Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Uff. Four BBQs in 4 days. Saturday night we went over to our friend Chuck's house. He's the one with tongue cancer. Him and his wife made a miso marinated salmon that was phenomenal. Man oh man, it was good. I had four servings it was so good. I spent a bunch of the day on Sunday cleaning out the garage and storeroom. The back of the truck is now completely full of junk for the dump, including two dressers that I've had since I was about 3. I was sad to get rid of them, but they were kinda piles of crap these days. Oh well. I found a recipe on FoodTV.com for baby back ribs with spicy root beer and bourbon glaze from Emeril. Bam! The glaze was alright, but the cooking method was awesome, I learned two great things. First, after putting a dry rub on the ribs, put them on a baking tray and pour in half a cup of chicken broth, seal airtight with aluminum foil, then bake at 275F for 2 hours. That makes the ribs so freakin' tender the meat falls off the bones. Next, put the oven on broil, then set a rack on the *lowest* setting. Apply the glaze to the ribs and use the broiler to cook it on. With the ribs so far from the burner, the glaze doesn't burn or char. Perfect! They were a big hit at dinner on Sunday, we ended up running completely out of ribs. Next time I'll buy more. On monday we were going to a birthday party for a friend's 3yr old daughter. It was at noon, and around 11:30 we checked MapQuest for directions. Uff-da! Estimated travel time, 50 minutes. His parents really live in BumFuck Egypt. Crickweasels. It was a fun party, they had a huge food spread. We headed straight from there to our 4th BBQ at B's sister's house, and after that B dropped me off 10 blocks away at my drinking club meeting. We didn't end up getting a quorum, so no investing got done, but lots of drinking was accomplished. A couple of us had cigars. One guy asked if Chuck getting tongue cancer affected our decision. I was like, 8.5 million to one? I like those odds! I woke up today feeling fine. Amazing considering. Saturday, May 28, 2005
Last night's BBQ was fun, burgers. My friend with tongue cancer is down to his last two radiation treatments and he doesn't have to have his last chemo treatment, so he had a bottle of champagne. Blegh. Sometimes champagne is OK, but it wasn't last night. This morning the kids and I took a walk through the ravine, over to Cowen park where we used the playground, then B joined us after her jazzercise and we went to the Farmer's Market. Yummy tasty fresh cheese curds! Woo! Friday, May 27, 2005
Holy crap was I en fuego last night at poker. I damn near couldn't lose, ended the night up $51. That's over $100 in the past 3 weeks. Nice! Man oh man do I love craigslist. Somebody hauled away my nearly dead dishwasher, and tomorrow someone is coming to pay for the working one, as well as the outdoor play toy the kids outgrew. We bought that sucker used for $45, and are selling it for $100 after 3 years of use. Gotta love those plastic Little Tykes stuff, it lasts forever. We have BBQs at someone's house each night this weekend, our place on Sunday. Anyone have any great baby back rib recipes? I need a freakin' beer post-haste. it's 88F outside, roasting freakin' hot. Record highs yesterday and today. Thursday, May 26, 2005
I finally got started staining the back steps and deck yesterday. Man oh man, after swinging a brush for an hour and a half I figured out why I went to college: So I don't have to paint for a living. I knew there was a reason I have B do all the interior painting. Ugh. Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Ok, I've got the weirdest boy ever. Last night for dinner we had beef stroganoff over pasta shells, asparagus, and brussels sprouts. Normally I only make enough brussels sprouts for myself and a few for Harry, since the girls won't eat them. However, in this case, Harry freakin' ate all of them. I doubt he's eaten more than 2 or 3 in a sitting before, but last night he ate probably 25 of them. Then he started on the asparagus. He refused to eat any of the pasta or stroganoff. I had to utter this highly unlikely phrase: "Harry, you need to stop eating vegetables and start eating some pasta or meat!" Raising kids is surreal, that's all I have to say about that. After dinner we tried walking to the library. It's about 3/4 of a mile away, and I know they've walked further distances than that before. We got there alright, but they decided they didn't want to walk home, so I called B and she came and got us. I would have simply gave Harry a shoulder ride if Isabel had been up for walking. After weeks of stormy "shampoo weather" (rinse and repeat) we've finally got some good spring weather again. Monday, May 23, 2005
B has migraine problems. She tries not to let it affect our lives, but lately they were getting worse. She's tried a zillion things, but when she'd had one from last Tuesday and still had it on Sunday and nothing was working, finally I told her to call the on-call doctor and see if there was anything else to try. He gave her a prescription for another anti-migraine medication, and it appears to have worked. She was practically floating last night she was so happy to not be in overwhelming pain. I suppose I had extra sympathy for her yesterday because I was pretty seriously hung over. Mike's Hard Limes are nasty, but Thom had run out of beer and it beat being sober. (shudder) I've finished the original six Del Rey published Ethshar novels by Lawrence Watt-Evans, so I can finally start on the two recent ones from Tor, and finally the chapter-a-week one on his web page. Blood of a Dragon is by far the weakest of the series, the main character is a spoiled 12 year old boy, and I never once sympathized with anything about him. He was selfish, moody, and obnoxious. Oh, and a serious ingrate. Spell of the Black Dagger was good, but I think Misenchanted Sword and With A Single Spell are the best. Taking Flight was relatively pointless. I mean, they're all sorta pointless, only Black Dagger is anything beyond a single person's quest for happiness, all very small scale. Sunday, May 22, 2005
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Last night we tried Fishpimp's sauteed clam recipe and holy cow was it good. I wish we'd made some pasta to have it on, but it was damn good on it's own with some artisan bread that had cracked pepper and whole roasted garlic inside.
Last night I went to my friend's local poker tourney. I did fine, having to re-buy once, but making it to the final table with a decent amount of chips. With 7 players left, I was the big blind and had pocket 10s. The flop was AA10. Woo! I made a full house, I was not afraid of flushes or straights. The chip leader had easily 4x as many chips as I did, and called my all-in with KQ of clubs, the board already had A10 of clubs. He needed Jc to win. The turn was an A, giving me a full house, aces full of 10s, but giving him a LOT more outs, any K or Q or Jc. The river was a fuckin' Queen. My Aces full of 10s lost to Aces full of Queens, losing on a runner-runner. Gah!!! I would have easily made the money with that win. Gahh!!! However, aces full of 10s losing *does* win the bad-beat jackpot, so I got $20 for my trouble, so the whole night only cost me $15, and I think I may have drank that much out of him. He had a case of atomic-thigh-spreaders, aka Mikes' Hard Limeade, aka the perfect drink if you want to get 15 year old girls drunk to screw them. Saturday, May 21, 2005
Last night we wanted to go out somewhere, but didn't feel like spending a bunch of money, so B made dinner at home and we went to U Village to the Ben and Jerrys for ice cream afterwards. The kids loved it, both of them think they love ice cream. Isabel actually finished her strawberry, Harry ate about half of his and considered it "done". The mall there has a new sushi joint, Blue C Sushi, with a name I love, and it's got a conveyer belt that runs through the whole place with price-color and bar-coded containers of sushi running around. A computer automatically rejects things that are more than an hour old. It looks like a lot of fun, but it was packed. Today we went to the University Street Fair, a bunch of food booths and vendors that lines 10 blocks of the main avenue near the UW every spring. We bought B a pair of earrings that were gold with black pearls. She wanted to think about it, but I knew if we did we wouldn't find them again and we'd regret it until the end of time. Sigh. Friday, May 20, 2005
Since B's mom left yesterday to San Antonio to be with B's brother and his wife (their new baby is due next week) she offered to babysit for us Wednesday night. First stop was to some house over in Bellevue where B had agreed to buy a kids outdoor play structure for $40 off craigslist.org. It turns out it's some German lego-like thing called Quadro, and if we'd bought the unit new it would be $550. Apparently they'd had a garage sale and marked it $40, but it didn't sell, so they put it on craigslist for that much. I bet it'd sell for $150 if we choose to relist it. I wish I could get more components for cheap, it's pretty awesome. Strong climing legos. Woo! Afterwards we went down to McCormick and Schmicks, where they were going nuts selling Fishpimp's Copper River Salmon. We sat in the upstairs non-smoking bar at the bar, and BSed with the bartender. He made B's whiskey sour all from scratch with sugar cubes and fresh-squeezed orange and lemon right in front of us. Impressive. He also gave me a bonus beer that he'd poured by mistake. Always one of the benefits of sitting at the bar is the occasional free "mistake" drink. Woo! Yesterday I got my aluminum G4 PowerBook back, they decided the easiest fix was a brand new LCD screen. Woo! Works like a champ and the new screen is a nice bonus. The old screen was slightly schmegged up. Last night I tried some 2nd best games, everyone unanimously hated them. I laughed. If Jeffe insists on calling his cum-garglers variant of Omaha-8 Hi-Lo (where if there isn't a low half the pot carries over to the next hand) I'll keep coming up with games to torture him. I did win $37, and for the second week in a row Jeffe went home at 9:30 after losing $40. Heh. This morning I took Harry into the Polyclinic to get another head CT scan. We got the printouts to take home with us because he's seeing an ENT doc at Children's Hospital next week as well as the regular ENT at the Polyclinic, so we could see that his sinuses have gone from 90% clogged to about 40% clogged in 3 weeks. MUCH better. The poor lil guy was such a trooper, the CT machine scared the crap out of him but he just sat there motionless, terrified. Thursday, May 19, 2005
Ok, yesterday in Seattle, it was about 60F, so it wasn't cold, and we had some torrential downpours for periods of time, then sun. Typical for stormy weather. Of course, all those geeks waiting outside the Cinerama for Star Wars got drenched. Then they got sweaty. And steamy. Lots of them have been in line for a day or more, probably without showering. Some of them undoubtedly haven't showered in a week anyway. I bet that midnight showing stunk to high heaven. Ha ha! Tuesday, May 17, 2005
On Saturday I spent the day going to Home Depot, buying 2 4x8' sheets of plywood, 13 2x4s, 16 Simpson StrongTie RTC24 connectors, and a couple boxes of screws, then building an 8' long, 2' deep beefy 4-shelf storage unit. It made a huge difference in organizing the basement bedroom we use as a store room, but I still need either another one or a 4' version. http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000589.php Saturday night B and her mom and sister went to see some movie, and I was trying to figure out what to do with the kids when the phone rang. A friend was calling to say he's won a free cake at the store. At first I thought he said he won a free keg, and I was like, "Oh man I am SO there, dude!" but alas, it was just cake. We went over anyway and let the kids riot in the backyard. They kept finding sticks where there were none, and playing whack-a-mole with each other. Isabel taught herself to swing since I was too comfortable sitting in a patio chair with a beer to get up and push her. She was VERY excited about that developement. Oh, and my stupid laptop. The G4 Powerbook latch that keeps the lid closed broke. It wil almost pretend it's going to close, but then it'll pop open, and best of all, it likes to bounce right at that point that tells the laptop it's on, no it's off, no it's on, etc etc etc. I took it into the Apple Store, they said it had to be shipped out, so I took it back home. Of course, I'd freakin' installed 10.4 on it, which breaks Carbon Copy Cloner, and large disk images are broken in 10.4, so I couldn't back up that way, I finally just logged in as root and did a finder copy. They better not freakin' reformat my disk. Also of course, 10.4.1 appeared in software update a mere 15 minutes after I'd dropped my Mac off, fixing the disk image issue. Sigh. On Sunday I moved the wine rack out of the kids' closet and into the newly cleaned up store room. It was in the kids' closet because that used to be the guest room. I took the closet doors off too, and we stuffed a ton of kid toy storage into that space, making a lot more room for the kids to play in. (Read: Room for more freakin' toys) Speaking of kid's toys, we'd bought a wooden box filled with musical instruments (a tamborine, two moraccas, a triangle, a pair of sticks, two cymbals, and a clacker stick) for Christmas before we figured out they had waaaay to many toys, so that box has been sitting in the upstairs hallway for 5 months facing the wall. Harry has walked past it a hundred times, but finally he said "Hey, what's this?" and it finally got opened. Isabel has been on a Twinkle Twinkle Little Star singing kick, and now she marches through the house, ringing the triangle loudly for every note. I was a fan of Lawrence Watt-Evan's Ethshar novels, starting with 'The Misenchanted Sword' and 'With a Single Spell', and recently saw this link to an experimental way he's releasing the 9th book. 9th?!? I only had six of them at home, I didn't know there were two more recent ones. Off to the bookstore I went, where I happily picked up #7 and #8. I've re-read 'Misenchanted Sword' and 'With A Single Spell' already and am reading 'The Unwilling Warlord' now. Once I finish re-reading the old ones and read my two new ones, I'll probably donate to the experiment. Saturday, May 14, 2005
Ouchie. My poor brother Dan, the landscaper, had an incident with a pruner this week that chopped his middle finger down to the bone, cutting the tendon. They tied it back together and sewed him up, but his hand is in a giant bandage for the next six weeks. Luckily for him a few weeks previously he'd finally signed up for the state labor and industries insurance, so now he is eligible for workman's comp for while he's unable to work and they'll pay his medical bills for this on-the-job injury. I don't think it's going to slow him down much, he's not one for sitting on his ass, but it's hard to do most of his job with only one hand. Woo! I've mentioned before that B's mom is back living with us for a week before she heads to Texas for three weeks to help her son with their new baby, and last night she offered to babysit for us. Our first date in probably two months! B wanted to go see a movie, and we'd both read the Clive Cussler book Sahara, so that was a natural choice. It was a pretty fun action movie, nothing great but a fun time. Afterwards we went to the Wedgewood Ale House, the bar next to Isabel's dance studio where I go every Saturday, B had only been there one time before. Actually, it was the bar I was at when she called my cell phone and told me to come over to her apt, the night we started dating. B had a tasty cheeseburger and I had a philly cheesesteak, and B was super happy they had a dark-n-dry cider on tap. She used to drink the bottled dark-n-dry from, um, I forget who, but they don't make it any more and she doesn't like the sweeter ciders. She was super happy because most of the bars we go to (which isn't often, admitedly) only have sweet ciders so it'd been years. I had a lovely pint of Baron's Munich Lager, which totally brings back memories of Bavaria, and a pint of Old Rasputin Imperial Stout, which was very disappointing. Imperial Stouts are supposed to be extra dark, with a ground-up charcoal briquet flavor, dark as Hades, but this one had a slightly amber tint to it, and tasted watery, not in-your-face. Pah. I'd almost call it a porter, not even a stout, let alone an Imperial Stout. Friday, May 13, 2005
En Fuego! Last night at poker I lost my intial $20 in about an hour, getting some great "2nd best" hands which are always the most costly. I was going to pack it in but that would have shut poker down early since we only had the minimum 5 players, and one of the guys talked me into ponying up another 10-spot. For the next half hour I was totally on fire, winning like crazy. I ended up with $46, minus the $30 I bought in for made a $16 profit. Quite the pleasant swing, let me tell you. The best part is the guy who talked me into staying was the one who lost everything. Thursday, May 12, 2005
Very cute to come downstairs and see Harry's street map rug has hotwheels cars neatly parked in the parking spots. I freakin' love my iPod, but I do have one thing to comment about. I've got ~600 songs on it, and I just use the Shuffle feature to play them at quasi-random. Ok, I know it's as random as they can make it, but my beef is everytime it gets plugged into a Mac or sits idle for a weekend, it re-Shuffles the entire playlist. As a result, in the few months I've had it, some songs have been played as many as 7 times, and a good chunk, maybe a third of them, have NEVER been played. I wish I could have it just keep one shuffled playlist, play though every song once, then re-shuffle. Wednesday, May 11, 2005
We had a fun little birthday party for Harry last night. B had gotten the kids some helium balloons, and we'd tied one to each of his wrists. He spent a good long while running around the house acting like he was flying. Dinner was his favorite, boboli pizza. Bleah. Kids. Sigh. I let him pick the pepperonis off my pizza which was a real treat for him. He got a ton of toys. My folks got him his 4th Tonka dump truck (we're probably going to take it back, I mean, he's already got 3 freakin' Tonka dump trucks of various sizes not counting matchbox size), a Tonka front scoop loader, a wooden puzzle, and a Lego Blockodile, which is a crockogator that can eat lego blocks. That's just from my folks. He also got some dinosaur books, a set of Finding Nemo bath toys, a toy lawnmower, and a set of kids Home Depot plastic tools. We knew he was getting a ton of stuff, so the only thing we got him was a 3' by 5' rug with a town and roads on it, suitable for playing with his vast collection of matchbox cars. We're also giving him $100 that we're sticking in a savings account, but not with any of those typical parent "gotta save it for college" rules. Fuck that, money for college is kinda useful, but it's a shitty present. This is money he can spend on a car or something stupid when he's a teenager. Whatever he wants, but I reserve veto power, in case he wants to buy a necklace for his girlfriend or something ludicrously stupid. Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Yes, yes, I am a worthless husband. I did dishes for the first time since I installed the new dishwasher a month ago. I did all the dishes on Sunday since it was Mother's Day. Holy cow. That new dishwasher kicks some serious ass. For the past 25 years, I've basically scrubbed all food off of dishes and used the dishwasher as a sterilizer. The new dishwasher is supposed to be able to wash dishes, and has a built-in grinder to chew up the food bits it disposes of. I figured "Challenge!!" and gave it some plates with crusted dried Que Bueno, dried refried beans, lots of crusted on crap. Set the dishwasher on "soak and scour" (it sprays water on the dishes for 90 seconds every 15 minutes for 4 hours to simulate soaking the dishes) and "Accusense" (supposed to detect how dirty the dishes are) and sure enough, the next morning the dishes were freakin' clean. All I did was make sure lettuce chunks/etc were in the trash. I didn't clean jack shit, I just loaded filthy dishes into the dishwasher, and even the glasswear came out clean. I'm amazed and impressed. I guess I'm not a totally worthless husband, I did buy and install this sucker.
Happy Birthday To Harry! My huge little guy is 3 years old today, which means for the next 3 weeks until Isabel's birthday, I have a pair of 3 year olds. Last night my mother-in-law Peggy came home. She's been in Spokane for the past 5 1/2 weeks, with her daught who had a new baby, helping them with cooking and cleaning and night diaper changes etc. My kids have been super excited to have her back, but then they got super shy when she arrived, it took them an hour to warm up to her to give her a hug. I didn't think they'd do that to *grandma*, but you can never tell with these things. We got some classic "40 days and 40 nights" type rain last night, and this morning my cable modem was out. Man, not having internet access really really sucks. Monday, May 09, 2005
Yesterday I let B sleep in, then when she was awake the kids came upstairs to jump in bed and cuddle with her. Isabel brought her mother's day present, a picture frame she decorated at preschool with her picture in it, wrapped in tissue paper. It wasn't a surprise in any way, since Isabel has been telling her about her "secret mother's day frame" for weeks now. That girl doesn't know what a secret is, but it was still very cute. For breakfast we went to Thom's house for his typical Mother's Day Brunch. Once upon a time, it was a bunch of us and Thom's Mom as the only mom. This time there were seven kids, five moms, and a total of 15 adults. A full spread of breakfasty foods, with mimosas to wash it down with. Corey had one of his many strokes, err strokes of genius, and wondered what a cinnamon roll would be like with bacon wrapped inside it. I immediately got some bacon and a cinnamon roll, unrolled it, added the bacon, rolled it back up, and confirmed that it totally kicks ass. Cinnamon bacon roll! In the afternoon we did some more yardwork, I took the extra topsoil and made a big dirt pile in the corner of the yard for the kids to dig in and play with trucks on. B was doing a bunch of backyard weeding, and I decided I needed to remove this stump in my side yard. I have no idea what kind of tree it was, since it was cut down before we bought the house six years ago. It's been sending up little suckers constantlty, despite my pruning them all off and spraying it with RoundUp, and even covering it with a bucket for a year. It filled that bucket with branches, very funny looking. Anyway, I noticed the suckers all came up in a circular pattern around a chunk of wood, where the trunk used to be. About 14" in diameter, must have been a pretty beefy tree at one point. It officially "Needed Be Killin' ", which I think is a legal defense plea in Texas. I dug down around that sumbitch about two feet, and it was a solid freakin' trunk, and even with the heavy steel 6' motivator bar I wasn't having much luck moving it. Sadly there wasn't a way to get my truck back there to pull it out, so I had to go to plan B and borrow a come-along and some extra tow rope. The only solid thing in the backyard was an old cherry trunk. The nearby holly tree wasn't thick enough, and I wasn't so stupid as to attach the come-along to either my house or the swingset. Once I had that hooked up, I cranked that sucker as tight as possible and the stump still wouldn't move. Gah! Eventually we had to take a mattock to it and slowly chop that sucker away. I'd gone over a third of the way through, occasionally doing other chores and cranking another five ratchets on the come-along when my brother Kurt came over, and took two giant swings at it. BOOM! With the second swing the stump leaped out of the ground to lie a few feet from the hole. Mission accomplished! I'll dry this stump and throw him on the bonfire next year. For Mother's Day dinner we'd invited Kurt and B's sister Judy and my not-brother-in-law Bill, and cooked two chickens on the BBQ rotisserie, B made stuffing, mashed potatoes, and chicken gravy, we had cranberry sauce, a salad, and I made rhubarb crisp for dessert. Mmmm, rhubarb crisp. As much as I love rhubarb, I love crisp topping even more, so I made a double-batch of the topping. Deeeelicious! Sunday, May 08, 2005
Yesterday was Opening Day of boating season here in Seattle, with a bunch of crew races and then a boat parade down on the Montlake Cut. The weather was overcast and a little chilly, and neither B nor I could get very motivated so we didn't end up going. Last weekend I'd bought some of the plastic and sawdust Trex decking and made a raised bed in the backyard for my new raspberry plants. Friday my brother Dan had gone to the nursery with his landscaping truck and loaded a yard of topsoil for my raised bed, so I was anxious to unload that and get the raspberries out of their pots and get that project finished. My truck was parked in front of my house, so I got B to stand in that spot while I moved my truck up the street. Parking has been pretty tight here since the neighbor across the street is having his basement finished by a gang of contractors, but apparently they only work on it on Saturdays for some reason. Anyway, while I was getting Dan's truck from down the street (I wanted the wheelbarrow distance minimized, of course) some lady in a Saaaab tried to park over Bridget, and gave her a nasty scowl. I apologized to her when I saw her, explaining I needed to put the landscaping truck there to unload a mess of dirt, but she just scowled at me as well. What a bitch. While we were motivated to do yard work, B started cleaning out parts of the front yard, we decided to just put grass seed over a front planter, and we got a bunch of weeds and stupid morning glory pulled up. Man do I hate creeping vines like blackberry, ivy, and morning glory. That stuff is flat-out evil. We then wen to a nursery and bought petunias and marigolds for our planter boxes, and some hanging fuscia baskets. I also found a replacement blade for my lawn mower. By then it was time for Isabel's dance class, and I had two well-needed beers. A pint of Elysian's Immortal IPA, and a pint of Baron's Munich Lager. Both were damn tasty, but that Barons really gave me flashbacks of my trip to Munich in 1997. Man oh man do I need to get back to Germany for some fine beer drinking. I put the new mower blade on, and boy howdy what a difference. I hadn't had the blade sharpened since I bought it 7-8 years ago, and it was freakin' awesome having a sharp blade. For dinner we had a potluck Drinko De Mayo (err Cinco De Mayo, actually I guess Siete De Mayo) since my friend Thom who runs our group's Cinco parties totally lamed out because he's a big lazy worthless pussy bitch-ass punk. We made a taco bar, Corey brought a #10 can of Que Bueno "it's good!" nacho cheese sauce. This is the yummy stuff that comes out of the pump at your local 7-11 when you get nachos. So good, but it's not really cheese, I'm sure it's some petroleum distallate. Someone else brought roasted stuffed pobolanos, someone brought chicken enchiladas, and habenero jerk chicken rounded it out. Many margaritas and mexican beers were consumed, a good time was had by all. Friday, May 06, 2005
Sunday morning Isabel was feeling a bit mopey, and then complained she had "angry tummy", then she puked. Lovely. I was packing for my annual trip to Vegas, and B wasn't exactly happy to have a sick kid. Isabel would act completely fine afterwards, eat, and then puke again an hour later. After the 3rd puke we stopped feeding her, gave her popsicles and clear liquids, then my friends showed up and I was out of there. I'd already printed out my boarding pass, so when we got to the airport I wanted to head straight for a bar. SeaTac airport has been going through a ton of remodeling and expansion, and there was a new Pyramid brewpub outside the security zone, so I had a large IPA there. The flight down was full, but problem-free. The four of us from Seattle easily met up with the loser from Spokane and our friend from Boise and we were off to pick up our rental car. Since we had six this year, we got a Ford Explorer with the 3rd row of seats, but since that used up all our cargo space we had to go straight to the hotel to check in and dump off bags. Our hotel this year was the Monte Carlo, and they were nice in giving us 3 rooms right together. Most places stick us all over the freakin' hotel, which is a mild pain in the ass. Most of us hadn't eaten lunch even so we went to the dinner buffet at the Mirage. It was $22.50, but I suspect I ate my money's worth. They had a sushi station, so I loaded up there, and got some crab claws with drawn butter. Round one was damn tasty. For round two, I went to the carving station for some prime rib. The carver asked how much I wanted. I said, "Oh, a healthy thick slice". He proceeded to cut off a slab that was nearly 3" thick, and probably around 2lbs. Uff-da! I got a bunch of horseradish to go with it, and sat down. Man oh man was it good prime rib. I'm drooling just thinking about it. After thumb-wrestling that down, it was time for round 3. More sushi, and going around finding the tastiest seafood options at each section. No starches for me, not when I've paid a ton and can get awesome protein. The sushi roll rice was enough starch. After I was swollen full, round 4 was a bunch of desserts. I can't believe I could roll out of that place. Some of my friends are big guys, I mean all but one is over 6' and most are over 200lbs, and I can eat roughly 50% more than any of them. The buffet had a bunch of LCD monitors at the exit with video of an egg frying, and it actually made me a tiny bit hungry around my ultimate fullness. From there we proceeded to the "World's Largest Gift Store" where I bought a styrofoam cooler, a bottle of scotch, a sixpack of corona, and some 24oz tallboy cans of domestic beer. It's always nice to have cheap alcohol on hand in Vegas, since you can walk anywhere with it, and if you aren't gambling at the moment, beers run $4-5. The rest of the evening I played $2-$4 limit Texas Hold'em at the poker room in the Monte Carlo. Nice non-smoking room, about 9 tables, they run 2-4, 4-8, 1-5 stud, and 1-2 no-limit holdem. I was doing alright, not really getting any playable hands, when I decided to play 7-9 clubs. It was only $2 to see the flop. Flop was 6-8-10 clubs. Holy crap! I just flopped a straight flush, and they have progressive high-hand jackpots! Wooo! Anyway, I kept betting or raising, since I knew I had the nuts, and my friend who was at the table though his ace-high flush had me, so he raised me back. Juicy! I was jacked on adrenalin, and my hands were shaking, but he didn't notice. I won a $357 high-hand jackpot, plus probably a $60+ pot. Monday I had a goal. My friend Corey had called the week earlier excited that we'd be in Vegas that moment the next week instead of at work, and he declared he wanted to be half in the bag by that time. Ok, Corey, by 9:50am I'll get you over half drunk. We played mini-baccarrat, chugging down drinks. I lost $100, but succeeded in getting Corey plowed. When the rest of the gang was up we went to Sam's Town, a way off-strip casino catering to locals and the RV crowd for a $3.99 steak-n-eggs breakfast. Afterwards it was noon, so two of my friends and I went to the pool, Corey went to gamble, and two others drove off to find a Vans outlet store to buy some canvas shoes for their kids. The pool area was nice, a lazy river with a nice fast hairpin turn, a wave pool, and a super warm "lagoon". No swim-up bar, but not bad pool area. I spent the rest of the afternoon drinking in the poker room. Dinner on monday was at the brewpub in Monte Carlo. I didn't expect much from their beer, but it ended up being alright. The brewpub was freakin' huge, sat 550 people, and was mostly full. The beers were huge too. They offered a "giraffe", in both 2.5 liter and 5 liter versions. It's stand with a tap and a big tall cylinder full of beer above it, about a meter or so. Like having your own personal keg. I got the "sampler" to start, but holy moley, instead of a six 5oz tastes, they were schooner-sized, 10-12oz. Uff. The wheat beer tasted good in the poker room but the on-tap one was dishwater and sour. The IPA was weak but drinkable, and the stout was the best of the batch, even if watery. Better than I'd expected. We feasted on appetizers and drank large quantities. Afterwards we moseyed over to Fusia, a japanese-themed bar over in Luxor where we'd had such a great time last year, but between some of us drinking for 12 hours already and others not really drinking at all, it wasn't the same. Of course it couldn't be, I don't know why I try. I ended up playing a few more hours of poker that night before calling it a night at 2am. On Tuesday morning I was starting to feel rode hard and put away wet. I added up Monday's drinking and I'd put away 16 drinks in 16 hours. Corey'd had 25 drinks in that time period, but he masses double or more what I do. Ugga. I needed a soak in the hot tub, so I put my iPod in a ziplock bag so I could listen to tunes while I let the heat work me over. We again went for cheap steak-n-eggs, this time to Arizona Charlie's East, which was OK as well. Mikey had bagged out of breakfast to sleep, since he'd be up until 3am doing I don't want to know what. After breakfast I had a hankering for a carrot, not having anything but protein, alcohol, grease, and starch for two days, so we went to a grocery store and I bought a foot-long carrot for like 20 cents. Mmm. I've been eating a lot of carrots lately. Yes, my friends know I'm a freak. After that we had to do the annual pilgrimage to Leatherby's. Ok this place is a little scary, the first time Corey wouldn't go in. It's named Leatherby's, and the color scheme is pink and white, and most of the windows are boarded up. Looks like a gay fetish club, but it's actually an ice cream parlour, and one of the few in Vegas that will make peanut butter milkshakes. A few years ago he'd called up most places in the phone book looking. Nobody wanted to go to the pool with me that afternoon, so I spent the a bunch more time playing poker. Around 6pm the non-poker players called and I hooked up with them, we went to the cafe in the Stardust for $11.99 steak-n-lobster tail. The dinner was pretty good, the lobster was awesome, but the steak may have been the worst I'd ever had. Eh, my expectations were low. Afterwards we went downtown, saw Fremont street, I lost $50 playing craps, then eventually headed back. I didn't think the guys were going to be much fun, and I was pretty much done with drinking, so I played another 4 hours of poker. At 3:30am I got a call from my friend, they were harassing our other friend up in the rooms just like back in college. Of course, we had to get up at 7:30am to make our flight, so I only got 3.5 hours of sleep. UGGA. I need a vacation from my vacation. Net winnings: $390. I'd made enough at poker to cover the $50 craps loss and the $100 mini baccarat lose, plus lots of dealer and cocktail waitress tips. Nice. Thursday, May 05, 2005
Back from Vegas, had a great time, but it nearly killed me. Won over $500 playing poker, net up $390 gambling. |
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