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NotJeff's wedding last night was very fun. It was held at the Newcastle country club, a very hoity toity golf club way up on top of Newcastle hill, with 270 degrees of sweeping views including Seattle, Bellevue, Puget Sound, Lake Washington, etc. Pretty damn impressive.

B and I gave Corey (aka WOPR) a ride, and we got there faster than expected so we went to the Wooley Toad, the swank dark wood and leather cigar bar there for a quick drinkey-poo. Nobody should have to see Jeff get married cold sober.

The wedding itself was in a huge outdoor tent that was very tastefully decorated. Right at the start of the ceremony when the pastor was asking who will give away the bride, a bird flew in through one of the side openings that was letting in a breeze, flew around for a second, over the bride, the SMACK ran into a clear plastic panel up high right behind the lined-up groomsmen. I nearly died laughing since it fell like a stone, obviously having broken it's neck. It lay there right behind the groomsmen not moving. That has to be the best wedding omen I have ever seen. So freakin' funny.

After the ceremony the guests were ushered out of the tent into the heat and sun to get cocktails and passed hors d'oeuvres, and once they'd removed all the chairs and set up tables we went back into the tent for dinner.

The best man's speech started out really slow, but kept getting funnier and funnier, people were nearly crying they were laughing so hard. Then came one of the great moments in wedding history, the speech from the groom's mom. As she was handed the microphone, she starts out with "Hi, My name is so-and-so and I'm an alcoholic" which had people rolling. Then she said, "I promised myself that I wasn't going to cry at this wedding, but I really like birds." Holy crap! Two back-to-back home runs! No wonder Jeff is so funny, his mom is hilarious!

The bartender had no problem giving us empty glasses that we filled with Lagavulin 16-yr single malt whiskey, since the open bar didn't include a single scotch, as long as we were "subtle". When WOPR ordered yet another gin-and-tonic, he put some ice in a tumbler, started pouring gin, and asked if WOPR wanted him to bother with the tonic. Uff-da. WOPR got amazingly drunk, but he didn't puke or embarras himself so all was good.

They had a DJ who had to be over 70 years old, it was the most amazing sight. I requested "You Shook Me All Night Long" but they'd paid extra to put that on their "Do Not Play" list, yet "Brass Monkey" by the Beastie Boys got played. The indignity of it all, I'll never forgive NotJeff for that one. Heh.

Good times, good times.
posted 10:28 AM | link | 10 comments

Yesterday was awesome. B made waffles to start the day, a perfect hangover breakfast. I'd bought this new cinnamon apple pie flavored syrup which ruled, mmmmmm.

After breakfast we got the kids loaded up to go to Carkeek park where we were supposed to meet up with some of B's friends. I thought she went there all the time, and she though I remembered how to get there, so we trying to ad-lib it and ended up spending an extra half hour driving around that part of northwest seattle looking for the access road to the park. Crickey. I'm happy neither of us loses patience and gets angry at situations like that. Every time we had to turn around and go back up the ridge the kids were asking why we were going home already.

It was such a beautiful day. After we got to the park, the kids played on the playground equipment for a while then we got the rest of our stuff from the van and crossed the pedestrian bridge over the train tracks down to the beach. There was almost no wind, so Puget Sound was almost lake-flat, and you could see the mountain ranges off in the distance. There is a creek there that dumps into the Sound and the kids had a blast playing in the creek, then a train was coming so we got about 15' away from the tracks and the kids were laughing and screetching, having a blast.

After we went home I drove down to Safeway to pick up some racks of baby back ribs for dinner since we were having some friends over. I got 4 racks, then figured I probably should get a 5th. Lacking a proper BBQ (I have a gas grill, not suited for barbequeing) I used my most successfull cooking method of coating the ribs with a dry rub, letting that sit for an hour, putting them on a baking tray with a half cup of chicken broth, sealing tightly with aluminum foil, and baking for 2 hours at 275F. I napped while they cooked to catch up on the sleep I hadn't got the night before, and the made a glaze for the ribs with jalepeno jelly and fresh squeezed lime juice. Slather that on the ribs and stick them under the broiler on the lowest shelf of the oven for about 15 minutes to set the glaze, and the meat was totally falling off the bones. Everyone loved them.

B had made a damn nice tater salad and baked beans to go with the meal, it was very fun. We sat in the backyard where it was nice and cool and had a great time talking and drinking wine while the kids played.

This morning I got up with the kids and we decided to go for a walk down the ravine and to the playground at Cowen park, then to the farmer's market for fresh cheese curds again. B met us there to take the kids to their Soccer Tots class.

Sadly, I noticed walking down the Ave that Atlantic Street Pizza is no more, it's now something like Fred's Famous Pizza Featuring The Original Atlantic Street Pizza Recipe. Sigh.
posted 10:55 AM | link | 7 comments

Uff-da. Uff-da. Here it is, 7:30 am. Wisely, I took the day off. Unfortunately, I didn't put the garbage and yard waste out last night, and the trucks come early on our street (my rental house was awesome, at the end of a route so the trucks came at like 4pm) so I had to drag my stinky hungover corpse out of bed and outside. Ooooooga. I definitely have that "not so fresh" feeling.

Man oh man what a fun evening, but expensive.

Last night was NotJeff's bachelor party. Unfortunately, no debauchery happened, so I can give out every detail. If his fiancee reads this, she'd be proud of him. Only 2 hookers, and neither ended up dead, so it's a personal record.

Oh wait, that's not funny. Eh, whatareyagonnado?

Aaaaanyway, we all met at 7:30 at El Gaucho, a swank restaurant that tries to evoke a 1950s Havana club theme. They used to be super popular when they opened in the late 90s, in the hipster dotcommer neighborhood, fed with dotcommer cash. I'm pretty sure I read that they had some dotcom multimillionaire's birthday party, for 8 or 12, that had a tab hit over $100,000. These days I don't think they are doing nearly that well, since the place was pretty dead for a Thursday night.

When we showed up, we were escorted into our private room, the 410 room, which doubles as their wine cellar. It has a large round table that seats 8 comfortably or 10 if you squeeze, and we had 10 coming. We had our own private server, Ashley, who kicked ass. She was always looming outside the door to bring us whatever we wanted. Of course, being the wine room, the somneliier, somenellier, somniea, errr, (too lazy to look up how to spell a wine guy) and others came in frequently to get bottles, but we were laughing and talking so much that I certainly didn't care, it's not like we were making out in there or anything. They did say jokingly that we could help ourselves to wine, just leave the empties stacked up and they'd total 'em for us.

At the time we started, we had 2 no-shows, and Luke was still in LA. Apparently he'd gotten a call from his agent that morning that he had five auditions for national TV ads that day, so he had to bump his flight and go stand-by. NotJeff and some of his friends are semi-professional comedians, and I like to think that myself, NotMe, and WOPR are pretty funny guys, so you can imagine how funny the conversations were. Somebody was always coming up with the ideal comment or insult, it was awesome. One of the non-commedians works for Pixar. Apparently they have 10 guys in Seattle who are important enough for them to not have to work in the Bay Area if they choose. He couldn't talk about what he was working on, but apparently his arm was used as a model for one in Toy Story 2. He told a funny story about being at a Bay Area party and meeting a guy who worked for Laurence Livermore, and when asked, the guy went into detail about this high-tech new defense laser he was working on. When he asked what Pixar guy did, he had to reply "I work in movies, I can't talk about it". Ha!

We started off with a entree seared ahi tuna cut into slices as an appetizer, and some shrimp in a lovely spicy sauce. Nobody ordered any of their flaming dishes or meat-on-a-sword dishes, I stuck with the $60 24oz 28-day dry-aged porterhouse steak. The T-bone with a NY strip on one side and a filet mignon on the other is my second favorite steak after a juicy ribeye. The guy next to me couldn't believe I was ordering such a large steak, he was getting a 12oz NY strip, and when it came he wanted to bet me that I couldn't finish it. Ha! I put a friendly $5 on it, knowing it was money in the bank. I mean, c'mon, whenever Safeway has ribeyes on sale for $5-6 a pound I always get a nice juicy 18-22oz one for myself, it's not like I'd ordered a 48oz porterhouse.

The server prepares the caesar salad tableside, and someone has asked about sardines. She made a comment that she could make it without sardines but then it would be a different salad. I mentioned that the worcestershire sauce had sardine bits in it, and she was amazed. I knew they made it with sardines in huge vats, and the sardines break down into bits of ichor and goo, that's why they put the sauce in a dark glass bottle and then wrap it in paper and why you shake before using, the chunkies can look disturbing to some. Mmmm, fermented fish sauce. (drool) Anyway, she went and read the label because apparently she didn't believe me, and was impressed that she'd learned something new.

They also have a crew served baked potato. One server takes a fork and fluffs the insides, and the next has a tray with butter and chives, and a gravy boat with a cheese sauce for it. Quite tasty.

After the meal they brought out a tray with a freaking incredible roqufort bleu cheese, dates, crustinis, and another bowl with apples, pears, grapes, and mixed nuts in the shell. Awesome, a perfect complement to the dinner. I should have had a glass of port with that, but forwent that in favor of a cigar. The table deferred to me on selecting the cigars, since the guys who wanted a smoke didn't know what to order. I set us up with Arturo Fuente Hemmingway Short Stories, a nice 5" by 49 ring gauge short fat smoke that doesn't involve all our money or all night. As I was explaining to the guys the differences between the Conneticut and Cameroon wrappers, the server was mightly impressed since I'd saved her the trouble of an explanation. NotJeff also wanted a single malt scotch but was a newbie. One guy recommended a 12yr MacCallans, and while I think it's a fine scotch, I think the Glenmorrangie 12-yr Port Wood Finish is a better choice for a novice, rich and buttery yet still mellow, only hints of smoke or peat, and definite port overtones. He loved it, so I was happy. I stuck with my stalwart favorite, the Lagavulin 16-yr.

Once the table was cleared of all that I pulled out my poker chip set that I'd been asked to bring. NotJeff was very happily surprised, he had wanted to play poker but didn't think he'd get a chance. We did a $20 buy-in dealer's choice games, and I followed my strategy for playing with fresh meat which is to never bluff, and don't slow-play. You can't get newbies to fold their bad hands, so just wait for a good hand and play it full-tilt. I rapidly increased my holdings from $20 to $30 to $40, ending up with $60, so there was $40 off my dinner price. Wooo!

Shortly after the poker game started who showed up but Luke and Fishpimp! Luke had made the flight up and Fishpimp had given him a ride, so I finally got to meet the illustrious Fishpimp. Luke was starving, but after a look at the menu his aspiring actor budget had him choose nothing. The server laughed at him and then unasked for she brought him a basket of the complimentary bread which he devoured.

The bill ended up being just north of $1,200, so split six ways we were each on the hook for $200. Ok, five days later my record for most expensive meal was trumped again, but this was a much nicer dining experience and I was paying for a share of the groom-to-be. Oh, plus I'd won $40 at poker and $5 on that side bet, so I guess it ended up being cheaper technically.

We got a ride home from the Pixar guy instead of the cab ride we'd planned, which was nice. Man I wish I'd put the garbage out last night. D'oh!

Hrm. 90 hungover minutes to type this. Uff-da.
posted 7:26 AM | link | 3 comments

Yesterday afternoon I got email from B saying that I was on my own for dinner. Shortly after I got home she took off for her jazzercise class, and I loaded the kids up and took them to the outdoor mall down the hill for another wednesday evening concert. Lacking ideas about what to actually feed them, we just went to Johnny Rockets for burgers and chicken strips. The kids had a good time as always.

While I was there a bunch of shaggy younger teenagers came in and grabbed the big corner booth next to us, then started pooling this raggedy-assed pool of change together, with lots and lots of pennies involved. When the waitress came over, they ordered a single order of fries and 5 waters. They ate those fries in about 30 seconds, and one of the kids managed to spill his water all over everything. Sigh. I wasn't the greatest kid, and certainly had questionable morals, but really, at least I was respectful. That poor waitress hadn't done anything to deserve that kind of bullshit treatment.

The concert was pretty good if annoying that it started a half hour late. The band this week was the Dusty 45s playing rockabilly. The kids started dancing immediately when the music started, and after a while a lady came up to me wearing a badge from the mall and holding a clipboard, saying that she'd taken a picture of my kids and wanted me to sign a release form so they could use it. Sure, what the heck. One of my poker buddies said he'd taken a photography class that talked about that issue and they may make $200,000 off of my kids' picture giving me nothing. I replied that while I think my kids are cute, they sure as heck aren't $200,000 cute. Crickey.

WOPR told a story about an older coworker who was in some pictures at her grandson's wedding. They had a deal with the photographer that any shots they didn't pay for he got to keep, and a year later she had the lovely surprise of seeing herself in a domestic violence advertisement. D'oh!
posted 5:06 PM | link | 2 comments

Woo! Despite poker being a tax on Humbabas who are bad at math (aka I was playing dumb and knew it), I still won $19 last night. Let's here it for blind luck! (I *can* play a lot better, I often choose not to in our home game)

Ok, I need some advice from anyone who reads this and knows anything about pimping fish.

Last weekend when we were at Mortons, and they had 4lbs lobsters for $100, several of us wanted some big tasty lobsters but didn't want to pay the $100, so we decided we'd have a lobsterfest sometime soon. Right now it looks like there will be 3 or 4 couples, depending on 1 couples finances.

Last night after poker, we started looking on this here intarweb to check some prices on live maine lobsters. The first hit on google gave us a place that would sell us 8 4.5lb lobsters with shipping for $660. Ouch. We found some cheaper places, then finally we found a joint that would sell us 10 pound lobsters for $150 with shipping. 10 pound lobsters! Holy glub! That'd be awesome.

Today my friend calls me with a url for www.thefreshlobstercompany.com, which offers a freakin 15 pound lobster! By all that is unholy in this world, that would be awesome to watch a 15 pound lobster chase my son across the kitchen. The kids would be traumatized for life!

Anyway, my questions are:

A) Do big lobster taste good?
B) How would you cook a lobster this large?
C) How freakin' physically big is a 15 pound lobster? 2'? 3'? 4'?
D) How much lobster meat would you get out of one? What's the rule of thumb?
E) Can you get it for me cheaper?
posted 1:16 PM | link | 1 comment

Last night after walking home in what for Seattle is really hot weather, mid-80s, I decided instead of cooling off and wasting the "up" feeling from the walk I'd just start immediately going to work on mowing the yard and edging. It worked out well, I didn't feel any more hot or tired than I already was, so it wasn't the ordeal it can be otherwise. Nice to have the lawn mowed.

Ok, this is crazy. Yesterday I tried to buy some Husky football tickets online from Ticketbastard, as well as book plane tickets for our trip to Cabo next April, and both web sites denied my credit card. Something wasn't right, so I called up Bank of America to ask WTF. I got transferred to someone else, and then someone else, and then someone else, each time having to give them the credit card number and a bunch of confirming info. FINALLY I got transferred to someone who, I shit you not, gave me the best bullshit excuse I've heard in a long time. She actually told me that internet credit card transactions were down because "the space shuttle launch this morning messed up one of our satellite links". Excuse me?!? If that was true, why didn't the first 4 people tell me that?

A couple hours later both transactions went through flawlessly. I have to admit I was quite impressed with how complicated a transaction you can accomplish on the Alaska Airlines web page. Two full-fare tickets, two $50 companion fares, and a half-price with 15,000 miles ticket. We're set for going to Cabo next year! Wooo!
posted 3:38 PM | link | 2 comments

Sunday morning I was set to make a dump run to get rid of all the carpet and pad that was in the back of my truck, and Harry decided that he just had to go with. He even got his Tonka hardhat on. Since he was so damn adorable, I figured what the hey. I moved a carseat from the van to the truck, got my gloves, loaded Harry up, and away we went. I got a running Harrylogue on what he could see the whole time. "Look, Daddy, there's a truck! And a bus!" "Daddy, I see downtown!" "DADDY!!! I SEE THE SPACE NEEDLE!!!" Ha. I was totally cracking up, it's so much fun when a 3 year old is in a great mood.

When we got to the transfer station there was a cute blonde coed with a clipboard asking me if I knew that starting Jan 1st it would be illegal to dump recyclables as garbage, they would be inspecting, and I could get a fine if more than 10% was recyclable. Sure, whatever, why would I pay by the ton to dump recyclable stuff when they take it free? Free, $95/ton. Free, $95/ton. Hrm. Tough choice.

Once I had the truck backed up to the dumping canyon, I let Harry out of his car seat so he could walk around the back bench in the truck and see me out the back window, since no way was I letting him out of the truck in that environment. Only took a jiffy to dump what turned out to be 220lbs of carpet and pad, $14 later I was back home in under an hour. Sunday mornings are the best time to go, I never see huge lines then.

Afterwards we went to Home Depot to get an area rug and some transitions, one for the gap between the wood floor and the kitchen linoleum, and one for the carpet in the hallway. We also picked up a kit with wood floor cleaner and wood floor refinisher, and a 20lb bag of birdseed and a bird feeder. I really must love my kids to be paying money to attract birdshit. Sigh.

The cleaner and refinishing stuff made the floors look a lot better, still relatively hashed, but eh, I can live with it. I'm hoping to get them refinished when we go to Cabo San Lucas next April.

While the kids were napping we watched the first two episodes of season two of Stargate: Atlantis off the DVR. Stargate: SG1 is on it's 9th season, and a lot of the main actors have gone, so it's sorta not the same as Seasons 1-6, but Atlantis is starting to get pretty good.

After naps we loaded the kids up, I figured out I'd left my hat at my parent's lake place, and drove downtown to park at Pacific Place. The Monorail is a block away, the kids are still free, so $7 got us roundtrip fare to the Seattle Center, site of the Space Needle and the 1962 World's Fair, and more recently the site of last weekend's Bite of Seattle. It's the typical bunch of restaurants have booths where they sell samples of their food to both make more money and to theoretically draw people to their restaurants. My favorite this year was a dungeness crab stuffed monte cristo sandwich for $5, closely followed by the $6 thai food sampler. Isabel thought the thai rice was too spicy, but Harry loved it. They also split a hot dog and I got a plate of jerk chicken legs with a side of mac-n-cheese which they loved, and B got them a banana split to share.

Still, by far their favorite part of the afternoon was the monorail rides. It's the easiest way to get to Seatle Center without dealing with tons of traffic and walking long distances with small kids.

On monday we had our drinking club meeting, one of our members who only shows up once or twice a year finally quit, and as the meeting was wrapping up our member who went on active duty and is serving in Afghanistan showed up with his girlfriend and his 3 daughters, apparently he got 2 weeks mid-tour leave. It took him 4 days to fly from there to Seattle via military flights, I'm not sure that's even worth it. There is a reason many servicemen pay for commercial air if they can afford it. It was great to see him.
posted 1:42 PM | link | 4 comments

Saturday morning while B took the kids to their soccer tots class I tore out a bunch of the carpet in the family room, and when they got back we finished it up before noon. One corner has a diagonal piece of plywood for floor, looks like their used to be some kind of built-in there once upon a time. For now the kid's toybox mostly covers that. The wood floor is in much better shape in this room, so we're pretty happy.

Saturday night we had the dinner for the five guys who shaved their heads in support of our friend who got tongue cancer. The six of us had quite the feast at Mortons Steakhouse. (I think they like to call themselves Mortons, The Steakhouse, but that sounds totally dumb). That had to be the most expensive meal I've ever had, hands down. Two glasses of Lagavulin 16-yr, $25. My quarter of 2 bottles of $60 wine, $30. Lobster appetizer, $20. Caesar salad, $10. Freakin' unbelievably awesome bone-in ribeye, $50. Coffee afterwards, $3.50. Ouch, but damn damn good. Most of the conversations were hilarious but of subject matters I can't blog about because our wives read this blog. D'oh!

Afterwards we went to Vons and sat at an outdoor sidewalk table for more drinks. There was a check from a previous party on the table, one of the drunker and more obnoxious members of our party added a "1" to the amount of the tip. D'oh!

We finished up there at 11:20pm, (yeah we're old) and went back to the valet parking at Mortons. Ooops! Mortons closes at 11pm, they'd parked the car on the street, and luckily our designated sober guy was able to find the valet, pay & tip him, and get the key. D'oh!

Needless to say, I woke up on sunday feeling a tad under the weather. Too much meat and booze.
posted 3:43 PM | link | 6 comments

Last night was fun. My friend Thom had an engagement party, it was relatively large for such a small house, over 25 adults and about 10 kids of various ages. He grilled some marinated flank steaks and some chicken breasts, there was a cooler full of beer and many bottles of wine, kids chasing each other everywhere, total chaos in about 350 square feet of living space and a deck. Everyone was having a great time, but apparently we let Isabel get over excited and let her eat way too much rich food, since she ended up hurling. Fortunately she'd been telling B that her tummy was too full and B recognized the pre-yakking cough noise, and B grabbed the plastic dome over the cake to use as a barf bucket.

Well, we always used to say you had to get an ERA (earned ralph average) above 0 to call a party a success.
posted 8:01 AM | link | 5 comments

A word to the wise: Don't think about sun tea when about to drink a glass of Juicy Juice fruit punch. Oooga.

B made sun tea the other day. Both of us used to drink gallons of it when teenagers, but I haven't drank iced tea in many many years. I had some last night and it was awesome. This morning when I poured myself a glass of juice before going to work I was looking at the iced tea, and the fruit punch is sorta brownish red colored since it's 100% juice, so my brain had a disconnect when I started drinking it. Very weird.

I totally got busted last night. B had a hair appt. at 8:45, so I was supposed to put the kids to bed, but my two brothers came over to celebrate their divorce being finalized last night, (they had owned a house together, now one owns it and the other had a lump of cash) so we were sitting around talking about various things and playing with the kids. At 9:30, nearly an hour past their bedtime, I'd gotten them jammied but not to bed yet when B came home. D'oh! I wasn't expecting her until 11 or so.

Stupid weather. Last night the 6-day forecast was for hot and sunny. (Hot being reasonable hot, 74-82F, not 100+F HAWT like Texicans experience.) This morning it's raining. I don't normally bitch about rain except in this case I have 350 square feet of carpet and pad in my driveway getting heavier by the minute. If the forecast had said rain I'd have loaded it into my truck last night under the canopy. Gah! Wet carpet is a pain in the ass as well as more expensive to dump since it'll weight 2-3 times as much.
posted 8:17 AM | link | 0 comments

Whew. We always burn the candle at both ends on vacation, and I always need a vacation from my vacation when I get back. The only restful vacation I've had was our honeymoon cruise in the Caribbean.

On Sunday we left B's family and went to spend time with one of my brothers, his wife, and my two nieces who are 15 and 12. The 12 year old was in a softball tournement all weekend, so we went to the ballpark where they were playing. We showed up in the 4th inning, and they were totally slaughtering the other team. It wasn't even funny, the score was 26 to 2, and that's because of the mercy rule that says if you go through all 10 players in an inning then that inning is over. It's a good rule, otherwise it'd still be the 1st inning. The game ended that inning since they have another mercy rule that says if you have a 15 run lead in the 4th it's game over.

It was a double elimination tourney, and they found out they had to come back at 3pm to play the last other team, but that team had one loss already, so my niece's team only had to beat them 1 of 2 to win the championship.

Since we had a few hours to kill we went to my brother's house so my kids could spend some time in their pool. Last year Harry didn't like water all that much, but this year he was a maniac. He was having a blast jumping into the pool. It was a nice hot 90F day and playing in the pool totally hit the spot. Very nice.

We got back to the ballpark during the 1st inning of the championship game. My nieces' team was up 2-0 in the first, then in the top of the second the other team tied it up 2-2 but they responded with an 8-run bottom of the 2nd to take a nice 10-2 lead. The coach on the other team was a real jerk, constantly yelling at his girls to remember very technical batting details, almost never encouraging them. He then started having his girls crowd the plate, I mean their toes were within an inch of the plate.

Mind you, these 12 year old girls weren't exactly MLB material. Almost no pop flies were caught all day, anyone who made it to first could steal a base a pitch since the catcher couldn't out-throw their runs, and even if she could the 2nd or 3rd basement couldn't catch the throw, often resulting in a girl on first stealing 2nd, the throw to 2nd was late and off so the 2nd baseman missed it, so the girl would steal 3rd, the outfielder who finally tracked down the errant throw would toss it over the 3rd base dugout so the girl would steal home. Anyone who just didn't swing was guaranteed a walk, since none of the pitchers could throw 3 strikes in 7 throws. The only girls who struck out either struck out swinging or they got 2 strikes by swinging at balls and then the pitcher got one over the plate. It was also amazing to see the size difference, I swear some of these girls were a good 16-18" taller than others.

So, as result of these girls crowding the plate, they were getting hit by pitches at a furious clip, which was making the pitcher nearly cry (the girls getting hit by pitches were definitely crying) and was making the adults on our side VERY angry. Sure the coach got the score tied, but what kind of jerk is going to do that to 12 year old girls to win a game?!?

Finally, in the bottom of the 5th inning, with the other team leading 15-13, our girls started hitting again, trying the score, then with the bases loaded one of their star hitters smacked the ball out of the park for a 19-15 victory. (The game had run on for 2 hours so that was the last inning). It was very sweet, my niece even won the "plays with heart" award for her team.

Later that night we loaded up again and this time took our two nieces with us out to my parent's lake property. Their parents were coming out the next day but the girls didn't want to wait around while their parents ran errands. We had a blast, the kids loved playing in the lake and jumping off the dock. We dragged a plastic Little Tykes slide into the water for the kids to slide off of, it was a big hit. Later I took the paddleboat across the lake with my 16 year old nephew and 15 year old niece and we spent some time jumping off a large rock into the lake, then they took turns picked up heavy rocks, slowly walking underwater with them until they couldn't hold their breath any more. Very funny.

For dinner my brother made a favorite recipe from when he was a restaurant cook, chicken dijon. I knew I was going to like it when it required 9 cups of heavy cream for the wine sauce. It's basically chicken breasts, fried in butter, on a bed of spinach, topped with a slice of black forest ham, swiss cheese, then the reduced cream wine sauce. Not exactly for those on a diet, but daaaaaamn good.

Tuesday we drove home back across the state. We had picked up a two sets of $5 headphones at Walmart and a 2-1 splitter, so the kids could watch the DVD player without bothering us. In this newfound silence, we talked, and B decided she wanted to get rid of our livingroom/dining room/family room carpet. When we bought the house we knew we were going to remove the wall-to-wall carpeting at some point, but since we didn't know what the condition of the wood floor under it was, we hadn't done it yet, justifying that position by keeping the carpet to pad the kids falls as they learned to walk. Now that they don't fall again, B wondered what it would take to take it out, just living with the floor underneath until we could get it refinished. Our carpets were pretty heavily stained by this point with 4 years of kids doing their worst.

Once she'd committed me to it, it became a monkey on my back, and I didn't want to have that looming over me, so after dinner I cleared the furniture out of the living room and dining room and tore the carpet up. That took about an hour, and the floor is in fairly decent shape for being 97 years old. It's got a few dings and stains, and needs sanding and refinishing, but it'll do for now. It took us another 2 hours of work to pull all the staples that held the carpet pad down as well as the tacking strips along the room edges. Now I just need to do the family room. Maybe if we scrape and save we can afford to have the floors refinished when we go to NYC in October, that would give the house time for the fumes to air out some.
posted 10:03 AM | link | 4 comments

Yesterday we went to Manito park up on Spokane's South Hill, where all the big old fancy houses from the beginning of time are. They have a large pond with ducks, geese, swans, and turtles, and we brought part of an old bag of bread for the kids to feed them. Of course, by 4pm on a Saturday, I'm guessing we were the 300th group to feed them that day, they pretty much only barely cared. I bet those geese eat so much their livers are auto-fois-grassed.

On the way home I decided since this long weekend is our summer vacation (until we go to NYC in October) that I wanted to go out to eat somewhere fun. Unfortunately my sister-in-law is on a pretty strict no milk product diet since her 3 month old supposedly is lactose intolerant and even the slightest bit through the breast milk makes her incosolable. Seems weird and sketchy to me, but I'm not around the little girl 24x7, so I can't argue.

Anyway, we ended up going to Red Robin, not exactly great but we had a good time. Isabel certainly enjoyed her favorite meal on this planet, RR mac-n-cheese. I think they use velveeta or something, but it's hands down her favorite. My sister-in-law had 3 or 4 strawberry lemonades.

When we got home and were unloading from the vans, Brooks, my 2 year old nephew, was encourage to say "truck you" to his grandmother. He uses an F instead of a T (like Isabel used to) so it clearly comes out as FUCK YOU. Annie was laughing so hard then she went Oh God, handed her baby to my brother-in-law, and RAN for the house, but too late, she'd laughed so hard she'd peed her pants. Man I'm glad guys don't get pregnant. It was pretty funny.
posted 8:09 AM | link | 1 comment

Yesterday morning got up, the van had been loaded the night before, so we were on the road by 8am. Pulled into Moses Lake just before 11 for an early lunch, and I was able to get a $6 steak-n-egg breakfast deal that ended at 11am. Woo!

Got to Spokane at 1pm, the kids played for a while, then we took them downtown, played on the giant wagon slide, rode the carousel, and we even took the kids on the Ferris Wheel, they both loved it.

When we got back the kids played in a yard a lot, then after dinner (mmm marinated flank steak) my brother-in-law and I put a new floor in his trailer to replace the parts that were dryrotted out so he could sell it since they inherited a motorhome from his stepdad's father.

Once we'd put all four kids to bed, my mother-in-law babysat while B, myself, B's sister, and my brother-in-law all went out to a bar for some "adult time". It was damn funny. When the waiter asked Kyle what he wanted to drink, Kyle asked, "So, what's the gayest drink on this menu?" causing the waiter to choke. I have to admit I've never heard anyone ask that. He ended up with a raspberry lemon drop with sugar on the rim. I had a 25oz Deschutes Black Butte Porter. (I always order the largest size beer a place serves to encourage the practice of offering it.)
posted 7:53 AM | link | 1 comment

Ewww!

I learned something new today. Apparently it's perfectly legal to have sex with animals here in Washington state, and not only that, there is an animal brothel here. Gaahhh! Who would have sex with a horse or sheep, and especially PAY for it?!

Ewwww!

I need a shower.
posted 8:04 PM | link | 3 comments

Uff-da. With 6 minutes to go in poker last night, I still had $14 of my $20 buy-in, but a short string of bad play and 2nd best hands and I ended up with nothing. Heh.

One of my poker buddies (WOPR, "The Only Way to Win is Not to Play") was reading about Pimm's #1 liqueur, and a traditional New Orleans hot-weather drink made with it called a Pimm's Cup, so he picked up a bottle at the ricker store and we tried some. There are lots of recipes, we settled on one that fit our ingredients: 3 shots lemonade, 2 shots 7up, 1 shot Pimms, on ice. Pretty tasty, and since Pimms is 50 proof, it's not a very strong drink. The quotes I was reading went along the lines of "a good early morning drink that doesn't leave you feeling like an early morning drinker" and "you can have a couple after lunch and still be in the mood for a serious cocktail come cocktail hour". I'd agree with both of those, it's a session drink that would sit pretty on a hot day. It wasn't quite so good when we doubled the amount of Pimms. Pimms #1 is basically gin and cough syrup or something.

Since that wasn't doing any damage to our sobriety, we switched to WOPR's favorite drink, the Drunken Monkey. Two shots of Myer's Dark rum with a half shot of Rose's Lime Juice, over ice. I'm not a rum drinker, that's about the only liquor I haven't aquired a taste for, and with the Rose's it was flat-out nasty. Ooogie. Blech. I think I'd have better luck just drinking the rum straight. It *smells* so good, but the taste just isn't there for me.

Yesterday we got in to see the head uber ENT doc at Children's Hospital to get a 3rd opinion about what to do about Harry's sinuses. He got 3 or 4 pretty serious sinus infections last winter, but he's been pretty good this summer. We'd taken him to a pair of ENT docs back in April/May, and one highly recommended surgery to widen his sinus passages to improve drainage, and one highly recommended no surgery, just use saline to flush him out more regularly and let him outgrow this phase. I was a little annoyed that we sat in the waiting room for half an hour after our scheduled appointment, then for 20 minutes in an exam room. This was for a morning 11:20am appointment, too. Sheesh. Anyway, the uber ENT was really nice, and she said not to do the surgery, so we have a tie-breaker. She recommended we a tube of bactroban cream and mix that into some saline when he gets a runny nose, that should flush antibiotic where it's needed and hopefully prevent him getting a full-blown icky green sinus infection that plugs everything up.

After dinner last night we headed down to U Village mall for their summer Wednesday night concert series. The Beatnicks were playing, they're a fun cover band. They played at an Apple party at MacWorld SF back in 1999 or 2000, I don't remember exactly which year. Man, I miss going to MacWorld. Sigh. Anyway, Isabel was a dancing fool, at one point she was doing a dead-on replica of the Elaine Dance from Seinfeld, except without the thumb action. VERY funny. We need to bring the video camera.

I may not be blogging much in the next few days, tomorrow morning we leave for Spokane, coming back on Tuesday.
posted 7:55 AM | link | 0 comments

I love emailing my wife.

> Can you mark Thurs, July 28th on the calendar?  Put down "Eric -
> Debauchery"
>
> Love you!

What exactly does that mean?

B

> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=debauchery

Very funny.

B

Last night we watched the 1992 Michael Mann movie, "Last of the Mohicans". I'd watched it at a dollar theater back in 1992 with my younger brother Dan. His eyes got big seeing Daniel Day-Lewis' hair, and he said, "I want mohican hair!". He hasn't cut his hair since. B saw it sometime the next year when she was in Peace Corps in Gabon, at some missionaries place where they fast-forwarded it through the love scene. Ha! Anyway, it was fun to see again, all I remembered from before was there were lots of scenes with Daniel Day-Lewis running through the woods with his hair artfully flying behind him.
posted 3:32 PM | link | 0 comments

Hoo boy the kids were a handful at the library last night. Instead of their usual lightning fast picking the first book that makes them smile, Harry took about 20 minutes to slowly pull out a book, then decide against it. Then, he and Isabel both picked a copy of the same book, "The Gingerbread Boy". Gah! Ok, no way am I going to check out two copies of the same book, even if they apparently have at least a half dozen copies. I was trying to talk Isabel into getting something else since she'd get to read Harry's book too, but it was a tough argument.

Played a little bit of Clan Lord recently. On Sunday there was a Dun'ilsar competition between all the clans, an all-way last-clan-standing battle in the Arena. Very fun. My fellow Dwarven Militia had a good turnout, 12 stout beer drinkers, but DMs weakness in contests like these is always our lack of serious healers. We've got Warplet and Tuzar, and that's about it. Still, we managed to hold our own and end up in 2nd place to a pack of bloodbladers with a better strategy, namely let the big clans fight it out and try to keep out of it. Humbaba did alright for a 5th circle fighter with no detha and only 350 atkus, I couldn't hit Yor even with my 30 ranks of fell blade, but I wreaked havoc upon lesser fighters and healer. A good time was had by all.

Man, I really miss my TiVo. The stupid hidef DVR said it recorded 2 hours and 3 minutes of the season finale of Battlestar Galactica in hidef off NBC last Friday or Saturday, but when we went to play it last night it had actually only recorded 23 minutes. Gah! SciFi.com said you could watch the season finale online without commercial interruption, so B asked if I could hook the laptop up to the TV. I'd never done it before, but after diggin up a S-video cable I plugged them in and voila, my screen was fuzzily on the HDTV in 800x600.

Then I ran into the issue that I needed stupid Real(lybad)Player. Gah! I downloaded and installed it, avoiding 300 begs for money. Why would I ever give them money, that would just allow them to last longer and annoy me longer. Finally I got it installed, and got the BG finale playing. First, the pigfuckers at SciFi only gave us the second hour of the 2-part finale, so now we've seen the first 23 minutes and the last 60, and are missing 40 minutes from "Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 1". Grrr. Secondly, the video was craptacularly stuttery. I mean, I bet we were getting about 1/2 a frame per second. The audio worked, but watching a fuzzy blurry jerky video for an hour is a little psychadelic.

I've been walking to work twice a week for almost six months now. It's mostly the same route, and one of my peeves is people who don't trim their vegetation to allow tall people to walk down a sidewalk. There were a number of places where I would have to duck, and it pisses me off. I'm pretty sure there's a city code against it, but instead "somebody" did some midnight pruning of their own, chopping back branches that hung low, and now I can walk unimpeded without having to duck multiple times, and with a broad smile on my face. Thanks, mystery stranger!
posted 1:30 PM | link | 6 comments

Way back in 1982, when my little brother Dan was 9, he asked for and got a Coleco mini tabletop Donkey Kong game. It had a little LED display, did a loose rendition of the first two screens, and had the worst sound effects ever. Anyway, he kept it for a long time, then eventually gave it to me. I've had it with my old 8bit computers and video game stuff down in my basement forever, and at some point the matching Pac-Man variant joined it. Recently it occured to me that I don't have any emotional attachment to them, and I may as well throw 'em up on eBay. After looking at other auctions, I figured they'd get $20-$30 each, and I'd net $50 or so, maybe $60 if I was lucky. Well, it appears that one guy wanted both, and bid them up nicely, so they ended up selling for $45 and $30. Uff-da! I'm very pleased, except I sent them invoices two days ago and haven't been paid yet, so I can't ship the dang things out.
posted 7:28 PM | link | 0 comments

Well, we're home again. Friday did indeed suck, it rained on me the whole time I was loading the truck, it rained the whole 2.25 hour drive, and it rained the whole day at the campground. Normally La Wis Wis is absolutely packed and you can't get in without showing up on Thursday or getting reservations, but it was a ghosttown this weekend. Even people who'd paid up for the weekend were leaving Friday afternoon and evening.

Fortunately before we left we stopped off at the local kid's clothes consignment store and bought two pairs of used rain boots for the kids, they'd outgrown their old pairs. It turned out to be great, they loved stomping around in them.

This time I'd decided we'd just sleep on foam pads under the canopy in the back of the truck so we'd be guaranteed to be dry and I wouldn't have to deal with the pain in the ass of setting up a tent, dealing with a wet tent, taking down a wet dirty tent, and having to dry it out later. Man I've started to hate tents.

I had to start by setting up a tarp over the back of the truck so we could get in and and out without getting rained on. Next I set up the new 8x8' free-standing gazebo that we'd bought Thursday night, it was awesome, we set it up right over the picnic table we were using for cooking. Then we ran a long line across the large wide space for the campsite and started attaching three huge tarps to that so there would be dry-ish places to sit while the rain poured down. We used a shovel to dig trenches around everything to route the water downhill. Man it was just soggy and lame.

Friday night was pretty funny. I've slept in the back of my truck a number of times, and last year my brother, his wife, and I all slept back there and that worked out OK, so I figured me, B, and two snuggly kids would be OK too. Well, not exactly. First off, Harry is a dyed-in-the-wool bedhog, plus he doesn't lie still when he sleeps, he kicks and elbows and headbutts like he's an enforcer for an NHL team. Uff-da. It worked, but it wasn't fun. Well, me and Isabel cuddled up was fun, but B had to sleep between the kids to absorb the damage from Harry so Isabel wouldn't get woken up.

Saturday was MUCH better. It never rained on us, and the sky even mostly cleared up. The kids spent lots of time throwing rocks in the river and lots of time digging in the sand next to the campsite with their buckets and shovels. They were very well behaved, never going to the river without an adult. Aunt Judy stood by the river for over an hour watching Harry throw rocks. He was in heaven, three of his favorite things are Judy, water, and rocks to throw.

It was a lot of fun to see so many of B's relatives, and in total we had a great time, but man do I hate rain when camping. Ugh. We packed up after dinner Saturday night and drove home at 10pm, once everyone was mostly going to bed. People jsut pack up and leave sunday morning anyway, so I figured since it's only a little over a 2 hour drive, may as well go home.
posted 8:24 AM | link | 3 comments

Great. We're going camping today, and it's freakin' pouring rain, and supposed to rain all weekend at the campground. No way am I setting up the tent, I suspect we'll either sleep in the back of the truck under the canopy or we'll get a motel room in the nearest town and just come back in the day to sit under tarps with the extended family. Or inside my sister-in-law's newly inherited 30' RV.

My will to camp has been totally sapped.
posted 9:13 AM | link | 1 comment

Wooo! Won $35 at poker last night, mostly offsetting last week's losses.

Man, my dang ole cell phone was on my belt clip and when I was buckling my belt after using the bathroom the damn thing fell off right into the toilet! Gah! Fortunately it was after I'd flushed, so it was fresh water. I immediately took the battery out and let it dry out overnight, and it seems to mostly work now, but some of the buttons are acting wonky. Hopefully they are just a tiny bit wet. Sigh. Oh well, at least it wasn't my iPod. It's the first cell phone I've had that I really liked, too.

Tomorrow is a vacation day, we're loading up and going camping for the weekend.
posted 8:40 PM | link | 3 comments

Oh glub. Ever get that not-so-fresh feeling? I'm seriously hung over like a french monkey this morning. Good gravy. I mean I'm seriously nearly ready to blow chow. Ugga.

Anyway, the reason I feel like crap is my brother Steve came to town last night. He and my brother Dan are going to see Judas Priest and Queensryche tonight, so he drove over yesterday and showed up right as we were having dinner, so we invited him to join us. Afterwards B went to her accupuncture appointment and Steve and I took the kids to Bottleworks, aka Beervana. Steve bought over a dozen 22oz bottles and a half dozen 12oz bottles, which we took back to my place and started drinking.

Being evil, I had to show Steve what HiDef TV is all about, so we were watching Baraka on INHD2 and his jaw kept dropping at how amazingly stunningly beautiful HDTV can be. He's a little bitter since two years ago when he visited I introduced him to the wonder that is TiVo, so he got one and it changed his life, and three years ago when he came to visit I introduced him to Lagavulin 16-yr single malt scotch, and now he feels like he needs to replace his 60" crappy rear-projection TV with an HDTV.

At one point he offered Harry a dollar if Harry would say "Steve is my favorite uncle". Harry wouldn't say it, he would only say that he loves his aunt Judy, (Judy does coloring books with him) so Steve gave him the buck for being honest. Funny, Harry is 3 years and 2 months old, and this is his first dollar. Noone has ever given him money before. He seems to understand the concept, however, he clutched it tightly in hand all night, stuck it under his pillow when he went to sleep, and it was the first thing in his hand this morning when he woke up. Very damn cute. Isabel doesn't quite get it, she keeps telling him to stick it under his pillow and the "Money Fairies" will come and take it for him. Unless of course she *really* gets it, and is just trying to con the buck out of him.
posted 8:35 AM | link | 10 comments

I finally updated some of the links on the sidebar, fixing some broken ones and adding Timmerov, a funny guy who I think wrote the clan lord engine.

Boy howdy we did a ton of yardwork last weekend. Yesterday we spent a few hours working on our backyard, and it looks a lot better even if we have a ways to go. I need to get my brother Dan to get me a truckload of bark to spread.

Our 4th party was fun but not super great, we had 8 adult guests but everyone left by like 8pm. We ended up watching the fireworks on HDTV, I could have walked up the hill to see them but would have had to gone by myself since there wasn't anyone else to watch over the sleeping kids. As usual, the Lake Union show was better than the Elliot Bay show, and there were some amazing fireworks.
posted 1:28 PM | link | 1 comment

Yesterday morning, after a tasty breakfast of B's homemade cinnamon rolls, Peggy watched the kids while B and I went to Home Depot to pick up some sod, landscaping bark, a blue hydrangia, a new front door mat, and a bird feeder. We got back and did a bunch of yardwork in the front yard with the kids (Isabel and Harry rolled out the sod).

When noon rolled around I figured since the kids didn't get to go for a walk in Ravenna park on Saturday due to the rain that we should head down, pick up some burgers at Kidd Valley (an excellent small local burger chain), walk through the ravine, and over to the playground at Cowen Park. B didn't want to stop doing yardwork but doing fun things as a family usually trumps yardwork and we'd accomplished a lot.

Down in the ravine we ran into a bunch of live-action role players in the middle of some event, and Isabel asked me what the guys in armored costumes where. "Nerds, Isabel. They're called nerds". I forget how often LARPers are in that place.

When we got back from that the kids were exhausted and went down for their naps, and B and I went back to work on the front yard. B had invited some friends over for dinner who weren't coming for our 4th of July party, we grilled some teriyaki chicken breasts, roasted some skewers of pineapple and onion, fried some green beans, and made rice, plus I made a rhubarb crisp following my mom's recipe except I double the amount of oatmeal crisp on top. Yum! I love being married to an awesome cook.
posted 1:16 PM | link | 0 comments

Yesterday it was raining in the moring (In Seattle? Shockers!!) so the kids and I didn't go to the ravine, park, and farmer's market. That ravine is *way* too sloppy and oogy when it's raining out. The kids were disappointed, Isabel was suggesting they wear their raincoats and rainboots, but I'm not pushing the stroller through mud.

Our plan had been to go visit the Tall Ships Tacoma festival. They've got like 30 large sailing vessels that are part of some race from Victoria to LA, stopping at lots of towns for tourist visits. I was thinking we wouldn't do it cuz of the rain, but it had stopped and B correctly said we should give it a try.

We loaded up the kids and the compact umbrella stroller and headed first to the Farmer's Market for some fresh raspberries, cheese curds, and a breadstick before continuing down I-5 to Tacoma. One of the guys in my drinking club has his law firm right on the docks in Tacoma, and he had gotten us a parking pass for his building as a "client" (yeah B was thrilled to know I'd gotten us listed as a client of a divorce attourney) but we didn't have any method of getting the pass from him in time so we decided to park at the Tacoma Dome and take the free shuttle bus from there.

When we got there, the Tacoma Dome parking lots were totally full, I was like "WTF?!?!" until we saw a sign saying they were reserved for Jehovah's Witnesses convention attendees only. Gah! Super. Fortunately a nearby business was offering parking for $5 (a buck cheaper!) and they didn't care who parked there. We ended up walking a block to the Tacoma Link light rail, which is free, and taking that. Harry was beside himself with excitedment at being able to ride a TRAIN!! We got off with everyone else at the Dale Chihuly Museum of Glass, walking across the glass bridge which has $12 million worth of glass art on it, simply stunning.

Once we were down at the water level there were concession booths everywhere, art installations, boats, etc. We figured out we were on the exact opposite end of where we wanted to be, since my goal was seeing either of the huge 3-masted ship-rigged (old-style pirate ship side-to-side sails instead of modern fore-and-aft sails) ships there from Russia and Mexico. We had a fun walk down the waterfront, stopping at a kid's play area with some of those huge inflatable rides, where we paid $4 to let the kids bounce around inside one. They were doing laps around it and laughing hysterically, it was very fun. Eventually we got to the end where those two largest ships were, which was the building my buddy's law firm is at. Our choice was 2-3 hours in line to walk on board the ships or no wait to get to a viewing area above them, so since we had the kids with us we didn't want to wait. The viewing area was right by my buddy's office, and his sliding door was open and his computer was on so we yelled in at him and he came out and talked with us for a while. Let me tell you, divorce attorneys have some damn funny stories.

We took a bunch of pictures of the ships, and three young russian sailors in their dress uniforms were walking down the pier so we got a picture of Harry with them, one of them put his hat on Harry's head, very cute.

Of course, the kid's favorite part of the whole day was riding on the light rail.
posted 8:09 AM | link | 0 comments

A couple of recent pictures of the kids.

Here's a shot of Harry (age 3) sitting on the couch with his beaming smile:

Here's a shot of Isabel (age 4) feeding Alex (six months) a bottle.

posted 6:32 PM | link | 3 comments

B and I started catching back up on the new Battlestar Galactica series on the SciFi channel last night. We've got 5-6 of the ones we missed recorded on the DVR. Man, while I want to like this show, I just don't. I'm not even sure why I keep watching, probably misplaced loyalty to the original.

Things I have a serious problem with:

A) Cylons that are indistinguishable from humans. If they can't be detected, they're flat-out human. Stupid.

B) Baltar's girlfriend being sometimes real and sometimes in his mind. I mean, WTF?!

C) Baltar is just creepy and nasty. I don't enjoy scenes he's in.

Sigh. I'm very disappointed.
posted 5:34 PM | link | 3 comments