Babes and Beer |
||
|
Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
Family Pictures Active blogs: Carpe Datum Cognitive Dissonance Dubious Quality Evolving Sweetie Joe Delta Fishpimp Cliff Mass Weather Blog A Clan Lord Journal Fun Turns to Tragedy! A Stitch In Time Free Market Fairy Tales Timmerov LJ & her dog The Phone Booth Chuck Pierce T-Homo The Brad Hole Greg Costikyan Phil Steinmeyer Ty Robin Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools Mostly inactive blogs: WOPR Spring Tide The Tangential Jeff Schell Clan Lord blogs: Fierce and Furry: The Adventures of Hor |
Notice
The blog has moved.
New posts will appear here: elundquist.wordpress.com These archives from the original Blogger blog will continue to be hosted here, but due to changes made by Google to how Blogger works, this site can't be updated. Monday, March 08, 2010
Testing... Been working on my kitchen lately. Tore out all the old crappy melamine cabinets and laminate counter, have installed 18 of the 27 new cabinets. We'll get new solid-surface counters too, but no money for new floors so cheap faux oak laminate floors instead of the linoleum. Friday, February 05, 2010
How to get from Old Ironsides to the Great Storm of 1987. Look up USS Constitution. Read on battle of Constitution vs HMS Guerriere. Read about Captain Isaac Hull, captain during that battle. Look up the five ships named after him. Look in Google Earth at the final resting spot of the last USS Hull. Notice nearby undersea feature named Albatross Knoll. No wikipedia entry for that, but interesting disambiguation page on Knoll. Read about Knole House, near the village of Sevenoaks in Kent near London. See that a bunch of the trees in their hunting reserve were knocked down by the Great Storm of 1987. According to that, six of the seven oaks in Sevenoaks were knocked down. I love Wikipedia and Google Earth. Monday, October 05, 2009
Home again. Lots of foods with chemically sauces give B migraines, so when she flies international, she orders the special "low sodium" meals. As an added bonus, the food is often better than the regular meal, and comes before the general food service. Her meal will arrive half an hour before I get mine. Instead of chicken chunks in sauce, she got a piece of plain roasted chicken. The silverware is a plastic bag with napkin, fork, knife, and a packet of salt and pepper. She opens up the salt and salts the crap out of her meal. I was laughing my ass off to see her salting a low-sodium meal. Sunday, October 04, 2009
Oktoberfest! My goal for my beercation was to average 4l of beer a day for the six days while there, or 24 liters total. Our motto for the vacation was a quote from Dr Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat": "It's fun to have fun but you have to know how!" Last Monday I got up a little bit early and went to Top Pot donuts to get raspberry bismarks for the kids as a special treat, since we were leaving them for a week. After breakfast we took them to school, Isabel showed me her class, and we went home to finalize our packing. We had a 12:30 flight so we needed to leave the house by 10am. When I did the web check-in, I found that Northwest (aka Delta in an airline marriage that either needs to go through or divorce, sheesh) actually didn't charge for checked bags international, I thought I was going to have to pay $50 each way for our bag, so I was quite excited to save $100. B's mom dropped us off at the airport (she's watching the kids while we're away) and we tried to check our bag. Instead of a queue at the Delta area, there was an unholy seething mass of confused people. It took about 20 minutes to figure a way through it and get our bag checked and our boarding passes. Once through, security was a breeze. I actually find security faster and more polite these days than it used to be. They make you check in two hours before your flight, so B and I headed to the airport bar where I had a pair of tasty 24oz Sam Adam's and we shared a french dip sandwich that was quite tasty. Doing that we missed most of the people boarding our flight which was nice, but we still stayed at the gate for almost an extra hour because of tailwinds to Amsterdam where we were not allowed to land early. The flight went fine. Free beer on international flights, so I had a can of Heineken, and the next time she offered I wanted another but she was out so I tried the Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat. I shudder thinking about it, it was spiced with lord only knows what, but I don't appreciate any spices in my beer besides hops. Nasty nasty nasty bad beer. I still drank it, of course. I used it to wash down a sleeping pill and dozed off. Sadly, I only slept about 3 hours, but after watching a couple of terrible movies we arrived in Amsterdam. Other than a huge line at passport control, Amsterdam had a very nice airport. Our connecting flight gate was a long ways from our arrival one, but that's par for the course these days. I didn't have any euros, so I wasn't able to indulge another beer at the bar there. Our KLM flight to Munich was fine. I love the Munich airport, if you don't have anything to declare you don't stop for anything upon arrival. I also didn't fill out any forms or anything. My friend Todd picked us up right outside baggage claim and took us to his apartment. First up was a couple of half liters of tasty Paulaner Oktoberfest beer, then we went to a mobile chicken rotissterie cart and bought 4 roasted chicken halves, ate those, mmmm tasty roasted chickens. Todd had a great shirt for me to wear, and a pair of long lederhosen as well, and B put on one of Dani's dirndl, which was tight but still fit. We were stylin' for Oktoberfest! We picked up Todd's boy from daycare and the five of us took the subway to the Weisn. We got off a few blocks away, and on our walk we stopped off at a booth selling espresso, a shot was just what I needed since i'd been awake for 26 hours except for the 3 hour nap on the plane. SO tasty! It's a big place, and looks like a fair pretty much anywhere except bigger. Tons of crazy spin-and-barf rides, tons of places selling food, snacks, souvenirs, and a traditional item which is a large gingerbread heart with a saying frosted onto it, worn on a lace around the neck. The beer drinking is confined to the huge beer tents and the open-air beergardens outside them. We walked around a while then went on a really old ride called "die krinoline" that has been at Oktoberfest since 1924. It was a bunch of booths facing out that went around in a circle up and down, with a box for a band to play as well. After that we'd had enough looking, it was time to start drinking! You aren't allowed to take strollers inside the beer tents, so we had to sit outside, but the weather was lovely and we found half a table outside free at Braurosl, a Hacker-Pschorr tent named after Pschorr's daughter back ages ago. First order of business was to order up a pair of Mass, the one liter glass beer mugs used to serve Oktoberfest beer. They run about 8.50 euros each and you generally tip it a half euro to 9 euros, or $13.50. It's expensive, but at least it's a full liter. Equivilent to $6.40 a pint, or $5.60 if you're getting 14oz pints at your pub. I was also dying to try obatzda, a tasty mixture of two cheeses, butter, and spices. Perfect for dipping pretzel into. It was as good as it sounded! We'll be trying to make it at home sometime. It had been a long ass day, so after two Mass we called it a night and went home. I stayed up until 9pm local time (30 hours with 3 hours sleep) and crashed after having another half liter. Total for day 1: 5.5 liters. Sadly, that didn't last long. I woke up again at midnight, and nothing I tried got me back to sleep again. I spent the night surfing the web, playing World of Warcraft, and reading my book. Todd has an awesome coffee machine that grinds the beans fresh for each cup and makes either coffee or espresso. Very helpful! Wednesday morning was ugly, I'd now had two 3 hour naps in 40 hours. Todd and I went to a bakery below his place for pretzels, a raison pasty for B, and some croissants. With leftover obatzda, it made a great breakfast. B and I then left them, taking the subway to Marienplatz so she could see the 11am show of the Glockenspiel. It's a cute little show, like a huge cuckoo clock on steroids. Afterwards we wandered around downtown Munich for a while waiting 12:30 when our bike tour was scheduled to start. Apparently Mike's Bike Tours are well known, and it was a pretty fun tour. Near the end we stopped off at a beer garden next to the Chinese Tower in English Gardens, a very large park in Munich. (It's bigger than Central Park in NYC) There I had two Mass, and we had some very tasty pomme frites and a schweinshaxe, aka a roasted pork knuckle. Nom nom nom! After the bike tour B and I went to ScheiderWeiss for dinner, having the Käsespätzle, which is noodles with cheese and fried onions, SO freakin' yummy. I had two half liters of their Weissbier, which is OK, but not my favorite. After that we came home, I was pretty tired after 60 hours awake and just that pair of 3 hour naps. Total beer so far, 3 liters on Weds, takes me to 8.5 liters. I slept all night finally, so I was rested up and rarin' to go on Thursday, our big Oktoberfest bash. Sadly, Todd's wife was unable to get babysitting, neither was Harald's, and Achim's wife had to work, so it was just four guys and B. However, on the bonus end of the scale, Harald loaned me a pair of 50-year old lederhosen that his grandfather wore, they were awesome! We spent the day in town, touring the Residence, which was the home of the Bavarian royal family for 400 years. They have an amazing collection of treasure, and the building itself was huge with over a hundred rooms, most of the decorated to the Nth degree. It was very tiring, so after that we went to a restaurant for a tasty lunch (mmm sausage sampler!) and two more half liters of beer. I also had one at Todd's before we went out. B and I put on our bavarian garb for another run at Oktoberfest, this time inside a tent during the evening. This time, instead of stopping for an espresso, we stopped to get B a tequila shot. She doesn't like beer but was planning on drinking some of it, and this was a way to prime the pump. The tequila they served was ice cold, B had never shot cold tequila before but she liked it. We met up with Harald and Achim outside Ochsenbraterei where we looked at the whole ox being spit-roasted. MMMM! Sadly, they were full up so we moved along. We ended up behind Braurosl in their outdoor beer garden, sharing a table with some Italian guys, had a few Mass and dinner. Harald ordered for me, getting me roasted pork ribs. After we finished we started trying to find a spot inside a tent. No luck at Braurosl, and several others had their doors closed due to maximum capacity, but we got inside Winzerer Fähndl, and after wandering the packed aisles for a while we figured we were doomed. At this point B decided to start kicking some ass. Not literally, but since only people at tables are served, when someone stepped down at a table to go to the bathroom, she stepped up there. The 20 year old hot blonde in a dirndl which barely contained her boobs gave her a dirty look, but B just said she just needed to order beer. We got a round off that, which was awesome, but then B just didn't get down again, and after a bit a few people left and we were standing on benches, singing and drinking far too much. Let me state that it's a hell of a party. The music was a bit crazy, heavy on american rock music and John freakin' Denver. All 8,450 people were singing along to every song, and between songs there was a short drinking song (I think it's call Ein Prosit) that ends with Once, Twice, Three times, CHUG! Everybody sings this as well, clanks their massbier together, and chugs. Thankfully the beer tents shut down at 10pm on weeknights, or things would really get out of control. We wandered around a bit and rode a huge ferris wheel, then took the subway home. Total for Thursday, 7.5 liters, so I was at 16 liters. Also, that's the most beer I've ever drunk in a single day, uff-da. Basically 2 gallons, or 16 pints. Amazingly, I woke up on Friday feeling OK. Weak, I'd spent Thursday walking though a zillion room museum and ended it standing on benches for hours singing, but not critically hung over or anything. We went back to Oktoberfest during the day so we could go with Dani, while their baby was at daycare. More wandering around, B bought the heart-shaped gingerbread for the kids, and B and I climbed up inside the statue of Bavaria, a huge statue from 1850 that is built similar to the statue of liberty, but smaller and different features. We then went to Ochsenbraterei for some roasted ox. When we were there they were on Ox #94, "Xaver". I laughed my ass off about the name placard, all they needed was a photograph of him as a calf nursing from his mother. Xaver was delicious, by the way. Two more Mass down. Friday night Todd made us Käsespätzle and we took it easy. Two more half liters of Paulaner Oktoberfest, so the total for the day was 3 liters, and I was up to 19 liters. I also spent Friday with that scratchy tickle in my throat of an oncoming cold. Gah, but after everything I was exposed to I wasn't surprised. Saturday I woke up feeling like crap, a full blow cold. B isn't the type to slow down on vacation, so I took some cold meds and a couple of advil and we went for a walk though Olympic Park, where the 1972 Olympics were held. Very cool, the pool hall was particularly neat and still in heavy use. After that we all got dressed up in FC Bayern Munchen jerseys for a trip to Allianz Arena to see Bayern play FC Koln. The subway line to the stadium was packed, almost as bad as the NYC subway at Times Square during rush hour. We couldn't get on the first one, and barely fit into the second. Sadly, there was space around the seating areas, but the people packed near the entrances wouldn't or couldn't move. The game itself ended in a 0-0 tie. That sums up my opinion of soccer. I was hoping it would be exciting or entertaining, but so many times a guy would pass the ball to nobody and it would turn over. Man that sport kills me. I have no idea how people love it. The beer was terrible too, I'm not sure how. Two more half liters. After the game we ran home, changed into dirndl/lederhosen as fast as possible, called the kids to confirm they are still alive, and headed to the Weisn. We were prettty sure we'd be doomed, and I was exhausted from my cold and the day, but we were in Munich during Oktoberfest so we weren't giving up. We got B a dinner of pomme frites with mayo, and then I needed to whizz. There was a ridiculous line outside the bathroom, so I figured we'd try to use one of the ones outside the beer gardens. The front doors everywhere were closed due to maximum capacity being reached, but once I used the jakes outside Braurosl, B noticed the side door was open and there was a line. We patiently waited in the line, and as people left the guards would let people in. You could also get in if you had a wristband for a reserved table. It was funny to see the guards stop girls with wrist bands, rotate the band, and untie the two loose ends! Busted! Lots of people trying all kinds of shit to get in, to no avail. 20 minutes of polite patient waiting and the guards asked B where we were from, we said America, and he waved us in. WOoooo! We went into the thick of things, and quickly B found us a table to order at. Shortly afterwards, the people there left entirely and we had a full 10 person table to ourselves. The benches were *covered* in beer, very slippery at first, then very tacky as the beer dried. We invited some other people to join us, and drank and sang and talked to everyone around us. We talked to tons of Bavarians, some folks from Spain, some from South Africa, and a guy from Scotland in a kilt. Very fun. The band was apparently a famous Munich band, theSpider Murphy Gang, and they were quite good. The locals told us we should be very honored to get to hear them, and when we got home Todd was green with envy. B drank an entire Mass by herself, and I drank 4, plus the 1 at the game made 5 for the day, taking my total to 24 liters. Success, I guess? After they shut down the taps and turned out the lights and booted us out of the tents we took the subway to Marienplatz to see the Lego tower they're building there all weekend. I think they're trying to set a record, it was pretty cool. We also used a bathroom, and B was drunkenly lamenting that she missed all her drunk friends on the subway car. I was pretty confident that at midnight during Oktoberfest our next subway car wouldn't be lacking in drunk people, and I was right. Sunday morning came far too early. We had reservation for brunch at 10am out in Stegen in Ammersee. Beautiful drive out there, tasty food, and a lovely long walk. On the way back we stopped at a gas station. It looked like it had a normal quick-e-mart inside, but was labeled "getraenkemarkt", which I knew to mean beverage store. Holy crap, I nearly cried when I went inside. It had a tiny coke cooler, and a few magazines, and about 30 zillion cases of beers stacked by the pallet load. Most bottled beer in germany is sold in half liter bottles in plastic cases of 20. It was a glorious sight. Then I spent 4 hours blogging. We wake up at 3:30am tomorrow for a 4am ride to the airport to make a 6am flight to Amsterdam, landing around noon in Seattle. Saturday, August 15, 2009
Ok, first, I got my new Husky season tickets. OOOOOOO! My seats are still first row, upper deck, south stands, but they've moved over 14 seats into the next section. That's 8-10 yards, moving me from the goal line to near the 10 yard line. Sweet!! That's the second-best move I've ever made, losing only to moving from the 53rd row of the upper deck to the 2nd row. (That was the year I wrote a begging-for-mercy letter to the ticket office) We went camping last weekend to Dungeness, out on the peninsula. The kids were nervous about going on the ferry, but once they were on it they loved it, Harry now says he wants to own a ferry when he grows up. The Harry Ferry. We went to the Olympic Game Farm when we were there. It's a drive-through zoo where you can feed most of the animals brown bread from the windows of the car. The kids loved it, it was lots of fun. We were warned not to stop in the bison section, the male bison were in a froth over the females and people were suffering vehicle damage. We didn't mean to stop, but one blocked the road, and then proceeded to decide my truck made the best scratching post ever. I was sure the bug deflector on the hood was doomed, but it survived OK. My severe bison damage consisted of a few scratches in the quarter panel and lots of bison slobber. I'd recommend it to anyone going to Sequim or Port Angeles, very fun. Bring at least 2 loaves of brown bread, or buy them there. While packing up, B told me that she was done with one of our bins. I argued we still needed to put stuff in it, but she had me load all 3 bins of cooking stuff into the truck. Five minutes later, she needed the bins again. In a sing-song voice I sang "I am right and you were wrong.... This is not howtokeepmymarriagehappy" She'd started to glare at the first line, but then cracked up when I finished it. Heh. Love you B! Wednesday, July 29, 2009
I used to go to the Portland Brewers Festival every year for a number of years, but then I had kids and was either too busy or B scheduled something for that weekend. Finally this year I had the epiphany that I could take Thurs and Friday off work, drive down, taste beers, and drive back, not missing B's weekend plans. My not-brother-in-law Bill went with me, we had a great time. Here's the list of beers I tasted and their scores. The scale was 1-4, 1 being bleh, 2 being OK, 3 being tasty, and 4 being holy hell I have to get more of that. Brown: Kona Brewing - Coconut Brown Ale - 3 Imperial/Strong Beer Valley - Leafer Madness Imperial Pale Ale - 2 Green Flash - Green Flash Imperial IPA - 4 (Best In Show in my mind) Laughing Dog - Alphadog Imperial IPA - 4 Old Market Pub - The Kraken Imperial IPA - 3 IPA: Alameda - El Torero - 3 Golden Valley - Bald Peak IPA - 2 Great Divide - TItan IPA - 2 Hazel Dell - Hazel Dell IPA - 1 Mt Shasta - Mountain High IPA - 2 Port Townsend - Hop Diggidy IPA - 3 (I had a 22 of this on the 4th of July, it was MUCH better than what was on tap at OBF) Standing Stone - Double IPA - oops tried it but forgot to rate it Stone - Stone Cali-Belgique IPA - 2 (half ipa half belgian, not bad) Pale Ale Boundary Bay - Amarillo Double Dry Hopped Pale Ale - 3 (really good) Lagunitas - New Dogtown Pale Ale - 3 Rogue - Latona Pale Ale - 2 Pilsner Full Sail - LTD03 - 2 Trumer - Trumer Pils - 2 Victory - Prima Pils - 3 Red Double Mountain - India Red Ale - oops tried but forgot to rate Stout Bison Brewing - Organic Chocolate Stout - 2 Oakshire Brewing - Overcast Espresso Stout - 2 Riverport Brewing - Old Man River Oatmeal Stout - 3 I also picked up a Deschutes Inversion IPA shirt (they were out of my size of Obsidian Stout shirts) and two bottles of Black Butte XXI. 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. |
|