Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Tuesday, October 30, 2001
Uff-da. One benefit of working in a state job is boatloads of vacation. This year I hit the maximum, I get five weeks of vacation per year. I can accure as much as I want, but you can only carry six weeks into a new year. I've got four weeks racked up now, and will get another week before the year is out. I'll be OK not using any of it, but I have to take five weeks next year. I'm gonna have to figure out some way of taking vacation cheap. Bridget doesn't work, so technically we can go do whatever we want, but only if it doesn't cost any more than staying home.
Harmonic Convergence: Today both the first Krispy Kreme donuts opens in Washington, and Civilization III comes out. Here's that pumpkin I mentioned yesterday: 
Here are some links to photos of my Vista Cruiser. I loaded it up with six other guys from my investment club for the drive down to our meeting last night in Tacoma. Half of them were chugging beers the whole way down, it definately had the feel of a college road trip. Pretty funny. Me and My Vista Cruiser Vista Cruiser front Vista Cruiser side Vista Cruiser rear Vista Cruiser interior Monday, October 29, 2001
Whoa. Ok, one of my friends showed up at my house last night with a Halloween present: He'd carved a pumpkin with the faces of Bridget, Isabel, and myself. Apparently he'd taken a photo, converted it to 3 levels in photoshop, and painstakingly transferred that onto the pumpkin with a pushpin, then carved it out. One level is all the way through, one is half way, and one is none. With a candle in it, it looks freakin' amazing. I'll post a picture tomorrow.
The weather was awesome yesterday, socked in heavy fog in the morning, and clear and sunny in the afternoon. Bridget and I took Isabel to the Zoo, we've got an annual membership. We saw the baby elefant playing with a big ball, (she'll be one year old next week), saw the hippos running in and out of the water, saw the Komodo dragon, a bunch of monkies and apes, and a few big cats. The Woodland Park zoo is pretty nice. I love how they got the domain name zoo.org. BEEEEEEER! I still need to find an excuse to drink my monster beer. Krispy Kreme opens their first Washington State store tomorrow at 5:30am. It's waaaay the hell out in the 'burbs, over a half hour drive with no traffic. Mmmmm, donuts. Sunday, October 28, 2001
Woooo! My Huskies beat the Arizona State Sundevils 33-31, putting us at a 6-1 record. Awesome. It was a very exciting game. Normally, every sunday in the fall after a Husky game I run downstairs and outside to get the sunday paper and read the sports section so I can relive my Husky game, but since the game was in Arizona where the temperature was in the high 90s, they hold 'em late at night (7:15pacific) so by the time it ended, the paper was already at press, and they had a tiny column instead of the normal 3 page spread of stats and articles. Sigh. I'm a little depressed.
I had two Halloween parties to attend last night, the first with Bridget's baby group, where we were one of two adult couples to be in costume. Lame, but the babies were damn cute. Isabel was a pumpkin, one of four babies being pumpkins. Bridget and I were hawaiian tourists. My brothers came by yesterday afternoon wanting a ride in my Vista Cruiser, so we headed off to Costco. I was told not to buy anything (money is tight with one income and four mortgages) but when I got there I saw a 3 liter monster bottle of Heinekin. I called Bridget and asked if I could buy "one bottle of beer". She said sure and hung up, not asking WTF was going on. I happily hugged my monster bottle of beer through the warehouse while my brothers shopped for crap. (They don't have Costco memberships so they leech off mine). Bridget laughed when she saw my "one bottle of beer". \yell BEEEEEEEEEEEER! Now I need to find an occasion to drink it. I think I'll spend today helping my friend Corey look for condos. Wednesday, October 24, 2001
Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I've been lazy.
The Huskies won, in an emotional rollercoaster of a game, with us behind 24-28, our QB got a touchdown with 13 seconds left to give us the win. Against a team we were supposed to maul. Not exactly a good sign, but a win is a win. The Mariners lost, pretty badly. Oh well. It's awfully hard to compete with a team payroll 150% of yours. I still think baseball needs a salary cap and revenue sharing like pro football. Scotchtoberfest was fun, lots of scotch was consumed, beer as well. Mmmm, Red Stripe. Ya mon! My office is still freakin' freezing. I am seriously doubting that this thermometer is accurate. Maybe it's the NiMH battery I stuck in, I'll have to find a regular nicad and see if it still reports balmy 74F. CivIII is due out next week. I can't wait! Friday, October 19, 2001
Tomorrow is my annual Scotchtoberfest party, the most beloved holiday of Groundskeeper Willie. There will be lots of beer consumed, as well as many tasty single-malt whiskeys sampled. Mmmmmm! Chock full of peaty goodness!
It's also a Husky home game, vs Arizona this time. They've really sucked, so it'll probably be a close game. The UW has lowered the temperature in all campus buildings from 68F to 65F. This meant that the icebox I work in is frickin' FREEZING, Mr. Bigglesworth. I've been wearing an undershirt, a long sleeve shirt, and a fleece vest, and freezing my nards off. I figured I couldn't complain without concrete data, so I went to the local radio schlock and bought a digital thermometer. Get back to my office, and it's a kiln. I can't freakin' believe it. I'm about ready to open the window. It was 74F as I left last night, and 72F this morning. Crickey, I should have bought the damn thermometer long ago. Isn't that always the case? Sheepdogs. Monday, October 15, 2001
Saw a great license plate this weekend, on a new Beetle: ESC POD
BAD weekend for Husky football. UCLA kicked our butts, BAD. Sigh. Had a great weekend. Bridget picked Lopez Island for our trip, one of the San Juan Islands. We drove up to Anacortes, caught the ferry, and had a great time. Quaint little island, population 2200. I'm sure it has more happening when it's tourist season. We went to just about every public park with hiking, it was beautiful. Friday, October 12, 2001
We're going someplace this weekend, and I don't know where. We've taken a trip every year for our anniversary, and this year Bridget decides. It can't be tooo far away, basically someplace within a 3-5 hour drive. I'm excited, it'll be fun.
My Huskies play UCLA this weekend, both teams are ranked in the top 10, both are undefeated. Vegas favors UCLA by 14 or so. The Mariners pulled out a win over Cleveland, tying that series. Gotta win two of the next three to go on the the ALCS. I've removed my K-ERIC buttrock mp3 CD from my MP3 player and have been listening to the BBC radio production of The Lord of the Rings to get psyched for the movie. I think if I was any more psyched I'd explode. I really hope they don't screw the pooch with this one. (case in point: Starship Troopers the book vs Bughunt 90210 the movie) Wednesday, October 10, 2001
Today is my third anniversary. Three wonderful years of being married. People ask me how married life is, and I always say, "It's great if you married the right person. Otherwise it sounds like a living hell". I'm definately happy, Bridget is wonderful, and Isabel is just getting cuter and cuter every day.
An article today on Slashdot about Erector sets turning 100 brought my thoughts back to the toys of my youth. I hadn't thought about my old late-70s Girder and Panel set in a looong time, nor about Micronauts. We always had Legos, including a big-ass (maybe a one cubic foot box full) collection we got from my grandparents of old-school legos. One of the pieces was a 6x5 yellow plate with a hole in it, I've never seen it before or since. We had at least a dozen of them. However, the most fun game we invented as kids was what we called "Steely War". To play, you need a large flat surface (small games we played on the fireplace hearth in the living room, large-scale ones dominated the cement-floored basement), a collection of action figures (Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica), a collection of wooden blocks, two sections of Hot Wheels track, and a large (~1") steel ball bearing, aka the Steely. To begin, decide who goes first. Pile up the action figures, and whomever goes first picks first, then the other guy gets two picks, then the starter gets two, repeating until all action figures are evenly distributed. Repeat the process with the wooden blocks. Then, each player takes one end of the play field, and builds a low structure with the wooden blocks, at least a foot away from the edge on the hearth, 3+ feet from the wall in the basement. Upon the stucture you stand up all the action figures. You then take turns dropping the Steely down your piece of Hot Wheels track aimed at the fort on the other side. Any action figure that falls over is removed, and the goal is to have the last man standing. This is actually fun for adults, too, if you had the materials and mindset. When the steely would smack into the fort, the whole thing would move a tiny bit, and there is a lot of strategy in where you aim your steely. Knocking blocks off the sides is always good, and you soon learn the basic strategies of putting the largest surface area of a block on the ground, so it moves the least, put the diagonal sides facing sideways, not up (up forms a ramp that the Steely will happily jump, causing more trouble than it's worth), and putting sacrificial blocks out in front to absorb damage. Some of the action figures had pretty damn good balance, I remember Princess Leia and some of the Stormtroopers could stand on one leg if the steely only grazed their other leg (which is pretty funny looking!). Of the Battlestar Galactica figures, the Ovion sucked, she'd always fall over, and the best of course was Muffit, the damn daggit, since it had four low-slung legs. It was always picked first. Ah, steely war. Monday, October 08, 2001
Had a great weekend. On Thursday, my brother Dan and I drove to Spokane and hooked up with my two olders brothers, Johnny and Steve, and my friend Nate, at a bar in Spokane. Steve decided that the Viking (a nice pub with a great beer selection) was too much of a sausage-fest, and wanted to go someplace with some eye-candy. Sheesh. Anyway, we went to 3 other bars, trying to find Steve something to look at. Finally Dan drove us to Steve's place (Johnny had work on Friday and Nate had class) where we crashed, but not before Steve had some more beer. Ugga.
Woke up hung over on Friday, said bye to his wife and kids as they left for work/school, (Steve works 4 10s so he has fridays off) and took at look at Steve's wife Jody's new 1995 Land Rover Discovery. They'd had it for two weeks but it wasn't running now, wouldn't start. Steve opened up the hood and explained he'd checked the cable between the coil and the distributor, and it wasn't getting a spark. His next step was to take the coil out and get it tested, he figured it was shot. I asked if he'd checked the fuse, he said it looked fine. "Sure it looks fine. Did you test it?" "No, my multimeter needs a battery" "Let's see, what else uses that size fuse... Ahah! The A/C, you don't need that" I swapped the fuses, the car started just fine. Heh. $3.50 later, his wife's car is in great shape. We took it off-roading, which I am sure got him in trouble, since the car was filthy afterwards. Not a great car, but damn if it wasn't fun offroad. It liked dirt more than it liked pavement. Around 3pm we went to go buy my Vista Cruiser. I've named her Rusty, she's an ugly bitch, but runs like a champ. She's a hoot to drive as well. I drove back that night. Bridget thinks I am crazy, and she'd be right, but she's tolerent of my weirdness. On Saturday I woke up, we got Isabel ready, and went to the Husky-USC game. Wooo! Excellent game, with the Huskies beating those damn Trojans by a field goal with 3 seconds left. Yet another Husky come-from-behind 4th quarter victory. Tuesday, October 02, 2001
Guh... Funny how things always manage to break on the first day of class. Everything that could go wrong in the morning, did go wrong. Fortunately, by afternoon the tide had turned and things were going right again.
It was hilarious biking home yesterday. The trail was totally choke full of kids running. Singles, couples, groups of 5 or 10, they were all out there getting exercise. I probably passed over 60 runners. By the end of the quarter, it'll be back down to the normal 3-5 total. Monday, October 01, 2001
I went backpacking with my brothers this weekend. We went up into the North Cascades, off Highway 2 near Stevens' Pass. The hike was called Surprise Lake, and basically you start at the base of a relatively steep valley, and hike up it ~4 miles and ~2000' to this gorgeous lake, and past that up the valley to Glacier Lake, which was larger and prettier, and we went up a shitload of switchbacks at the end of the valley to this perch WAAAY the hell up, looking at granite spires all around, and down the valley you could see both lakes and off into the distance. TOTALLY gorgeous! Total distance was 7+ miles and ~4000' elevation gain. We went a bit further than that, at the ridge line to the valley we could see a bunch of glacier-covered mountains on the other side, but the ridge was too narrow with no flat spots for tents, so we had to go back down. It's part of the Pacific Crest Trail, and it's the time of year for those few beefy souls who hike the PCT from Mexico to Canada to be coming through, but we didn't see any. The local town (Skykomish) had a "Welcome PCT hikers" banner.
Turns out the Huskies beat Cal again, the third year in a row Cal had a double-digit lead and blew it. One of these days Cal is going to get pissed at us! Thursday night I am taking off from work with my brother to drive to Spokane to buy my Vista Cruiser. Picture 13 of those is the Vista Cruiser that the guy bought that made him sell his old one. |
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