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 |
Thursday, June 30, 2005
This week Isabel has been in dance camp every afternoon, and Harry hasn't been napping as much as he should, and it sure shows in the evenings. Lots of total world-is-ending meltdowns. Poor kids. They had their annual physicals today, Harry at 3 yrs and 2 months is 40 lbs and 42.25", Isabel at 4yrs 1 month is 42lbs 44". Her weight is 97th percetile, her height is off the chart, Harry's weight is off the chart and his height is literally off the piece of paper it's charted on. Poor Isabel got 4 shots today, I hope she's feeling alright now. Dang, I couldn't win last night at poker, lost $43. Lots and lots of 2nd best hands, and when I'd win it would be small pots. Sigh. Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Gah. I still have nausea in the morning, but it goes away shortly afterwards. Weird. Isabel made up the cutest song about dinosaurs the other night and offered to sing it to me. It's amazing, she just keeps on spitting out line after line, many of which even rhyme. I really wish I had it on tape but I didn't want her to stop. It was very cute. All the playing with emulators and talking to Craig the other day made me get really into my classic game collection. Last night I finally cataloged most of my loose video game cartridges, not including the intellivision ones. Craig wants to see my Atari 5200 and Atari 7800 in action, I wouldn't mind firing those up. Also, talking to him motivated me to get back to work on my MAME cabinet. (MAME stands for Multi Arcade Machine Emulator, it's a full sized arcade cabinet with a PC driving it so it can play any arcade game from the 1980s if I have the appropriate ROM image.) Since nobody but me pays attention (nor should they!) I'll bring you up to speed. I've got a cabinet (converted generic JAMMA cabinet that has Cabal in it), got a PC to stick in it (PII-266Mhz I think, plenty fast enough for 1980s arcade games), got an appropriate video card (from www.ultimarc.com) and got it playing with a DOS version of MAME. To get sound working I needed one of the few PCI sound cards that have DOS drivers, and that was one of my major sticking points. I broke down and bought one off eBay this morning for $8 including shipping, so that obstacle is over. The last major sticking point is making a metal control panel to hold all the buttons, two joysticks, and two trackballs. I need to take a piece of cardboard of the correct size, plot out where everything goes, and send it off to my brother Johnny (who is a foreman at a metal fabrication shop) to be fabricated. Once that's done I can install it, wire it up, and the cabinet will be done. I think I'm going to eventually break down and install one of the front-ends that will allow more than just MAME to run, I'd like to be able to run VICE to emualate a Vic-20 or Commodore 64. Hey, speaking of Vic-20s, my 20 yr old student helper had never even heard of one. Sure they were from 4 years before he was born, but still... Here's a picture of that corner bench and table that we got earlier this month:
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
I must be pregnant. Yesterday and today I've woken up with morning sickness. Huge waves of nausea, felt fine later in the day. I stayed home yesterday, man morning TV is crap. I watched one 5 minute segment on History Channel about the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, but otherwise my surfing was fruitless. Good thing I had a laptop. By noon I was feeling normal again, thankfully. Felt fine all the rest of yesterday, but nauseaous again this morning. Fine now too. I tell you, it has to be morning sickness. Monday, June 27, 2005
Ugh. Yesterday I woke up at 4am with insomnia, only 4 hours of sleep. I went downstairs and watching some tv, finally watching the 2003 "freaky friday" because i channel surfed to it just as it was starting. Man, Lindsay Lohan sure was easy on the eyes when she was jailbait. Too bad she looks like Skeletor now. Funny to think she was born the summer after I graduated from high school. Later in the morning B made plans to visit some friends who'd had a new baby, and B wanted to make a meal for them, but they're vegetarians and we were out of veggie boulion cubes so I was sent to the store. I decided while i was there to pick up a cuppa joe for a pick-me-up. Ever since I quit caffiene 10 years ago, drinking a cup goes a LOOOOONG way. As a side benefit, even the worst coffee tastes like ambrosia. Normally on the rare occasions I have coffee I get half caf and half decaf, but this was high-test, and I was totally wired on it. I did manage to nap in the afternoon, and we had dinner at B's peace corps friend's house. (Another vegetarian. Seattle is packed with them...) The dinner was stir fry noodles, very good, and B's friend's boyfriend is a fellow geek who shares my apprecaition for emulators and classic 8 bit video games, so we spent two hours talking about them. I need to exchange my DVD of Apple][ roms and two CDs of Commdore ROMS with him for his Atari 800 software CD. Sunday, June 26, 2005
Last night was our annual "Thanksgiving in June" where we invite a bunch of friends over for a full-on turkey dinner. It was dang tasty, and a good time was had by all. I think we had 10 adults and 5 babies/kids. Poor Thom had to drive down to freakin' Kent to pick up his fiancee from her job, and traffic was hellish. The main freeway, I-5, was shut down to 1 lane through downtown for repaving, and the alternate route, SR-405 had some major accident. His hour trip took nearly 2 hours, causing him to show up just as people were "rounding out the corners" as hobbits like to say. Fortunately an 18 lb turkey leaves enough that he wasn't totally SOL. One of our friends brought her sister and brother-in-law, they've been down in the Bay Area for two years while did a residency in orthopedic sports medicine as an assistant team doctor with the Oakland Raiders, and they're moving back up here for good. They were looking for homes, hopeing to have one set before they move back in August. He's like 6'10", and it's just amazing talking to him, he's so much taller than my 6'2" that I finally know what it's got to be like to be 5'6" and talking to me. I can't even imagine what it's like for him to talk to a short guy. I put those two boxes of lead figures I found up on eBay. I'll be happy if they earn $8, and really happy if it breaks $15. Saturday, June 25, 2005
Zombies!! Woooo! I love zombie movies, it's the only horror subgenre that I care for at all, so when I heard that George Romero's "Land of the Dead" was coming out, I was all over it. My non-brother-in-law Bill wanted to go too, so we caught the 5:20pm matinee yesterday after work. It was fun in that there were a lot of zombies and gory deaths, and funny things happened, but overall it was just sorta mediocre. Not as good as either the "Dawn of the Dead" remake or "28 Days Later". There were too many stupid inconsistencies. I have to pull out that Oscar Wilde quote again, "Man is willing to believe the impossible but not the improbable". I'll accept the premise that there are zombies, but not some of the other stupid things that happen in the movie that don't fit the premise. I didn't realize until afterwards that this wasn't a sequel to the remake of Dawn of the Dead the other year, but rather it's Romero's 4th zombie movie set sometime after "Day of the Dead" from a zillion years ago. I suppose it's too much to ask for someone with a little scientific training to set some basic rules of zombism, like how and why it happens and consistently apply them, and have someone who is a good write follow those rules and make a good screenplay. I mean, if your premise is "hell is full, so the dead walk the earth", then zombieism happens when you die, and thus shouldn't happen when you are just bitten. If your premise is it's some super virus, then it shouldn't happen without some infection vector, (ie dead people can't come back to life) and it can't happen instantly like in 28 Days Later. I don't know what the fastest possible duplication rate is for a virus, but I'm guessing that a 3 hour incubation period is damn fast. Anyway, I think a zombie movie that was *good* like that (some impossible, no improbable) would go over well. I'm honestly amazed that Land of the Dead had a budget of $15 million. It's not a $100 million maker, but I'm guessing after DVD release it'll be happily profitable. Friday, June 24, 2005
Ugga. This morning Harry had explosive diarhea all over himself, his diaper containment failed completely. What a mess. That always throws me off my feed. Lately I've been playing with a Commodore 64 emulator, playing old games. After doing that for a while, I somehow got on the subject of Commodore Vic-20s. I still own two of them, and a bunch of games. One cartridge game I have for it, "Pharaoh's Curse" by HESware, was particularly good, and I wanted to play it again. I was going to buy a copy of Power20, a Vic-20 emulator for OSX, but they use Kagi for their shareware registrations and after six years Kagi *still* doesn't take paypal, and they don't take paypal directly, so I gave up on that and did further research. Finally I found a port of the VICE emulator for OSX under XWindows, and was able to run it on that. The game has 16 screens and I decided I wanted to map them, so for the past few evenings I've been spending an hour or so on the computer doing that. Using the Grab.app that comes with OSX, and downloading "Teal", a free low-end paint program, I came up with my Pharaoh's Curse solution web page. Apparently the game came out for the Atari 8-bit series first, then was ported to the Vic-20 and C-64. In the C64 version you start level 1 by exploring the first 9 screens, and if you solve that level 2 gives you 4 additional sceens, and if you solve that you get access to the last 3. The VIC version gives you access to all 16 screens at each difficulty level. Looking inside the ROM code of the Vic-20 version it mentions V1.3x. Looking at the actual chips on my cartridge version it says V1.4, so one of my current goals is to check to see if the code is the same or not, which will involve firing up an actual VIC-20. My collection of 8-bit computers and video game systems is pretty extensive. I've got two VIC-20s, one of which was my first computer from 1983, my old C64 from high school, a C-128, an Atari 400, an Atari 800, an Atari 800xl, a Mac Plus, a Mac IIsi, a Vectrex with a multicart that contains all the original games (I'm still amazed people write new games for those old systems!), an Atari 2600, an Atari 5200, an Atari 7800, two Colecovisons, an Intellivision, and a hortload of cartridges and software for all of them. Back when I was single, I had a bunch of desks and shelves in my basement with room to have my collection set up and ready to use, but when we moved, it all got unceremonially shoved into random boxes and those shoved into the basement storeroom. With the new shelving and after tossing a bunch of stuff I have that room organized enough that I can actually start trying to find things, so last night I started trying to fire up a VIC-20. Finding both Vic-20s was actually easy, mine still has the original box from the early 80s. I also knew where both of my old Commodore RGB monitors where. Next I needed to find a power supply for the VIC, and a video cable. Ugh. After searching many many boxes, and finding some good stuff, some good stuff to toss, and sorting through a bunch of stuff I still have no idea why I own (two boxes of Ral Partha D&D licensed lead figures, *painted*?!? I've never owned lead figures nor painted them.... A set of Chaosium's 1977 "All the World's Monsters"?!? Where did that come from? Man I should just eBay a bunch of that crap!), I found both and finally got it fired up. One of the VIC-20s fired up, the other one didn't, but it needs a little bit more testing before it's ruled dead, the cable might have just been loose or something. VIC-20 cartridges auto-start, so I need some way of avoiding that. The bad method is to jam the cart in while the computer is running, but that's just asking to fry the VIC-20. I used to have a 3-slot expander that plugs into the cartridge port and allows you to enable or disable multiple cartridges with DIP switches, it also has a reset button. Exactly perfect for my needs, but I was unable to find it last night. I'm sure I didn't throw it away, so that means more box searching. Once I find that and compare ROM images, if they're different I'm going to want to save that ROM to floppy ("patience is a 1541 disk drive") then figure out a way to get data off a C64 floppy (most Commodore computers used the same floppy drive). Hey, you knew I was a geek already. Crickey! Sheesh. Thursday, June 23, 2005
Yesterday Harry puked all over Bridget, then started to apologize for it. He was fine the rest of the day, but B was freaked out. I fed him some toast for dinner, his little tummy was GRUMBLING something fierce. When he heard that I was having poker (won $23!), he asked me if he could bring me beers. Later, when I asked him for a beer, he squealed out, "Bring BEEER for DADDY!!!" and ran off as fast as he could to the beer fridge. I may have created a monster. A damn cute beer-fetching monster, so all is not lost. Wednesday, June 22, 2005
If anyone can explain why all the Google AdSense ads are for gazebos, when this is the first time I've ever mentioned the word in the 4+ years I've been blogging, please let me know. I don't own a gazebo, nor do I want one or have room for one... Maybe Google can predict the future and created a self-fulfilling prophecy... Last night after dinner we let the kids watch Bob The Builder on video-on-demand, (that's the only VOD thing we ever use, free PBS shows) and got crackin' on the kitchen. I spent some time trying to increase the flow rate on the water supply line to the icemaker in the fridge, but failed. I got it to go from an enemic 15 seconds per 8oz to 13 seconds, but that's still a long time to wait for water. The line uses a piercing vampire tap to connect to a copper water line, my guess is the only way to get better results is to cut that copper and solder in an actual T and shutoff valve. This is one of those issues that's a close one. On the one hand, what I have now works, I've lived with it for 2.5 years, and I can continue that for nothing. Getting a plumber out to put in that T would probably cost me $100, at least I've heard that quote for adding a water line to a fridge, so it's probably about that. That has the advantage of being eas, but I've never had to call a plumber for anything before, and $100 is $100. I've never sweated copper before, and don't own a torch, but I could just suck it up and learn to do it myself. It's a useful skill, but I haven't needed it before now, and the location is sort of a pain in the ass over the furnace up against the ceiling in the laundry room with a large duct between it and where you have to stand. Since it's currently working, I'm guessing laziness and inertia will win out, but it will be a minor thorn in my side. We finished all the major relocation stuff in the kitchen, but I'm the world's worst before-and-after picture taker. I have no idea why I never remember to take before shots, it's sad. I've got some after shots that hopefully I'll put up today. At least initially, we both like it a lot, it's a lot better layout of our kitchen. Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The kids were incredibly well behaved yesterday. I got home and could hear the squealing and yells from the backyard, B had obviously set up the pool, and Katie, Harry, and Isabel were splashing around in it like crazed weasels. I dragged the slide over and stuck the end into the pool so they could slide into it, and they went nuts doing that. Isabel started going head first, then Harry half-drownd himself when he tried it. Very funny to watch. B went to jazzercise, and Parker stayed over for dinner. His wife is in Spain for 9 days for a conference, leaving him with Katie (2.5yrs old) and Alex (5 months old). He's mostly insane at this point, lucky for him he gets to drop the kids off with B and go to work. They took off after dinner and the kids went with me to the library and then to Home Depot to pick up some parts for the kitchen. I got some felt pads for the feet on the new table so it could slide easily, and I needed a longer hose to supply water to the icemaker in the fridge since we want to move it. Turns out that I couldn't get a long enough hose, so I had to get an adapter to combine two pieces of hose. Joy, just what I always wanted, another plumbing point of failure... That project is for tonight. I also picked up some 3/4" galvanized pipe to make a trellis for the raspberry beds. I need to get some wire for it and that project will be done. I can't wait for the raspberries to start ripening! I'd brought my iPod with me, and on the way home Isabel started dancing up a storm in her car seat, she loved Van Halen's "Panama" and Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n Roll". Since the kids did such a great job for me, I gave them each a popsicle for a treat. This week's episode of The 4400 was particularly dumb. I'm sorry, but a company isn't going to inject 100 people with an unknown substance because the CEO wants a clinical trial started before the end of the day. Crickweasels. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said, 'Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.' I'll take the premise that people were kidnapped and returned with weird powers, but not that a company would run a trial like that with no preparation. Monday, June 20, 2005
I signed up for Google AdSense, we'll see if it ends up earning me enough to pay for a sixpack of beer. Of course, my desire to drink beer is at an all-time low, I'm mightly hungover after yesterday's Father's Day beer fest. My morning started off very cute. Isabel had made me a gift in her preschool, it's been sitting in the living room all wrapped up. She was VERY excited when I came downstairs, and I was excited as well, it was my first father's day gift made by one of my kids. I opened it up and it was a *very* cute picture of Isabel dressed up as a pirate in a little hand-made ship portal-window frame. Isabel started into her pirate routine, "Arrrrgh! Shivver me hearties!" which had me dying laughing. Kids can be so much fun. A bunch of my friends came over for our annual pre-beer-fest brunch. Have to lay in a good base coat for a long afternoon of beer drinking! B had made her cinnamon rolls and a bunch of waffles, I made two pounds of bacon, a pound of breakfast sausage links, and fried eggs for anyone who wanted them. Almost all the food was snorfled down in record order. B had also thrown a pork butt into the crock pot for shredded pork for dinner. Thom and Vesya showed up, they'd driven back from their California road trip the day before. On Friday they were in San Francisco, trying to find a viewpoint of the Golden Gate bridge. It was cold and Vesya was getting sick of Thom always taking pictures of things, so she told him he had 10 minutes then they needed to get moving. He dragged her to the viewpoint, where another photographer was taking pictures. Thom was a little annoyed at the lack of privacy, but then he asked the other guy to take their picture with the bridge in the background. He agreed, and then after a few shots he freaked out as Thom whipped out an engagement ring and proposed to Vesya. Apparently Vesya was totally surprised. They seemed very happy yesterday. After brunch we loaded up Corey's car with chairs and people and headed over to the brewfest. B was loading all the kids in the van and would join us a bit later, but we wanted to grab a good spot in the shade. Of course, I was a total moron and forgot my ID, but luckily they didn't ID me. Whew! Dork dork dork. I can't *believe* I forgot my wallet. Sigh. There were a zillion hoppy IPAs there, more than I've ever seen at a beer festival. Big Time brought their Decade IPA, Diamond Knot brought their Industrial IPA, ("more of everything"!) and Bert Grant's had their Hopzilla. I went over to visit the kids in the play area and B handed Harry off to me, he wanted to do the zuchinni races a bunch. They've got a tub of zukes, and some wooden wheels you stick a nail through the wheel into the zuke, decorate it, and race it down a pinewood derby track. Harry's car was usually near dead last, but he didn't care, he was having a blast. Shortly afterwards B took the kids home, leaving us to a nice afternoon of drinking. When I got home I was pretty darn toasted, and B told me to go upstairs and take a nap, but I was too lazy to climb all those stairs so I crashed on Harry's bed. 90 minutes later he was delighted to find me on his bed so he started jumping on me and wrestling with me. Ugga, just what I didn't need. Cute guy. The shredded pork with BBQ sauce was a tasty dinner, and B told Isabel that if she finished her green beans we'd go get ice cream after dinner. I helped her with those green beans to speed that process along, and off we went to Ben & Jerry's. Man, 4 small ice cream cones was $16. Damn, what a racket! We had good time walking around, then we went home, I gave the kids their bath, and B put them to bed. I had a typically restless night of sleep from drinking too much, but you have to pay the price. All in all it was a fabulous Father's Day. Sunday, June 19, 2005
Apparently Harry *loved* his soccer tots class. They went to a free demo one so you could see if it was for your kid or not, and while he needed hand-holding the first 20 minutes after that he was in heaven. I mean, they had about one zillion balls for him to kick. I had some snacks and hats and things prepared, so as soon as they got back we didn't even unload Harry from the van, I started loading Isabel and stuff and B went in to pee and grab sunscreen, and off we went to the Fremont Solstice Parade. We had to park about a dozen blocks uphill from it, those neighborhoods aren't known for parking and with about 50,000 people coming to watch, it was a zoo. The parade starts at noon, and we got down to a spot about 2/3 of the way along the parade route with about 10 minutes to spare, which got us a second-row spot with plenty of space to set up our folding camping loveseat. Unfortunately, the overcast skies had dried up and we were directly in the sun with no shade, and B had left the sunscreen in the car. D'oh! Within 10 minutes of our arrival the entire route was packed 4-5 rows deep. The Solstice Parade is extremely arty hippy, with anyone allowed to sign up, and the rules prohibit motorized vehicles or words, so the floats have to be pushed by manpower. It's also clothing optional. There were some clowns walking the parade route with little skits, and some with a wagon full of buckets of bubble mix, but a light breeze was playing havok with the giant bubbles while providing much-needed cooling for the crowds. Shortly afterwards the parade's signature naked bicyclists started cruising by. There were a freakin' ton of them (actually one woman looked like she weighed a quarter of a ton, wearing a Viking helmet and Viking tresses) about half of each sex, most of which had body paint on. Apparently there used to only be a few naked bicyclists and they'd get arrested each year, but nowadays I'd guess there were well around 50 of them and they get cheered on by the crowds. Some of the body paint jobs were downright amazing. Since we were so far down the route, it took about an hour for the parade proper to reach us, and while the kids did just fine, Bridget was very impatient. I was laughing at her. The naked bicyclists reached the end of the route and got bored so they biked back to the start and just keep doing laps for the entire hour. They were funny the first time, but after a while we'd just as soon they moved on. It's funny how quickly nakedness gets boring. The parade itself was awesome. Lots of groups of dancers in fancy costumes, lots of non-dancers in fancy costumes, at least 3 different troops of 10-12 year old girls on unicycles. The kids were very excited on the long uphill stroller push to the car, talking about all the different things they'd seen. B got a little sunburn, the kids and I got barely any if any. I made sure both kids wore their hats. After we got home my friend Shell arrived with his daughter Summer who is about to turn 3. He lives in Boise and flew into town yesterday. His wife and children had been here for a week visiting his mother-in-law, and he was here to help drive them back to Boise on Monday. We had a good time talking, and the kids had a grand time playing together. They finally left 4 hours later and it was time to find something for dinner. We decided to go to the Wedgewood Ale House's family dining room. It was nice, B and I had good food, Harry wanted a corndog and Isabel wanted their cheesy noodles. Unfortunatley, their cheesy noodles were really cheesy butter noodles, and the cheese was just parmesean sprinkled on top butter noodles, so Isabel wouldn't eat any of it. We should have just ordered a second corndog. Sigh. Live and learn. After that long day they crashed immediately when I put them to bed, let me tell you. B and I caught up on last weeks episode of The 4400 off the DVR. That show is pretty good, I have to admit. I just got email from a friend who borrowed the set of Firefly DVDs. "Fuckin' Fox. Joss Wheden is a genius". Well duh. I mean, how freakin' good do you have to be to make a space western work? Saturday, June 18, 2005
Last night we had dinner with B's mom group and their families like we do most every month. Scott made jamaican jerk chicken, but he ran out of propane *again*. This is the second time we've had a BBQ at his house and he ran out, causing us to drive to my place to get my spare tank. Once I can understand, but twice? Sheepdogs. The evening was a lot of fun, the guys drank beer on the deck while running the BBQ, and the women were in the living room talking, and the kids ran rampant down in the basement. My friend Corey, aka WOPR, works with a Lebanese guy. That guy regularly gets homemade ouzo (anise liquor, aka black licorice) from his family back in Lebanon, and he gave a pint of it to Corey who gave it to me for my liquor collection. It's perfectly clear, and somewhere in the 110-130 proof range. I tried it last night like a pastis, how the french drink anise liquor in the south of france), which is cut 5-1 with water. Even cut that far it has a black licorice taste like a half dozen skinheads came to stomp-dance in your mouth, but damn is it good. Way better than the nancy-girl Ouzo they sell in Greece. I'm even not blind today, so I'm guessing they made it correctly. Heh. This morning I rousted B out of bed early to go to her jazzercise, and I got the kids loaded up in the stroller and we did our walk through the ravine, a brief stop at the playground for swings and Isabel got a run down the zip line (I still can't believe a public park has a zip line as a play toy!) then off to the Farmer's Market. I bought a cherry struedel for the kids to be split, but the streudel lady gave me two for the price of one. Uff-da! I got a fresh breadstick and a tub of fresh cheese curds, then B was back with the van. We were in a time crunch since today Harry and B were going to preview a soccer tots class she wants to sign him up for. Friday, June 17, 2005
Ok, I'm absolutely dying here. Sure, part of it has to do with the fact that my friend gave me a bottle of homemade Ouzo that he got from a Lebanese coworker. It's somewhere between 110 and 130 proof is my guess, but cut 5-1 with water it makes a damn fine pastis. (Southern French cocktail) Of course, it's like a half dozen skinheads came over and stomp-danced black licorice into your mouth, but hey, it beats the mambly-pambly Greek or French anise liquors. The main reason I'm dying is I finally got curious and asked my web host, Mr. Nosuch (no, he actually *hasn't* died, despite his lack of blogging!) for some web stats. Turns out that my blog is frequented by pervs and weirdos. Yes, this means you. Search terms that found my blog in the last 24 hours: "movie tallboy blue oyster cult" "freezer rental spokane" and I suspect my all-time favorite: "what is a banana eating contest gilmore girls" Of course, over the long haul, most freaks are coming here based on searching for the word "babe" and something, usually naked. Or searching for "naked babies". I guess Michael Jackson and his fans must be regulars. Thursday, June 16, 2005
So, as part of rearranging the kitchen for the new corner bench and table, we tried re-arranging the rest of the kitchen to make better use of space. I of course screwed myself by not making a scale model on paper first and seeing how things fit. After moving a bunch of thing around, everything is currently where it originally was, but I think we're going to move the fridge this weekend after I buy a much longer water line for the ice maker. In the meantime, the kitchen is an utter disaster.
So, last night at poker (won $17!), I was drinking a beer. Yeah, big suprise. Unknown to me, Harry (age 3) asked B if he could bring Daddy a beer. She said, "Oh, I think he already has one." Harry was so dissapointed that he broke down crying. After sobbing for a bit, he comes over to the poker table, gently raises my arm out of the way and sees a full beer in my chip well. At that point he totally lost it crying. The look of utter crushing disspointment was pretty damn funny. I finally had to say, "Harry, could you get Daddy another beer?" and he quickly said OH OK!! and ran into the kitchen wiping tears out of his eyes. Let me tell you, if you two-fist Kokanee and Red Hook ESB, and take alternate swigs, it does weird things to your taste buds. They are NOT very complimentary. Two new games at poker last night. The first one Chuck thought up. It's a modified psycho 3-5-7, not naked so no up cards. The 3 and 5 rounds are the same, you get dealt 1 card in the 7 round, and there are 3 communal cards, but you don't get to see them until you decide to play or pass. If there is a showdown, the first communal card is in everyone's hand. The second one, if you have that rank card in your hand it's dead. If the last one is a 3,5, or 7, then there are no wildcards, but if it's anything else, that rank is also wild. You get that 3rd card in your hand as well, so you have a total of 8. He wants to call it Psycho 3-5-7 Shanghai rules, but the table agreed Psycho 3-5-7 Pigfucker Shanghai rules was a better name. Speaking of renaming games, we decided that Cum Gargling Omaha (everyone hates it with a passion except the one guy who calls it, it's Omaha 8 hi-lo, but if there isn't a valid low, that half the pot carries over to the next hand) should be renamed Cum Gargling Pedophile Omaha. (Complete with gargling noise) The other new game is from ultimatebet.com, it's Royal Texas Hold'em. Texas Hold'em rules, but you only use the 10s through Aces in the deck for a 20-card deck, max is seven players. Freaky little game. Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Ok, I was cleaning out the storeroom more last night and found a box of B's old cassette tapes. Included amoung them were five that she'd made in Africa when in the Peace Corps and mailed to her mom. It's very funny to hear her at 24 all ditzy and young. At one point she mentioned meeting the Ambassador at the time, Joe Wilson, and how cute he was. It's very funny to be able to say now, "Hey, his wife was a CIA spy!" I'm still pissed that a White House sleazebag and a reporter would out a US spy and not get thrown in jail for 20 years. Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Two things I forgot to mention: One: I love craigslist. Somebody bought our old fridge for $100. Woo! Even more clear space in the garage! Two: Isabel has a new game she's invented, called "Skatoon!". It involved bouncing a balloon around between two people, saying "Skatoon!" every time you hit it. No other real rules other than lots of laughing if someone gets hit in the face. Dunno where that word came from, either.
It was raining on Saturday when I was building the shelves, but the two huge London Plane trees in my front yard make for an awning that takes quite a downpour to penetrate. Of course, today I was a moron and looked outside to see if it was raining, saw that the front was dry, and believed it. Duh, it's always dry out front! Dork dork dork. Sigh. My iPod crashed yesterday, but a quick reset and it was fine again. B got the bench and table lightly sanded from their staining yesterday and applied the first of 4 coats of varithane. They're looking good. I have to say that after 4 months of walking 10-15 miles a week extra, I feel great. I have more energy than I used to, and while I haven't lost any weight, my body fat percentage has dropped from 22% to 18%, and I get to eat more which is fun. I also have to admit that watching IMAX movies in HiDef totally kicks ass. So freakin' beautiful. Monday, June 13, 2005
Another busy weekend. I got up with the kids on Saturday, and we made a tasty breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages, and toast with the fresh strawberry jam B made last week. Gotta love berry season! While the kids were watching TV and B was at her jazzercise, I started cleaning out the corner of the kitchen where the new table is going. I moved the microwave, and then rolled the large shelving unit to it's temporary new home in the guest room. B was quiet pleased when she got home. She wanted to go to I-k-k-k-kea to buy some comforters for the kids' beds, and driving all the way the hell down to Renton to go to Ikea was the last thing I wanted to do, so I let her and the kids and grandma go. I finished cleaning out space in the garage for my new shelving unit and got to work on that. I went down to my brother's place to borrow his sawhorses and his 12" compound chop saw, cut the 4'x8' sheets of plywood in half with my cordless mini circ saw, used the chop saw to make the appropriate lenght cuts in the 2x4s, and got cracking on assembly. It was a lot easier the second time since I'd done one before and as small as my garage is (10x18' with a 78" ceiling) it's still got way more space than the storeroom had, plus I was only putting in 3 shelves. Most of my stuff is in either large bins that are 17" high, 5 gallon buckets that are 14", smaller bins that are 11", or milk crates that are 10", so the bottom shelve was 18", and the rest of them were 14.5". Of course, after I was done I found a couple of my buckets (from Pace membership warehouse, since eaten by Sam's Club I think) were 15.5". Gah!! I finished and got everything cleaned up just before 1pm, and the family wasn't back yet. Isabel's dance class is over, but I don't think that should mean I stop going to the bar every saturday afternoon, so I left a note on the door which simply said, "Gone Drinkin' ". As I was taping it up my neighbor (who is putting a new 2nd story on his house) was on his porch working so I showed the note to him and he busted up laughing. At the bar I had a pint of Boundary Bay IPA and a pint of some imported german pilsner, and since I hadn't eaten I had a soup-n-salad with french onion soup and blue cheese dressing . Mmmm! Very tasty. A friend of mine came and joined me, but I couldn't get him to stop talking about buying diamonds. He'd helped our other friend buy a ring earlier in the week, looks like that friend is getting engaged this week during a road trip to Disneyland. Once I got home I helped with the kids some, then B and I finished up cleaning out that back nook in the kitchen. All my plants got put outside on the deck, and the last shelving unit got moved out and put into the storeroom in the basement. That corner hadn't gotten painted when we did the rest of the kitchen so the walls were still white, not the buttery yellow like the other walls. Fortunately, with the re-arranging of the garage I was able to find the paint for B, and half an hour later the walls were freshly painted. We got cleaned up and ready to go to the 40th birthday party of a friend of ours. We were very happy to have babysitting, it's a lot easier to have fun at a party without worrying about the kids. The party was pretty cool. The wife had rented a bunch of bistro cocktail tables for people to stand around, and her mom is insane when it comes to cooking up tasty hors d'oeuvres. There were round after round after round of tasty tidbits coming around. They also had a chocolate fountain on their back porch, but it was a bit chilly and the chocolate kept seizing up. It needed a few heat lamps. We eventually rolled home around 11pm stuffed to the gills. Apparently there were a number of other hors d'oeuvres prepared that never got served due to lack of oven time. D'oh! Not the best planning... Still, a great party. Sunday I woke up feeling the effects of two afternoon beers, a half dozen glasses of wine and a few beers at the party. Ugga. After breakfast I went down to the garage and started sorting things out. Opening boxes, putting paint stuff together, putting plumbing and electrical stuff together, organizing thing like they've needed for years. Uff-da. The weather started getting nicer and sorta sunny so we decided to make some sammiches and take the kids to the zoo. They had a great time as always, and the zoo has a new exhibit called Willawong Station. They've got nearly 200 brightly colored Austrailian parrots, and for your buck entry fee you get a popsicle stick with seeds glued onto one end. The bird fly down, land on the stick, and start chowing. Very cute. Isabel and Harry loved holding a stick with a little bird on it, but Harry got a little freaked when one backed up enough that one claw was on his finger. Fun exhibit, well worth the extra buck entry fee. When we got home from that the kids went down to play with Grandma and B and I took off in the truck for the unfinished furninture store. $480 later we had the corner bench and table loaded up and we were on our way home. We drove past a home for sale having an open house and I asked B if she wanted to stop, and she said "sure". We used to go to open houses all the time when we didn't have kids, it's fun (for us at least) seeing what's out there. This was a 1998 house, new construction, for $670k. 5 beds, 3 baths, 2800 square feet. Pretty nice, but for that much I'm pretty sure you can buy an under $300k little craphouse, knock it down, and have something built to your own specs. I spent the rest of the afternoon assembling the bench and table, getting them done right before dinner. While the kids were napping B got the stain, and after dinner she got the bench and half the table stained, but spilled the rest of the stain so she'll need more before she can continue. It all needs a sanding before the 4 coats of varnish, she's going to be sanding and varnishing all week before we can use them. Man oh man does that honey color look good on the solid pine wood. Saturday, June 11, 2005
Yesterday I had to take my truck (2000 Chebby Silverado) in to have its' emissions tested so I could renew the tabs. I don't think I've had to do that before, you get a few years exemption on new vehicles, then it's every other year. Interestingly, they didn't actually test anything, they plugged a reader into the onboard diagnostic port under the dash and when the computer said everything was OK with respect to emissions, they took that as good. Huh. Afterwards I went to the Home Despot next door and picked up a couple more sheets of plywood, a dozen 2x4s, and some more brackets so I can build some more shelving in the garage. B cleaned up the extra fridge we have down there so I could take pictures and post it on craigslist. Hopefully we can get rid of that this weekend. When I got home from those errands, B wanted to go out to Red Robin for dinner. Sigh. It's not my favorite place by far, but since they sell huge beers it's OK, so I said sure. She wanted to know if I wanted to invite our friends (the ones B watches their kids) along, and I didn't care either, so we ended up not bothering. Of course, once we got loaded and drove over there, who do we find but them unloading in front of the restaurant. Apparently after picking up their kids they went home and decided they didn't have anything to cook so they had the same idea. Too dang funny. We got a table together and had a fun dinner. Friday, June 10, 2005
Bridget finally broke down and decided she had to have an L-shaped bench for our breakfast nook. Currently it's got shelving for our kitchen, so a *lot* of rearranging and organising is going to have to happen, but once that's clear, we'll be set. This is what it looks like. I've agreed to get it and assemble it and move things, but she's going to have to sand it, stain it, and varnish it. We should probably get a sheet of thick glass to put on top, otherwise the kids will chew that pine up with forks and pens and whatnot. Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Yesterday Harry went into the kitchen, opened the beer fridge, got out a Kona brewing Longboard Lager, brought it over to the wall mounted bottle opener, opened it, and brought that in to give to B. Too damn funny. He was very dissappointed that she wouldn't drink it, but she doesn't drink beer. I had no idea he could *open* beer bottles, he's been bringing them to me for a while now. Isabel told me last night that she was working on a surprise for me at preschool, but I couldn't know about it yet. Heh. She really doesn't grok the word "surprise". Monday, June 06, 2005
Holy glub. I can't believe Apple is freakin' switching hardware architectures on me On Friday we finished watching the Firefly DVD set. That show was awesome, and so much more so when you see them in order instead of at random. Too bad Fox killed it, but I can't wait for the movie ("Serenity") this September. Saturday was Isabel's last day of into to ballet class. Unfortunately, it was "parent's watch" day so they'd get practice performing in front of people before the recital that Isabel isn't signed up for. Ugga. Watching Isabel was fine, but I swear after about 3 hours of that (and NO BEER owowwow!) I checked my watch and only 10 minutes had elapsed. Kill me now! There were a few totally undisciplined kids running around doing whatever the fuck they wanted. Gah! Isabel's party on Saturday went great. The girls actually didn't scream much. Afterwards we went to the PTA fundraiser carnival at the local elementary school. Next year hopefully we'll be able to sign Isabel up for that one, I'll be VERY VERY angry if she doesn't get to go to the school 3 blocks from our house. VERY angry. The kids had fun at the carnival, they got cotton candy to eat, and there were a bunch of inflatable slides and jumping room dealies, and both kids got to have their first pony rides. On sunday I got up early to hit the dump before 9am so there wouldn't be any lines. It's not actually a dump, it's the North Transfer Station, where stuff gets dumped into a big pit with an armored bulldozer to scoop it into the garbage haulers that will take it to whatever landfill it ends up at. One large truckload of crap, GONE. Now I need to keep up this momentum and build more shelves for the garage. B told me today she wants to redo part of the kitchen as well, I'll put my thinking touque on and see what I can come up with. After my dump run, we took the kids to the pool. They loved it, but B thought the family time ran until 1:30 and it ended at noon, a little over half an hour after we got there. Harry was totally distraught. Poor little guy. They both love playing in that pool, I tell you. Sunday night we had B's sister and her boyfriend over for ribeye steaks. The kids spent nearly two hours after dinner playing with their aunt Judy, Harry had her read stories while Isabel sat next to them coloring. Very cute. Friday, June 03, 2005
Isabel had a grand time on her birthday. She loved all her presents. She got a bunch of jigsaw puzzles, a Barbie princess castle playset, a princess dress, a cardboard chest full of dress-up clothes, all things she loves. Harry was a bit disappointed, the only thing there he wanted to play with was the castle. The other day B had gone to the craft store and bought a couple 1lb bags of mixed colored beads for the kids to put on strings, and a plastic multi-compartment tray to sort them into. I dunno why, but apparently I have a nutso manic part of my brain which decided the fuckin' beads needed to be sorted out. I fully understand the geeky side of my brain that sorted the front six compartments with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Anyway, after sorting them all out with the kids' help, I carefully closed the lid and had Isabel show it to B. Isabel decided it needed to be a "surprise", so she tried to hide it behind her back, causing her to drop it, causing beads to fly everywhere. GAAAAA!! I JUST SPENT AN HOUR SORTING THOSE!!! AAAAAAA! Just kill me. At least I was able to laugh about it, and wasn't mad at Isabel. Thursday, June 02, 2005
Happy Birthday to Isabel! Today my little girl turns 4. She's having 3 of her friends over on Saturday for a princess dress-up party, and tonight she gets her favorite foods, which include meat (pot roast in this case), mashed taters with gravy, and apple pie for dessert. Strange night at poker last night. Was down a ton, worked my way back up $8, then went down hard to end down $33. Interesting for geeks, I found a web page for Metamorphosis: Alpha, a scifi RPG from TSR that predated Gamma World, and I read weird tidbits about in my "Best of The Dragon" magazines and odd snippets in other TSR games, but never got to read. That web page has the rule book in .rtf format. Cooool. Pretty funny antiquated RPG, no real method for healing. D'oh! I guess you better take that Regeneration mutation. |
|
