Babes and Beer |
||
|
Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
Family Pictures Active blogs: Carpe Datum Cognitive Dissonance Dubious Quality Joe Delta Fishpimp 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 |
Monday, June 02, 2008
Happy Birthday Isabel! My little girl is 7 years old today. Most of her presents are clothes and accessories for her American Girl "Bitty Baby" doll she got for Christmas. This morning she got to open up her bitty baby birthday outfit and she was super excited about it, at one points saying "gosh, you guys are spoiling me!" and "this is the best birthday EVER!" Very cute. On Friday evening we went over to my brother's house for his baby Sequoia's 100th day incarnation celebration. It was very nice, a vegetarian potluck (B made a very popular among the non-vegans mac-n-cheese with gruyere and dubliner cheddar) followed by whatever you call an Ommmmm-ing circle then the burying of the placenta under a cherry tree in the yard. Yep, frozen placenta looks a lot like fresh, aka like a slab of liver. Blegh. Anyway, as an atheist attending hippy ceremonies like that feels just like attending Christian baptisms to me, but I am happy to let people have the belief system that makes them happy, and it's certainly no stranger than baptism. It's important to be part of my relatives lives. Saturday I let B sleep in and after doing my Wii Fit yoga with the kids watching, we loaded up and drove to QFC so I could buy supplies for my weekend trip to see my 10th and 11th Rush concerts. Isabel asked why we were walking down the baby food aisle when we emerged and she said, "Oh, I should have figured, we're at the BEER section". For the trip I got a sixer of Laganitas Pils, a sixer of Lost Coast 8-ball Stout, one of Widmer's Broken Halo IPA, and three 22oz bottles, one of Alaskan IPA, one of Deschutes Hop Henge, and one of Stone's Smoked Porter. I also got a half dozen bagels and some cream cheese, a bag of white cheddar popcorn and a bag of cheesy poofs, as well as a few bags of ice. Next the kids and I went to the Farmers Market for some cheese curds, and by the time we got home it was 10:15am, B got a pretty good sleeping in. B took Isabel to her gymnastics class (man oh man I don't quite understand how little kids can make that gym smell like sweat so bad, it's nasty) while Harry and I drove down to Ezell's for a supply of fried chicken, which turned out to be very appropriate since the Rush shows had a chicken theme going on. On the way home I filled up the tank, setting a new high score for gas purchasing, $83 beating my old high score of $73. El Parquito came over and we got the truck loaded, putting in the 4" foam pads in the back, sleeping bags, folding chairs, the portable awning, and the coolers. We drove downtown to pick up a buddy who was coming with, and drove to George, WA, where there Gorge Amphitheater is. First we stopped down Vantage Road to Frenchman's Coulee where we met up with my brother Steve who'd driven from Spokane. By meeting up there we were able to enter the Gorge campground together and park next to each other. The campground at the Gorge is just a grass field, we got to pay $40 per vehicle for the privilege of parking overnight. We had a few hours to kill eating cold fried chicken and enjoying some tasty beers as well as the Ardbeg 10 year that Steve had brought. When it was time to walk the half mile over to the concert venue, we ran into a 3' fence that looked like we wanted to be over it, so I just went over it, no problem, as did Zach and El Parquito. Steve, on the other hand, managed somehow to fall and sprain his ankle. He had to lie down for a few minutes, then managed to limp to the show, but after the first song he was going to go back to his car to get some tylenol since his ankle was totally killing him. I knew if he went back to his car he wouldnt make it back to the show, and there were no pass outs from the gate anyway. I told him to find the first aid tent and they'd hook him up, which turned out to be correct. They got his ankle iced down and wrapped with an ace bandage, and he watched the rest of the show from the lawn. Ok, I haven't been to the Gorge in six years since the White River Amphitheater opened, since the shows I see have moved to my side of the mountains. In 2002 they were in an anti-alcohol phase and a total pain in the ass. I've never been happy with that facility, I don't see it as nearly as pretty as it's reputation. They have relaxed all the anti-drinking rules, you can drink openly in the campground and buy beer in the venue to drink at your seat. However, the Gorge can still suck my left anus. For the first time we had reserved seats up front instead of lawn seats, and they just stuck rows of folding chairs out, but the rows were WAY too close to each other. Empty you could barely walk down a row to get to your seat, and with people it was a total clusterfuck. As an added bonus, the seats were numbered with masking tape, and our row had seats 13, 14, 16, 17, 18. No fucking seat 15. Thus, we paid for 4 seats and only got 3, so 4 guys had to cram into 3 seats worth of space. It was almost fortunate that Steve got hurt and left. The wind at the Gorge was fierce. The speaker stacks were blowing like crazy, the lighting rigs were smashing into each other. WIth the speakers swaying like that the sound was total crap. Neil always looks pissed off, but Alex was scowling the whole show as well, leaving only Geddy looking like he was having a good time. I'm going to rate that show (my 10th) as the worst Rush show I've seen yet, pretty disappointing. The half mile walk back seemed much longer, but eventually we got back, had a few drinks, and crashed around 1am. Man oh man, I was hung like the proverbial french monkey the next morning. The sun must have come up at like 3am or something, (actual sunrise was 5:15am, welcome to June at 48+ degrees north) and I spent from then until 9am trying not to hurl. Eventually I got enough energy to make myself an alka-seltzer and later to eat a poptart. We got packed up and began our drive to Portland. I'm not sure I am ever going to see another show at the Gorge. I suspect I'd rather just skip that and see them in Vancouver BC. Hopefully the band had a bad enough time they'll go back to White River instead. We drove down through Yakima then over across the Columbia river to I-84 and drive down the Columbia River gorge in Oregon towards Portland. I'd set my GPS navi (she's named Navi) to Australian English, and man that voice is hot. However, any highway in Washington (like WA 57, etc) is abbreviated WA-xx, and she reads WA as "Western Australia". Very amusing, but worth it for how hot she is. It was like, "Oh baby, say that one more time, I'm almost there" In Oregon we had to stop for gas, and they don't let you pump there so we had to use mini-serve. $87 later we had a new high score for a tank of gas at $4.22/gallon. My truck had gotten 15.75 mpg, but El Parquito isn't a gas saving driver. The Columbia River was extra high and angry with the spring runoff. The dams all had their spillways open to let excess water out, which lack of generating capacity has to make their managers cry. We stopped off at the fish hatchery at Bonneville Dam to see Herman the Sturgeon, and feed the trout in the trout pond. El Parquito would put a quarter in the fish food dispender, and get 6 pellets. I put one in and got a handful, probably 50 pellets. Zach would get 50. Parker tried again and got six. I laughed and told him he was putting the heads and tails sides the wrong way. It was pretty funny, no idea why out of 9 quarters in two different dispensers Zach and I got handfuls each time and Parker got rooked. We stopped off at Multnomah Falls, and hiked the 1 mile to the top of the falls. Rising 540 feet in 5280 feet, that's over a 10% grade. Uff-da. Not so great while hung over. In Portland we headed to the Horse Brass pub. I had a pint of Walking Man's Homo Erectus imperial IPA, as well as a tasty scotch egg (hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage then deep fried) and my ploughman's dinner included Branston Pickle, which was quite tasty! I first heard of it in a recent Zero Punctuation game review, and have been wanting to try it. I'd buy a jar if I find it locally. The Portland show was in Vancouver WA at the brand new Clark County Amphitheater. Very nice place, free parking, right off exit 9 on I-5. The show rocked, Alex was in a great mood, the sound was good, it was a great Rush show. We took off during the encore and were on the freeway in 5 minutes, damn impressive. The guy sitting ahead of us was from Seattle and he reported that last year he made it home from both White River and Clark County at the same time, despite one being in Auburn, because the traffic at White River is totally redonculous. Arrived home at 1:45am, tired but happy. Rush shows #10 and #11 are in the books. Labels: qu |
|