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Woo! My Vista Cruiser is back, working great again. It turns out the switch inside the steering column that interupts the starting circuit if it's in gear was wonky, so it's a relief that it wasn't something I could fix easily.

We watching "The 40 year old Virgin" last night. Crazy movie, but lots of funny parts.

It's kinda sad that what may be the best team in football history will have an asterisk by their record if they do sweep, since their coach is a dirty rotten cheater. (I still hope the 'Boys fall in the playoffs, but only because I hate them like I hate the Yankees.)

Last night the girls went out Christmas dress shopping, so Harry and I went to a local chinese joint for dinner, where as soon as the dinner arrived he proceeded to drag me into the men's room so he could be constipated for 20 minutes. Man it's times like that I need an iPhone for entertainment. He had fun at least, I was pretty bored. It was like the worst combo of eating alone and having to watch a 5 year old. Sigh.
posted 4:45 PM | link | 2 comments

Well, we finally joined Netflix.

Two reasons: The first is there isn't anything on TV this season that we both like. (There isn't much of anything on this season that I like.) The second is that I'd given a two-month gift subscription to B's brother last Christmas, and recently got email stating that he'd never used it and it was about to expire. Well, hell, apparently he wasn't interested, so we may as well use it. I was pleased to see the rates are lower than they were when I looked into joining last summer.

Our first three disks showed up today, "Deadwood" season 2, disk 1, "40 yr old virgin", and "30 Rock", season 1, disk 1. So far B hasn't contributed anything to the queue, so she's kinda doomed with stuff I want to watch.

I was pretty impressed with their suggestion feature. I went through a ton of comedies, rating them, and it suggested that I might like to see "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane". Ha! Dice Rules! That movie kicked ass.

"Lt. Amos: You think you are so hot 'cos you get in all the clubs, heh? Just because you have sex with great looking women...
Ford Fairlane: You got to admit those are pretty good reasons... "

"Ford Fairlane: How much?
Ticket Guy: 300.
Ford Fairlane: 300? You charged the chicks one.
Ticket Guy: Hey, they blew me.
Ford Fairlane: Heh. 300 coming up. "
posted 6:32 PM | link | 2 comments

Last night I worked with Harry to install a bunch of new christmas yard decorations. I bought them in January on sale at Michaels, 90% off of their already half off, so we got a pre-lit christmas tree for $4 and six light cones ranging from 5' to 18". I think the yard looks pretty good, but I'm still a little sad that the house is too tall for practical light installation. (The eaves are a good 30' above the ground in front, I'd need a cherry picker.)

When I put the kids to bed we read the last chapter of "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", the 5th Narnia book, next we'll start "The Silver Chair". Still not sure what to read to them in 3-4 months when we're done with Narnia, part of me votes for The Hobbit, and part for The Chronicles of Prydain.
posted 10:15 PM | link | 0 comments

Aw man. We have a little chest freezer in our kitchen next to the upright fridge/freezer. Somehow it got unplugged over the weekend, ruining everthing inside. Well, that's one way to clean out the stuff at the bottom that's too old and get the thing defrosted. B went to Costco today to get a start on re-stocking it with staples like boneless skinless chicken breasts and dino chickens.
posted 6:05 PM | link | 1 comment

Yesterday I got up with the kids and after feeding them breakfast we took a walk around the neighborhood for an hour. I was impressed that all the houses for sale I passed had "sold" signs on them, not a single one still for sale. Isabel wanted to go to a playground, and when I explained that I was going to watch the Seahawk game at 10am, then after the game go into work to check out the flood, then install christmas lights, then we had a dinner party, she got offended and said I should go exercise with the kids instead of watching football. Ha! "What do you call this walk we've been on for the past 45 minutes?!?!" Apparently not fun enough.

The football game was strange. The Hawks didn't show up until the second half, but held on the for the win, and the Niners dropped the Cards to give us a nice comfy 2 game lead with 5 games to go, and every team on our remaining schedule has a losing record. (two 5-6, two 4-7, one 3-8). That should be good enough for a 1 and done playoffs.

Work was pretty funny. Over a dozen large commercial dehydrators running full steam, draining into big 55 gallon cans on wheels, and a ton of blowers blowing everywhere. Everything that was on the floor up on something, and everything like bookcases, etc up on little foam blocks. Total disaster zone.

Putting up the christmas lights took 90 minutes to do 60 minutes worth of work because of my "helpers". I still have probably another hour's worth, when I went into the attic last night I found that I'd gone nuts buying yard decorations at 95% off at Michaels after-christmas blowout. I've got six pre-lit outdoor tree-like decorations to install.

Dinner was fun, our friends made maui tacos with some marinade for chicken and flank steak. We provided a roasted crab dip, something like 8oz crab meat, 8oz parmesian cheese, 8oz of artichoke hearts, and 4oz sour cream, 8oz mayo, mix and bake at 400 until golden on top. I just bought a whole dungeness crab and extracted all the meat, it was under half the cost of buying pre-shelled crab meat.

Work today sucked. Had to move some computers to other offices since the entire admin office is half destroyed. Apparently a staff member in a lab upstairs was filling a large tank with water on Wednesday, and forgot to turn the water off when he left for the weekend. The cascade wasn't discovered until Saturday. It's supposed to take 10 days for the dehydrating process, but there is asbestos in some of the base cove molding so who knows.
posted 4:59 PM | link | 0 comments

Quote of the day for the 2007 Apple Cup: "Do you have any money? I spent all of mine on panties." -B

Well, the tailgating yesterday was awesome. After we dropped the kids off at a friend's house, we had mom-in-law drop us off at the stadium. (She got the kids a few hours later).

There were about a dozen people there under 3 awnings, in a great spot right overlooking the boats passing by in the Montlake Cut. Shortly thereafter a pickup showed up with seven more people, taking a parking spot we'd reserved, and unloading a ton of great food, including seafood chowder and a deep-fried turkey. The minivan that the guys arrived in had been converted to a wet bar.

Nearby was a van with a table outside that had the bottom half of a mannequin with some panties partially on it. B went over to ask what was up with that, it turns out they were selling Husky and Cougar panties. They said they'd give them to B for free if she was willing to model them. She wasn't, but she bought some Coug boy shorts and a Coug g-string.

There were some pot brownies that someone had brought, but the funny part was they were frosted. Ha! I've never seen frosted pot brownies before.

A guy showed up with a couple enormous sacks of Dick's hamburgers, nearly starting a riot. Mmmm, it's offically the best thing for a hangover ever.

I laughed watching Oregon get shut out by UCLA, and was amazed by the 4 overtimes of Kentucky at Tennessee.

I got a phone call from my boss while I was there, apparently someone left a faucet on in a lab above my office and most of my floor got flooded. It's a disaster.

The game itself was kinda fun, if you weren't emotionally involved in it. Losing after last week's dominant win sucked.
posted 4:53 PM | link | 0 comments

Ugga. I'm serious hung over today, just in time for tailgating. (shudder)

Since it was Black Friday yesterday, my brother and I wanted to go shopping. The girls all took off to the mall, and Steve and I went to Store 101, the flagship of the Washington State Liquor Control Board stores. This is a store that services over 200 bars, so in addition to all the standard stuff all the stores carry, they have the volume to buy up lots of single cases of strange things. Steve got his bottle of Ardbeg 10yr Islay single malt whiskey, but passed on the $250 bottle of Port Ellen. I bought a pint of Jose Cuervo for B for tailgating today, a bottle of a different Amaretto for B, and a bottle of Sloe Gin for WOPR and myself to sample. One of the guys at the liquor store said that the sloe gin fizz was the official drink of the working girls in Korea when he was in the Army. Heh.

Afterwards, we went to Bottleworks for more beer, made even funnier by the comment by the Bottleworks employee on Weds that he'd see us Friday.

Next Steve wanted to buy a copy of Rush's "Power Windows" album, he couldn't find it in Spokane and doesn't use computers, so we went to Silver Platters where he got that and a DVD of Jethro Tull at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970, and I picked up "Feedback", the CD of cover songs that Rush did a few years ago, they were songs that the band loved when they were teenagers, very fun.

We tried to stop at the Wedgwood Ale house for a pint, but they were closed until 4pm, so we went home and watched "Kelly's Heros" and drank beer all afternoon, then napped, had dinner, and watched Hawaii kick Boise State all over the place. I'm worried for my poor Huskies next week.
posted 11:42 AM | link | 0 comments

I've had a super fun Thanksgiving. We had 13 people, including my brother and his family from Spokane. A 24 lb turkey, my brother brought a ham and his infamous "ham sauce" (a half gallon of pineapple and other juices heavily reduced), mmmm.

Steve and I demolished many a 22oz beer from many a brewery.

This morning we were hungy over and strangely hungry, so we went to Safeway and bought a pound of sausage and six cans of Cambell's sausage gravy, and two cans of Pillsbury flaky country-style biscuits. After about a kilogram of sausage gravy charged with extra sausage, I feel like I'm never ever going to eat again. (said the man snacking on his custom-brewed Chex Mix.)

Eric's Chex Mix recipe:

Two sticks of butter. Six tablespoons of Wostershire Sauce. (Gotta love those fermented anchovies). Heavy splash of seasoning salt, heavy garlic and onion powders, light sprinkle of cayenne, 5 glugs of Tapatio. Half box of each of the wheat, rice, corn Chex, and a full bag of Bugles. No pretzel sticks, they suck.) Roast at 225F for a couple of hours, stirring.


I laughed watching USC make the ASU students cry. Sorry, no Rose Bowl for Dennis Erikson, the least respectable coach in NCAA.
posted 10:04 PM | link | 0 comments

Last night we went to dinner at Tutta Bella with my friend Chuck's widow Jeannette. It was the 5th anniversary of their first date. Sad event, tasty dinner. The waitress brought me the wrong beer for my second beer (I didn't mind, they have two beers on tap, one Italian import and one ale made special for them, I normally alternate anyway) so she didn't charge for it. Wooo! Love free waitress mistake beer, it's one of my favorites.

Last night on Guitar Hero III I tried the Dragonforce song "Through the Fire and Flames". It's a crazy hard song that's unlocked if you win at Career mode. I manged to pass it 3 stars on Easy, getting 80% of the notes, but check it out on Expert.
posted 10:27 AM | link | 0 comments

Last night at bedtime Harry handed me part of the snap on an old pair of jeans he was wearing, asking me to fix it. I told him that once the snap breaks like that, the jeans are done for, especially since they had two holes in them already. He was very distraught. The next thing I know he's in his room, crying. I walk in, and he's sitting there in his underwear, almost finished pulling the pants off, crying. Isabel was also in her panties, getting her jammies on, and asked Harry if he needed a hug. He nods yes, and she goes over to console him. "There there little guy, it's OK." She pats his head. Then she reaches for the nearest stuffed animal. "Do you want to hold Draggy?" "Yes!!"

Too damn cute.

Later, after brushing their teeth, Harry tells me that he's keeping the broken snap, "so I can remember those pants."

I nearly died laughing. Life's rough when you're five.
posted 3:37 PM | link | 1 comment

I'd forgotten all about our Parent-Teacher conferences on Monday. B scheduled them, but then forgot that she'd scheduled 9:30am and 10am, writing down 9am and 9:30am. D'oh. That gave us an extra half hour, so we went for a walk through the neighborhood. Uff-da, Laurelhurst has some seriously nice houses. I was also surprised to learn that the school building dated from the 1930s, since the gym has a cornerstone marking 1951, but apparently the gym was added later.

Both kid's teachers are young, blonde, and kinda hot, which is a little strange for me. When I was a kid, my teachers always seemed so old, so it's really weird to be older than the teacher. (With the exception of my 2nd grade teacher, Miss Winston at Maple Grove Elementary, Boise, ID, back in 1975-1976. She must have been 21 or 22, but looked much younger. Damn.)

Both kids are doing well. Isabel has basically only one problem, she's a perfectionist so she doesn't get as much done in an hour as the teacher would like. It's hard to get worked up about that.

Harry is doing fine as well. He's learned a lot in two months of kindergarten.

Both teachers commented on what sweet, well-behaved kids they were, which makes B and I laugh hard. I suppose if they're only going to behave one place, I'd prefer it to be at school.

Sitting in the miniature chairs in their classrooms sucks.

Last night B and I went shopping for thanksgiving dinner. We've got 13 total this year, so we got a 24 pound fresh turkey from Fred Meyer (Safeway only carries frozen), then we drove to Bottleworks to pick up some tasty beers, the to Safeway for the rest of dinner. It's nice to shop with B without the kids.
posted 8:08 AM | link | 0 comments

Not much going on. Played some WoW last night (it's more fun with the new 2.3 patch) instead of Guitar Hero.

I watched half of The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, what a great movie.
posted 5:27 PM | link | 0 comments

The girls all went out to breakfast yesterday morning, leaving me to make bacon and pancakes for the kids and Kyle sleeping on the couch. (He'd come downstairs, basically shifting his slumber one floor). Isabel wanted a puppy, which was hard to draw with a funnel full of pancake batter. Harry wanted another brachiosaurus, pretty easy. Faith wanted a flower, which was easy, and Brooks got regular round ones since he'd slept in too long to put in a request.

Afterwards Kyle and Annie went to visit a friend who's here getting cancer treatment, and B and I took the four kids to the Zoo.

I called up WOPR and had him come over to watch the Seahawk game, it was pretty fun watching the Hawks beat the Bears. That gave me the football trifecta, both the Huskies and Seahawks won, and the Cougs got thumped. Heh.

B and I went out to dinner by ourselves, leaving the kids with grandma. We went out for some Indian food at Tandoori, a restaurant on the Ave in the U District that I've been going to for almost 20 years now. Tasty.
posted 6:05 PM | link | 2 comments

Yesterday I got up at 7:30, got dressed, and drove down to QFC to pick up some beer and food for tailgating. I got the typical 12-pack of cans of Miller Low Life, the Champagne of Beers and my official tailgating beer, and luckily for me the sushi ladies were there, so they made me two packs of spicy tuna rolls and one pack of eel rolls. MMMMM!

I got home, got my brother-in-law Kyle out of bed, and we went down the street to catch the bus.

We got down to our regular tailgating zone about 9:15, but the guys weren't there. I walked around a while trying to figure out if I'd missed them somehow, but luckily it wasn't raining yet. Finally Kyle and I sat on a low wall waited while eating sushi. If I had the brains to pour piss from a boot with the instructions written on the heel, I would have gotten the guys cell #s. They showed up at 10:15, (they're normally there around 8am) and we helped them set up the two awnings. Good thing, because it started *seriously* raining at that point, a good old-fashioned 40 days and 40 nights type deluge. The parking folks stopped letting cars onto the lawn we were on because it was turning into a bog.

The guys have a 32" LCD TV and generator, so we were able to watch the Michigan-Ohio State game.

Around 11 their wives showed up, and more guys. One of the wives had a song called Superman That Ho, but didn't know what the phrase meant. We told her to use her iPhone to check urbandictionary.com to find out. Heh.

It was a very fun tailgate.

The rain stopped when we got to the stadium, so basically the entire game was rain-free. Woo!

The Cal Bears totally coug'ed the coin toss, only the second time I've ever seen that. We won the toss, elected to defer our choice to the second half. They elected to kick off to us. Huh?!? WOoo! We got the ball at the start of both halves.

Man oh man, it's been a while since I've seen a physical performance like that from my Dawgs. Our O-line was just mauling them, running play after running play, 5-10 yards a shot. Over 330 yards rushing in total. Only one senior on that line as well, things are looking pretty good for next year.

We had a huge taco feast for dinner. The kids got into a taco eating competition, Isabel and Harry each ate 5 adult-sized tacos.
posted 10:30 AM | link | 0 comments

My brother-in-law and El Parquito helped me build the top weather-roof of my ongoing shed/fort project yesterday, but we ran out of daylight to get it hoisted up and installed.

We all went for dinner at my sister-in-law and not-brother-in-law's place, then my not-brother-in-law and I walked the two blocks to the Wedgwood Ale House for my monthly "book club" drinking club. There were five of us this month, and the bartender took pity on the $200 bar tab we'd racked up the month before and knocked a pitcher off the tab. Woot!

Hales has a "coconut porter". Yes. A dark porter beer, with coconut flavor added. Very bizarre. Strangely, it's not awful, if you like coconut. The chalk board had the second C a little abbreviated so it looked like an L, it looked like "cold nut porter". Probably a better way to sell that product if you want to get rid of that keg so you can replace it with something that sells.
posted 8:19 AM | link | 0 comments

B's youngest sister, her husband, and their 2 kids showed up last night for the weekend. He came to go to the UW-Cal football game with me tomorrow.

Before they arrived I finished watching "The Postman" with B. Man, that movie really was terrible. I was amazed that Brin actually liked it.

Today I got the new plates on my '71 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser and got it towed to a nearby garage to get the non-starting problem fixed.
posted 10:03 PM | link | 0 comments

I took the kids to the library last night, and while Isabel had her library card in her coat pocket when we left, it wasn't there at home. Hopefully it's in the car somewhere.

I've been reading "Time Enough for Love", by Heinlein, and my copy is an old used paperback, one of the first printings from the 70s. The binding glue has worn out and pages are falling out, so I bought a new replacement copy. Curiously, even though the new copy is the 32nd printing, they use the exact same layout. Page 251 is the same in each. I guess it makes sense, since in 1973 when they laid it out, it was on plates of type, they don't have a digital version of it to reset. Still, it amazed me.

Back in my freshman year of college I was a huge David Brin fan, with the Practice Effect and his Uplift war books, so when I saw the novel "The Postman" for sale, *and* it was post-apocalyptic, one of my favorite sub-genres, I jumped on it and enjoyed it very much. Ten years ago, when it was made into a Kevin Costner movie, I was excited until I read all the reviews saying it stunk and wasn't anything like the book, so I didn't end up seeing it, and eventually I made a deal with myself that I'd like to see it, but not pay for it.

Well, finally a few weeks ago it was on one of the free movie channels on my TV, but half over. Searching for additional showings gave me one last night, so I set the DVR to record it.

B and I watched the first two hours last night before getting tired, so I haven't seen the end, but it's not totally terrible. Not the book, sure, but that's often very hard to do. I'll withhold judgement until I see the last hour.

My friend with the eye surgery said that it turned out his corneal tear was as large as is possible to repair, they got it just in time. He's got a bubble of gas inside his eye, so he can't fly or drive over a mountain pass for three weeks. He's going to London to see Led Zeppelin in three weeks, so he's lucky that Jimmy Page broke a finger and delayed that concert by two weeks or he'd have missed out.
posted 1:48 PM | link | 0 comments

Last night B had some henfest with the moms from one of the kid's classes, which since Tuesday night is Isabel's gymnastics class, stuck both me and Harry with sitting on those damn hard bleachers for an hour.

On the plus side, B's mom returned from two months in Colorado Springs, she was back when we got home. The kids were SUPER excited to see Grandma. Grandma was pretty happy to see the new dishwasher, it's so much nicer and quieter than the old one.

A little after 5am Harry come trotting into our bedroom and pats me on the head. "Daddy! Daddy!" he whispers. "I had a bad dream, can you kiss it away?" "Uhrmrm? Uh, sure." Smootch. "Dank you Daddy!" off he ran.

30 seconds later, I hear the pattering of feet again, and more head pats. "Daddy! My blanket is all messed up. Can you fix it for me?" Sigh. He ran off. When I got into their room, he was happily squirming on his lower bunk, I got his blankets adjusted, and got another "Thanks, Dad!".

Sadly, that was it for sleeping for me. I'm awesome at getting to sleep at night, but anymore I suck at getting back to sleep if I've had more than 3-4 hours.

(Shudder). A good friend of mine is under the knife tonight to re-attach his retina. He's terribly near-sighted, but had no blows to the head or other trauma. Apparently squinting really hard is enough. His vision blurred a bit over the weekend, he went in yesterday afternoon, and today he's at the Eye Center at Swedish Hospital.

I asked how they did it, and he said, and I quote:

Yeah, they poke some holes in it, drain it, cut away some stuff. laser
around the tear, put a gas bubble in there to hold it in place, then fill it
with saline and sew it back up.  Or something like that.  I think I will be
normal (well, as normal as someone as nearsighted as myself can be) after
they fix it.  I think.  Who knows?

Should be fun.  I'm glad I don't live in bumf*ck nowhere.  It's nice to have
people who can handle this nearby.

Man, that queebs me out bigtime, and makes me very nervous for him. I sure hope everything works out OK.
posted 6:18 PM | link | 0 comments

Ugh. What a day yesterday.

We got an early start to go visit the fish pond at 9:30am so the kids could watch. They thought it was pretty cool, but B wasn't happy with the salmon getting bonked on the head. (They're dying, no need to make them suffer any more). It was pouring down rain, too.

Next we had to drive to Alderwood Mall to get a family portrait done. Ugh. We got partway there when I remembed I was only wearing my Trogdor T-shirt. D'oh! Had to go back home and change, then head back up to the mall. The mall was as evil as malls always are. Ugga. After hours of sitting there with my thumb up my butt we finally escaped with some really cute pictures.

We barely made our 2pm appointment at the doctor's office to get flu shots. I went first, then Isabel, then B, and Harry tried to scream bloody murder until his shot was done, and he was like 'Wait, that didn't hurt, what's the big deal?". No shit, Sherlock. Even Isabel tried to tell you that.

I did read Orphans of the Sky, a Heinlein book about Generation Ships, which along with post-apocalyptic ranks as one of my favorite scifi categories. At 128 pages, it's not much of a novel these days, it was originally just two linked short stories.

I tried to make popcorn balls, but my jello glaze turned into a sorta gluey goop, total failure.

The Seahawks are a weird team. Either they dominate, or they suck. Last night they kicked ass. They are nearly sure to make the playoffs this year, since two of the three worst teams in the NFL are in our division, and we don't have a game left on our schedule against an opponent with a winning record.

The kids both have "bands" in career mode on Guitar Hero now. Isabel's is "Rock Girl", and Harry's band name is "Dinosaur Rumpus". Isabel managed to finally pass "Slow Ride" just strumming with B doing the fretwork. Once she gets the timing rhythm down we'll add frets.
posted 9:46 AM | link | 1 comment

Yesterday I mostly just sat around feeling lousy. Far too much rum.

We went to B's sister's house for a pot roast dinner, and I watched Peyton Manning throw a whole ton of interceptions. They still nearly won the game but shanked a last-second field goal.

I took the day off from Guitar Hero III to let my left wrist rest. Both kids are now playing it, with either B or I doing the fingering and them doing the strumming. Once they get the hang of that, I'll start them on fingering. I wish there was a difficulty setting below Easy.
posted 3:36 PM | link | 0 comments

My Marine Corps birthday dinner last night went excellent. Both 10lb rib roasts turned out great. We had 4 Marines and three guests from the Navy, plus 3 civilians. Over two quarts of 1775 Rum Punch were consumed, leaving me with that "not so fresh feeling" today.

In addition to the normal speech from General Lejeune and the current Commandant, General Conway, we read the citations for the Marine who was recently awarded the Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade in Iraq, Corporal Jason Dunham as well as Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL who won the Medal of Honor for his valor in Afghanistan.

We also read the two citations of Captain Charles Upham, who won the Victoria Cross *twice* during World War II. Amazing story.

My poor Huskies. Jake Locker got his neck sprained early on in the game last night, being taken to the hospital. I doubt he'll play again this year, hopefully he'll be all right. Alex Serna, the kicker for Oregon State, complete 5 of 5 field goals against us. That guy has got to hold the record for scoring against the Huskies, in his career he is now 18 of 18 on field goals vs the Huskies. Two years ago in massive wind and wrath-of-god rain he nailed 6 of 6. BAH. The Huskies are now 3-7, officially a losing season and no bowl game for the 5th straight season. Willingham has lost me as a fan.
posted 4:17 PM | link | 0 comments

The other day Isabel tells me, "Daddys are only allowed two beers per night". Oh really? I was laughing, and asked her where she heard that. "On Good Morning America. Daddys can have two beers per night, and Mommys can have a small glass of wine." "Well, Daddy didn't have any beers yesterday, how many does he get today?" "Um, FOUR!!". Right on, girl!

Last night after dinner we decided to have a family movie night, and since the kids didn't want to watch "The Incredibles" and I didn't want to watch "Shrek", we compromised on "The Princess Bride", which they'd never seen before. Harry has decided he is a Rodent of Unusual Size.

Woo! Bulk AR-15s. I've always wanted an AR, ever since boot camp. Now's my chance to pick one up cheap, before another assault weapons ban. I don't even neeed to store it in El Parquito's gun safe with my other guns, since it's easy (for me) to remove the firing pin. I have a scope designed to mount to an M-16 carrying handle that my friends bought me before I went to the first Gulf War, I'd finally be able to use it. Now I just need to find someone with a federal firearms license to have it shipped to.

Today is the 232nd birthday of my beloved United StatesMarine Corps. We're going to have a big birthday dinner tonight, due to a Supply mix-up we've got 20 pounds of standing rib roast, and a half dozen Marines plus a few from other branches of service.

I got 5 gold stars for a perfect "Barracuda" on Guitar Hero. :)
posted 10:14 AM | link | 0 comments

Ok, I've now seen the Guitar Hero "South Park" episode, pretty funny, but not as good as their one "Make Love Not Warcraft".

This morning I swapped some hard drives around in my work Mac Pro and installed MacOS X 10.5 on it. So far so good. While it was installing El Parquito came by and we walked over to the fish hatchery pond to watch them pull salmon out, whack them on their heads, check them for ID tags, then milk out the sperm or eggs for the hatchery. They do it MWF while the fish are returning, so on Monday I think I'll bring the kids down to see. It's very funny watching them try to swim up the water coming out a small feed pipe.
posted 6:04 PM | link | 0 comments

Super. Now, instead of singing "Slow Ride" all the time, Isabel is going around the house singing "and baby.... talk dirty to me!"

I am SO not winning Dad of the Year.

I did manage to play "Rock and Roll All Nite" by KISS on Easy without missing a single note. Instead of getting 5 stars, I got 5 *gold* stars.

I still suck at Medium. B is enjoying it a ton as well and improving rapidly. Too bad we don't have a second guitar for co-op play.

Our regular pharmacy at Safeway was out of Harry's antibiotic, so Isabel and I had to run down to Bartell's to get it, and they were swamped, so in that spare half hour we ran over to Dunn Lumber to pick up some backordered parts for the shed, which hasn't seen any work since my brother left in mid-August. My brother-in-law is coming for a Husky game in two weeks, we'll put a roof on it then, which will conclude work until next spring.
posted 3:27 PM | link | 2 comments

Well, the lab results on B's throat culture confirm that she's got strep throat, and this morning Harry had a fever as well, and tested positive for strep as well. Owowowow. I hope I don't get it. It makes my throat sore just thinking about it.

Wooo! We got someone off Flakeslist to take our old working dishwasher away, he needed it for a rental unit, which is what I'd expect. Nice to have someone respond the first time and not be super flaky.

For some reason I had never read Heinlein's Lazarus Long series. Well, I'd read Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, but never the first two where he's the main character. I just finished "Methuselah's Children", it was alright. It had some great parts, and some crummy parts. Next up is "Time Enough For Love".
posted 1:33 PM | link | 0 comments

This morning I woke up at "normal" time if it was still daylight savings, so since I had an hour to kill I finished off reading S.M. Stirling's "Conquistador", a pretty fun novel about a WWII vet in 1946 who discovered a portal to an alternate Earth where the New World hadn't been discovered. The story revolves around two Fish & Game agents trying to track down some weird poached animal skins and figuring out about the other world.

On Sunday morning El Parquito and I installed B's new dishwasher. Removing the old one was easy: Kill the power, remove the two kickplates, turn off the water, unhook the 3 power leads, unhook the drain line, unhook the water supply, remove the two screws that hold the top to the counter, roll it out.

Installing the new one should have been nearly as simple, but the water supply line was copper tube, which is a pain in the ass. We got it all done, but El Parquito overtightened the crap out of the compression fitting, stripping the threads and ruining it. A quick jaunt to the hardware store got us a new fitting and a flexible supply line, and wonder of wonders, it didn't leak first time. Would have saved us easily half an hour to do that from the start.

The new dishwasher runs great, it's MUCH quieter than the old one.
posted 8:43 AM | link | 1 comment

A few weeks ago we took the kids to a fall carnival, with a "roundup" theme. Isabel won a bunch of tiny stuffed horses, I think five of them. Her favorite has spots on the hindquarters. She named it "Bumdot", because it has dots on it's bum.

My new voting method is to take a note of all the pigfuckers who call me for any political cause, and vote against them. There is an initiative to make school levys just require a 50% majority instead of a 60% supermajority. I would have voted for that, but they've called me 3 times now. B is so fed up with the incessant calls that she's going to vote no for everything.

ObGH3 post: I passed "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" on medium with only 70% of notes hit. That 4th fret button brings out the spaz in me. Still having fun.

Oh man, at least the Seahawks totally coug'ed it yesterday at Cleveland. Terrible play calling for much of the game. I'm sorry, but if you know your tailback has a broken hand and it's in a cast, STOP THROWING THE BALL TO HIM, HE CAN'T CATCH IT!!! They did that at least twice yesterday. Put in Mo Morris if you want to try that stuff, he can catch the ball and actually run. Also, if you can't get a yard straight up the middle the entire game, why try that on 4th and a half yard in overtime?!?
posted 9:34 AM | link | 5 comments

Yesterday morning I was watching the Kansas-Nebraska football game, and since I missed the start, I got to see Kansas get the ball 10 times and score 10 consecutive touchdowns. Holy smokes. I'm sure if they hadn't let up they could have pasted 100 points on NEBRASKA. I'm not a Cornhusker fan, but man, talk about another program in dire straights. Same with Notre Dame, losing to Navy for the first time since before I was born. If it wasn't for UCLA choking, they'd be 0-9 right now.

B and Isabel went up to the Spin Alley bowling to meet up with some of Isabel's friends, leaving Harry and I to run errands.

Our first stop was to Almvigs, a local high-end appliance store. They had the Whirlpool GU2700XTS dishwasher, the latest version of the one we loved so much at our old house. The only dishwasher I've ever used that actually can clean nasty dishes instead of me having to clean them by hand and use the dishwasher as a sterilizer.

At Almvigs, we had to wait for a loading guy to get free to help us, and meanwhile in the back of the store a chef had cooked up some bacon and cinnamon rolls, and Harry was more than happy to have some while we waited. Mmmm, bacon!

After we got the dishwasher loaded, we headed down to Costco, which was as packed as I'd ever seen it except during Christmas. Holy moley. We knocked out our list, got Harry a slice of 'za for lunch, and headed home.

I settled down to watch my woeful Huskies play Stanford, and wonder of wonders, they won! We got like 380 yards on the ground, often straight up the gut for 5-6 yards. We weren't able to turn all those yards into points, but we still did respectable and managed to play 4 entire quarters instead of only 2.

This morning I fired up GHIII again, managed to 5-star "Cliffs of Dover", then had the finale boss fight against Satan playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". Wooo! Beat the Devil! I've now beaten GHIII on Easy, so I tried a second song on medium, the one I only missed 1 note on yesterday on Easy. I passed, 3 star, getting 81% of the notes. D'oh! Adding that 4th fret makes it a lot harder for me.
posted 9:37 AM | link | 1 comment

Last night B and the kids came to my work kegger, then afterwards we went to Red Robin for dinner. Harry had fun drawing with the crayons they gave the kids. One part of his kid menu had a blank canvas and the caption, "draw your own masterpiece". He decided to draw Mommy. "These are Mommy's boobies.". Super.

When we got home, B wanted to find a movie for the kids to watch, but they wanted to watch us play Guitar Hero instead. B is already doing much better, rapidly getting the hang of it and enjoying it.

I told her about Rock Band, which is by Harmonix, the guys who made Guitar Hero 1 & 2 before some weird corporate shenanigans took it away from them. In Rock Band, you have guitar, drums, and a microphone. Both B and I want to be the drummer, but I told her she was needed on the microphone, cuz I have zero pitch.

This morning B has a slight fever so she's up in bed resting. I played some GHIII, and got a 383 note streak in "One" by Metallica. I played one of the easy songs, Talk Dirty to Me, by Poison, and got 379 out of 380 notes in the entire song! Only missed one damn note!! ARGH! (By comparison, One has 600 notes).
posted 10:53 AM | link | 2 comments

When I got home last night the kids were busy sorting their Halloween candy into "their pile" and "Dadddy's pile". They're not big peanut fans, so I get all their Butterfingers, Peanut M&Ms, Twix, Almond Joy, Baby Ruths, etc. I'd love to know who gave out the full-size Hersey w/Almonds bar.

You know, thinking about it, why the hell don't *I* give out full sized candy bars?!?

Man am I getting better at Guitar Hero III on Easy. Last night I was tearing through songs, five-starring many of them on my first run-through, and the second Boss fight vs Slash I won first try. I've got about 8 songs left before the final boss fight vs the Devil (doing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia, naturally).

I tried "Slow Ride" on Medium, where they go from 3 frets to 4. Uff-da. I was seriously back to square one, getting my ass handed to me. I managed to 3-star it and not get booed off stage, but damn I sucked. Normally I get like 95-98% of the notes right on Easy, but only got 75% on Medium. Once I finish career mode on Easy, I'll start up Medium.

B tried it some last night too, and had fun as well. I wish they'd port the song list from GH 1 & 2 to Wii, just selling as software w/o the guitar. (Although I could use a second guitar for co-op play...)

Isabel walks around the house now constantly singing "Slow Ride.... Take it easy...." saying it's her favorite song now. Harry wanted B to sing it as their bedtime song, with all the words. "Um, sorry kids, we don't know any more of the lyrics than that..." I'm pretty certain I don't want them knowing the lyrics. Yep, just checked, I certainly don't want them knowing any more.

Email from B:

Subject: ghIII

I did Pat Benatar and sucked but got an encore.  I also got sponsored.  I
can barely move my left wrist though.

Love you.

You have to watch out for "The Claw".
posted 1:52 PM | link | 0 comments

Halloween was super fun.

The other week a couple guys in my 'drinking club with an investing problem' wanted to take their kids to University Village mall for trick-or-treating and wanted to meet up with me and my kids and el Parquito and his kids. I'd been there before with my kids, and knew how crazy it got there, so I told them sure, we'd meet at 4pm, and get out of there by say 4:45pm before it truly reached critical mass. They wanted to know if there was a restaurant nearby we could have dinner at, and B suggested we just come eat at our place, so that was the plan.

I got home about 3:30 and got the kids ready. First stop was going into the laundry room, finding their old pumpkin buckets, and dumping out the rest of the candy from last year. Ewwww.

I got to the parking garage at about 3:50, and got a parking spot right off. It wasn't bad at all, yet. B didn't come with since she still had Ella, the infant she watches (who just turned 1 on Tuesday). El Parquito and his wife and kids showed up a few minutes later. His daughter was dressed as a fairy with a wand, but she was really more of a battle fairy, since she swung that wand around like a weapon. His boy was dressed as a gay cowboy. They had some leather chaps and a pink cowboy hat left over from the year before, and since he's just shy of 3 years old, he wouldn't notice. Brokeback Alex. Poor guy.

The best quote of the night was from el Parquito, when a little kid in a Stormtrooper costume walked by. "Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?" Ha!

After waiting 15 minutes when the other guys weren't there and the kids were going nuts, we started with the trick-or-treating. (We'd tried calling but got no answer) Lots of stores were giving out two pieces of candy "because we have tons". You idiots, don't you know that in the next 20 minutes half the children in the city will be here and you'll have used up your "tons" before 5pm? A little while later we finally got a call, one of the guys was running way late, the other had arrived. We met up and continued around. By 4:30 the place was officially a mob scene. Fortunately Isabel and Harry were pros at squeezing into a store, getting candy, and getting back out again. I was sure I was going to lose them, but they did great.

After a loop around about half the mall we were ready to call it quits and headed back to the garage. We got a call from the last guy, he'd just entered the far side of the mall from the garage, and was looking for parking. Good freaking luck, at this point cars in the lots weren't even moving because of all the kids walking around, plus there wasn't any spots for them anyway. I told him to bag it and just head to my place, we'd be there shortly. We made it out of the garage no problem, there was a huge lineup of cars trying to get parking spots inside, but getting out was easy.

Back at my place, B had made a great dinner. She'd dyed some rotelli pasta orange, and added a few spinach ones, so it was sorta pumpkin colored with odd pieces of green. Jar pasta sauce with homemade Alton Brown baked meatballs (minus the lamb), caesar salad, scratch-baked cresent rolls, and orange plastic pumpkin bowls for the kids to eat out of. El Parquito's wife brough smoked salmon spread for crackers. Mmmm. I opened up a bottle of Clos du Bois Chardonnay, which is currently B's "go to" wine.

After all seven kids and eight adults ate, we got the kids re-costumed for trick-or-treating up in Windermere. We hit our neighbors across the street and the little old lady who lives two houses down, then turned up towards the wealthier streets above us. First stop was my friend's house with all the Halloween decorations. Harry was once again terrified, I had to carry him. My traveller beer was gone by this time so I loaded up six more beers there (they don't drink much and had it left over from their party), two for el Parquito, one for his wife, two for me, and one for one of the other guys. We continued up the hill. I simply could NOT believe how many houses have their porch light on, and FRIGGING PUMPKINS LIT, yet the house is otherwise dark and noone answers the door. Whisky Tango Foxtrot. Common sense is an uncommon virtue.

Damn but there are some seriously nice houses up there. Every place that was giving out candy was giving the kids like 3-5 pieces, so even though I'd emptied their buckets before we started, once around the rather large block was enough to refill them. Harry was hilarious. He'd ask me what each piece was, and when I told him he'd yell out "YES!!!" and pump his arm like it was the best candy ever. Too funny.

One of our good friends from college who married a russian woman who doesn't like any of his friends and he's thus basically dropped off the face of the earth called while we were out. El Parquito made sure to open up a fresh beer right into the cell phone so our friend could here what he was missing. Heh. A little while later the kids trick-or-treated a house where a guy in a Spiderman costume answered the door holding a cocktail and saying "Trick or Beers!" El Parquito and I were totally all over that, giving up our empty bottles for fresh beers. Wooo! Love the neighborhood.

After we got back everyone left to put their kids to bed, and we put ours to bed as well. I weighed Harry's haul, 3lbs 3oz. Note to my children: Kids, if you read this in the years to come, yes, Daddy ate a bunch of your chocolate bars. I call it the Daddy Tax.

I fired up Guitar Hero III last night for "just one song", and did "Lay Down", by Priestess, some band I've never heard of that's apparently a Canadian stoner band. First try on a brand new song, and I 5-starred it, getting a 150 note streak. Woo! That opened up an encore chance to play "Paint It Black" by the Stones, which was a lot tougher, but tons of fun.

Oooga. After two glasses of wine and five beers, I have that "not so fresh" feeling this morning.

Here are the kids:


posted 9:53 AM | link | 6 comments