Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Saturday, August 31, 2002
I'm on vacation until Sept 18th.
Right now I'm at my parent's lake place in Spirit Lake, Idaho. We come here every labor day weekend with some friends. Yesterday we took the boat out and took a tour of the lake, with me on the innertube being towed behind and my dad driving. Nobody else wanted to ride the tube, so I was on it for a half hour straight, which gets pretty darn tiring. I don't understand people not wanting to have fun. I guess my friends are getting old. The only one who wanted to try it was pregnant and her husband forbade her cuz he's a nervous nelly. This morning we're driving into town to my brother's place to watch the UW Huskies vs the Michigan Wolverines football game on his 52" TV. This will either be a glorious victory or a painful defeat, but either way I'll be drunk. 9am game time here (noon eastern) so we'll be back here celebrating or drowning our sorrows all afternoon. We return on Tuesday (traffic on Monday sucks so years ago we figured out it was much easier to return on Tuesday) and get to work cleaning our house, cuz on Tues night my brother Lance arrives. He hasn't been in Seattle since my wedding nearly four years ago. He's my closest brother at 21 months younger, (oldest two are close, then a 4 year gap, then me and Lance, then a 3 year gap, then Dan, then 5 years, then the caboose, Kurt), I can't wait to have this much time to hang out. Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Crickey I'm busy.
Camping was fun. Isabel did great, she wasn't attracted by the fire. My brother sent me email from Germany that he's coming to Seattle from Sept 3rd to the 17th, I've taken that time off work to hang out with him, we'll probably play through Baldur's Gate I or II or both together plus I'm taking him to Spokane (aka Loserville) for the first Six-Brother Reunion in five years. Wednesday, August 21, 2002
Sorry I didn't post Monday and Tues. Bridget wasn't feeling well, so I was home watching the kids while she slept. Holy glub they are a handful. I have absolutely zero idea how she gets anything accomplished.
Only TEN days until Husky Football!! WoooO! Camping was a lot of fun, more so than I expected. Isabel LOVED all the rocks and sticks and dirt and moss and leaves to play with. On Saturday we went for a day hike at a nearby campground to a beautiful waterfall. I took Isabel on my back, and B took HG in the frontpack. When we finally got there, B was pretty worn out from carrying him in the frontpack, so I ended up carrying both of them down. It was pretty funny having both a front and a backpack, but it actually balances quite nicely. 50lbs of kids isn't too bad. We had two adjoining campsites and used one mainly for cooking and the firepit and the other for mostly tents. Sunday morning when we were packing up Isabel walked over to where our tent had been. She looked around, and did a double-take, then threw up her arms, shaking her head as if to say, "Huh? Where is it? I left our tent right here! Where did it go?" It was so dang funny. Cute little girl. Camping again this weekend starting tomorrow, won't be back till Monday. Friday, August 16, 2002
Thursday, August 15, 2002
Wooo! TiVo rocks!
So, the other night, Bridget and I were sitting at the table, eating dinner with our family. We hear a very loud noise outside, almost like someone is jackhammering at 7pm. I go to investigate, but I should have been able to figure it out on my own. Any loud noise in my neighborhood has an 80% chance of being my brothers, and this was no different. They had borrowed a jackhammer from work and were in the process of destroying the concrete walkway from the sidewalk to their porch. Now, the previous owners had removed the old one just two years ago and poured a new one, so this was new concrete. Dan has this great plan of replacing the walkway with a path of boulders that he loads his VW van with every weekend when he goes backpacking. I think he's got an ankle-breaker in the making, but I'll have to see the finished product before I pass judgement. I am SO glad that I am not his insurance company. Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Wooo! My AT&TiVo arrived in Seattle last night and got loaded in a truck for delivery today. (I love UPS's tracking page!)
I guess I'll be installing a phone jack near the TV tonight. 17 days until the Michigan game! Go Dawgs! Harry slept from 9pm until 5:30am today. Starting to look like a trend! Damn it was too hot for the kids yesterday. It was in the mid-80s in the house. Hawt. I finished reading Robert Heinlein's "Friday" again. I don't think I've read it since it came out 20 years ago. I certainly didn't enjoy it as much as a 34 year old as I did as a 14 year old. He tends to be a little preachy about how things ought to be, and while I agree with many or even most of his viewpoints, I don't like the preachiness. His female characters, like always, are pretty highly idealized. It aged fairly well, all things considered, but some parts made me laugh hard. Still using the "mouse test" for pregnancy detection was a funny shortsight. Using horse-drawn carriages everywhere just struck me as completely bizarre. Tuesday, August 13, 2002
My AT&TiVo shipped from Salt Lake City last night, UPS ground.
I've got to get either a phone jack or ethernet to it before it arrives. Hrmmm. While I prefer the speed and elegance of ethernet, I also would need a USB enet adapter, preferrably somewhere local and under $20. I think I'll go with phone, since it'd be easy to drill to the outside wall and feed it through. Free and easy does help. Wooo! Only 18 days until my Huskies play Michigan. College football season is nearly upon us! Woooo! The new Apple G4s look pretty nice. I think I'll check with my boss and see if I can get a dual 1Ghz to replace my single G4 667. Harold went to sleep at 9pm last night, and didn't wake up until 7am this morning. 10 solid hours. He just turned 3 months old last Saturday. Let's hope this trend continues! Monday, August 12, 2002
Fun weekend. Didn't have anything planned, got invited to BBQs both Sat and Sunday. Friday we watched "Iron Giant", good movie.
Between me making her breakfast sunday, and doing dishes twice, and the BBQs, and her mom being here, Bridget got through the whole weekend without having to cook or do dishes once. She even got to see Blood Work with her mom and sister. Wooo! I ordered an AT&T TiVo, or AT&TiVo as I call it. attt.tivo.com Hundred bucks cheaper than regular, plus has controls on the front. I can't wait for it to show up. Friday, August 09, 2002
I laugh.
I told Bridget that my Vista Cruiser was probably more reliable than her 5-yr old Kia. Sure enough, we get back from vacation and her car won't start. It's been getting progressively worse, I was sure it was the battery. Cheap cars come with cheap batteries, and this one lasted five years, not bad. Unfortunately for me, all the nuts in the Kia are metric, and all my sockets and wrenches are Yoo Ess. Bah. Anyway, $81 later I had a new battery and a set of metric wrenches and her car is all dandy again. Well, as dandy as it gets. You guys crack me up. I complained about weird search terms, and immediately the sick monkies amoungst you go and try all sorts of funny searches. Here's my latest report: - 2 for "alabama crab dangler" - 2 for "babies drinking beer" - 2 for "cleveland steamer" - 2 for "how can i kidnap that cute baby" - 2 for "using beer as birth control" - 1 for "beer" - 1 for "boogereater" - 1 for "buttchicken" - 1 for "castle shlongenstein" - 1 for "eric s naked booty" My favorite was "Using beer as birth control", a double slam. On our drive home last weekend Bridget was trying to use her breast pump to get some milk to feed Harry while we drove and wasn't having much luck. Since one of the signs that we were pregnant last time was her milk drying up, I teased her about being pregnant again. WRONG MOVE. She wanted to go to Costco and buy a bulk pack of EPT tests to take weekly. Heh. Thursday, August 08, 2002
Aaa-oooooo-gah! Alert! Alert! HG has suffered complete containment failure on the reactor core. Blah. That's the third blown-out diaper in a day, which is usually the sign to move up to the next larger diaper size, but he's already wearing size 3... Crickey! He's up to 18lbs, which is freakin' huge for a 3-month-old baby. He also spit-up a bunch of cheese onto my shoulder last night, something he doesn't usually do.
On the plus side of the equation, he's cute as the dickens and getting to be WAY more interactive. He looks at you and smiles and coodles, it's a lot of fun. One of our friends has her parents and sister and sister's boyfriend staying with them for a week, and since they're already going a little crazy we offered to have them over for dinner last night. Bridget made pot roast, and it was sorta amazing to me, living in Seattle, being at a dinner party where everyone ate red meat, everyone not pregnant or breastfeeding drank wine, everyone had dessert (rhubarb crisp with vanilla ice cream), everyone had an after-dinner snort of schnapps... I'm much more used to SOME of the guests being picky or vegetarians or non-drinkers... Today they got up early to take the Victoria Clipper hydrofoil to Victoria, BC. I wish I was going, it's a very fun place to visit. One of my poker buddies got engaged on Friday. He told his girlfriend not to make plans for Friday night, then picked her up at work and was driving around seemingly at random. They stopped at a float plane place downtown on the south end Lake Union and hopped in for a 'city tour'. As they were seeing the sights, they asked to head over to see their house from the air. His house has this huge freakin' backyard, it's more than a normal city lot by itself but there isn't really a way to get a driveway to it so it wasn't ever sold off. Anyway, he'd put a huge freakin' sign in his backyard saying 'MARRY ME HOLLY', how sweet. Wednesday, August 07, 2002
Wow. A friend asked what the recreational scuba diving depth limit was. He's friggin' certified, so he should know, and he shouldn't be diving anywhere NEAR that deep, but it's 130'. He also asked what was the deepest I'd ever dove. I sorta thought it was around 200', maybe a tad more, but decided to check, and what do you know, I found my old Excel spreadsheet dive log.
Turns out the my deepest dive was 191', back in June of 1995. Longest dive was 100 minutes (I got to the point where I wanted to see if my digital dive computer could register three digits or not...) in Nov of 1995. I've logged 262 dives (done some un-logged, but probably less than 30 of those). 30% of them at night. (Lots were after work in the winter, when it gets dark at 4-5pm) I've logged 165 hours underwater, that's almost seven straight days. Ah, my diving years. Reading the dive log brings back a ton of memories.
As I predicted, Isabel LOVED the lake. It had her two favorite things, water and rocks. She'd have a rock in each hand, wading in the lake, looking around, and look up at my like, "Can you believe it daddy? Rocks everywhere I look!" Then she'd toss the ones she was holding so she could grab more.
Fortunately she only tasted like 10% of them... My dad had left a 4'x7' empty framed room in the corner of his bathroom for future installation of a sauna. He's Skandahoovian (half Finn half Swede) and had one growing up, and missed it terribly. He finally got the parts and I helped him install it last week. Unfortunately I didn't get to try it since we didn't open the box with the door until the last day, and read that it requires a bunch of coats of stain. Ah well. It's got a beautiful smooth redwood interior now and a couple of benchs, it should rule. Air-compressor powered tools RULE. So does 12" compound miter saws, holey glub I want one now. CHOP CHOP CHOP done. Easy as pie. Tuesday, August 06, 2002
I had a blast last Wednesday. Bridget and I loaded up the kids and headed into town (Spokane, almost an hour away from my parent's lake place). She dropped me off at my friend Nate's place and went on with the kids to spend the day with her sister.
Nate and I have been friends for a quarter of a century. His apartment was the ground floor of a 1890 house. He has it filled with his hobbies, which include breeding exotic reptiles, collecting comic books and toys, and collecting all sorts of music, often on vinyl. He listened to punk in high school, but has worked himself up to japanese noise bands now. I dunno how you ever get from here to there, but he's pretty funny. I showed up around 11am, and he had two other visitors there from western WA, brothers who knew him from when he lived in Seattle last year and worked at a comic book/toy store. (He moved to Spokane to go back to school but dumped that plan and is now living off unemployment). One was drinking a beer, which sounded like a damn fine idea, seeing as how I was on vacation and it had to be noon somewhere. Nate had Red Stripe (ya mon! No problem!) in the fridge, a tasty Jamacian beer. Grabbing one, I took the tour of his critter collection, which fills two rooms. He's got all sorts of cool exotic lizards, most of which only have scientific names because they are rare and from other continents. He's also got this fish that looks SO cool, we call it a sea monster. It's about a foot long, maybe a couple inches in diameter, big mouth. Gotta keep yer fingers away from the tank when feeding it, it leaps and snaps and loves any kind of meat, including human. He's also got a very large sun spider (camel spider, etc.) that he fed while I was there. He took a jar of cockroaches, pulled one out, and dropped it in. The spider (well, solifugid) raced over, grabbed the hapless roach in it's four jaws, and immediately started chomping the shit out of the roach. It was totally nasty. That is the creepiest looking bug, ewww. (shudder) His turtles were cute, tho. They were both named "Bob". Makes it easier to not have to tell them apart. Anyway, after the beer we went on a tour of Spokane for his two friends. We went from comic book store, to toy store, to record store, repeat. I bought a magnet that said "Of course I love you honey. Now get me a beer" for my beer fridge. We also went to their new branch of the Real Soda Company. They sell any form of soda as long as it comes in glass bottles, and they had hundreds of different kinds. It was pretty cool seeing them all. Sorta like Bottleworks for soda instead of beer. The day ended with us driving to Stateline Speedway (some pics here) in Stateline Idaho. Stateline is a tiny place filled with bars and strip clubs and other sorts of entertainment. It used to be big when the drinking age in WA was 21 and in Idaho it was 19. I am sure business is way down from their glory days. The racetrack has "Wednesday Madness", which has bump-to-pass racing. You take a large old american steel car, remove all the glass and fabric and seats, weld some protective bars on it, and they race 'em for 20 laps. Per the name "bump to pass", contact is fully allowed. My favorite vehicle was a mid-70s blue Chevy station wagon, who had a shopping cart welding to the roof. Inside the cart was a case of kokanee and a case of Budweiser, as well as a box of Tampax. ("Honey, while you're getting beer, could ya get me a box of tampax?" One old Caddy had no trunk, Nate said the previous week they got slammed so hard that the trunk was bent UNDER the car, so they just cut it off, bending the last bit of trunk lid into a mini-spoiler. While we were there a car was spun-out on the back stretch, and because someone else was in the dirt on the inside there was a bunch of dust and another car totally slammed head-on into the stalled car. The race was black-flagged for a minute so the tow truck and ambulance could get to the wreck, but fortunately both drivers were OK. One car even still functioned and finished the race. The other was totally destroyed, bent into a U shape. Nate said that in the two summers he's watched bump-to-pass, only one driver left in the ambulance, and he was back racing the next week so it couldn't have been tooo bad. Did I mention that the whole time we were drinking 24oz cans of Miller Low Life (aka High Life)? Like I always say, you can take the trash out of the trailer, but you can't take the trailer out of the trash! Monday, August 05, 2002
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