Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Friday, June 26, 2009
Poker last night was awesome. We've got some fresh meat, he's young as crap but funny, he brought Wild Pineapple to the table. (Texas hold'em, except you are dealt 3 cards, and after the flop you bet, then discard one. Invariably the one you needed). Anyway, I get dealt QQ10. The flop is 2QQ. I nearly shit myself. Slow-played it, the river came up with a K. My friend bets, I raise, he re-raises, I cap it. He apologizes and shows a pair of KINGS, the dude had a full house, kings full of queens. So sorry, my quad queens took him down in style. Anyway, I won $38 on the night, which is always fun. OOOOO! I finally got my Marine Corps license plates for my truck. Ooo-rah Devil Dogs! I totally love them, and as an added bonus, I've got probably a 2% less chance of being pulled over. Thursday, June 25, 2009
Currently I am reading James Clavell's Gai-Jin, but I wish I hadn't started it. After reading Shogun and Tai-pan, I've got 2000 pages of Clavell under my belt, and probably wasn't up for another 1200 pages. At the time I didn't have anything more pressing, but it's been a bit slow and then some of my friends posted "15 important books" lists to Facebook, making me want to read some other books. I'm 400 pages into Gai-jin though, and I know if I quit now I'm unlikely to come back and finish it like it deserves. I guess I just need to make more time to read. B put the movie "Ladder 49" in her netflix queue, it was terrible. B's sister brought her puppy "Sugar" over with them, the dog is too young to be left at home. I was wrestling with her last night and she was chomping away at my hands with those super-sharp baby teeth, so I got out some leather gloves and used those for a while, she loved it. Then I took the gloves off and just let her chew on the gloves for a while, it was funny, she'd worry at them and toss them around, probably for 15-20 minutes. Wednesday, June 24, 2009
It's almost amazing how many people are totally clueless on biking trails. It's simple, other people use the trail too, don't just stop and block the entire trail to talk. I had to take Isabel to her orthodontist appointment yesterday, we would have been on time but B gave me the old address for the Navi. Her teeth are doing great, she picked green rubber bands for the braces so she looks like she's got spinach stuck in her teeth constantly. We went to Lowes for the second load of patio pavers. 61 pavers and a dozen 50 pound sacks of paver sand. Lifting 600 pounds of sand onto a cart, taking it to the truck, loading it into the back of the truck, then loading it forward of the rear axle makes for a lot of lifting. B helped unload everything. The last trip will be the last 100 pavers, and a couple 20 pound barrels of the sticky sand to fill the cracks between pavers. Right after the kids went to bed B's sister arrived from Spokane with her kids and new puppy. Our kids leaped out of bed to play with them, it took a while for things to calm down. Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Last night the kids and I were going to go to Lowes to pick up another half ton of patio materials, but we only had one booster seat, so that plan got shot down. Instead we watched the latest episode of the Next Food Network Star, which was entertaining. When it was time for bed, B was trying to fold laundry so I went into my computer room to read for a bit, but fell asleep on the futon there and woke up at 4:30am a little confused, then went to bed. Monday, June 22, 2009
Friday night was my "book club" at the Wedgewood Ale House, fun night. They had 6 different IPAs on tap, I tried 4 of them. Saturday morning we walked over to our friend's place for brunch, it was delicious. Tons of food, massive quantities of bacon, and I balanced just enough mimosa with coffee to keep feeling perfect. After we walked home we drove to Costco for a major resupply run. Once home from that I checked my email, I had one from my renter saying the water main in the street in front of my rental house had blown, and the city had shut off water to the block and was repairing it. Uff-da. B and I went to check it out, luckily no damage to our place, then we went to Lowes to pick up 24 bags of gravel (50 pounds each) for the base layer for B's new patio. We even hauled it all up into the backyard. Still need to get ~170 pavers and 12 bags of sand. Saturday night we went to a friend's Solstice party. It was a lot of fun, but it was chilly out and I should have brought warmer clothes. A friend from back in college was there, I hadn't seen her in ~7 years. Sunday morning B made me fried eggs on garlic bread, then we packed up to go to the Father's Day beer festival at St. Edwards Park, my long-standing father's day tradition. There were plenty of great beers to taste, but my favorite was Laughing Dog Brewery's "Alpha Dog" Imperial IPA. Superb hops, both taste and smell. Thursday, June 18, 2009
Mmm, last night my brother dropped by with some birthday presents for the kids and he brought me a growler of Elysian IPA, which was delicious. B went to jazzercise while the kids and I made stir-fry yakisoba with asparagus and a half dozen eggs for protein, it looked like hell but tasted great, the kids each had seconds. We also watched this week's episode of "The Next Food Network Star" which the kids are addicted to. The problem with that series is half the contestants have zero chance, they needed to eliminate 2 per show at the start. So Seattle got a Major League Soccer team, the Seattle Sounders FC. I will never understand that sport. So far, the Sounders have played 14 games. Six of them have been a tie. You have GOT to be kidding me. A freakin' TIE?!? Who the hell wants to pay a bunch of money to see a tie? "Sorry, no winner tonight. Might as well not have gone." WTF? Wednesday, June 17, 2009
B wants to turn the terrace in the back yard into a patio. It's the southernmost part of the yard, and the neighbors behind us have a huge hedge, so there is shade and coolness there unlike the patio right outside our back door. We can't afford to do the whole thing at once, so the plan is to do it in ~8' sections. We went to Lowes to pick out some pavers that will match the terrace wall, and price the materials. We settled on some 7"x9"x2 3/8" rough-tumbled pavers, and looking up that concrete weighs 150lbs per cubic foot I figured out that they weigh 13 pounds each, and we need like 2000 pounds of them for the first section, plus 36 bags of gravel. Ugh. That's going to be a few trips in the truck. They also had full bags of potting soil with holes in them inside clear plastic bags, labeled $1. Crickey, I'll take potting soil that's got a hole in the bag for 90% off. We also got a new hibiscus. Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Yesterday when I got home I drove over to pick Harry up from a playdate with a girl in his class that is also named Isabel. They apparently had a good time finding butterflies and dragonflies, and he raved about the watermelon otterpop and BBQ chips they had for snack. We drove from there to the Laurelhurst Beach Club. It's a private club that has hoit and toit in spades. We were there as guests of a friend of B's. The kids played on the sand beach, Isabel and her friend tried the swim test to let them into the shallow half of swim area without an adult. No way was I going into that alge-filled icy cold lake. Isabel made it 2/3rds of the way across then gave up, so she had the lifeguard wade out to "rescue" her. I was laughing. Harry and his friend buried each other in the sand, and then Isabel and her friend buried each other in the sand. We ordered pizza, which the kids devoured. Apparently the kids who are members go pretty much every day all spring/summer long, and our kids were begging us to join. Well, two huge problems with that, first, we don't qualify for membership since we don't live in Laurelhurst, two, there is no way we could afford it anyway. Man, getting all that sand out of Harry's hair in the bath last night was grim. Monday, June 15, 2009
Yesterday was spent getting the place ready for B's 2nd grade mom's margarita party. We made a deal with the kids to go see "Up" in the afternoon if they did their chores and cleaned up their toys and didn't complain, but they didn't hold up their end of the deal so we didn't go. Last year for this party B got about 35 moms, this year only 6. Strange, since she had 20 rsvps. I don't understand telling someone you're going then not showing up, but that's just me. Still, they were partying and talking until 11pm, so it was fun for her. I bartended for the first hour or so, then put the kids to bed and did my weekly World of Warcraft night with my friends. It was the first time in a month since one of the gang has been in Japan for a month and just got back this week. At least the house and back yard are cleaned and looking good! Sunday, June 14, 2009
Yesterday morning we decided to bike over to the neighborhood farmer's market. I wanted the kids to use one real bike and one trail-a-bike, so they could trade off and neither kid get too tired. Harry wouldn't ride Isabel's bike, and Isabel wouldn't ride Harrys, so that plan went out and both kids rode their own bikes. Shortly after we got onto the Burke Gilman bike trail, when I was following Harry to make sure he kept straight, up ahead Isabel was with B and veered off the edge of the trail into a ditch and crashed, scraping both her knees. We got her back on her bike but turned around to head home. Once we were home B took Isabel inside to clean up her knees, and I put the kids' bikes away and installed the two trail-a-bikes on our bikes, and put the proper amount of air in everyone's tires. Isabel was crying about her knees, and didn't want to go, but when I said that mommy and I and Harry were going anyway, she decided to go too. It was a good decision, the exercise was good for her. We biked down to where the Burke crosses 25th, then up to ravenna park, biked through the ravine, then down Brooklyn to the farmer's market. The kids were having a blast, constantly chatting. Once we got to the farmer's market I used my long chain to lock the whole mess of bikes together, then we shopped. We ran into my sister-in-law and my nephew, and then ran into one of B's friend's husbands and his youngest boy. We bought cheese curds, asparagus, cilantro, hazelnuts, and cherries, then went to the little food court where I had a hot tamale and grilled veggies, the kids had a strudel and split a smoothie, and I had rhubarb ice cream. We needed to head back because Harry had a birthday party to go to, and while I was unlocking the bikes El Parquito called to invite me to our local watering hole for a beer. I got permission to go ahead home with Isabel and the two of us *cruised*. It's funny, but she contributes enough power to make us go faster than I normally go alone, we had a blast. I went up to the bar, had two beers (an Elysian Hubris Imperial IPA and Big Time's Hop Fest), and some great conversations with the guys around the bar. That evening I went with El Parquito over to a friend's father-in-law's place for a major scotch tasting. He pulled out about 30 high-end single malt whiskeys, it was awesome. B dropped us off and then when she came back later to pick us up, our host pulled out some high-end tequilas for her to taste, so it took another hour before we left. Super fun night, I love drinking scotch with scotch lovers. Saturday, June 13, 2009
Last night we watched the end of Hidalgo. Let's just say the first half was better than the second. I've been reading James Clavell's Asian Saga lately, finished with Shogun and Tai-Pan, now I'm reading Gai-Jin. I forgo that last night was the great Facebook name grab, by the time I remembered at 10:30 (90 minutes later) all forms of my name were taken, with suggestions to add a 1 to the end. Gah. I finally picked lastname.firstname, which was still available. B got her firstname.lastname. I'm not too dissappointed, I haven't ever used the URL before and I don't see using it in the future. Now to figure out what to do today. Friday, June 12, 2009
Last night was poker, I won $31. NotMe and WOPR's little brother won $60, offsetting his $45 loss last week. The other three guys all lost their $20. While poker was going on, B went out drinking with a friend of hers. After poker I decided to go join them, they were at the Sand Point Grill, a restaurant that one of their friends recently bought, so they were the last ones in the joint, talking to the owner and the bartender. I had a tasty Elysian Immortal IPA, then around 11:30pm we walked home, it's about a mile away. Man, the weather here has been amazing. Sunny and low 70s, no rain for weeks. Thursday, June 11, 2009
We've got the final Shogun disk, but decided to watch half of "Hidalgo" instead last night. B's got a thing for Viggo Mortenson, and I was trying to figure out why we didn't see that movie in the theater. Oh yeah, it was 2004, so we had a 3 and 2 year olds. Duh. Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Last night for dinner I was cooking a pork loin on the new BBQ. I had the meat thermometer in so I could make sure the meat hit 144F to kill the non-existent trichinosis. The temp kept rising, then stuck at 146.8F. After 5 minutes of not moving, I called the meat done (it was, and was delicious) and pulled the temp probe out. Even in the air it stayed at 146.8F. I'm going with the theory it either needs a new battery or it died. After dinner B wanted to take Harry over to Magnuson Park to practice braking while going on slight downhill grades. He just learned to ride his bike without training wheels a few weeks ago. Well, he got OK at braking, and started leading us on our "normal" bike route through the former military base, eventually going on a 3.5 mile bike ride. Pretty good practice for someone who couldn't ride a 2-wheeler a month ago. After he got tired and B and he went home Isabel and I rode further trying to find out where the marching band we could hear was playing, we tracked them down to an empty hanger, then went down to the Sail Sandpoint launch and then back home, a 5.5 mile ride. B and I finished the 3rd of 4 Shogun DVDs from Netflix. Oh man, if you're recently read the book, don't bother seeing the miniseries, it's very painfully faithful, yet without the background and what everyone is thinking that makes the book. Still, after 6 hours 45 minutes, you better believe I'm watching that last DVD. Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Spent part of last night playing Super Paper Mario on the Wii with the kids. Pretty amusing, would be more so if I had played any of the previous ones to any depth. I'm a bit ticked off at AT&T in regards to iPhone 3GS pricing. Right now they're telling me that I don't qualify for the $299 price until next friggin' March. At that point I may as well stick with my 3G and wait to switch to Verizon next year or the year after. My biggest beef is that some people are being told they can upgrade after a year, others are all over the map. I'm not saying I didn't sign a 2yr contract, but when I did so they were giving 1st gen iPhone customers the ability to upgrade after a year, so I felt they'd do the same as long as I agreed to extend my contract out another year. I'd think they'd be happy to keep me away from the competition. Man, when Verizon gets the iPhone AT&T is going to be hurtin'. Monday, June 08, 2009
Yesterday the kids went to a birthday party at Mad Science, some chain birthday place. They had a good time apparently, and came back with slime and other science-y goodies in their goodie bag. One toy was a propeller that fit over a spiral stick so when you yank the stick the propeller flew up for a bit. If I cranked it in the front yard I could get over 30' off it, which impressed the kids mightily. While B was doing that I was prepping a turkey for our annual Thanksgiving In June. Our friend El Parquito also bought a turkey, he brined and smoked his, very delicious. NotMe brought a pasta salad as well as some cans of cheap beer. Our good friend Jeannette forgot the date so when she didn't show we called her up and had her come over. Heh. El Parquito also contributed a kick-ass pecan pie and a very nice pumpkin pie, and our other friends brought an ice cream sundae bar with tons of toppings. They also announced that they were engaged, which was exciting! We're very happy for them. Sunday, June 07, 2009
With sunrise at 5:15am, I've been waking up about an hour later the last few weeks, it's making it tougher to sleep in. Yesterday was no different. Ah well. In the morning we drove over to a local market where Seattle Children's Hospital was having their annual $10 bike helmet day. I finally replaced my helmet, which is about 6 years old, and the kids got new helmets. It's nice to get them fitted. Once we were home we fed the kids lunch, then got on our bikes for a bike ride. First was back to the bike helmet place, the market had a booth with cake/fruit/whipped cream/chocolate syrup stuff for a $2 donation to Children's, then we biked around Magnuson park for a while, then stopped at a field to play some Trac Ball. I made flank steak and stir fry yakisoba for dinner, then we watched "The Empire Strikes Back" with the kids, and after they went to bed we finished disk 2 of the Shogun TV miniseries. Saturday, June 06, 2009
Last night we took the kids to their school carnival. It's a fundraiser for the PTA, and the kids have a blast every year. My first thought when dealing with 500 screaming children is that I can't face that cold sober. I have a 14oz insulated plastic Starbucks travel mug which I normally fill with beer, but that requires frequent refills which might be problematic if the car is parked far away. I took suggestions for drinks from my friends, ruling out scotch and gin as having far too strong an odor. WOPR suggested a vodka collins, but when I got home B said just take your backpack, add some beers and some freezer packs to keep them cold. I like the way she thinks! She made herself a margarita in another travel mug. Normally the first beer going into the mug totally foams out, but the rest pour smoothly. This time I got the idea that maybe the dry plastic on the inside was setting off the CO2, so I filled it with water, dumped that out, then filled it with the first beer. Success! Always glad to learn something new that's useful. I do need to get a larger starbucks mug. I only had 2 people comment on my mug while I was there who didn't have their own mug. I told them I was a member of the Coffee Achievers, which made them laugh, but they were mostly jealous they either didn't think of it or were too chicken to implement it. One night thing about my kids going to school in a wealthy neighborhood is that instead of the normal odds of say 10% of the population being good looking, there it's more like 40%. That school has a seriously uncommon percentage of hot moms. Anyway, the kids had a blast, eating pizza & watermelon, playing carnival games for cheap plastic trinkets, Isabel dunked some kid at one of the two dunk tanks (the lines of kids waiting to be dunked were twice as long as the lines of kids to do the dunking, and you had to pay either way), and they had a crazy ride where you get hooked into a harness then to two poles which let you bounce waaay high up and do flips/etc. Talk about a crazy line, I was in it for about 20 minutes then they decided they didn't want to do that and went for ice cream, then they changed their minds and we were back in line for 90 minutes at the end of the carnival, but they LOVED it. Oh man after five beers and waiting in that line I needed to pee something fierce, but didn't dare crack the seal until I got home. Very funny night. Friday, June 05, 2009
Lost a buck last night at poker, it was just on the edge of being uncomfortably hot, but two fans kept it cool enough. My living room is on the north side of the house, so it doesn't get nearly as hot there as the south half. Towards the end of the night the weather turned drastically, becoming windy and overcast and much cooler. Harry has mastered riding his bike without training wheels. He is super proud of himself. I've been working with him to master starting by himself and braking with his coaster brakes. Very cute to see him biking. Isabel gets a tad bit jealous, he's getting all the praise at something that's super easy for her. The Burn Notice season 3 premier was good as the show always has been. Funny to think I started watching mid-first-season because WOPR told me that it had Bruce Campbell in it, but the show rocks. It's like a better-written version of the A-Team. The lever arm on our main floor toilet broke the other day, I finally got it replaced last night. $5. Funny to think some people would have to hire a plumber for that. I shudder to imagine what that would cost. Thinking back, the only time I've hired someone to work on my house was hiring my brother (basically at cost) to redo my back yard two years ago, and 13 years ago I hired a roofer to reroof my rental house. Thursday, June 04, 2009
It was too freakin' hot outside yesterday (around 90F 32C) to work on the fort stairs, so I stayed inside playing Sword of Fargoal, actually a 2004 port of the early 1980s C-64 game. Sadly, it kept crashing every so often. I combat this by using Terminal to go inside /Applications/Sword of Fargoal/Content/Resources/sword/data/ and copying save1.dat and save1.html, then copying them back to make backups of the otherwise-unsaveable save files. I'm not sure if the crashes are because it's PPC on an Intel, or because the OS is newer than expected, or they coded lousy. After the kids went to bed B and I watched most of Disk 2 of the old Shogun miniseries. Tonight is the new season of "Burn Notice", a show that everyone I've recommended it to loves. Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Last night we had Isabel's birthday dinner. She picked beef stroganoff, corn on the cob, and garlic bread for her dinner, and there was a cherry pie and an apple pie as well. She got a swing for her Bitty Baby dolls, three sets of clothes for them, some art stuff, a Hannah Montana CD, and 3 Webkins (stuffed animals with codes to use on a web page for a virtual version of the toy that you can play games to earn points to buy virtual stuff for). She was very happy! Oh, and when she opened the card from my folks she saw the check for $50 and threw up her arms yelling "Fifty dollars?!? Yes!!! I'm RICH!!!" Very cute! Since January I've been growing a ridiculous goatee. Instead of my normal trimmed to 1/8" goat, it's now a 3" LudicrousGoat. (Apparently my beard grows at a rate of .6 inches per month) B hates it. I sorta promised a friend that I would keep it until he throws his Seafair Pirate party at the end of July, he wants me to braid it. I think I should buy some slow match and braid that into it. :) Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Happy Birthday to Isabel, who turns 8 today. Dang. A week ago for Memorial Day weekend B was taking the kids to Spokane to visit her sister, I didn't want to go and I didn't want to stay home alone so instead I flew to Albuquerque to spend a long weekend with my brother, his wife, and their 2.5 year old daughter. My brother is working on a kitchen remodel, so we did a ton of work, doing new wiring to move his wall oven, building and installing some new cabinets, removing this huge hutch the previous owner had built in place, and whole-grain brewing a batch of IPA. I'm now seriously considering getting into brewing myself. Last Saturday we went over to El Parquito's house for "Cheesy Movie Night". There were eight of us, and the first movie on deck was the horrible "Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus". They weren't even trying. They would show footage of the USS Missouri, then the overlay text would call it a "lead destroyer". Not sure which version of "lead" they meant, and boy oh boy does a battleship make for a large destroyer. It ended up being pretty funny with all the commentary, at least fueled with beer. The second movie was MUCH better, "Outlander". Nothing like the story of Beowulf told with aliens in 8th century Norway. On Sunday Isabel had her birthday party. She had two friends over and they went to some place that lets them paint ceramics, then the place will fire them for them and we'll get the end result in a week. Last night I finally mowed the back lawn, then worked on the railing on the steps up to the kids' fort. I had 3 of the 4 pieces to the upper rail done last year, enough for taller kids to be safe. Last night I got the last upper piece in and one of the 4 lower rails, which will make it safer for short kids. Just need to get the last 3 pieces of the short rail in plus a lot of trim work and new hinges for the door. On the reading front, I finished reading "The Hobbit" to the kids, they loved it. Discovery Channel had an Alaska Week, and that week Dirty Jobs did a show on sled dogs. That had me reading "Call of the Wild" to the kids, which as it turns out, is kind of a horrible story. The kids loved it so much they wanted me to read "White Fang" next, which is also a tad brutal for a kid's bedtime story. Isabel got "Heidi" after that, which was sort of nicer. Currently I'm reading David Macaulay's "Castle" to them. Personally, I just read "Shogun" and "Tai-Pan" from James Clavell. Damn good reads. I'm super excited about going to Oktoberfest in 4 months. |
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