Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Monday, January 31, 2005
It was a very fun weekend, nice to be with the family again.
Friday night B didn't want to cook so we went to Chinook's, a fish place down on Fisherman's Terminal. If it hadn't been raining we could have walked out on the docks and looked at some of the boats of the Alaska fishing fleet docked there. Saturday morning we went for a walk at the Zoo, the kids had a great time as they always do. Isabel got slightly cold and so at the end I warmed her up by zipping her inside my jacked with her head out the neck hole, and she loved it. "Nice and snug, right Daddy?" On Sunday B had a lunch with some of her moms, and the kids and I dragged a futon onto the living room floor for a knock-down drag-out tickle fight. Heh. I almost always manage to tire them out enough to nap. Sunday night we had a dinner party with B's mom group friends, 9 adults and, um, crickey, 8 kids. Very funny, tasty spiral ham. Tonight I took the kids to the library while B goes to her jazzercise class, they love getting new books each week. Man, the checkout procedure kicks ass. Pass the barcode on your card under the scanner, then set up to four books at a time on the flat scanner, it automatically reads what exact book you have. Click done, you're done. Dunno if they're using RFID or what, but it's way cool. I reserved a book online, they emailed me saying it arrived, I checked it out. Sweetness. Sunday, January 30, 2005
Every time I make sandwiches for the kids, as I pull pieces of bread out of the bag, I say, in a Sean Astin accent, "Lembas bread, and MORE Lembas bread!"
I know I'm a geek. Thursday, January 27, 2005
So my friend Corey, aka WOPR, decided the day they were released to order a Mac Mini. 1.42Ghz, 512Mb ram. He places the order a few hours after the annoucement, but accepts the free 5-7 day shipping vs overnight. He started getting excited when he read that some where shipping early, then he gets email from Apple saying his shipping date is now March 13th. He was all pissed off, so I suggested he call around and see if either the local Apple Store or the University Bookstore has any in stock that he can buy at his academic discount.
It turned out the U Bookstore *did* have one left in stock, and so he went up to buy it. He didn't reserve it, and they only had one unit left, so he didn't cancel his online order. (D'oh!). He managed to get the last Mac Mini, but while they were ringing it up someone came in asking for one, so it was close. The next morning he gets email from Apple saying that his Mac Mini had shipped. WTF??! I mean, sure he should have cancelled before buying one elsewhere, but they had JUST sent him email saying March. He asked me if I wanted one, and I told him he should call up Apple and bitch and moan, asking for a manager if needed. He calls Apple. The person who answered the phone said "Nope, no way. No returns on 'custom configurations'". (Added RAM). He askes to speak to that person's supervisor. "Nope, no way. No returns on custom configs." He asks to speak to the supervisor's boss. "Um, eh sure what the hell. It's not like we can't resell it, that's all anyone is ordering anyway."
B got a framed Leroy Neiman piece, "End Around (Larry Brown)" from her father, and besides pictures it's all she has to remember him by. It was at her brother's house in San Antonio, and he went to a UPS Store to have it packed and shipped up to us.
Reading up here on his web site shows that limited edition serigraphs are the correct size, signed in pencil in the margin by Leroy Neiman, and numbered, in this case 300. Ours has the hand signature, but no number, instead it has AP hand written in pencil. Apparently that means our copy is an "artists' proof", and while those are also normally numbered, we've been told now that early artist's proofs weren't numbered. Several places on the web have the numbered serigraphs of End Around listed for between $2,000-$3,000. We don't know if the artist's proofs are worth more or less. However, it was matted and framed, and UPS handled it very roughly, shattering the glass. One piece of broken glass put a 1" slice into the picture, and the matting is destroyed as well. Theoretically UPS is going to pay to rematte and frame it, but who knows how much value it lost due to the scratch. It wasn't insured for anything extra because until we got it and researched it, we didn't know it had any real value. Wednesday, January 26, 2005
What a week. The kids have been great, we're having a blast playing together. They really missed me, it's fun to roughhouse with them. Last night B and I took them to our new local library, which is only 3/4 of a mile away. It was doubled in size in the last year, making it very nice. The kids each got to choose a book to check out, and they loved it. I'm going to try to start the tradition of taking them to the library every week from now until they're in their mid-teens and old enough to go on their own. I loved it when my dad took us to the library as kids.
Funny, their policy on paperback novels isn't to check them out, just take them and return them when you are done. They're not worth the effort to catalog and keep track of. I didn't check anything out, because I'm in the middle of book 3 of the 20 Aubrey/Maturin "Master and Commander" novels by Patrick O'Brian. It'll be a while before I finish this series. The set is 5 hardbound books with 4 novels per, so I'll probably take a break between each one. I love them, they're really good. Monday, January 24, 2005
I'm back. Had a great time, but missed my wife and kids. I got in late last night, around 11pm, and went into work a little late this morning so I could get the kids up. They were SO happy to see me. Harry gave me a huge hug and said "Dad, you're my best friend!". Awwwwww!
Isabel had to show me her two 48-piece wooden jigsaw puzzles. She can solve both of them all by herself, it's pretty amazing to watch. Sunday, January 16, 2005
I'm here in Albuquerque, having a great time with my brother Lance and his wife Deann. My trip yesterday was a tad on the hellish side, since it involved getting up at 4am for a 6am flight to LAX, in my experience the world's worst airport. No signs, confusing layout, and to change gates (like to make your connecting flight to Dallas) you have to exit one terminal, walk outside in the weather to another terminal, and go through a long-ass security line. I mean, it's by far the most fucked-up airport I've ever even heard of. Gah.
I barely made my Dallas connection because I had an hour and 45 minutes and spent nearly all of them getting to the plane. Then in Dallas (a very very nice airport, not like that's difficult...) I had like 15 minutes to make my connecting flight to Albuquerque and the Dallas airport is size humoungous. I made that flight too, so I didn't have to call up Observer and beg a couch for the night, but I was dead tired when I made it here. This morning I got up early, we played some computer RPG (Planescape: Torment, supposedly very highly rated, uses AD&D 2nd ed rules, very bizarre game) then after some tasty breakfast burritos (my brother and his wife put green chilis in everything here) we started getting ready for a day of brewing beer. My brother's friend showed up with his brewing rig as well, so we brewed up two batches, one 6.5 gallons and another of 5 gallons, plus we kegged the stout Lance had aging for 3 weeks in the basement, it is SO freakin' tasty. MMMMMMMMMM!! I think I had 2 pints before noon, and 6-8 all told today. I might have to sneak into the garage where the keg fridge is and make sure it "hasn't gone bad". heh. Any excuse for a beer. (It's so freakin' dry here that I've also had 6 pints of water today) Lance brews with whole grains, so we spent some time grinding. Damn I wish I was going to be around in a month to taste these bad boys, his buddy's batch had 20lbs of grain in it, he's making a double imperial stout of doom. We also spent a lot of the day eating, Lance had made homemade bread, we had some brie for it, his buddy brought smoked salmon, and Lance and Deann made two huge freakin' stuffed crust pizzas, like 3" deep. Crazy amounts of food. By 6pm I felt a bit used up. I called B at 8pm to talk to her and the kids, they're in Spokane at her sister's place. Apparently there is a foot of snow on the ground and they'd gotten 2 more inches overnight, and the kids had a blast playing in it. Well, Isabel did, Harry had fun for a limited time but won't suffer gloves or mittens, so he suffers frozen hands which makes him cry after 10 minutes. Lance has a pair of puppies, they're white-colored yellow-lab and something mixes, very sweet. Instead of pups he calls him his poops, cuz they poop a lot. Mr Poopy McPooperson I & II, but their real names are Otto and Ajax. They're so sweet. Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Man, I finally caught the cold that the rest of my family has been fighting off and on for weeks. This sucks. I'm flying to Albuquerque on Sat for a week with my brother and his wife, and I don't wanna be sick while flying. Ugh.
Stupid cold. On Monday I went to bed at 8pm and slept through till 6:30, and last night I went to sleep at 9pm and slept through. I generally feel pretty good in the morning after that much sleep, but as the day drags on I get more weary. Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Wow. You know, in 21 years of making Macs, Apple has never sold anything close to as cheap as the Mac mini. My friend Corey was looking to replace his ghetto PC, thought this was the coolest looking computer ever, and bought one today. With the faster processor and a half gig of ram, it's $650. It's 3 times as fast as my G4 at home, and 1/3 the price. (Of course, my home G4-466 is 4 years old next month).
I think they'll sell like hotcakes. Anyone with a PC chock full of viruses and spyware can drop it in as a replacement. Too bad there isn't a way to use it as some sort of upgrade to those original bondi-blue iMacs. (I always wondered about that color name. I mean, that's a GREEN if I ever saw one. Not that I'm good with color...) Monday, January 10, 2005
Holy smokes. The Lion King kicked some serious ass. That was one hell of a good show. Some of the costume design was freakin' amazing. I don't know how someone thinks things like this up. Sunday, January 09, 2005
Wooo! A rare snow day here in Seattle. The kids got up all excited, so we put clothes over jammies and went outside to play. The snow was very moist, and PERFECT for making a snowman. I rolled up about half the snow in the backyard making a 4' snowman for the kids, Isabel named him Jaque. We had a snowball fight, Harry wouldn't wear gloves so he wouldn't touch the snow but he pushed a Tonka dumptruck around the grassy patch where the snowman making had slurped up all the snow. I also pulled Isabel around the yard on a big piece of plastic.
I'm very excited, B and I are going to see the broadway version of the Lion King today. It's supposed to be awesome. We wanted to see it when we visited NYC in 2000, but it was super waaaay sold out. Stupid Seahawks. It wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't have a lot of talent and find ways to blow it, or if we'd lost to a decent team, but we lost to a 8-8 team that can only basically beat US. Crickey. At least we lost by our signature play, the dropped pass. Thursday, January 06, 2005
Alright. I've got a beef about christmas lights. I was always under the impression that the Christmas season starts after Thanksgiving, and pretty much ends at New Years. Decorations are fine between those dates, but outside that it's just nuts. I put my Christmas lights up at the beginning of December, and just about nobody else in my neighborhood had anything up. I ran them all month, and unplugged the timer on New Year's Day, and took them down the next day. However, a bunch of the people in my neighborhood who put up lights (which is less than a quarter of houses) did so the week before Christmas, and still run them as of last night.
I mean, I guess I can understand if you bother to put up lights on the 22nd you wouldn't want to take them down the next week, but c'mon. Last year there were houses running their christmas lights nightly until March. This is almost as bad as the stores having Christmas displays in September. Hey, as long as I'm on a roll bitching about stupid things, my next target is the phrase "I loves me some ____". Man does that sound stupid to me. I've only recently encountered it, but now that it's under my skin I seem to see it everywhere, including today's PvP webcomic. Gah. This is coming from someone who regularly flogs the language to death, making up works like snacklicious. I don't cotton to that phrase, it's not copacetic. Speaking of copacetic, I remember when I first heard that word. When I was 20 I did a year of quasi-internship working the tech support phones at Microsoft for their Mac products. One older gentleman from somewhere in the South used it, and I was like, "What the heck did you just say!?!" It was nuts. Weird-sounding phrase. Last night I had to go over the our rental house, the tenents had some problems with the outlets in the basement not working. I immediately guessed that since no breaker was thrown, it had to be a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) outlet further upstream on that circuit, but what a fucked up circuit it ended up being. I spent 90 minutes testing everything, including taking the cover off the breaker panel to confirm that 120v was making it out of the breaker, before I finally managed to figure out this circuit included two of the kitchen counter GFCI outlets, which have to have the ground-fault circuit because they're near water. So, that circuit is 2 kitchen counter outlets, one outlet in the garage, and the far wall in the basement. NO rational order to that. Sigh. That's the trouble you find when your house has had several major remodels, but was never fully rewired. If I hadn't been so exhausted when I remodeled that kitchen 6 years ago, I would have either redone all that wiring correctly, or at least taken better notes. Sigh. Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Sad to see the end of another college football season. I suppose it should be happy, since it was the worst season in 110 years of Husky football. Sigh. Great run for USC, however. Interesting to watch them take Oklahoma apart, yet the Huskies hung with them for the first half.
Dang, it really freakin' cold here now. It was 25F this morning, made for a chilly bike ride. They're predicting an inch of snow, maybe, tomorrow. We'll see. It'd be fun for the kids. I'm very excited to be spending a week visiting my brother in Albuqueque in two weeks. Wooo! Much beer drinking and computer RPG playing. Will miss my family, however. Saturday, January 01, 2005
Man, can I ruin New Year's Celebrations or what? The only time they go well is when we have them at our place.
Uff-da. This year we were going out with another couple, and I figured B and Jeannette would figure something out, but by Friday afternoon nothing had been decided, so I finally was force to think up an idea, and came up with FX McRory's. The downtown steakhouse and whiskey bar was a favorite haunt of my friends and I when we were in our 20s and went out all the time. Huge whiskey and scotch selection, cigar friendly, a fun place all around. Turns out, they've gone non-smoking. Gah! No cigars for me and Chuck. Also turns out they close at 11:30pm. What the hell? A Pioneer square bar that closes before midnight, on NEW YEARS?!! Gah! We also didn't find this out until 11:30pm, which gave us zero time to do anything else but run home and watch the Space Needle fireworks on TV. Sigh. Woo hoo. We still had an OK time, it's always fun to get out with babysitting. I've watched 12 solid hours of football today. The Capital One Bowl nearly killed me, rooting for Iowa, and they gave up a touchdown with less than a minute to go, and drove down, made some mistakes, yet as time expired they pulled off a 56 yard touchdown pass to win the game. Unbelievable! It was sad for me to watch Texas win the Rose Bowl when they were only there due to shennanigans. Michigan sure is good at losing Rose Bowls. Utah looked good, but they were only playing Pittsburgh. I'd love to have seen them face someone tough, but it's still impressive that they went the whole season undefeated. |
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