking of Isabel's kindergarten thingy, she got introduced as "the girl most written about in people's journals, including some who write about her in their diaries at home, lots of kids have a crush on her". Oh super. I asked Isabel about this, and she said, "What does 'crush' mean, Daddy?" I said, "That means they Loooovvvveeee yooouuuuuu". "Oh, those boys are *always* kissing me!!!" Sigh. When is it again that I need to put her on birth control? Sheesh. B had a little party for Isabel, and kicked Harry and I out of the house in the rain. Owowowow. We ended up going to the Pacific Science Center since we're members, and thank goodness for that, there were like 70 people in the line for non-members. There was a traveling exhibit of dinosaur bones from China, very very cool. We had a good time. On the way home I forgot that it was UW's graduation, and man were we stuck in traffic. We were totally doomed. Harry was a good Doom buddy, we made doom drum noises "dooom dooom dooom DOOOM DOOOM DOOOM dooom dooom doom" for nearly the entire hour we were stuck in rerouted traffic. Last weekend B took the kids and drove to Spokane for the weekend to visit with her sister. I stayed home, and on Saturday I got the 4 main posts for the new backyard shed/fort in the ground. I'd spent over a week digging out those holes in the rocky clay soil, they were each 3' deep because the beams are sixteen foot 4x4s, and I want it to be extra stable. 3' underground, 1' of space until the floor, 7' interior height for the shed, flat roof for shed/flat floor for fort, then 4-5' above that a sloped roof for the fort. I found out that climbing wall handholds are called "holds", and cheapholds.com has some great packs for kids so I'll make one wall a climbing wall. This week the concrete is curing (took 13 sixty pound bags), but I don't want to get really going until I get an air compressor and a nail gun. For every major home improvement project I get a new tool, and this is it for this one. Having a compressor will kick ass. Isabel is done with kindergarten, and Harry is done with preschool. They had a graduation for Harry's preschool, I'm guessing that by the time they have grandkids there will be a graduation every Friday. Man do I hate graduations. I darn near missed my high school one, by Dad caught me just as I was bailing out and dragged me to it. I didn't go to my college graduation. I mean, doing the absolute minimum got me a 3.33 gpa, it wasn't quite the attendance award that a high school diploma is, but it's not something I feel proud of. It was just a hoop I needed to jump through to get a real job and a real income. I also got the garage cleaned out while B was out of town, it seriously needed it. For Father's Day we went to the annual beer festival held at St. Edwards Park. Last year was the only year I'd missed it since I'd first heard of it like 15 years ago, the promoter and the beer folks had gotten into a fight and the promoter held the rights to the park that weekend, so they moved it to a place that wasn't family-friendly. This year we had a blast, it threatened rain but didn't deliver, we brought tasty cheeses and olives to snack on, most of the brewers brought 3 or 4 beers each, it was a great time. I invited us to WOPR and NotMe's folks place for dinner, we had a lot of fun. Isabel told me that if I fell asleep before dinner she'd wake me up, I wonder who she has been talking to? I drank a 20oz Mountain Dew to solve that sleepyness issue. My father's day dinner was held on Saturday, and I had marinated lamb chops (B doesn't eat lamb so I only have it rarely), a bite of steak, shrimps in a pasta salad, chinese BBQ pork with hot mustard, and king crab legs. MMmmm lots of types of meat. My friend's mom made the most amazing all-homemade dessert, it was chocolate mousse layered with chocolate meringue. Crunchy and creamy and chocolately and YUMMY! Everyone had like two huge slabs because it was too good to stop. Afterwards it was about 7pm and Isabel asked if the two of us could walk home. I was like, Um, sure. A little past halfway home we passed a firetruck and a paramedic, they were partially blocking the road to work on someone in one of the houses there, but when B drove up and saw the flashing lights she nearly threw up because she immediately thought we'd been hit by a car. Poor B. She found us down the road, we were about 3/4 of the way home. One day my friend NotMe emailed early at work asking if I wanted to bail out and go to a nine-inning lunch, the M's were playing the Red Sox. Sure, what the heck, the M's were at least above .500, and it's been a few years since I'd been to a game, I am the total fair-weather M's fan. We tried to park where I used to park in the International District, but between it being a weekday and all that parking tied up with downtown workers, and half the lots have succumbed to the real estate boom and are being turned into condos or offices, we were halfway doomed. We finally found parking on the lowest level of the 'sinking ship' garage near Pioneer Square, and since we were late we moseyed into the Elysian Brewery outlet down there for a good pint of IPA before the game. As we approached Safeco Field we heard the crowd roar, and I cheered too. Some lady asked what I was cheering about, and I said that I was cheering the fact that I wasn't at work right now. We got to the game in the 2nd inning, and we scored in the 4th, giving us a 1-0 lead for most of the game. Late in the game the Sox scored on an error, tying the game, and we bailed after the 10th inning. The M's ended up winng in the 11th. Man, I swear 40% of the people there were Sox fans, which I now hate with the white-hot passion of 3 suns. (not worth hating 1000 suns worth!) Stupid Sox fans. Always cheering bad things, it makes you pay FAR too much attention. Gah.
"Who loves the Quik-E-Mart? I Dooooooooo!!!!" 7-Eleven has a Simpon's Movie tie-in promotion going on, where they took 11 stores in 11 major cities and turned them into Quik-E-Marts. We went to the Seattle one last night, and it was a mob scene. Groups of people getting their pictures taken with it, and all the special products were sold out (no Buzz cola, no boxes of Krusty-Os, no copies of Radioactive Man issue #711, no donuts with pink glazing and sprinkles.... mmmmm, sprinkles....) so I just got a blue vanilla Squishy (you can really taste the chutney!). The three store employees *were* Indian, amusingly. I am a *terrible* father. When we play Wii Sports Tennis, and the score is tied at 40-40, aka "Deuce", I already had the kids saying "I dropped a deuce!". However, when you server really hard, the ball leaves a trail of smoke behind it. Instead of saying "I smoked ya!" they said "I steamed ya, Daddy!". I've now got that converted to saying "A Cleveland Steamer, Daddy!" I am going to Hell, but it's totally worth it. |
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