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Today is B's 40th birthday. Happy Birthday Bridget! If her mother had told the Air Force doctors to wait 8 hours before inducing her, tomorrow would be B's 10th birthday and I'd be robbing the cradle. Heh.

On Saturday when B drove to the airport to get her sister and her sister's friend, Isabel asked if her and Harry and I could go to the Farmer's Market, which we hadn't visited in months. In the winter it's mostly baked goods and cheeses, but not our favorite cheese curds. The weather was beautiful, sunny and high 50s, and we ended up getting lots of things. A pound of organic brussels sprouts, and the guy threw in a small purple cabbage because "here, cuz your kids are so cute". A damn fine baguette, so I bought some chevre to go with it. The chevre creamery also sold mozzerella cheese curds, but not nearly as nice as Appel Farms cheddar curds. The kids got cookies, and I bought a almond croissant for B.

There was a guy there with a brick-fired pizza oven on a portable cart. He was kinda half-assed making pizzas, but mostly he was chatting and ignoring the line of customers. Guess he didn't want my money.

Oh man, after getting little sleep on Saturday night, I was up at 8am on sunday. I knew I didn't have to take Isabel to ski lessons since she'd booted the night before. I found Harry in the parlor watching cartoons, and he looked super happy to see me, very bright eyed and bushy tailed. I told him, "Well Harry, the reason Mommy and Isabel are asleep on a futon on the floor in your room is because Isabel had the throw-ups last night. We don't have to go skiing today, but if you want to it'll be just you and me, buddy." He was all over getting some solo daddy time. Ugh.

We got ready, drove up to the Pass, and got him into his class. Week three of a four week lesson and it was still a completely disorganized clusterfuck. New teacher, kids of all different levels in the same class, written comments from previous teacher saying to upgrade a certain kid ignored, parents throwing a tizzy, I was laughing. You get what you pay for.

Harry did really great, his teacher says he's ready for the chair lift next week.

When we got home, B was sitting on the couch barely awake, saying she deperately needed a nap. Fine, go sleep. I read on the couch for a while, then napped with the two kids pigpiled on top of me. We actually napped for 2 hours, I'm not sure why B didn't nap earlier.

Last night B and I went over to my brother's house to see the new baby some more, he's a super cutie. Still no name. Afterwards we met four of B's friends at the Wedgewood Ale House for drinks, to celebrate B's last night in her 30s.
posted 8:12 AM | link | 0 comments

B's party was super fun. We had more guests than expected, and they consumed WAY more alcohol than I would have guessed. 3/4 of a gallon of vodka, a quart of Jim Beam, and tons of cheap beer.

B got everyone to play "Quarters". I actually hadn't played that back in the day since I didn't start drinking until I was 22. I've seen it played, and now I've played it myself. At 10pm B declared "mandatory dancing", and a whole bunch of people actually danced. At one of our parties. Truly a first. Lots of fun. Even WOPR danced, a first.

People said my mustache looked liked either "Yeah, I've done porn. Want to be in my next movie?" or that I was in the State Patrol, "Can I see your license and registration please?" LOL. Need to grow my goat back asap.

At 2:30am Isabel woke up and hurled all over herself, so I had to drag myself out of bed to wash vomit out of her hair. She was in that mood where puking totally fixed what ailed her, saying "I guess I had some throw-ups in my tummy". Guess so, sugar bug.
posted 10:20 PM | link | 1 comment

Last night the boys did our monthly "book club" a week late, since I was in LA last week. Really fun time, after a few pitchers of IPA we broke out my new cribbage board for a couple of games. I'm 0 for 2 on it, heh.

Today was a crazed amount of work getting ready for B's "20 times 2" 1980's dance party. I shaved off my goatee, leaving just the 'stash, because there were no goats in the 80s. I look pretty cheesy, it keeps making B laugh out loud. I've got a pink dress shirt with the collar popped, tight Levis, and my Vans.

We've got Coors Light Silver Bullets and Animal Beer (aka Schmidt) to drink, as well as Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers (shudder) and the fixin's for Long Island Iced Tea as well as anything else.

I'm exhausted before the party starts. Uff-da. Taking a quick rest to blog, party starts in 20 mins.
posted 7:03 PM | link | 0 comments

From: Bridget 
To:  Eric 
Subject: money

Isabel found $68 from poker sitting around and wanted to know if she could
keep it.  I almost said yes, but didn't.

posted 9:03 AM | link | 1 comment

The total lunar eclipse on Wednesday night was pretty cool. We had a few clouds but from most places around here it was easy to see. The first time I've EVER seen one, since they're often at bad times or it's overcast. I used a streetlight to show Isabel what was going on.

Last night B and I ran over to Best Buy to get an iPod boombox for the party this weekend. It's pretty nice, but man do I hate Best Buy. Evil store, evil company. I laughed to see a HD-DVD player for $99. Dead technology. I think Blu-Ray is the very first Sony format to succeed, and it remains to be seen if hidef DVD formats succeed at all long-term, since physical media doesn't seem like it's going to be around a whole lot longer.

We had poker for the 2nd time this year. I had a huge losing streak, getting absolute crap cards. I was down $35, but at the end I was only down $12, so not so bad.

Here's my cute new nephew:


posted 8:02 AM | link | 2 comments

Ugga. Last night for the first time we had real trouble finding on of the kid's library books. After searching everywhere it should be twice, I finally checked in the pile of stuff on B's desk and there it was. Totally the last place I'd look for a book, and it actually was this time. 40 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

I crashed early and woke up at 4am. Super. I read more of the WEB Griffin 'Argentina in WWII' series, I'm on the 2nd of the 3, I brought them to the cruise since I knew they were perfect cruise fodder.

Holy crap, I forgot to mention, my brother and his wife had their baby over the weekend. They were trying for a home birth, but after 30 hours of labor she needed IV fluids so they went to the hospital to finish up there. SUPER duper cute little boy. (9 pounds, not so little...) They haven't named him yet, but one of my other brothers is pushing hard for "Thor", "Conan", or "Elric".
posted 8:02 AM | link | 1 comment

Thursday night we got mostly everything packed. I packed up one of our portable DVD players right before bed, and said "Let's remember to grab the netflix disks in the morning". Halfway to the airport I remembered that we'd left them. D'oh! Oops-no-movies.

Getting up at 5am sucks. Our originally booked flight left Seattle at noon and got to Long Beach at 2:30pm, which would have been awesome, but between last year and this they rejiggered the schedule so our flight left Seatac at 8am. Ugh.

Flying first class is pretty spiff. There is a special queue at security for first class passengers, we got to board first, there was a bottle of water at our seat during boarding, the breakfast was pretty nice. I had two bloody marys and two Glenlivets, so my edge was all the way off when we landed.

I was a little surprised at how small Long Beach airport is. It's TINY. One runway, 4 gates. Extra-tiny. Old, though, it was the original base of Douglas Aircraft.

Upon walking down a stairwell onto the the tarmac and going through security, then to an open-air baggage claim, we went over to ground transportation. There was a lady there with a clipboard, giving her our name she said "oh yeah, you're in van 505, over there and down a short ways". Geez. I've never been to an airport that could handle ground transportation reservations on a single sheet clipboard.

We got to the cruise ship, "Monarch of the Seas", around 11:30am, and it only took about 15 minutes to get through security/customs/etc and get onboard, but we couldn't get to our stateroom until 1pm. They did have the buffet open, so we went and had some lunch. In case you didn't know, on cruises the food is included but the drinks aren't, the only free drinks are water, lemonade, and iced tea.

The food was OK, I would say it wasn't as nice as the Carnival cruise we did 10 years ago for our honeymoon, but that was a larger cruise ship (Carnival Destiny) and thus had larger buffets. I very much enjoyed the 360 degree Viking Lounge bar up on the 14th deck around the exhaust stacks at the back of the ship, very nice views there, a very pleasant spot to drink. I mostly drank Coronas if outside or 25.4oz Foster's oilcans if inside, since the Fosters was the cheapest per ounce. (like $5 for a 12oz Corona, $6.25 for the Fosters).

The comedian that night was pretty damn funny. He spent some time ripping on teenagers, mocking the ones walking around trying to act ghetto saying "Um, I'm afraid I have news for you. If you're parents have taken you on a cruise ship, you are NOT from the ghetto!"

The casino had a texas hold 'em table, but it was at a normal blackjack table, and thus only sat 7 people on one side with a dealer in the normal spot. Very strange, I never did play.

On Saturday the ship arrived in Ensenada. It wasn't quite as nice as Cabo, but it was pretty nice. We did some shopping, B bought t-shirts for the kids, a skirt for herself, and I found a really cool cribbage board. I also went into a cigar store and after a debate between the Partegas Series D and the Montecristo No 2, I went with the Montecristo. It was pretty funny, as I walked into the humidor the guy immediately trys to show me some no-name brand (or at least one I hadn't heard about) but when I said I had my eye on the Series D he did a 180 and started showing me real high-end Cubans. I guess I passed his "ignorant yahoo" test.

We decided to return to the ship, eat, then lounge at the pool with some beers. I ordered a bucket of six Coronas, and B even drank some. When south of the border she actually drinks beer, maybe in 10 years I can get her to aquire the taste.

Saturday night was the formal dinner, I wore my tux and B wore a slinky silver cocktail dress. After dinner we went up to the VIking lounge again, after 9pm it's a cigar bar as well so I smoked my cigar then, accompanied by a glass of Glenfarclas single malt whiskey.

Later that night we took a salsa dancing class, but I was too loaded and it was too boring for me to pay attention to. I did see a Marine sergeant in Dress Blues, I made sure to buy his drink for him, since I'm not about to let a Marine in uniform pay for drinks when I'm around.

Even later that night at a different nightclub they had 80s dance music, B and I danced for a while, then she was dancing with someone else and I was dancing with 8 gals on a bachelorette party. Eventually I was really really drunk so I went back to the room to crash, and managed to hurl all over the bathroom. Ooops. Good thing I didn't have to clean that up. The room cleaning dude should have got an extra tip.

We were both a bit hung over on sunday, sleeping in until 10am was really nice however. That afternoon I climbed their rock wall, the first time I've climbed an actual rock climbing wall. Sadly, it was like 65 degrees with a breeze, so after the half hour wait for my turn on the rock wall I was half frozen. Still, being half monkey (and that day half hungover french monkey as well) I found the wall pretty easy, and didn't embarrass myself.

We didn't stay up too late on sunday since we had to get up at 6am on Monday to eat before we disembarked. Our flight home wasn't until 5pm (another reschedule) but we managed to fly standby (even got first class again) on the noon flight. The kids were sure happy to see us again.

Last night we ran a quick errand to Display and Costume after we dropped Isabel off at her gymnastics class, and picked up some things for B's birthday party this weekend. The theme is being 20 twice, so she wanted to have an 80s dance party. We picked up a blacklight, a strobe light, a spinning colored light, and a disco ball. Tonight I need to get a boom box for my iPod, we spent a bunch of time this weekend narrowing down the play list.
posted 2:22 PM | link | 3 comments

Two weeks from today B turns 40. To celebrate, tomorrow we're flying down to LA for a 3 day cruise on Royal Caribbean. It's been a busy week getting ready.

I've also been working on making a playlist for my iPod for B's birthday party next weekend, she's throwing an '80s Dance Party, saying she'll be 20 twice. It turned out that I didn't have 10 songs she needed, so after checking iTunes and seeing that 9 of them would have DRM, I bought them on Amazon. It does piss me off that the record labels won't let Apple sell them DRM-free.

I've got all 210 songs loaded on the iPod, but since it's a 3-year-old 2nd gen iPod Mini, the battery life is under 2 hours, and since I'm not bringing Lappy (MacBook Pro 2.33Ghz) with me, I needed some way to charge it. Normally I charge it via USB off my Mac, or I have a DC car charger. I went to the Apple store and picked up a wall power adapter, it came with a USB docking cable as well as a bonus. Now I can have one at home as well as work, which will kick ass.

Ooo, as an added bonus, we're flying first class. I booked the tickets with miles, and figured for B's 40th it was worth the extra miles. We're also flying into Long Beach, since I loath LAX so much. Fortunately, Long Beach is actually closer to the cruise ship pier anyway.

On Tuesday we went over to my brother's house to see how our sister-in-law is doing. She's completely pregnant, full-term, due any day now.
posted 7:18 PM | link | 3 comments

B got up early to take the kids to their ski lessons yesterday. Thankfully despite weeks of amazingly heavy snow up there, the pass was open and they actually got their lessons.

While she did that I did a Costco run. I picked up a beef tenderloin, which I trimmed, sliced into filet mignons, and B cooked them up with peppercorns then made a cognac-cream sauce for them. Damn tasty.

If "Transamerica" is in your Netflix queue, delete it. Ugh. I figured out how to give B her own Netflix queue off my account, and that's what she came up with. Shudder.
posted 11:10 PM | link | 2 comments

Yesterday I went to my precinct Democratic caucus. The last time I went to a caucus was in 1996, I went to my precinct Republican caucus supporting Steve Forbes and a flat income tax, and there were only 3 other people from my precinct. I got them all to switch to Forbes, but didn't try to go to the county caucus or take it any further than that.

This time, it was right at the closed elementary school that is 4 houses away on the corner. They were expecting 35 people from my precinct. They had it divided up with 3 precincts including mine in the auditorium, and the rest one per in classrooms. Well over 150 people showed up from my precinct alone, it was kind of a madhouse. The initial poll was ~90 for Obama, ~30 for Clinton, and ~30 undecided.

I can't believe people show up undecided. I mean, if you haven't made up your mind yet, you're going to be convinced by the people in your precinct?!? Sheepdogs.

I eventually left after ensuring my initial vote counted. I think the caucus system is a boondoggle, but love the vote aplification factor, where my vote there counted like 20+ votes in the primary.

So that was me being a Democrat for a day. Today I'm back to being Independant. I do think the Dems system of "superdelegates" is a total crock of shit, especially since the ones from my state support Clinton yet the public who vote for them support Obama 7-3. It reeks too much of political machine for my tastes.

I was shocked to see Romney back out, but happy, since I don't like him and I do like McCain.
posted 10:43 PM | link | 2 comments

Now that my mother-in-law is back from a few weeks in Spokane, we have babysitting again, so last night after dinner B and I went out. First stop was some shopping, B needed to return something and buy a new piece of carry-on luggage, we bought our current one 10 years ago when we got married and it's not real great anymore. The new one is much nicer.

Afterwards we went to the Wedgewood Ale House where we met up with my friend El Parquito and two of his fishing buddies. It was a lot of fun, lots of good and funny conversation.
posted 8:40 AM | link | 0 comments

Last night B and I watched "The Omega Man", the 1970s version of "I Am Legend" with Charlton Heston. As far from the novel as it was, I still think it was closer than the 2007 Will Smith version. Netflix doesn't have the Vincent Price "Last Man on Earth" version from the early 1960s.

I've had a cold the past week, and I have to say that whatever combo of drugs is in 12 hour Drixoral, it's the bomb. It's by far the best cold goofballs that I've ever been hopped up on. I mostly just feel normal when on it, it's awesome. My second favorite drug after Alka-Seltzer.
posted 9:33 PM | link | 0 comments

We've been using Netflix heavily since we signed up two months ago. We're already at the point where they add a delay of a day or two to DVDs, those rat bastards.

If I start using the phrase "cock sucking hoopleheads", it's because we watched all three seasons of "Deadwood", which were excellent.

Movies we've caught up on include:

Napoleon Dynamite ***
Longest Yard (2006) ***
Flyboys ***
Idiocracy ***
We Are Marshall ****
Wild Hogs ***
Shawn of the Dead ****
Knocked Up ****
Pirates of the Caribean 3 **
(using the Netflix rating of * = hated it, ** = didnt like it, *** = liked it, **** = really liked it, and ***** = loved it.)

Deadwood seasons 1, 2 and 3 all get *****

Right now we've got Dexter, the Showtime series about a serial killer who works for the Miama PD as a crime scene investigator and kills bad guys at night. Very strange, but not terrible.
posted 11:16 AM | link | 1 comment

B's mom made it back from Spokane last night, just before the pass closed yet again. They've got an unbelievable amount of snow up there.

We bought the kids some used skis and boots off craigslist, but when I took them in to a local ski shop to get adjusted they wouldn't do Isabel's, saying the bindings are over 10 years old and they're not allowed to work on them. Bah! They don't look any older than *my* bindings, which I bought in, um... 1997. I guess that makes my skis 11 years old. D'oh!

Anyway, I took her skis down to my workbench, then looked up the info on Marker's web page. They said, "You've got to see an authorized dealer for service". Bah! I found another page on how to mount ski bindings, it was pretty simple. I'm not sure why they try to make it such a mystery. We won't bother trying to re-sell her skis and boots next year, however, and we'll keep a better eye out for newer used skis. For right now, on the bunny hill and green runs, she'll be fine.

Next year I am seriously planning on spending a week family ski trip to Big White. A solid week of lessons every day will get those kids up to snuff.
posted 1:24 PM | link | 0 comments

Happy Mardi Gras!

Sadly, I'm not in New Orleans right now, and probably not even going downtown. B did make some red beans and rice.

I went out with four guys on opening night for the new Rambo movie. I've been a huge fan since I was a teenager and my parents when on a vacation, leaving my older brother in charge. He rented a VCR and two movies, "First Blood" and "The Terminator". Damn but my brother has great taste. The new movie was pretty good, better than Rambo III, maybe as good as II. Sad that Richard Crenna has died. Sheriff Teasle: "Whatever possessed God in heaven to make a man like Rambo?" Trautman: "God didn't make Rambo, I made him!" Ooooo! At the theater it was pretty funny, the group of kids ahead of us actually got carded. They looked 19-20 to me. I want to guess that there was maybe 3 women total in the theater.

I had to get up early the next morning, B had given me a ski weekend getaway as a Christmas present, so we loaded up and drove the family to Wenatchee. Mission Ridge is just 12 miles out of Wenatchee, we drove up there and put the kids in their afternoon lesson. The lesson ran 1-3, and they had daycare til 4pm, so B and I could go ski. B had only skied 5 times before getting pregnant, and had 1 day last year during the kids' lessons, so she's still pretty inexperienced, but she did really well.

After skiing we went down to town to our hotel, then we went out to eat at this awesome place called McGlinn's. The kids got mini pizzas, I got a full rack of ribs and a pint glass full of peel-n-eat shrimp, and B got the special, two bacon-wrapped beef tenderloins with lobster meat on top. Plus drinks and dessert it ended up being like $80. I'd hate to live in a small town but man the prices sure are nicer.

After we got back to the hotel we took the kids to the indoor pool for some swimming while I soaked my bones in the hot tub. The place was packed and loud, but the kids had a blast. They crashed HARD when we got back to the room.

The next morning the kids were wearing their ski boots, so we knew they were excited about skiing. They were in a morning lesson while B and I skied. Isabel was the only one at her skill level so she went up the chairlift with an instructor, effectively private lessons. She did awesome. B and I went up to the peak and did some blue runs coming down, B didn't fall down too many times. We really need to get her a helmet. Speaking of which, I skied with a helmet for the first time, it was fine.

I'm still laughing at the 18-1 Patriots. What a choke. I was laughing pretty hard during that Superbowl, funny group.

There is a new WEB Griffin book in his "Presidential Investigator" series, "The Shooters". Excellent. I also chowed through the first four of his OSS series since there are two new ones written by his son. We'll see if it's any good, the reviews are poor. It doesn't seem too difficult to write such formulaic novels, but apparently it is. I'd love a dozen clones of his so I could read a new one a month.

On the good news front, my friend Todd in Germany is now a Daddy, they had their honeymoon baby last Thursday. Super cute!

On the sad news front, one of my good friends' mother passed away sunday morning. We feel awful for him. B called the funeral home in his hometown and the lady knew my friend, she gave B the # of a florist to send some flowers to his dad's house.

In World of Warcraft, I finally figured out that I can cheaply aquire 'welfare epics', great pieces of armor. They have a PvP arena, but I don't have regularly scheduled time to compete in that and earn points, nor do I want to join a dungeon raiding guild to get the fancy armor sets that way. However, the season 1 Arena armor sets (they're currently on season 3) are now available with honor points, which you get fighting in battlegrounds, something easy to do on your own schedule. I've currently got 2 pieces of armor and the fancy crossbow, and will earn a new piece about every 10 days or so until the set is complete.

I got totally f'ed buying tickets to the Rush concerts in May/June. They had a fan club pre-sale today before tickets go on sale on Saturday. At 10am sharp when they opened, they were out of tickets. Turns out yesterday was the Ticketbastard Amex presale, and they still had seats. I got my friend with an Amex to buy them for me, but if I'd known about that presale, I could have gotten much better seats. Ah well. I'm going on Saturday, May 31th to see them at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, WA, and the next night at the Clark County Amphitheater in Vancouver, WA, just north of Portland. Going to be a long well-worth-it weekend.
posted 4:50 PM | link | 3 comments