Babes and Beer |
||
|
Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
Family Pictures Active blogs: Carpe Datum Cognitive Dissonance Dubious Quality Joe Delta Fishpimp A Clan Lord Journal Fun Turns to Tragedy! A Stitch In Time Free Market Fairy Tales Timmerov LJ & her dog The Phone Booth Chuck Pierce T-Homo The Brad Hole Greg Costikyan Phil Steinmeyer Ty Robin Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools Mostly inactive blogs: WOPR Spring Tide The Tangential Jeff Schell Clan Lord blogs: Fierce and Furry: The Adventures of Hor |
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
My cable modem has been sucking lately. Apparently it gets the bare minimal signal to function, and sometimes not even that. Much of the past few weeks we've had no connectivity. Seems to work fine early in the morning most of the time, but hardly ever during the day. The cable guy was out yesterday, he says they need to replace the entire line, but it's going to be next Weds before they can come out. Gah! Stupid cable. No fat pipe makes me angry!
Poor Harry. One side of his neck is all swollen, I dunno what it is a gland or something. We brought him to the doctor yesterday and they didn't know either, they said if he was an adult they'd order a CAT scan, but he wouldn't hold still for that. Ugh. Scary. Anyway, he's got an appointment with an Ear-Nose-Throat doc tomorrow morning, hopefully he can figure it out. Monday, August 30, 2004
Yes, yes, I've been remiss. By the way, this is my 700th blog entry, apparently I've been averaging 4 posts a week over the past 3 years.
I'm fine, B's fine, kids are fine. The kids moved into their new bedroom over the weekend. We'd taken everything out of the guest room, B painted all the walls to about 7' in a light green, and the walls above that in light yellow, then I installed crown molding at that 7' mark. Looks awesome. I hurt my brain for two hours on saturday trying to figure out what exact angle to cut the crown molding at so they butt up together correctly, (note it's not 45 degrees and 45 degrees cuz a 45 at a 45 isn't 45 anymore...) and finally tossed in the towel and bought square blocks for the corners so I could cut the crown moldings straight. Wooo! That made it easy. It was also especially easy cuz I borrowed my friends air compressor and finish nail gun, ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk, easy as pie. Looks pretty sweet, too. The kids love it. Saturday night we went to a party at one of B's friend's house. They'd just moved to just over a mile north of us, and it was a pretty fun party. Many of the guys were drinking Rainer ales, trying to decipher the stupid sayings on the bottle caps. (You know, like a beehive for "i've", etc) It was a fun crowd even though most of them, like the host, were Microsofties. At one point the propane tank for the BBQ ran dry (d'oh! Faux paux!) and we figured the quickest replacement was to run to my place for my spare. My mother in law is finally living downstairs in my mother-in-law apartment. I got her cable routed to both of her TV sets, got her entertainment center console built (she bought one of those crappy particle board pieces of shit from Walmart that I loathe), and got power to her living room TV and to her computer. I keep trying to add her to our wireless network, but the USB wireless NICs all apparently require Win98 Second Edition, and she's got regular Win98. Gah! Guess I'll have to upgrade her to WinXP. Tuesday, August 24, 2004
You know you are a geek when you can't use the word "scum", as in, "that water in the sink is covered in scum", without adding the phrase "and villainy", as in "the water in that sink is covered in scum and villainy. We must be cautious."
Yeah! My blog is working again. All bow to Mr Nosuch and his hosting! I've been having fun with Mini vMac. It's a Mac Plus emulator, runs great in OSX. I've been able to play Pirates!, Reach for the Stars, and Lunar Rescue, all nearly perfectly. We went camping last weekend at La Wis Wis, with 24 of B's relatives from WA, OR, and Colorado. Very fun, but Saturday evening we got some 40 days and 40 nights wrath-of-god type rain. Of course it all flooded straight to my tent, which sucked. At 5am I woke to check on Isabel, she'd fallen off her air mattress and was sleeping in a pool of water. Gah! Wet child! We got her dried off and stuck her on our bed between B and myself for the rest of the night. Harry was in a porta-crib which puts him 4" off the ground so he was perfectly dry and happy. Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Well, apparently B got a call from from friends-of-friends today, saying their nanny had bailed on them and asking if B could do daycare for their new baby short term. Well, until Feb when she gets baby #4 (katie (who is baby#3) is getting a new brother) she can take one one more. Damn but babies are so cute.
I'm sorta sad. My babies aren't babies any more. I mean, they're way easier now, and loads of fun, but they're not babies. No more babies for me. I just bought 9 Seahawks tickets. Going with a large group of friends. This will be the first time in a decade I've paid for 'Hawks tickets, and my first time in the new stadium. I'd have season tickets if I didn't have Husky season tickets already. Speaking of which, I should have already received my Husky tickets, the first game is in 19 days. Holy Glub! 19 days until Husky football! Woooo! Of course, last season sapped my will to live, and there isn't any real reason to expect more from this season, except low expectations. The media picked the Dawgs to be 7th in the Pac-10, the lowest we've EVER been picked since there has been a Pac-10. Hopefully they'll use their underdawg status to win some games and make a decent bowl game. Tonight I'm going to snap some chalk lines in the guest room (soon to be kids room) so B can paint more. She is having the first 7 feet or so in some shade of green, and the upper couple of feet are now some shade of yellow. I'll add some crown molding along the paint line, it should look nice. Once the new paint is on, the kids can move in. Sunday, August 15, 2004
Yesterday started for me at 4am. After my alarm went off, I got up, went downstairs, and started the pot of decaf coffee that I'd set up the night before. Got dressed, filled a thermos with the coffee, and went over to my friend Chuck's house. Would have made it in 10 minutes with 4:30am traffic, but the Aurora Bridge was closed due to a car fire so I had to go around.
Chuck and I have been wanting to cook a whole pig for a long time, and he finally pulled it off. In the dark in his backyard, in a roasting pit built with free cinderblocks from craigslist he had his 100lb pig on the rotating spit that an engineer friend designed and built. Basically the frame was a rotating rectangle, and after putting 4 rebar skewers through the pig, we used bailing wire to attach the rebar to the rotating frame. Unfortunately, the design was a 1.0, so the motor didn't have enough grunt to spin the pig slooooowly (like 2 rpm or slower, one rotation every few minutes would have been ideal). It either couldn't spin it at all, or it spun it something like 45rpm, which is WAY too fast. The backup plan was to just rotate Mr Piggy 180 degrees every 10-15 minutes. We lined briquettes up along both long sides of the pit, with none directly underneath so that dripping fat would land on dirt, not flare up and possibly catch the pig on fire. (once a pig catches on fire, you can't put it out without encasing it in firefighting foam or something similar.) I stayed until 7am, helping with the flipping and adjusting the coals, and tighting the bailing wire that attached the rebar to the frame. Then I drove home, half blind because I forgot sunglasses at 4:30am. The kids got up shortly, and I let B sleep in. Made eggs with the kids, and when B woke up I had already gotten the kids dressed, and loaded them up to take them to the Zoo. B had asked for a few hours sans kids so she could work on painting the trim in the guest room (soon to be the kids room). We had a great time at the zoo. When I got back I took a nap so I would be refreshed for the party that night. We had babysitting, which was great, and we drove off to the party. We got Mr Piggy off the frame onto a table, and after the bailing wire was removed and the burned leather skin chunks, the meat underneath was extremely moist and succulent. Fork tender, I could take scoops of meat out with a large metal spoon. I helped Chuck strip the meat off, and he was giving me a tour of all the cuts of meat on a pig. Every so often we'd slurp up a piece of particualrly tasty meat, moaning "oh yeah baby that's the stuff". Since the shoulders and butt of a pig are larger, he'd stuffed a pair of whole chickens into the body cavity to even out the cooking, and holy christ chicken cooked inside a pig, basically cooked in pork fat, are damn tender, juicy, and delicous as well. After we'd gotten all the meat harvested, I snuck the pig head out to the front yard where I placed it on a spike out near the street. (They live on this crazy 7-way intersection on the north end of Queen Anne hill). Heh. Friday, August 13, 2004
Ugh. Ok, so where was I? It's been hot as hell here, in the mid 80s.
B had a dentist appt the other afternoo. I went home a little early to watch the kids. I'm sitting under the ceiling fan, trying to cool off, when I look over at Harry, and he's got a handful of shit. Fuck! His diaper had blown out at the leg, and I couldn't smell it because the fan was blowing it away from me. Finally, I get him cleaned up, and turn around, and Isabel says, "Uh oh Daddy, I had an accident!" She's standing in a puddle of pee on the carpet. Gah! My #1 did a #1, and my #2 did a #2. Sigh. B's been painting the guest room. We're swapping the large guest room with the small kids' room, so the kids have more space for their crap, er toys. With B's mom living downstairs, our guest room will get a lot less usage anyway. This time I bought the gallon jug of TSP, it's only twice as much as the quart, and it's not like it goes bad. The damn yellowjackets keep chewing their way out of the GreatStuff(tm) expanding insulating foam, so I keep sealing them back in. I'll know this afternoon if last night's foam-out worked. Corey and I have now played 26 head's up texas hold'em tourneys. We're 13 and 13. Heh. A lot of luck is involved in head's up texas hold'em. Thursday, August 12, 2004
Turns out Isabel is just fine, perfectly normal. Our doctor didn't like what she heard so she sent us to a specialist, who said everything is great, no problems at all.
Ugga. Stress. At Isabel's 3 yr well-baby checkup last month, our doctor thinks Isabel might have a heart murmur. Today we take her to a cardiologist for a sonogram to check, and find out if they think it'll close on it's own, or if she will need surgery.
owowowowow. Heart surgery. Uff. Wednesday, August 11, 2004
I'm back from vacation. Huge quantities were drunk, good times were had. Great having all my brothers together for a weekend. Thursday, August 05, 2004
Drove to Spokane yesterday, a relatively uneventful drive. B's mom convoyed with us since her last day of work was Monday and she's going to spend a few weeks here. After we stopped for lunch in Moses Lake, I drove her car the rest of the way while she rode in our van with B and the kids. Since all of my cars have a range greater than 300 miles, I forgot to gas her car up there, and nearly ran out before getting to Spokane. Much of that last 60 miles doesn't have any gas stations until you are right in Spokane, and following B driving 80+mph takes a lot of gas out of that little ricegrinder.
Last night I picked up my friend Nate, his friend Josh, and two of my neices and my nephew and we went out to State Line, Idaho to the racetrack for their Wednesday Night Madness Bump-to-Pass races. Old cars racing around a short (1/4 or 1/8th mile) track. So much fun, full-contact racing. Lots of great spinouts, two good crashes into the wall, white trash fun for all. Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Woo! Tonite was our street block party, and it turns out one of our new neighbors is an owner of Pike Place Brewery, and he brought a keg. Mmmmmm. I'm handily pickled now, but I don't work tomorrow. FOr the next week I'm on vacation. Monday, August 02, 2004
You gotta love how literal kids are. Today when I got home from work, B was holding Isabel in the kitchen, and Harry was standing next to them, facing away from me. I asked him if he wanted to give me a hug, and he said 'uh huh!". "Ok, Harry, turn around and let me pick you up!" He turns around 360 degrees, ended up facing away from me again. Ha!
Let's see. Ozzfest was awesome. The mosh pit on the 2nd stage was great fun, I love mosh pits. One band (Lamb of God, I think) had us moshers line up in two lines on both sides, and then charge each other ala 'Brave Heart'. Too damn funny. Mass destruction. At 2:30pm they finally opened up the beer gardens. Much beer was consumed. More beer was consumed. It was hot. At 4:30pm they opened up the main stage, with some crappy bands I didn't know, and at that point I was pretty distressed to find out our freakin' $100 tickets did NOT get us access to the front mosh pit. In my drunken state, I tried bribing my way in, three times at my side of the amphitheater, and twice at the far side. No luck. Gah! Anyway, I ended up having to be in our reserved seats about 300' away. It wasn't all bad, these two sluts sitting in front of us starting doing a striptease and making out with each other during Judas Priest, but I'd still rather be in the mosh pit. Judas Priest was awesome. Rob Halford's voice was SO damn good. That was all that was good about him, man oh man he's gotten super fat, it's hard to imagine old bald fat buttrockers, but there you have it. He was wearing this ludicrous leather tent-sized cape too. Damn. My brother Johnny (#1 of 6) was half dead of some plague or another, and Steve (#2 of 6) had gotten too drunk, he missed the last two bands entirely, sleeping through Black Sabbath. Too damn funny. On Weds morning the brothers and I went to play gold at the local par 3 at Greenlake. I suck at golf, can't drive to save my life, but I can putt OK, so I was hoping to hit par 6. Two bad holes (9 and 10 strokes) and I ended up missing even that, but it was fun. A greasy Dicks burger set my hangover straight as well. Weds afternoon, that moving of the giant machine tool, was a boondoggle I should write about, but it made me too weary to do so now. Thursday I caught the cold B and the kids had had. I slept all day, and woke up feeling pretty good on Friday, but Harry had had a 101F fever for two days. All our friends were gathering at our house that morning to go on our group camping trip. B decided that Isabel and I would go and she would stay and take Harry to the doctor. Isabel and I had a great drive, leading the 4 vehicle convoy. It was a fun camping trip, B showed up friday afternoon, Harry's fever had broke and she had antibiotic for him. I fed the kids lots of junk food like "pink sticky", which is what I call the pink lemonade variety of the gallon jugs of coolaid type beverage available at local grocery stores. It used to be a buck a gallon, and since it's so loaded with sugar and the jugs are invariably sticky from spilled product, we call it by the color and the word sticky. Red sticky, orange sticky, and the least distasteful pink sticky. Man a college bet involved the loser drinking half a jug of sticky. Anyway, I fed some to Isabel, she loved it. "That's good and sticky, Daddy!" Heh. Plus the kids are sluts for cheesy poofs, they just love them. We've got a yellowjacket nest in the eaves of the house, and poison hasn't worked, so I finally hooked up the shop-vac and hose. Holy smokes, that worked awesome. It is SO damn funny to see them try to take off or land, and get slurped down the hose. Wooo! I don't wanna open the tank now, however. Heh. |
|