Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Friday, April 30, 2004
Yesterday I helped my little brother buy a 15" flat panel iMac. $999, not a bad price at all for everything you get. He and his girlfriend are very excited, they were using a POS Power Mac 7500 with an old-school 13" Apple monitor, giving them a fixed resolution of 640x480. Using a web browser at that resolution is torture on par with many of the levels of Hell.
They'd never used iTunes before, or iPhoto, etc. They were very excited. Isabel's current favorite word is "adorable". "Oh, look at that little kitty. Isn't she adorable? Oh, and that baby seal is adorable too! So is that horse! Isn't he adorable?". Kinda ironic. Thursday, April 29, 2004
Ok, here are a few pictures of my brother's new bay window we built last week.
In the first shot, you can see the siding isn't finished, but you get the idea. It was just blank wall there. The third shot is one of the infamous tipi. Lots of partys happen in there. The next two are inside views, but it was too dark for me to get a picture of the views. Ah well. The last shot is my brother Dan. In the background you can see the snail they painted on the stair wall. Wooo! I'm excited. I'm getting one of the new 15" PowerBook G4s from work. The last Mac powerbook I got from work was a 520 back in maybe 1993. Now if Apple would just release the new G5s so I can replace my desktop as well... Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Holy smokes. Yesterday's bike ride home was the worst one ever. Many bad decisions led up to this event.
First, it looked like a thunderstorm, and a few minutes before my day was over I was debating leaving early to try to beat it, or staying until it had passed. Both would have been excellent choices. As I left my building, it started raining. I was wearing my gortex jacket, but not the pants or the neoprene overbooties for my shoes. After I got to my bike, I put my pants on and started biking home. The rain was pouring pretty heavy by this time. Normally, rain isn't much of a problem, but then it started to hail. Heavy hail, mixed with rain. Fucking hurt hitting my poor mostly-bald head (the helmet only protected my head so much since it has large ventilation holes) plus it was cold as crap. Then my shoes filled with water. Icy cold hail water. Gah. It sucked. Very very unpleasant. Monday, April 26, 2004
Today was finally warm enough to wear shorts to work. It's supposed to get near 80F today.
Another busy weekend. My folks showed up late Friday night, and early Saturday we started cutting a giant hole in the back of my brother's house for a new bay window. The room is on the main floor, but the ground slopes down so it's 10' in the air in back. My dad owns a set of scaffolding, and he'd brought it, but he forgot to bring the cross-braces that make it useable. My brother rented a set of cross braces, but they were for a different brand of scaffolding, slightly too short. He spent a bunch of time on the phone trying to get the correct pieces, meanwhile my dad was about to start building some braces out of 2x4s. Finally I took a look at them and figured a way to make the rental braces work for us. A little bailing wire to tie things together and we were able to build some scaffolding to stand on while we worked. Much much nicer than working on ladders all day. They started framing the new bay window, but I had to head back to my house for a prior engagement. B was going out to lunch with her mom group friends and the dads and babies were coming over to our place. We basically let the kids run rampant, while we drank beer and grilled up some bratwurst. It was lots of fun. I spent a bunch of the afternoon back at my brother's house helping. Most of the time was spent waiting while some particularly difficult angled cut had to be made. It's amazing how difficult it can be to carpentry with lots of angles and get it right. Saturday night we went to a friend's house for his birthday Tiki-themed party. There was a fun group of people there, lots of folks I don't see very often so it made for fun conversation. The tropical froo-froo drinks weren't very strong, so I took a brandy snifter and taped a little umbrella to it and poured myself a hefty few fingers of McCarthy's oregon single malt whiskey. Very tasty, I need to get a few bottles for myself again. On Sunday I went back over to my brother's to help out again. Cutting the roof pieces was kicking my brother's ass until I convinced him to cut a piece of cardboard and use that for a template. By 1pm we had all three of the windows hung, so the easy part is now done. They now need to do all the detail work of replacing the siding, doing trim work, roofing the bay window, and doing all the interior trim. I'm much better with rough carpentry than finish work, fortunately it's not my job. Friday, April 23, 2004
Ok, this article in Equire is hilarious. The guy took $2k in $20 bills and tried to see how far he could get tipping people. He got someone to trade their first-class seat on a flight, he jumped cab lines, got seats in restaurants and theaters, etc. Very funny, and some useful advice as well. It must be good to be the king.
So yesterday B had to take the kids to the doctor's office since they still have sinus infections. Lovely green boogars. Great. Anyway, while she was there the nurse asked how tall Isabel is. (She's 40" and not quite 3 yrs old). She was shocked, her 7yr old daughter is only 2" taller. Uff-da. My folks are coming this weekend to my brother's house to help them knock a large hole in the side and build a bay window with bench seat. Should be a fun project. There was a huge rotten spot in the sheathing under the siding when they took the siding off. Makes you wonder what hidden damage other houses have. My office is a boondoggle addition to a boondoggle addition to a former public space in my building. The wiring is a total disaster, but the part that really concerns me is this bit of conduit above my head. The load through that circuit is so high that it makes the conduit vibrate. It's sorta like a buzzing alarm going off in the next office 24x7. I can get it to quiet down a bit by thumping it, but I finally had someone from Physical Plant come check it out. He basically said I was %&$*3ed, they'd only be concerned if it was too hot to touch. Gah! I got my boss to agree to have new circuits pulled in the next two offices (my server room and my student helper den) so the load in this conduit can be reduced. Hopefully it won't take 36 months. Thursday, April 22, 2004
Holy freakin' cow. A house down the street went on the market last week for $630,000. It's smaller than mine, but nicer. It sold in a week, which means they probably got full price or higher in this market. HOLY HELL. That's a lot of money. No way could I afford my house today. Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Man, speaking of zombies, I was a total zombie yesterday after only getting 2 blocks of 2hrs sleep. Gahooba.
Anyway, I got lots of sleep last night, it was really good. Sleeeeeep. I tried to start Dan Simmon's Hyperion, since it won a Hugo, but it has really fine print, and I was too tired to concentrate. Instead, I watched Monster House: Mad Scientist House, which was the worst butchery of a house on that show yet. Uff-freakin-da. It made Christmas House look good, and they had to restore that owner's house to it's original format. Let's see, they removed all his furniture, replacing it with a gurney, two bean bags, and a splintery electric chair. Super. No more dining room, no more places to sit. Lovely. The weird purple fabric on the walls is also just bizarre. They got lucky the homeowner is stoned. Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Ok, I have to admit I have a soft spot in my heart for zombies. Thus, I had to go see the new remake of "Dawn of the Dead". Zombies, people stuck in a mall, what more can you ask for out of a movie? Well, they came up with some twists that rocked. I could pick a few nits with the plot and decisions made by the survivors, but basically I had a great time. What a fun movie. I was laughing my ass off.
Man oh man am I tired today. Harry was crying a few times around 1am, and getting up to take care of him woke me up enough to give me insomnia, so I was up from 1am to 4am. Ugga. I finished Terry Pratchett's "Guards! Guards!", it was awesome. I kept snorting or giggling out loud every few pages, something I never do. Very good, I'm going to have to track the rest of this series down. I also finished Philip Jose Farmer's "Time's Last Gift". It's a mind-candy time-travel story with a slight twist that's easy to predict with all the clues if you know anything about Farmer. Unfortunately some of the details he throws in have been invalidated by science in the interveining year. Some of his stuff is really really good, like his Riverworld series, or Maker of Universes series, yet a lot of his other stuff is schlock. His novel "Dark is the Sun" was my favorite for a long time, and I still think it's an amazingly unique adventure set near the end of the universe. I also really like "The Green Oddysee" and "The Stone God Awakens". Amazing that he's still alive at age 86. Monday, April 19, 2004
Ho! Fire! Gotta love fire. Of course, being the best wife ever, B let me go to the bonfire. It was awesome. I mixed up over a gallon of lovely accellerant, mixing used motor oil, diesel, gasoline, and some leftover ethyl alcohol in a bucket then pouring them into quart containers for distribution on the pile. The pile this year was huge.
Lighting it was a bit slow, I erred on the side of caution and didn't use enough gasoline. Once it caught, however, it roared. Fire was probably 20' high for the first half hour, and it was hot enough that people had to stand back about 25'. Mmm. Around 11pm, when it had burned down to a few large logs and huge coal bed, we started tossing ziplock baggies of gasoline on it, then throwing keg cups full of gas onto it. Phoom! One of the guests had brewed up a batch of belgian white. It's not my favorite style of beer, but it was a good one. Another sick monkey brought slivovitch, which I think is distilled from plums. Nasty paint thinner, that is. Throwing a sacrificial glass of it over the fire made a cooool blue fireball however. Another guest had brought a box of cigars, and I'd loaded my new titanium flask with Aberlour 10yr, which was much appreciated by a few guests. A good time was had by all. Isabel has a card game she invented. Basically, she takes a bunch of cards. (I've got probably 30 leftover used-up decks from poker) She hands some to B, some to me, and some to Harry. Then she askes "Daddy, do you have some passers?" I say, "yes", and hand her one or more cards. She then says she has some passers and gives some to B. Then she asks, "Mommy, do you need a clue?" and if B says yes, she hands her a few more cards. Each of us keeps saying those two phrases, "I need a clue, do you need a passer?" until someone can't stand it anymore. Uff-da. I can't wait for her to be old enough to understand Go Fish or other card games with actual rules. Saturday, April 17, 2004
Ok, here's my dilemma.
B's got us scheduled for a dinner party tonight with her baby group friends. Fun people, I'd enjoy myself a lot. However..... One of my friends is having his annual slash pile bonfire today. He lives out in the sticks near Fall City, on 9 acres, 3 of swamp, 3 of lawn, 3 of forest. He piles up the fallen branches and crap in a large slash pile, usually about 12' by 10' by 7' high, and as the pyro of my peer group, he invites me over to burn it. We soak it with a variety of accellerants, like jugs of used vegetable oil saved from frying, and mix that with diesel or gas, and torch it off. This creates a lovely column of flame maybe 30' high for a few seconds, which settles down to a nice bonfire. Since a nice bonfire isn't my goal, I hook up a shop vac on "blow" with an 8' piece of metal pipe on the end of the blower, and stick that into the base of the fire. That turns it into Hell's own blast furnace. Hot enough to melt a glass beer bottle down to slag in under 10 seconds. Hot enough to melt steel rebar so you can bend it into funny shapes. Maybe you can tell I'm a pyro... Anyway, to top that off, he's starting this year's burn with a molotov cocktail throwing contest. Crickey!! Like I can miss that!! Anyway, if I don't go to B's deal, I'm in the doghouse. I'm 1,000% positive the other guys at the dinner party tonight would understand, they're fun, but there's not going to be fire there. Homer Simpson: "I don't know why, but fire made it good" Thursday, April 15, 2004
Ugga. Got my taxes done last night, this year instead of getting a huge return we owe, but we got more money back each month last year. All told, I paid 4.4% of my gross income in federal income tax. Not too bad. I've got friends who made half as much who paid more total dollars. Crickey.
Poor little Isabel. She horked last night but didn't tell us, leaving a nasty mess for B to clean up this morning. Then this afternoon she was sittting on B's lap and horked all over both of them. Something about the smell of puke just turns my stomach. Ugga. Isabel is now watching her favorite movie, "Sleeping Beauty". Wednesday, April 14, 2004
More photos. Here's some from my birthday BBQ last Friday.
I also fixed the sidebar link to older family pictures. I had a great time last night, it was my 5th social dinner in a row. Friday was a BBQ for my birthday at my place, sat was a BBQ at a friends to celebrate the arrival of his russian mother in law, Sunday was Easter, Monday some friends had a steelhead BBQ because he caught a steelhead, and last night we had a BBQ for my friend from Munich who was in town. I think tonight I'll just rest, bathe the children, and do my taxes. Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Ok, I finally started taking some pictures with my digital camera.
To start, here's my Booze Cabinet as well as my wine racks and my beer fridge. By my count, I've got roughly 161 bottles of liquor, 73 bottles of wine, port, champagne, and mead, about 50 bottles or cans of beer, 4 ciders, and one nasty clear malt beverage that a friend left after poker. Monday, April 12, 2004
Saturday night we went to a friend's BBQ. Their daughter just turned 5. When buying clothes for Isabel, B has often thought Isabel was the size of a five year old, but seeing them stand next to each other, the same height, really drove it home. Uff-da. She'll be 3 in two months. Harry turns 2 in a month, and he's only a little smaller than she is. Uff-da.
On sunday morning we got them up and let them find plastic easter eggs all over the living room. Isabel still would only get pink ones, knocking Harry over if he found a pink one, and putting other colors into his basket. She also figured out some had stuff in them, and others were empty, so she would pick one up, shake it, and if it didn't rattle, she'd put it back where she found it. Heh. The weather was amazing, 77F and sunny. My mother-in-law had gone to Texas to see her other grandbaby, and I was laughing cuz the weather there was rainy and cruddy. Not too often you see it sunny here and rainy there! Today is overcast and 60F. We had a lovely bone-in spiral ham for easter dinner. Our plans to go down to visit B's aunt fell when B's aunt fell off her porch and broke her collarbone last week. Ouch! Saturday, April 10, 2004
I had a good birthday BBQ last night. The weather was great, sunny and 70, clear skies. Totally beautiful Seattle day.
We had 15 guests, I cooked up burgers and brats. Typical of my friends, my presents were mostly booze. A bottle of Craggenmore 12yr single malt scotch, a bottle of Aberlour 10yr single malt, a bottle of Maccallan Cask Strength (no age statement), as well as a bottle of Maker's Mark bourbon and a bottle of Wilderberry liqueur from the remainder bin at the liquor store. B got me a titanium flask to put booze in, and the newest two Horatio Hornblower DVDs from A&E. I also got a lovely cigar, a Artero Fuente Opus X, which is a really friggin' expensive smoke, I think they're around $25. Crickey. It was good, really good, but only slightly better than a decent $6 cigar. I won't be buying them, let's put it that way. This morning I woke up feeling pretty good, so we thought about going to the zoo, which was a real zoo because they were having an easter egg hunt. It was totally nuts. Huge crowds everywhere, strollers galore. Uff-freakin-da. Anyway, when we got to the egg hunt for 2 and under, it was hysterical. There were eggs everywhere, and little toddlers chasing after them. Harry would pass easily 50 eggs to find one. Isabel did something I'd never seen before, she only picked pink plastic eggs. Her whole bag was filled with pink eggs. It was pretty funny looking. After the zoo we stopped by Dicks Drive-in for some yummy greasy hamburgers and shakes. MMMM!! Friday, April 09, 2004
Happy Birthday to me! I'm 36 today.
Man, I felt like crap all day yesterday. Too much beer. Yeah, I know, it's blasphemous, but it's true. Sigh. Isabel has this toy dog that if you squeeze the ears, it plays music and vibrates enough so it hops around. Apparently it has a short in it somewhere, since now it will only play music, and if you pick it up and slam it down, it will start to hop. Isabel explained it to me, "You have to stomp it, Daddy. That's all." I finished Terry Pratchett's "The Color of Magic", the first of his Discworld books. Fun, and very very clever. Lots of really clever bits. He's a creative guy. I think I've owned this book for nearly a decade, but never got around to reading it until a friend loaned me "Guards! Guards!" telling me to read that one. I'll probably start to pick up the rest of the Discworld series as I hit used book stores. Thursday, April 08, 2004
Awoooga. I'm hung like a french monkey today. Uff.
My not-brother-in-law Bill (my sister in law's boyfriend, hence he's not my brother in law...) called me the other day asking if I wanted to go see the Mariners with him. He and my sister-in-law bought a 16 game pack (suckers!) and she'd hurt her back so he had an extra ticket. Of course I said yes. One of my poker buddies is a manager for the company who does concessions for Safeco Field. We always bug him about getting free tickets or a free luxury suite, but he doensn't work for the Mariners or Safeco field, but he did say he could hook us up with food and beer if we come to the game. We called him up a few hours before the game, gave him our seat numbers, and asked him to hook us up. Very shortly into the first inning, one of his employees shows up at our seats with a tray of 4 large microbrews, (Mac & Jacks African Amber) and two chicken-strips and fries meals. WoooO! Not only free food and beer, but he made someone else deliver it for us! It was good to have the beer, because the Ms got shelled again. Two games into the season, and the team has given up 19 runs. With Moyer's ERA of 9.53, Pineiro's ERA of 18, and the bullpens abysmal ERA, it may be a long season. Ah well, football is where it's really at anyway. I'm only a fair-weather M's fan. Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Ha. Ok, yesterday B took the kids up to Everett to see the Wiggles in concert. For those of you who don't know, the Wiggles are a group of four poofs from Aussie who have a kids show where they sing and dance. Each one wears a specific color. Actually, it turns out that 3 of the 4 are married with kids, so maybe I just assumed singing and dancing guys were poofs. Normally a fairly good assumption.
Anyway, opposite of what I would have guessed again, Isabel was terrified the whole time, clutching Bridget in a death-koala hug, where Harry had a grand old time. "Anthony!" he'd yell, and point. B went with some of her mom group friends, and they all choose the 3pm show instead of B's preferred 7pm show, so the kids missed their naps, and I came home to an empty house. I figured B would be happy if the house looked nice when she got back, so I picked up all the toys, vaccuumed the living and family rooms, did the dishes, and cooked up a pot of chicken noodle soup. I was correct, she was VERY happy. I must admit my chicken noodle soup kicks ass. Occasionally we buy one of those $5 rotisserie-cooked chickens that every grocery store around here sells. We'd had one on Sunday, and I saved the carcass after we were done in a gallon ziplock bag and stuck it in the fridge. I take a pot, add 5-6 cups of water, and set it to boil. I chop the carcass into chunks, and toss it in, with every remaining bit going into the pot, skin and all. If we have carrots or onions around, which is normal, I chop some of those and toss 'em in. Add some salt, pepper, a sprinkle of red pepper flakes, celery seed (we don't normally have celery in the fridge or I'd chop some up), onion powder, dried cilantro flakes, and parsley if I have it. Plus my secret ingredient, a couple of chicken buillion cubes for extra flavah. Once that's boiling, I reduce heat, cover, and let it simmer maybe 20 minutes or so. Then I take it off the heat, skim off any fat, and pour the liquid through a strainer into another pot. Into that pot goes some pasta, a handful of basmati rice, and a handful of wild rice. It goes back on the burner to simmer 20-30 minutes more. I then pick through the solids in the strainer, cleaning picks of ichor, skin, fat, connective tissue, etc off the juicy tender bits of chicken meat. You'd be surprised how much meat is still on a carcass. All that, plus any carrot chunks goes into the soup pot. Damn it's tasty. Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Saw Hellboy last Friday. I was going to go with B, my friend Thom, and the couple who just got married in Vegas two weeks ago, but B was getting a cold, and the wife of my friend ate some bad sushi and was yakking so they couldn't go either. Thom and I went, bought our tickets, and went to the hotel bar across the street from the Neptune theater. The bar was pretty nice, very upscale, pretty typical for a hotel bar but not so typical for the University district.
The movie was a lot of fun. It wasn't Spiderman, but what is? It was much better than the League of Extraordinarily Stinky Gentlemen. Ron Perlman was awesome. On Saturday both B and I felt like crap, but the weather was so awesome we took the kids to the beach. They loved playing in the sand, and Golden Gardens park has a few creeks from groundwater upwelling that they loved to play with. Harry basically sat in the water helping the stream push sand and rocks down to Puget Sound. Of course his diaper was cold and wet after that, ugga. After we got home we fed the kids lunch, put them down for their naps, B went for a nap, and I did yard work. Saturday evening we'd had a BBQ planned, so we had a BBQ with a bunch of friends. I didn't feel well enough to drink, but I had a good time anyway. Our friends who just got married had gotten a TiVo for a wedding present, so they brought it over with a big hard drive and I performed my 5th TiVo hard drive upgrade. I guess that makes me a TiVo hard drive upgrading Ace now. Heh. On Sunday we mostly just lazed around. I had to get up early with the kids because B felt even worse. Ugga. I miss getting my one day a week to sleep in. Ah well. Yesterday I was feeling normal again, and B was much better, thankfully. The weather was good again, and it's daylight savings, so after dinner we took the kids to the huge playground at Magnuson Park. There were only a half dozen other kids there, they had a blast. Harry pushed this rusty hulk of a Tonka truck crane (with the crane long gone) around and around and around for over half an hour. Isabel excited went from swings to slides to climbing to pretending she was taking orders at a restaurant and back to swings. It's good to work some energy out of them. Friday, April 02, 2004
If anyone who reads this still plays Clan Lord, I'd love to hear what they did for April Fools this year.
I've been having fun playing Neverwinter Nights lately. It's a bit weird playing 3rd edition D&D, since I know nothing about the rule system, but I don't normally know all that much about most RPGs that I play. I own Baldur's Gate I and II, and doing some searching, it appears BG1 is only MacOS9. Bah! Even Fallout got ported to OSX. Stupid GraphSim. Wooo! I've talked B into going to see Hellboy tonight. I'm excited, I hope it's good. |
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