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Last night B and I watched Stardust. I'm not sure why it was in my Netflix queue, possibly because I said I liked "The Princess Bride". While this movie is very different from that one, I would describe Stardust as this generation's Princess Bride. Excellent movie that I am sure will become a cult classic.

Wooo! This morning the lumber fairies showed up. When I opened my garage door to bike to work this morning the 20' 4"x6" beam was sitting in the driveway. Thanks, Lumber Fairies!
posted 1:28 PM | link | 2 comments

Last night B went to get a pedicure with a friend and they went out for dinner and drinks afterwards, so after I'd put the kids to bed I fired up Call of Duty 3 on my Wii and worked through a few more chapters on that. B came home and read on the couch while I was playing. Never one to be politically correct, I commented to B "Man, these Germans sure a pain to kill, but they are great to go out drinking with!" Strange to think about how the world has changed in the past century.

Speaking of political correctness, I see that the Communist Party in Russia is upset with the movie, claiming that in 1957 they were not sending terrorists to America but sending the Sputnik satellite into space. Gee, did you know that it's a movie? Interdimensional aliens don't exist either. C'mon. Feel free to make your own movie with American spies being the bad guys, but try to not make it suck as much as Indy IV did.

Aw, we just got this email from Isabel's teacher:

Dear xxx and xxx & Bridget and Eric,
     Your wonderful children were nominated by their classmates
to receive the Seymour Kaplan Award!  Here is the information we
received and passed along to the students before they submitted their
nominations of one girl and one boy from our class.  Each spring, the
District in conjunction with a memorial fund managed by the
Anti-Defamation League honors elementary and middle school students
who epitomize the values of Seymour Kaplan.  "Mr. Kaplan was an
outstanding member of our community who dedicated his life to human
relations, helping people to overcome prejudice and accept
differences."  In 1st grade terms this is someone that is helpful,
kind, accepting and is a friend to all.  They don't know they will be
receiving this award and we hope to keep it a surprise!   They will be
receiving their award on the last day of school assembly at 9:30 and
we would like to invite you to come and acknowledge/celebrate the
amazing children you have raised.  Congratulations to xxx and
Isabel and to you all as well.

Certainly she can be sweet at home, but she can also be a little bitch as well. I'm glad she saves that for home and is well behaved in public.
posted 3:19 PM | link | 7 comments

Warning: Indiana Jones movie spoilers at the end.

It was a pretty great holiday weekend. The weather was supposed to be rainy and low 60s, but every afternoon it cleared up to sunny beautiful low 70s.

Saturday morning Harry went with me on a 10 mile bike ride up the lake, then we walked over to our friend's house for a very tasty brunch.

On Sunday El Parquito and I got the sheets of plywood for the walls of the fort/shed, and got most of them installed. It's super rigid now, I'm quite pleased. I also ordered the 20' 4"x6" beam that will hold the 3 swings, it is being delivered later this week.

On Monday B and I dropped the kids off at a friend's house so we could go see Indiana Mulder and the Temple of the Crystal X-Files. What a worthless pile of crap.

My first complaint isn't with the movie, but the theater was nearly full, so we ended up sitting in the back row of the balcony at the Cinerama. NEVER DO THIS. The acoustics there are terrible, it was really tough to understand anyone speaking with an accent.

Ok, I'm going to go through a bunch of the things I hated about this movie. Spoilers spoilers spoilers, but I'd just recommend you skip the movie anyway.

First, how did they get two dozen Russian troops into Nevada during the height of the cold war?

Second, even if they managed to kill everyone at the guard shack, where is everyone else on the base?

Third, if the object is so highly magnetized that it pulls things towards it, why wouldn't it be pulling EVERYTHING in the warehouse towards it, or it's case towards a truck?

Fourth: Aliens? Really? You had to go there? That alone ruined it for me.

Fifth: Refrigerators aren't very tough, even "LEAD LINED" ones. They do NOT survive an atomic blast. Also, they are not internally padded, and even padded objects tossed like that kill the occupant.

So, we're done with the intro, Shia LeBouff hasn't ruined the movie yet, and they've already lost me.

I did like them mentioning that Indy was in the OSS during WWII.

Shia LeBouff sucked. Having Indy in so many beefy fistfights at 65 was dumb. Shia swinging like Tarzan from vines was beyond dumb. The roads through the jungle cut by the blade-machine-car-thingy were perfectly smooth for racing on, apparently it including a magic stump grinder.

Magic inter-dimensional space beings? Really? You had to go there?

You can't convince me that there weren't better scripts to work with.
posted 2:19 PM | link | 0 comments

I am honestly surprised at how much I am enjoying yoga. I would totally have predicted the opposite. I don't really care about the "score" that Wii Fit gives for each, but do like the feedback on how balanced I am and that it keeps running records of everything. Give me a progress chart and I'm much more likely to continue something. We'll see.

Aw man. I noticed that they are renumbering Metro bus route 74 to 30. That's the route that has almost always served me, since it goes from downtown to the U district to Sand Point. Back in college when I didn't have a car it was how I got to the Sand Point Naval Base where my Marine Reserve unit was based, and it took me downtown when I needed to go there. For the past 8 years in both my current and former houses I lived within a block of the route as well, not that I bus very often, but I have fond feelings for that particular "perfect" route. It takes me to Husky games the past two years.

They're not changing the route, just renumbering it, but geez, that seems like it will just confuse people for no obvious benefit. The whole 70 series serves NE seattle, why change?
posted 1:27 PM | link | 1 comment

I forgot to mention one of the funniest parts of Wii Fit. Since it thinks my BMI is too fat, it gave my Mii an enormous body. My Wii is totally mocking me!

The kids and I went to visit my nephew Sequoia the other night, he is SO cute these days. He laughed for the first time while we were there, my sister-in-law was super excited about it. I love babies at that age.
posted 7:23 PM | link | 0 comments

Last sunday we went to the U District Street Fair. B bought some more yard art (little metal dragonflies on stiff wire) and we got a bunch of carnival booth food. Mmmm, meat on a stick. The funniest thing I saw was a guy holding a sign that said "Punch me in the stomach: $5". I laughed at him and he smiled, nodded, and pointed at his stomach. LOL! I didn't feel like paying a five-spot to jack the dude, however.

On Monday we went to the kid's school to see the Science Fair. Lots of presentations on composting and plant growth. The coolest was a 5th grader made a trebuchet out of legos that shot mini marshmallows.

Walking the next day, Isabel got snagged by a blackberry cane and scratched. I explained to her that blackberries live on human blood. She insisted that they live on sunlight and water like other plants. I told her she should do an experiment for next year's science fair, raising one cane with sunlight and water, and another on human blood, and see which does better. B asked where I planned on getting the blood. I said, "Um, duh, your sister and not-brother-in-law both work for the blood bank. We'll get some old expired blood."

Last night my new Wii Fit arrived. It's pretty fun so far. My Wii Fit Age initially was 27, because I can balance OK, which seems strange since my balance isn't what I would call great. It has my BMI at 27. (6'1", 203lbs) It says you should get it under 22. For me, that's under 167 pounds, which would be skinny as hell. BMI also doesn't take into account fat vs muscle, just height vs weight. My body fat % is right around 20.5%, so I'm less concerned that I would be otherwise. I should get my weight down to say 180-185, and my body fat % down to 16-17%, but 167 is just too damn skinny.
posted 1:40 PM | link | 1 comment

At my friend's annual bacon-themed Mother's Day brunch, another friend showed me a picture of chicken-fried bacon. Yes, battered and fried bacon. I did some web searches and found a dive bar in Seattle that serves it. I must have it, oh yes I must.

That day my garage door broke. One of the extension springs snapped. I learned a lot about garage doors in the past 10 days, including the two types of spring systems (extension springs on the sides, or a torsion spring mounted above the opening) and how to fix it. I ended up having to take the other spring off, disconnect the garage door opener, and then lower the garage door down to weigh it. 92 pounds for my 6.5' tall 8' wide single car door. I finally picked up a pair of 90lb extension springs (and new cables and pulleys while I was at it) at Lowes last night and got the door working again. This weekend I'll replace the other spring (it'd due to die now too) and the cables/pulleys. The springs are generally rated for 10,000 cycles, which is only 7 years at 4 times a day. Thankfully, extension springs are super easy to replace if you're careful. Beats paying a garage door dude.

I got "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle" in my netflix queue, but it was scratched and only played for 40 minutes. Sent it back for a replacement and the *replacement* was even worse. Their system isn't set up so you can mark replacement disks as bad, so I had to call (and wait on hold for 5 minutes) to get that handled. Funny movie, I was amazed that B picked Freakshow out as Elliot from Law and Order: SVU despite all the nasty boil makeup.

We also watched Gandhi. I hadn't seen it before, pretty good movie. His non-violence worked well for his situation (Indian self-rule) but wouldn't work in many other situations. B's queue is torture, the last one was S.W.A.T., which was terrible but saved by Samuel Jackson's presence.

I've been trying to bike 10 miles at least 3 times a week, twice on the way home from work by adding six miles, and on Saturday morning I got up early, added a trail-a-bike, and had Isabel bike with me. She was very impressed that we left the Seattle city limits on a bike ride.

Saturday night we hosted the Single Malt Scotch tasting dinner that we auctioned off for our school fundraiser. Alton Brown's Filet Mignon Au Poivre, which was awesome. The dinner went over very well, and we tried about 20 scotches, going through each of the 4 whiskey-producing regions in Scotland, with most of the emphasis on the delicious Islays. My youngest brother attended as guest/servant, helping serve and clean up.

B allowed me to get the bottle of 21 year old cask-strength Lagavulin that they had at the local liquor store. $299 beats $240 as my most expensive single malt whiskey, but DAYUM is it good. Totally glorious, like breaking out of the treeline on mountain ridge and having a huge valley open up below on a achingly clear sunny day.
posted 3:36 PM | link | 4 comments

Last night B and I went to REI to help stimulate the economy. My doc wants me to get more exercise, so I added 6 miles to my evening bike ride. 10 miles is a LOT more work than 4, let me state for the record. I wear old white cotton t-shirts, and they get gross soaked, so I wanted to try some quick-drying synthetic workout shirts. I picked up 4 Mountain Hard Wear's Wicked Tees, I'll give them a test this week.

Afterwards we caught Iron Man, it was pretty good. Funny, but not the "awesome" that people were reporting for it. The after-the-credits bit was good, but probably not worth waiting through 5 minutes of credits. The credits have gotten ridiculous, by the way. The PAYROLL ACCOUNTANT made the credits. I'm sorry, the best boy and key grips at least contribute to making the movie. The payroll accountant is some studio admin person, not part of the film crew.

Today is Harry's 6th birthday. He LOVED his presents. He got a 20" tall foam T-Rex, a robotic claw arm that extends/retracts and opens/closes which he's been using to do everything today, and two sets of fake legos, a pirate ship and an army set with a tank/jeep/plane and some army dudes.

He doesn't get a big birthday party this year, so he had 2 friends and they went to the Burke museum to see the dinosaurs, then they went to McDs for happy meals. They had a good time playing.
posted 4:12 PM | link | 0 comments

On monday night WOPR came over to help me kill the metric sixpack (aka Bob and Doug McKensie's method of double it and add 30, so 42 beers in a metric sixpack) of mexican beers left over from B's sunday night henfest.

I figured a hangover was perfect for yesterday morning when I went in for a physical. My last one as when I turned 35, and now I'm 40. Turns out I'm mostly healthy. I'd gone in a few weeks ago for the blood draw so we'd have the results to discuss during the appointment. I need to eat a little better and exercise a little more, duh. I got a topical antibiotic for my rosacea, a nasal sprayer of Flonase for allergies/snoring, and my vitamin D is low so I got 50,000 IU to take twice a week for 2 months, then she wants me on 1000IU in the summer and 2000 IU in the winter, and we'll check again next year.

Last night I said "fuck it" and decided to put the roof on the shed by myself. I was sick of hearing my friends bitch about how I would need a crane to lift it up. It's six 8' 2x4s, 2 10' 2x4s, a few strips of cedar, and some polycarbonate roofing. Under 150 pounds.

I went down to the garage, got out my set of 4 ratcheting tie-downs, and used those, two to a side. I'd ratch it up with two, and when they ran out of room I'd use the other two to hold it while resetting the first two. B came out to help. In under an hour I had the roof lifted up and installed. Wooo!

The next step is plywood siding to stiffen things up, then the all-important swing set.
posted 7:57 AM | link | 4 comments

Fun weekend.

On Friday, I got dogged by my not-brother-in-law Bill, we'd planned on going to Hop Scotch for some beer and tequila tasting. Instead, my youngest brother came over to return my circular saw and we had our own Hop Scotch, drinking some beer, putting the kids to bed, then doing some serious scotch tasting.

On Saturday I was going to either work on the shed or go to Opening Day of boating season (when does boating season close, anyway?) but it was raining and Isabel had gymnastics, so I did neither.

Saturday night B and I had planned to go see Iron Man, but my friend threw a Tres De Mayo party so our revised plan was to go to that for a few hours then see a late show of Iron Man, but the party turned out to be so much fun we stayed longer and went home afterwards.

Sunday morning Harry begged us to go out to breakfast, so we took him as a birthday treat. (His birthday is next Saturday, he'll be six.) Afterwards we stopped off at my brother's house to see Sequoia, who is still super cute. Then B took the kids to get haircuts and I went to Toys R Us to buy some birthday presents for Harry.

When I got home I started working on the shed. I now have the roof supports ready for the roof I assembled last fall, now I just need to get a few guys over to help me hoist the 150-200lb roof up into place. I also got the lawn mowed since it finally dried out enough.

We also took the kids on a trail-a-bike ride, and B cleaned like a mad dervish since she had 35 of the first-grade moms coming over for a margarita party.

We really love the Roomba, which B has named Rooby. I don't know how it would fare on wall-to-wall carpets, but for hardwood floors and area rugs it kicks ass.

I tended bar for the first hour of B's party. B had bought two dozen colorful plastic margarita glasses online, and I stacked them up into a big pyramid which was a big hit.
posted 9:03 AM | link | 1 comment

B and I took the kids for a trail-a-bike ride over to Magnuson Park today. While Isabel was behind me, B mentioned that her butt her.

Isabel said, "We do not say B U T T in this family."

I laughed and said, "Daddy says that, Daddy says all sorts of bad words."

Isabel said, "Yeah, like the REALLY bad 'S' word."

I laughed even harder, and said, "Oh yeah? What 'S' word?"

"You know, S T U P I D".

I almost crashed. Totally not what I expected.
posted 6:19 PM | link | 0 comments

You know, I really love the Google ads this blog gets. These were the 5 on here a minute ago:

1: Forensic Analysis Lab, UK: Analysis of accelerants

2: Wholesale Diesel Engines

3: 12 guage shotgun eBay (but eBay doesn't sell guns...)

4: Diesel Generator

5: Shotgun DNA sequencing

I am laughing my ass off.

Now that I finished the Narnia books, I've been reading books from the set of 35 child-ized classics that we bought cheap at CostCo. So far we've read Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Caruso, and now they've picked Moby Dick. (It starts out "My name is Ishmael"). I can't wait to see what they pick next.

Recently I bought a new DVD player, our old Awia was starting to skip and have problems reading discs. The new Philips upconverting player is alright, but it was having some serious crashing problems. Turns out the Wii is too hot to sit on top of the thin low-profile DVD player. Oh well, there is just enough room to fit it vertically.

Speaking of Wii, we finally bought Carnival Games for the Wii. All your midway favorites, like Ring Toss, dunk tank, knock down 3 pins with a softball, pop balloons with a dart, etc. The kids have been having a blast earning prizes and trading up for larger prizes.

Last night B and I watched "Willow" via NetFlix. I saw it in the theater 20 years ago this month and haven't ever seen it since. Man, I remember almost nothing about it. It's alright, not great. I am VERY thankful that Lucas didn't get the rights to make The Hobbit then, which is why he made his own variant.
posted 2:02 PM | link | 0 comments