Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Holy smokes I'm wired. I don't normally have caffeine, but the coke machine downstairs talked me into a frosty can, and while it was darn tasty, I'm now totally jacked up. RrrrrRRRrrrrrrRRRRrrrrrrrRRRR! I am Cornholio! Come out with your pants down!
Last night Isabel asked me if I thought it would be a good idea to go swimming. Of course, how can I say no to that? They absolutely love that pool up in Montlake Terrace. Too bad the good pools are way the hell out in the 'burbs. She was awesome in the water, I barely had to pay any attention to her. She'd climb up on the side, jump in, pretend to swing, and was having a blast. Harry just liked wandering around the pool, going to the slightly deeper part where he'd have to stand on tippy toes, a toy in one hand and a ball in the other... Man are there some unattractive people in this world. I'm so glad my kids don't have a 240+ lb mother. Uff-freakin-da. Tuesday, March 30, 2004
B made beef stroganoff last night. Normally she doesn't spice it up much so the kids can eat it. I take the bottle of tabasco, shake it, open it, and apply it liberally.
However, last night, B used it first, and just set the cap back on lightly. I picked it up, shaked it, and the cap went flying into the stroganoff. Tabasco started flying everywhere, including right into my eye. Note to self: Tabasco in your eye burns like a motherfucker. Holy hell that hurt. Saturday, March 27, 2004
A) I had Shiner Bock for the first time last night. I've heard Texans refer to it as the end-all be-all of beers, but I wasn't that impressed. Of course, if it was the only real beer I could get, I'd sing it's praises too, it's a eminantly drinkable beer. Mmmmm.
B) We took our friend Corey out to a local poker room last night to make up for the fact that most of his friends were in Vegas during his birthday last week. (His boss wouldn't let him come) Anyway, we went up to Parker's, which used to be a roadhouse bar back from the 40s to the mid 90s, (I'd gone dancing there to bands more than once back in the late 80s in college, and seen Blue Oyster Cult there too) when it was sold, renamed Charlie Macs, and turned into a sports bar. I'd been there when it was Charlie Macs as part of a bachelor party back in '97, but now it's Parkers again and it's a casino. The poker room was nice, 5 tables, friendly people, smoky but with fans and a high ceiling so I barely noticed. They had enough people to start a table when the four of us arrived, so we started a 3-6 table. I bought in for one rack, $100 worth of $1 chips. Small blind was a buck, large blind was $3. I think the house rake was $2, but it may have varied, I didn't keep track of it closely. I did alright at first, going up $40-$50. Then the guy next to me, who kept buying $1 shots of tequila, whiskey-n-cokes, and beer after beer, got this evil combination of good and lucky. He'd play on crap and make a hand on the flop. People assumed he'd have crap and he'd have pocket kings. He seemed to never get less than two pair, even playing 2-7 unsuited, the worst starting hand in hold'em. Gah. Anyway, after 3 hours I got schooled for $190 and left. It was fun, but expensive. Friday, March 26, 2004
Last night B wanted to take the kids on an outing, since they hadn't gone anywhere that day, and they didn't go out the previous day because one of the kids left a light on in the van and killed the battery, which Bridget didn't find out until all three were loaded up and ready to go. D'oh!
That reminds me. On Monday I had lunch at the Zoo with B and the kids since the weather was so nice and I missed them. We ran into one of the couples from our childbirth class 3 years ago. She had a 8 week old to go with her 3 year old. She talked about how hard it was having two kids, even though she has a full-time nanny. Yeah, life is *really* hard with a nanny, when she takes a week's vacation the world ends. Imagine, having to raise your own children like a commoner! Anyway, so we went to the mall last night after my suggestion to go to the Oh Boy! Oh Berto Meat Factory Outlet. (What could possibly be better than factory second meat?!?) It was pouring cats and dogs. Isabel kept singing rain songs, like itsy bitsy spider and "it's raining it's pouring the old man is snoring...". When we got to the mall, I remembered that Wizards of the Coast was going tits up, and they were probably past the 10% off stage. Sure enough, everything was 40% off. That's getting to be the right price! I was looking to get some GURPS books, but of course WOTC doesn't stock those. I also wanted a travel yahtze, they didn't have that either but I bought a nice non-travel yahtze. (heh, I bought yahtz at WOTC) Anyway, I wouldn't have minded getting axis and allies, or the Naval War cardgame, or the Nuclear War cardgame from Flying Buffalo, or Settlers of Cataan, but they didn't have anything cool. Tons of Monopoly clones, ugh. Just kill me now. Tons of collectible trading cards, and card sleeves, and boxes to store cards, etc. What they did have that was cool was a bunch of little trinkety toys like superballs, flutes (the straight through kind, a recorder?), and other weird little things. All that crap was 70% off, so we got a bunch for the kids. I got a little rubber guy with a parachute to launch into the air. Wooo! I love those. We also got a box of 270 plastic glow-in-the-dark stars to stick to the kids ceiling, and a box of kids' card games (crazy 8s, old maid, war, and go fish. I can't wait to play games with the kids!) Thursday, March 25, 2004
Alright, more Vegas.
On Saturday I woke up about 7am because the curtains in our room at the Excalibur (motto: We're the ghetto of the Strip!) didn't go down far enough to block out that searing yellow orb in the sky. I seem to remember something like that from my childhood, we called it "the sun", it's something we don't see here in Seattle. Anyway, I had been given $120 in cash and tasked with getting some champagne, booze, and beer for the bride, groom, best man & his wife, and maid of honor to drink while going on a limo ride after the wedding, so B and I got dressed, put on sunglasses, and walked out to our converitble. A lovely drive down the strip in the morning, where the traffic wasn't bad so you could actually get somewhere, and we showed up at a liquor store right at 8am. They didn't open for another 5 minutes, which is another pet peeve of mine. Why the hell is *anything* in Vegas closed ever? I mean, crickey. At the booze store I bought a styrofoam cooler, and since I know basically nothing about champagne other than add 1/3 OJ to make a tasty mimosa, I had been told "good champagne is $30/bottle". Okay, right. Hey, the booze store had a lineup from $4/bottle to $$$/bottle, but Tattingers was $32/bottle, close enough. Buy two of those. Let's see, I was told to get a sixpack of "decent" beer. The best of a bad situation was a sixer of New Belgium's Fat Tire Estrogen Ale (err, Amber Ale). Not bad, but not Bud. Speaking of Bud, I knew the sick monkey who was the best man had converted from real beer to Bud Light, I think his mom dropped him on his head a few dozen times as a kid, so I got him a 24oz tallboy can of Bud Light. Off to get the last item, some bourbon. A bottle of Knob Creek was like $30 or something, and there's no way they'd drink it all, but the liquor store had a huge selection of airline bottles, so I got them 4 minis of Maker's Mark, 1 of Blantons, and 1 of 25yr old Maccallans'. Total price, $118 and change. Wooo! Perfect! After we got back to the room I loaded the cooler with ice. The next stop was breakfast with the groom, groomsmen, and the groom's male relatives. Unfortunately the groom gave two of the party the wrong place to go, so it took them an extra half hour to join us. I have to admit the coffee shop in Excalibur was excellent. For some reason, it was 11am and I was in Vegas and still cold sober. Crickey! No help for it now, it was time to get dressed. Fortunately I talked the groom and best man into getting dressed in their room and walking over to the chapel in their tuxes. The wedding was being held at the MGM grand, which is kitty corner to Excalibur. The best man kept fucking with his bowtie, and it exploded all over the place. D'oh!! Fortunately B had a sewing kit and was able to sew it mostly back together. We'd have been fucked if we'd dressed at the chapel. I must admit, even I look good in a tux. Yessir, a tux makes just about any guy look good. Once we were ready, we walked to the MGM grand. Turns out their wedding chapel is like 300 kazillion miles deep into the bowels of that monstrosity, so it took us twice as long to get there as expected, and there weren't any table games or bars nearby to pick up a quick drink. Bah! The lady in charge of the chapel looked at our cooler in horror, but we told her it was "for later". They fucked us out of our groom's room, it was occupied by somebody or something, so I was extra glad we didn't have to change in the hallway. The wedding was beautiful, I cried like I always do. Afterwards I stopped at the nearest bar and bought a pair of Coronas to wet my whistle while pictures were being taken. I figured one would last me until we got out of MGM grand and another would keep me occupied while pictures were taken at the Brooklyn Bridge of NYNY across the street. Unfortunately, I should have gotten three, since I gave one to the bride. Ah well, sometimes you have to take the sacrifice. It was *her* wedding day, after all. Pictures took a while, we had to go get more beers to live through the heat. 88F outside in the sun wearing a wool tux isn't cold. I had planned on changing out of my tux after the wedding, but the groom asked us to be in them for the dinner in a few hours, so I just stayed in my tux. B went to our room to nap, and I tried to play poker or blackjack, but the waits for both were insane. I walked back up to the room and B was reading. The phone rang, it was the bride. They were going to get a limo, but the only thing available was this huge stretch Excursion SUV, so they had a lot more room and wanted to know if we wanted to go limoing with them. HELL YEAH! Wooo! The limo was crazy, like 40-50 feet long. We started tossing down drinks, and stopped off at a liquor store for more. Everyone was having a good time. After two hours, it was time to head to the Paris for the wedding dinner at the buffet there. Once we got there, the bride and groom were stopping every few feet to take pictures, so I went ahead and found most of the people waiting outside the buffet. I knew we had a room reserved inside, so I went up to the hostess and said "what the fuck?" Well, ok, I was more polite than that, especially cuz I was soused. She said she needed to wait for the bride. I said, "the bride is busy taking pictures, and i can guarantee she doesn't want 40 people waiting outside when we could be inside!" Finally I convinced her and we got everyone inside and seated. I have to admit, the expensive buffets in Vegas are really tasty, and the one at Paris is excellent. Mmmm! The dinner was choke full of wine, toasts, laughter, all the typical stuff. Afterwards most people drifted off, but we moved to the nearby Napoleon's cigar and champagne bar, where we took over the cigar lounge. The groom had bought a really nice box of cigars for us to smoke, and we ordered more drinks (they were out of Lagavulin, much to my regret, and didn't have Oban, so I settled for Glenmorangie portwood finish). A while later I had to bring the best man, his wife, and B back to our hotel. Our convertible was in the garage because I'd asked my friend Jack to drive it over for us. Later I found out he'd had his own rental car, that was really nice of him to deliver ours. After dropping my passengers off and kissing B goodnight I went back to join the festivities at the Paris. When I arrived, things were winding down,so I took Jack and the bride and groom and we went for a drive up and down the strip at night. Converitibles rule. I so love having the top down. I've already arranged with B that I get to buy one when I hit 40 for my "midlife crisis". heh. After that I didn't feel like sleeping, so I wandered around to see if I could find an open blackjack table that wasn't $25 or $50 a hand minimum. I failed, so I went back to our room to sleep. 14 straight hours in a tux. Damn I looked good. Wednesday, March 24, 2004
I slept almost all day yesterday, fighting a cold I picked up in Vegas. It did give me a chance to finish up an excellent book I've been reading, "The March Up" by Ray Smith and Bing West, about the First Marine Division's campaign last year from Kuwait to Baghdad.
Both of the authors are retired Marines, and were given incredible access to everything, resulting in a book that gives a real feel for what went right, what went wrong, and how Iraq was actually taken. In one of my favorite parts of the book, the commanding general of the division is standing next to his HumV, talking on an iridium satellite phone, right up in the action during a firefight. He can easily see the battle, so he knows how the morale is going, and as a Marine comes past him, he offers the Marine a drink of water from his 5gallon jugs on his vehicle. The Marine fills his canteens, drinks one, and pats the general on the shoulder, saying, "Thanks buddy", before continuing on. Ha! I'm sure that jarhead had no idea it was his commanding general he just thanked. You just gotta love the Marine Corps. Monday, March 22, 2004
Man, what fun Vegas is, even if I basically didn't get a chance to gamble.
We flew down Friday afternoon. We had a delay at Thrifty because the young couple ahead of us didn't understand you can't rent a car with a debit card, you need an actual credit card with some minimum limit, but they soon had us in the only convertible left in the lot, a midnight blue Chrysler Sebring. Down went the top, and ahhhh enjoy the sunny high 80s Vegas weather. We checked into the hotel, and went for a stroll around a bit before meeting a bunch of the wedding group for a dinner at the buffet at the MGM grand. After dinner the women went out and the guys went on a "bachelor party". With no plans and no consensus, it mostly involved walking around with no beer and our thumbs up our collective asses. We did buy some tasty cigars and find a nice cigar bar to visit, but with the NCAA basketball tourney and it being Spring Break, there were 300 trillion college kids in town, all filling up every table game in sight. I tried to play some poker, but every poker room had a minimum 2 hour wait, and I never had time to wait that long. I ended up crashing around 1am, and B rolled in around 2:30am, needing to soak her feet in icewater after too much dancing. I'm out of time, I'll add more later. Friday, March 19, 2004
Oooo! Vegas vegas vegas VEGAS VEGAS vegas vegas vegas Vegas baby!
Leaving in a few hours, B and I are going to have a great time. My sister-in-law and her husband are here with their little guy (who turned 1 this week) to babysit for the weekend. We've got a convertible reserved from the rental car place, and I'm going to be steamed if they don't have one for us when we get there. We've got our stuff mostly packed, and I've been playing Tournement Texas Hold'em a few times, set to the 2002 World Series of Poker format. So far, out of 600+ entrants, the best I've done is place 118th, which is out of the money, only the top 45 get in the money. This last time I lost when my full house lost to four of a kind. Gah! Drowned on the river. Ah well. Thursday, March 18, 2004
Man oh man I love corned beef. It was SOOO good, too. Just perfectly tender and yummy. I was right about needing 10lbs, we had just enough leftover for my lunch, that's it.
Washed down with a half dozen Guinness, I feel great! Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Note to self: If you look at those veins on the back of your hand, and notice that they can move quite a bit, and spend five minutes moving them an inch back and forth, it ends up making your hand sore. Don't do it.
Last weekend I read "1901", by Robert Conroy. It's an alternate history about what might have happened if Germany had acted on their plans to attack the US. The idea wasn't to take over the US, but to force us to give up the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. It was a fun read, with good pacing. Afterwards I laughed to find out the copyright was 1995, but it finally hit paperback in 2004. Seems like the scifi publishers are digging deep to find alternate history stories now that they're popular.
I found this weeks "Savage Love" about a 78 yr old religeous widow grandmother who jerks off her parakeet to be hilarious. I'd link to it but the link would go stale. Speaking of sick funny things, here's a funny webcomic done by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the South Park guys. Warning, it's totally not safe for work: Princess 1 Princess 2 Those sick monkies. Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Ah, beer. You gotta love beer.
Guinness sent me a St Patty's day card. How sweet of them. Speaking of St Patty's Day, we've got 10lbs of top-grade corned beef in the fridge, 4 heads of cabbage, 10lbs of taters, and a couple pounds of carrots. On the Guinness front, I've got 11 cans in the beer fridge right now. One friend has a pair of 15-packs. Another has 20 leftover from the poker tourney. Uff-da, that's 61 cans of creamy stout beer goodness. Thursday, March 11, 2004
Today B's going to Market House Corned Beef to pick up 10 pounds of the best corned beef around for next Weds. Mmmm!
We're going to Spokane tonight for our cousin's first birthday party. She's going to pick me up here after work and we'll leave from here. Ok, two things. First one is crazy. A friend is brokering an eBay auction for a first edition of Eragon by Christopher Paolini. While I admit that I haven't read his book, he started it when he was 15, and he's now 18. All the reviews say that it's just the same rehashed craptacular fantasy you'd expect from a teenager. Why he's selling like hotcakes is beyond me, and why first editions are selling for $1,200 is beyond bizarre, approaching surreal. Secondly, this article about the Marines is awesome. Ooo-fuckin'-rah! Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Sometimes I wonder who searches my blog for "Alabama crab dangler". Several times a month.
I mean, I can understand when I update and my blog shows up as freshly updated on Blogger's home page, from the title people might think other than the babes are my wife and daughter, so there are always searchs for "nude girls" etc. But alabama crab dangler? Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Holy smokes. It was just barely dripping a bit when I looked outside this morning, so I decided to put on the rain pants before biking into work, but it was raining cats and dogs a few minutes later. My feet are soaked, good thing I keep dry socks at work.
Yesterday was beautiful, 65F and sunny, a record high temp. Ah well, that's March for you. Monday, March 08, 2004
I watched Tripping The Rift on my TiVo last week. It was a short animation I downloaded like 4 or 5 years ago, done by some animators from King of the Hill, a very profane mockery of Star Trek and other sci fi. Now it's a TV show, and while not as profane as the original, it's pretty darn profane. Pretty funny, too, at least the pilot. I've got it as a season pass on my TiVo.
It was a pretty fun weekend. The weather was nice, so we took the kids to the zoo on Sat and the aquarium on Sun. We had babysitting on sunday afternoon and went shopping, I bought a sport coat for our trip to Vegas in two weeks, and then to a dinner party at a friend's. They're the ones getting married in Vegas in two weeks and they had the wedding party over for a nice get-together. I was given my wedding party gift, a nice leather box with an monogrammed silver plate on the outside, a lock, and it opens up to reveal a little minibar. Everything is stainless steel, three little flasks, a corkscrew/bottle opener, two collapsable cups, and a stirring stick. Woo! Have booze, will drink! I'll have to pick three boozes to load it up with for this weekend trip to Spokane. Our little nephew Brooks is having his first birthday party. Friday, March 05, 2004
More Isabel. Last night B and I had some tabasco on the table. The kids are fiends for condiments, happy to dump anything on their food if Mom or Dad does it, so I took to calling all pepper sauces "ouchie sauce". They know they don't want that.
Isabel says, "Daddy, you better not have any Baby Ouchie Sauce. It makes Mommy and Daddy's teeth hurt. It's only for little girls." Thursday, March 04, 2004
I always used to admire Bobby Bowden, since he had the tenure and reputation at Florida State to say whatever he wanted with impunity. If he said his team sucked and shouldn't have been there, like after the 2000 national championship game, he wasn't fired.
Sadly, that freedom is a double edged sword. Yesterday he said something so ignorant it hurt. He berated ex Colorado football player Katie Hnida for saying she was raped while she was a Buffalo. His quote was "If that happened, why wouldn't you report it immediately, why wait two years?" Gee, fucknut, I have no idea why someone who was repeated tramatized trying to be part of a team of a sport she loved wouldn't report a rape. Maybe because she's embarrassed. Maybe because dingleberries like yourself wouldn't take her seriously anyway. Anyway, I'm off the Bowden bandwagon, that crusty old buttnugget. Last night we took the kids with us to the U Bookstore to buy a birthday present for our cousin's first birthday, to buy another Jan Brett book for our kids, and I wanted to check out a book recommendation from a fellow blogger. On the way home, Isabel had a little conversation with herself: (yells) Holy Cow! I missed the bus! (normal voice) I missed the bus. All I wanted was a pink bus. (sad voice) just a little pink one... She cracks me up all the time. I have no idea where craziness like that comes from. Besides from the obvious suspect, myself. Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Last night we took the kids to the Montlake Terrace pool. Montlake Terrace is one of the many small towns outside the city limits, in this case in the next county north. They have a great pool however. The thing was huge, and had a very large, maybe 100' by 30' or larger, shallow end that was between 1' and 2' deep. The whole thing is floored and walled with soft white rubbery stuff. There were tons of toys for the kids to play with, and tons of kids having a whale of a good time. They also keep the pool a lot warmer than the Seattle pools, which are the classic rectangular 3' shallow end 12' deep end pool I grew up with.
The kids had a blast. Isabel loved pushing herself around holding a kickboard pretending she was swimming, and Harry kept trying to go down the slide head first. Sploooosh! Last night I got an email, and after reading it, went downstairs to B. Eric: "Ok, B, repeat after me. Woo." B: "Woo." Eric: "Hoo" B: "Hoo" Eric "Now say them together, quickly, with exclamation points." B: "WooHoo!!! What's up?" Eric "The renters emailed that they want to sign another year lease" Woohoo! This will be their third year. Not having to find new renters utterly rules. Tuesday, March 02, 2004
The book to movie I most want to see is Peter Jackson doing The Hobbit.
After that, I'd like to see Edgar Rice Burrough's 'A Princess of Mars', his first book and the first of the John Carter Warlord of Mars series. The minute I left the theater after seeing Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, I knew that FX technology had come to the point where they could pull off APoM. The question is if they'd do it right. Here is a link to an Aint It Cool News report about a rumor about a director taking on this project. I strongly suspect it'll suck, but there's always the possibility that they pull off another LotR. I especially hate the idea of "modernizing" it. That just makes me shudder. Monday, March 01, 2004
It was a fun weekend. Long post. First third is poker, second third is B's birthday, last third is Gettysburg.
Quick testicular update: The Boys don't hurt anymore. Everything is back to normal. WooO! I'm even back to biking to work. On Friday night, I put my "Drinking makes me play poker better" theory to the test. I got pretty sloshed early on, then just kept that image up the rest of the night. It's actually pretty hard to keep drinking while playing poker, you get distracted with having to shuffle, deal, and bet. Or at least I do. The tournement had 18 players starting at 3 tables. With $20 buy-ins, and one $15 rebuy available the first hour, the total pot taken in was $420. 4th place got $20, (their buy-in back), 3rd got 10% of what was left ($40), 2nd got 30% ($120), and first took 60% or $240. Anyway, I did pretty well. I played pretty conservatively at first, but each time I played I bet big and took the pot. I started growing my little stack of chips. We each start with $100 value in chips, and I'd worked it up to over $200. At one point, one of the pretty good players at my table went all-in, and I had a 4-7 unsuited, but there was a 4 on the board. I figured he was bluffing his way into a good pot like he'd done to me a few times (once with a straight on the board he bluffed that he had the higher card to beat me) so I went all in against him. I had double his chips so it wasn't like I'd go out. He had a pair of jacks, soI was doomed, but as luck would have it, I got a 7 on the river for two pair! Wooo! 4-7 unsuited beats out pocket jacks! Heh heh. He was pissed cuz he thought he lost to a drunk playing like an idiot, but it was a calculated move that just got lucky. At that point I had like $350 in chips, which was a commanding lead. I'd play every 3-4 hands, raising $100 and people would fold. After bluffing 3-4 times in a row, finally someone caught me out, and everyone at the table thought I was just playing on crap. At that point I got a great streak of like 4-5 hands in a row, Ace-Jack, Ace-Queen, King-Queen, pair of 7s, good playable hands, and people got clobbered thinking I was bluffing. Ooo! I made to the final table with over $750 in chips, by far the chip leader. One of the short stacked players went all-in after a flop, and another followed, and I couldn't believe my luck, because I had a pair of fives and a five had come out on the flop. My trip 5s easily won, and I had over $1000 in chips with 4 players left. A few hands later we took out the 4th place player, who had gone all-in on the first hand of the night and lost so he'd had to rebuy and was in for $35. His $20 winnings gave him a net loss of $15, better than most. Dee, Bill, and myself were the final 3. Bill was seriously short-stacked, with like $80 in chips. The blinds were $15 and $30, so he wasn't going to last long. Dee had a nice $~350 stack. I had J-10 on a hand with Q-10-9-8 rainbow on the board, so I figured my straight would take it, and was overjoyed when Dee when all-in, but he had K-J, so he had a 1 higher straight. Dang! After all my escapes on the river, (meaning I won a lot of hands by getting extremely lucky on the last card dealt) I figured I deserved it. He had a slight chip lead, and we took Bill out a few hands later. At this point it was 12:30am. It was going to take a long time for Dee and I to take one or the other out, and I was tired and had to get up early to watch the babies since Saturday was B's birthday. I offered to Dee to just split the pot and each of us take $180. He wanted to play a few hands. The blinds raised to $20 and $40, and we alternated taking them for about 10 minutes. I offered again, and he agreed. Wooo! Winning $180 in a poker tournement feels great. On Saturday, it was B's 36th birthday. Last October, I got the idea that I'd knit her a scarf in her college's colors for her birthday, and got some help the ladies at work, our downstairs housemate, and a fellow blogger (thanks Dande!). Mind you, I'd never knit before in my life, and I certainly plan to never do so again. So, for the past 4 months, I've spent my lunch hour knitting a %&$*$ scarf. Man oh man do I hate knitting, but it was worth it. It looks great, and B loves it of course. Since she reads my blog, I couldn't let anyone in on it. Also for her birthday she went out to lunch with a bunch of her mom group friends, without babies. Some of the dads came over and we grilled some brats and drank beer and fed junkfood to the kids, which was a good time, but B had a blast, they'd never before gotten together without kids and it was good for them. B had arranged it, but didn't tell any of them that it was for her birthday. For dinner that night, a whole big group of us went to Olive Garden. Not my favorite place, but it wasn't my birthday. As a group we ordered a "build-your-own" appetizer plate, picking 3 things, two of them being calimari and one of stuffed mushrooms. They gave us a plate with a bowl of stuffed mushrooms and about an equal sized amount of calimari, which was pretty skimpy. We asked if that was our double portion, not knowing their portion sizes, and the waiter said yes, so we ordered another one of the same because we needed a little more calimari. Mmmm, squid. The second tray comes with twice as much calimari as the first one. Uff, now we're swimming in freakin' squid. I like squid, but crickey. Anyway, as an apology, they bring out yet ANOTHER plate of calimari. Crickey! 600,000 calimari later, I wasn't hungry anymore. This took forever, too, so finally the kids melted down and I took 'em home, leaving B to have fun with our friends. I've been reading "The Killer Angels", a pulitzer-prize winning book on Gettysburg. I'd seen the 1993 Ted Turner movie Gettysburg in the theaters back then, but didn't know it was based on this book. I borrowed the DVD from a friend and watched the first half yesterday while the kids napped. Uff-da. Chamberlain was a total utter stud. The following ramblings are spoilers, but I'm not sure accurate representations of historical events can be spoiled... It's truly amazing how close that battle ended up being, and how different history would have ended up had the result been different. If Buford hadn't held the Rebs off the high ground that first morning, the Rebs would have won, and the war would have been lost. There would today be a South and a North, and quite probably a West as well as 3 different countries. If Early (or was it Ewell? One of those E generals) hadn't choked at the end of the first day and taken the empty hills in front of him, the Union would have lost, and the war would have been over. If Colonel Chamberlain of the 20th Maine hadn't talked 115 of 121 deserters from the 2nd Maine (they'd signed 3-yr terms instead of 2yr, but thought they'd only be with their 2nd Maine buddies) into joining them, the war would have been lost. At Little Round Top, those men made the difference. When they ran out of ammo, and Chamberlain showed that he had some of the largest balls EVER, and fixed bayonetts for a charge down the hill, routing the Rebs, the war would have been lost. Had Lee listened to Longstreet and his other generals begging to let them go right and flank the Union and take them from the rear, he would have won. Had Jeb Stuart, the general in charge of the Confederate calvary, not blinded the infantry by not scouting around them because he'd gone on a joyride pillaging up north, the Confederacy would have won. Truly amazing. |
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