Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Wednesday, April 30, 2003
When we bought B's new minivan, there was a couple of small scratches on the left rear wheelwell we didn't notice, but they offered to have them repaired so we figured we mightaswell. Yesterday we dropped it off, and at the same time since my truck was there I decided to take care of a little thing that broke last summer. The plastic surround to the tailgate handle is held in with two plastic clips, they broke off somehow so that part fell off. Fortunately I noticed.
It's just a stupid trim piece, and it should be covered under warranty. I brought the broken piece with me last month when we bought B's minivan, but they needed the truck there to do it under warranty. So, last night I was there with the truck while parts was still open. They had the part, I held it in my hand. Turns out they don't do warranty stuff, you need to go to the service counter. I go to the service counter. They say I need to make an appointment with a tech to get the %&$($ thing fixed. I'm like, why can't you just do it, or give me the $%*#(# part and I'll do it. No, they've got to have a authorized tech do it so they can bill GM. Motherfuckers. I'm going to write a letter to the dealership's owner, and probably one to the CEO of GM as well. I hate being jerked around like that. Tuesday, April 29, 2003
Yesterday I went to lunch with my friend Todd from Germany. We went over to Big Time brewery, where I don't think Todd had ever been. He was simply shocked at how good the beer was, he's pretty used to pooh-poohing American beers vs his beloved German beers. I'd taken the afternoon off and after a few beers we went onto the UW campus to visit an old co-worker that he hadn't seen in years. Man, while I work at UW, I am waaaay the heck down south on the water, below the monstrously large health sciences complex. I rarely make it to upper campus where most of the students are. Holy smokes. It was a hot sunny day, and the undergrads were taking advantage of it. It's probably for the best that I don't normally work around a bunch of hot 19 year olds. Sheepdogs.
Bridget had a rare dinner failure with a spinach quiche (it was liquid inside when cut into), and I made cheese quesadilla for the kids. It's very funny to hear Isabel (23 months) say "I want some more quesadilla, daddy." Four-syllable words aren't that easy! After dinner I went over to my friend's place for our investment club meeting, before the meeting I pumped 25 more gallons of fuel oil out of his no-longer-used tank. That'll save me $45-50 off my next heating bill. Roughly 125 gallons to go. We nearly bought stock in IMAX, but then it turned out the reported P/E ratio of 15 was incorrect, and we had a hard time finding out the real one. Every finance site quoted a different number, from 24 to 60 to 150!! Sheesh. This morning Harry woke up at 6am, so I changed him and gave him his bottle, that's all he really wanted. He was VERY happy once he had a bottle, he musta been starving. I think he's teething some more. He turns 1 a week from Saturday. Monday, April 28, 2003
Another fun weekend. On Saturday my old friend Todd from college come over, he's been living in Munich for the past 12 years. We had a tasty dinner (I made cajun blackened steak on my BBQ) and went to a friend's birthday party, which had a Hawaiian theme. They served mai tais, pina coladas, choco coladas, horny monkeys, lava flows, all in tiki god cups or flamingo cups with little umbrellas in a piece of pineapple.
They also had an awesome habenero bbq chicken mmmm! Fahr! Todd had brought some tasty Romeo Y Julietta cigars with him, a bunch of us hung out in the backyard smokin'. I drank far too much and ended up pretty shnockered. Fortunately for me, I woke up on Sunday and was NOT hung like a french monkey. Oh wait, sorry, my bad. In this ludicrous political climate, I was NOT hung like a FREEDOM monkey. yeah, that's it. Sheesh. The guys in my rental house had emailed with a plumbing problem, there was a leak under the sink in the master bathroom. I went over there with my bucket of plumbing tools, and wonders never cease, I actually had the right part with me, so I was able to fix it with ZERO trips to Home Despot. Amazing! While I was there I harvested 4 cups of rhubarb off the super-healthy patch of rhubarb I have there. I got a ton of yardwork done yesterday, played with the babies, and got the shed in the back yard cleaned and organized like it never has been since we moved in. Last night I fired up the BBQ again to grill some brats that I boiled in beer first, and made a burger for B who doesn't really like sausage. I used the rhubarb to make a damn tasty rhubarb crisp. Mmmmm! Sunday, April 27, 2003
Ha! Ok, few things are quite as cute and funny as waking up at 7:30am to what sounds like a cup being run back and forth across jail cell bars on the baby monitor. Bam bam bam.... bam bam bam. Bam bam bam..... bam bam bam. Next, Isabel's voice, in a very sing-song fasion, "Maaaa-ma. Daaaaa-da. Maaaaa-ma. Daaaaaaa-da. Come Dooooown here."
Bridget and I both just busted up laughing. "Gee, you think she's ready to get up?" Damn she's funny. 23 months old in a week. Friday, April 25, 2003
Now I'm trying to figure out what to blow my $645 left over from Vegas on. My mental view is losing it there, so I sorta consider it gone anyway. That makes me think I could spend it on a fancy-shmancy new toy or something. I could just save it for my Vegas trip next year, but I'll be saving for that anyway, and I don't think it'd be a good idea to bring a grand with me.
I seriously need a new cell phone, so I was looking into Bluetooth-equiped models so I can use iSync and keep it up-to-date with my Addressbook and Palm Pilot. Unfortunately, no cell fone company lets you search by BT fones. Gah! Almost done with the third George R. R. Martin "Fire and Ice" book, and 4th isn't going to be out for a year or more, so I need to find something new to read. I wish it was football season already. Thursday, April 24, 2003
Wooo! Short version of Vegas trip: It kicked ass. I counted up the cash I'd saved for gambling plus the extra moola in my poker wallet, and had exactly $660, so I pitched in a five and a one so I'd have exactly $666 to gamble, a perfect omen for a trip to Sin City. I was up most of the time until the last night, when I lost $400, but the last morning I put my last $300 into $25 blackjack and 45 mins later had doubled it. I ended up with $645, down $27, which is less than I paid out in tips to cocktail waitresses and dealers. Saturday, April 19, 2003
I'm going to Vegas for three days leaving Sunday night. Wooo!
Yesterday at work I was trying to get things wrapped up since I'm not bringing my laptop and thus will be out of email contact until Thurs of next week. My boss is out Weds-Thurs-Fri next week, so we won't be able to talk until a week from Monday. There is this group of web monkies that have a bunch of web sites running on a bunch of web servers, and I finally got disgusted with the variety of OSes and server hardware, and decided I need just one single web server with large mirrored disks, and virtual host all these various web sites. I was going to talk to my boss about this, but he wasn't around when I went looking for him. I heard he was getting his hair cut, and would be back around 4pm, which is when I leave, but I needed to get my student helpers working on this next week so I waited around for him. I called B to see how things were going and tell her I was going to be late. She had been planning on going to her friend's happy hour, so she left with the babies. I stayed at work until 4:45, never found my boss, so I said %^$ it and went home. After biking home I went out to my truck to go join B and help herd babies, when I remembered I forgot the truck keys in the house. I went back, got the keys, and as I was heading to the truck my youngest brother Burt yelled out for me. So, instead of going to happy hour with B, I talked with Burt, had some beers, and we worked on trying to upgrade/repair the wireless network between our houses. We had some tasty Stone IPA, a couple of Deschutes Black Butte Porters, and when we were at his house they only had the king of beers so we drank cans of Bud. Heh. If I'm going to drink american megalager, I prefer 24oz tallboys of Miller Lowlife (err Highlife), for the white-trash quotient, but honestly I enjoy almost any beer. The Linksys WAP11 v2.2 we use for our wireless network had firmware 1.009, and firmware 1.1 was available, but we could not figure out how to upgrade it for the life of us. FINALLY after emailing linksys, we found out that if you connect to the WAP11 via a web browser, and go under the HELP tab, there is an option to upgrade the firmware. Under HELP. Sheepdogs, we had been through every setting panel possible, EXCEPT Help. Gahhhh!!! I figured the built-in help would be less useful than the company web page... Sigh. The new firmware didn't help. Those things are cursed. They worked flawlessly while he was gone for two months, now they don't work for no apparent reason. There isn't a way of testing the signal strenght between them (stupid Linksys!) but they worked flawlessly while the neighbor between us was getting re-roofed, and the signal had to go through a 3'x3'x6' pile of cedar shakes, and the cantenna is rated for over 2 miles if it is tuned properly, so I doubt the 150' it goes is a serious problem. I dunno. Anyway, see you guys on Thurs! Hopefully I'll have won moola! Vegas, baby! Steak-n-eggs for breakfast every day. Friday, April 18, 2003
I went to Trader Joe's recently, and bought two cases of three-buck Chuck, (formerly two-buck Chuck), aka Charles Shaw wine. It's not bad, a decent table wine, and at $3 a bottle, it's cheaper than beer.
Last night Isabel (22months) was playing with Harry (11 months). It was so cute, I think it might have been the first time they really played together. She hid behind the window curtains in the living room, with him sitting a few feet away. She'd pop out and say Peek-a-boo to him, and he'd laugh and clap his hands joyfully. After a bit of this, she came over and would touch his face saying "Harry Berry! Harry Berry!" which also made him laugh, and then when they got distracted by noticing B was in the kitchen, they both got on hands and knees and crawled off in formation towards the kitchen. Too funny. Apparently Isabel crawls around with Harry when she feels like it. I'm always forgetting how old other people's kids are, so I figured I couldn't be the only one, and decided I'd list their ages for reference. My TiVo paid for itself again last night. I was feeding Harry a bottle, and turned on the TV. There was yet another Friends rerun on Fox, and I shuddered remembering when that was all there was to watch. AAAaaaaaaa! Thank glub for TiVo. Instead I watched a Junkyard Wars (aka Scrapheap Challenge). I don't like the new US announcers, and I am convinced they play fast and loose with the rules. The episode was a semi-final, involving teams building a device to throw a 150lb washing machine as far as possible. One team decided to make a tortion catapult, and the other teams expert wanted them to build a leaf-spring ballista, but they overruled him and built a trebuchet instead. I'm sorry, but I am not convinced you can build a working trebuchet in 10 hours that is capable of throwing a 150lb washing machine without some serious help. They didnt mention the team "expert" as being a trebuchet expert, but I've played with MacTreb (a realbasic Trebuchet calculator) enough to know it's really not easy to get the dimensions right, plus it would need to be SO freakin' beefy to throw a 150lb weight. I'm sure they got extra time and some extra help. Thursday, April 17, 2003
Well, just shy of a year old, and Harry got his first haircut last night. B's friend who rents our basement did the honors, and she did a really good job. Now he doesn't look like some throwback from the 70s with his wild long hair. My plans to sneak him away and use my clippers with a #2 sheild and give him a good Marine high-n-tight crew cut are currently on hold, partially because someone would have to hold him down while I did it, and partiall because Bridget would kick my ass all over the place if I did it. Heh, even if it would be cute. Just need to get him some camo onesies..
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
The other night I went to our local Whole Paycheck (err, Foods) because I heard they had whole milk (what I like to call 4%) for ~$2.50/gallon, and as a bonus it had no hormones or other crap. Safeway charges us $4/gallon, and Isabel drinks around half a gallon a day. Harry will move off formula onto whole milk when he turns 1 in less than a month, so the demand for high-fat milk is about to nearly double, and price becomes even more of a concern.
Man, I'd love to be able to afford to shop there. They did have non-hormone whole milk for $2.80/gallon, (their organic whole milk is $4.50/gallon!) but man do they have a nice produce section, and an awesome meat counter. I looked at some gorgeous center-loin Ahi tuna, it looked so damn good, unfortunately they want $20/pound for it. At that price I might as well go to a nice restaurant where they buy whole fish and get the same cut for about that price fully prepared. Same deal with their beef. Awesome looking beef, but as expensive as buying it cooked in a restaurant. While I was there I spent some time in their excellent beer aisle. I bought two bottles of IPA, which I haven't been able to enjoy due to my cold. Tuesday, April 15, 2003
I'm going to post more about Shadowbane.
So far, Humbaba is a lvl 31 Half-Giant Fighter/Barbarian. You have to start as Fighter, Rogue, Healer, or Mage, and when you reach lvl 10 you have to "promote" to something like Barbarian, Warlock, Crusader, Ranger, Druid, Assasin, etc. Rogues and Fighters can both promote to Barbarian. The character developement system is pretty cool, but they sorta ruin it by only including documentation in the $30 extra cost "strategy guide". It's easy to make a character that is pretty unique, and the huge variety of weapons, armor, and clothes means it's kinda rare to see someone dressed exactly like you. My other character is Trogdooor Burninator, a lvl 16 Shade Mage/Channeller. He's working on flame spells mostly. I don't know how to describe Shades, you'd have to go to the Shadowbane web pages for that, but he's sorta half there, and can go invisible. One bad thing is you basically have a set amount of points to spend before you reach the soft cap of experience and progress no further. If you made a wrong choice or whatever, there is no undo, you've weakened your character permanently. For example, Humbaba accidentally wasted 10 skill trains on One-Handed Axe Mastery when he meant to use 'em on Two-Handed Axe Mastery. I can't get 'em back, but that's not tooo bad a flaw. Major problems like spending stat points on dexterity or spirit (for a Barbarian, at least) can "gimp" your character, no real choice but to start over. Monday, April 14, 2003
Weird. The kids had colds last week, which I caught on Friday. I felt almost completely better on Saturday, and felt fine yesterday, until after dinner I started feeling sickish again. This morning it's back. I'm going to have to say it's workday-itis. Weird.
Had my birthday party on saturday. I invited the usual suspects over for single malt whiskey, wine, beer, and cigars. Smokes the lovely Cohiba my brother brought back from a certain carribean island, it was pleasant, but I much prefer a fatter (wider ring gauge) cigar, the fatties tend to have a cooler more pleasing smoke. I got some great presents, a bottle of single-malt whiskey, a bottle of Maker's Mark bourbon, a new biography of "Chesty" Puller, the greatest Marine ever, and a gift card for tools. Oh yeah, one friend called B to ask what to get me, and she jokingly suggested late harvest reisling, since she loves those ultra-sweet dessert wines. I got two bottles of it, which is funny since I don't really care for it. Most everyone bagged out for one reason or another by 10pm, but I made my friend Corey stay until midnight so the party wouldn't be over too soon. Here's some Clan Lord content: I had a good time in the Dun'ilsar competition between my clan, the Dwarven Militia (BEER!) and the always-fun Rising Foam, er Claw. I barely made it, since we were going to go to the zoo but the kids naps overlapped wrong so we couldn't go, and then the client on my home Mac was 17 versions behind, and I barely got it updated and working in time. (I don't clan much from home anymore). The competition was a money hunt, and I earned 129 coins. We won by 79 coins, so in some ways you can Harry sleeping longer caused Rising Claw to lose and DM to win. Thursday, April 10, 2003
Ugga. Ever wake up with that "not-so-fresh" feeling? I'm definitely hung over today.
Last night I picked up some take-out Thai food (panang beef, hot-n-spicy noodles, chicken phad thai) for dinner, and afterwards we drove to the mall to buy my birthday present. I got something I've been needing, a nice electric carving knife. Should make carving roasts and turkeys easier! Afterwards B's friend babysat for us and we went out drinkin' with a friend of mine. Corey and I proceeded to get pretty sloppy drunk for a weeknight. He ended up hurling after we dropped him off at home. I'm doing alright, alka-seltzer saved my bacon again. Man I can't wait for my Vegas trip in 10 days. Wednesday, April 09, 2003
Happy birthday to me! I'm now 35 years old. No real way to say I'm young anymore, I'm now officially old.
Wow, watching the Iraqis in Baghdad celebrate in that town square on CNN this morning, tearing down that statue of Saddam, you can't convince me they didn't know they were being oppressed. I've supported the war all along, but it makes me happy to see it turn out so well so far. Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Critters.
Yesterday as I was walking to my bike locker after work, I saw a duck sitting on the sidewalk, looking perfectly content with the Seattle rain. This morning as I biked in to work, an opossum was walking along the trail. I biked past it, and saw a jogger heading towards me, obviously in her jogging "zone". I looked back to see if she'd even notice the opossum, and when she got near, it must have hissed at her, cuz she leaped at least three feet into the air. Too funny to watch. Monday, April 07, 2003
I took Friday off work, my parents were coming to help me build a small deck off my kitchen backdoor for my BBQ.
They arrived at 11am on Friday, we had lunch, then made a bill of materials, and off to Home Depot we went. We spent the afternoon building, and got all the reinforcement and basic framing done on Friday. Saturday was a cold nasty rain day, but we got the decking installed, the rail posts, the railing, and we were basically done. Sunday morning we poured concrete around the posts. Now I have to wait a week for the concrete to cure before I can BBQ, but now I have my BBQ right outside my kitchen, ready for easy use year-round. This is going to rule. We even made some planter boxes so we can grow herbs and flowers. It looks awesome. My dad is great. Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
Well, looks like I'm going to have a new niece or nephew in October. My brother Dan just got back from his four-month vacation trek of flying to Peru and hitchhiking back, and he got an email from some girl in Columbia saying he'd knocked her up. Crickey. None too bright, mind you.
I had my TiVo record the SciFi channel's rendition of Philip Jose Farmer's Hugo-award winning "Riverworld" books. The basic plot of the books is someone or something artificially formed a planet that is just one huge-ass river winding back and forth for 25 million miles. The basic terrain is a near-sheer mile vertical cliff, a few miles of flat or hilly land, the river which is roughly a mile across and a mile deep, and repeat the terrain on the opposite side of the river. Every mile on both sides of the river is a giant low mushroom shaped structure with tons of small holes in it. Everyone who ever lived on earth from BC to something like 1982 is resurrected on the shores of this giant river in their 25-year-old bodies. Each has a bucket, that fits in the holes on the mushroom rock. Three times a day a great gout of lightning blasts out of each of the mushroom rocks and a small energy-to-matter converter fills the bucket with food and sometimes booze. Basically, you can use this setup to put any two or more historical figures together. Following the basic setup, virtually any plot would work. Except the folks who did this Riverworld apparently didn't read the books. Spoilers follow: First gripe: In the show, the %&$* river had SURF! Huh?!? How?!? Gaaahh!! Second gripe: In the books, the only raw materials to build stuff with is bamboo, flint, and stuff extracted from river fish (bones, skin, etc). In the movie, 15 minutes after the group shown gets ressurected, they are attacked by people wearing leather and chainmail, riding horses!!! Horses?!?! Apparently in the movie, they decided some people get ressurected 10 years earlier than others... Um... Riiiiight. Third gripe: the movie sucked ass. |
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