Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Friday, September 30, 2005
Cute kid things: Yesterday Isabel asked Bridget to do her hair in two pigtails instead of her preferred single ponytail, because "that's what Daddy likes best". Awww. Harry has worked up seeing dinosaur skeletons at the Natural History Museum in NYC as the end-all-be-all of his life. He is so freakin' excited. Both kids misinterpreted B's comment that they'd get to do a sleep-over with each other (they're gonna be sharing a bed at their great-grandmas) and they are very excited thinking they're going to be sharing a bed *with* great grandma. Ha! She's 82 and recovering from a stroke, I don't think she's going to be up for that.
Ugh. We didn't get anything productive done last night. After dinner B took Isabel to her swim lesson, and Harry insisted upon going too, so I was alone and decided to veg out and watch some TV. I cleared out the DVR schedule for next week, getting rid of everything that we don't need while we're gone, and then started watching 'E-Ring', a crazy new series that B had recorded. 'E-Ring' is set in the Pentagon. The main character is a light colonel who just got back from doing special forces ops in Afghanistan. The other main character is Dennis Hopper, a crazy general who is the main character's boss. The plot, such as it is, is something bad happens somewhere in the world, and US military assets are needed to fix the situation. The main character has to take a sheet of paper typed up by his enlisted sidekick and get signatures from all the top brass to approve that operation. I shit you not, the show is about getting paperwork filled out correctly. Sure, since it's a Bruckheimer show there are lots of action and pseudo action sequences, and the main character's CIA girlfriend has huge breasts that are on prominent display several times per show, but basically it's a show about paperwork. I don't think it's meant as a comedy, but I laughed my ass off. It's also very Oh-Rah gung ho on the military. I don't expect it to last long, but I had fun watching it. Mind you, it's not *good*, but for crappy TV it can be funny. After B got home she watched some with me (she'd recorded it, and had seen it earlier but saved it for me) while the kids played with Grandma, then her aunt showed up and we spent some time talking to her. B's aunt and her family have been going through a very very rough time. Her older daughter is 15 and just a perfect kid, smart, popular, athletic, a great all-around kid. Her younger daughter is 11 and autistic, somewhere along that scale, but in ways that aren't typical, so she's really hard to classify. Lately she's been going through various meds to try to calm down some of her more violent tantrums, and it's been a losing battle. B's aunt has nearly had to call 911 a few times. It doesn't help that her husband has to travel a ton for work... Finally they had brought their daughter to Children's Hospital for the latest interview with some doctors there, and her daughter calmly explained to the doctor that "my dolls talk to me and say I have to kill my mother". Well, that earned her an automatic 14 day admittance to their psycho ward. Crimeny. I have known them for eight years now, and she's just been getting harder and harder to deal with. I can't even imagine how tough this would be to go though, I'm sort of a wreck and I'm so far on the sidelines it's not even funny. It does make me appreciate what I have, but there are no guarantees in this life, I could be there too, my kids aren't grown yet. B's aunt is doing amazing, considering. I mean, she's still mostly functional after being emotionally destroyed. I wish there was something I could do to help. They're starting to accept that there won't ever be a magic pill for their daughter, I don't know what they're going to end up doing. Taking it day by day, I suppose. Tonight we've got babysitting, B and I are going out to dinner, then we're going to meet some friends and see the premier of "Serenity". I hope this movie does well, I've heard only good thing about it, and the "Firefly" tv show was awesome if you watch it in order off the DVD. Great characters. Thursday, September 29, 2005
B and I got 9 boxes of kitchen stuff packed last night, dry good we won't need until in the next two weeks and all the top shelf glassware and vases etc. She figures if we do 10 boxes a night we'll be set for the movers. We're actually getting a lot accomplished, the end is in sight and it hasn't been so bad. The appraisal came back at $664k, of course, Being an appraiser has got to be the easiest job, what a scam. It's just a way of milking a few hundred dollars out of each and every home transaction. Everything about the sale and purchase seem to be happily humming along, looking good for a closing on the 12th. It's a little weird to think that sunday morning I'll be flying to NYC with my family for a week. I mean, it's the big vacation for the year, we've been planning it forever, yet it has been completely overshadowed by the move. Well, at least being in NYC will keep me distracted from moving. Last night B and I watched the first two episodes this season of Lost. We missed the premier last week because our DVR isn't a TiVo and sucks major donkey balls, and the DVR recorded a 1-hr synopsis of last season instead. Man oh man I miss the ease and utility of TiVo. Anyway, ABC rebroadcast it so we were able to watch it. Sigh. That stupid show. I'm thinking I'd honestly be happier just watching a 1hr synopsis of this season and saving all that time. For example, the 2nd episode started before the events in the 1st episode ended, and they basically just barely caught up. Thus, as is completely typical with that show, the plotline advanced basically not at all. I read on a webbooard someone commenting "Oh man this show is so sweet, last night was awesome and we'll learn so much next week!!" and I had to laugh. No, you won't ever learn anything. That's what keeps you coming back. They're not going to ever resolve anything on that show, it would end the gravy train for the producers. Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Ah, the first day of school. I'm sure I saw 20-30 joggers on the Burke-Gilman trail this morning. That number always spikes the first few days of the school year, and again at the start of each quarter, dropping back to normal after a few weeks. Last night B and I watched "Commander In Chief" off the DVR. It was alright, but not as good as West Wing or the very short-lived "Mr Sterling", which it shares a lot in common with. Wish-fulfilment of an honest Independant with morals and values holding a position of power and sticking it to the corrupt government for the benefit of the people. B called the moving company. They said most of the complaints are people who don't get a written estimate and don't admit to how much stuff they actually have. They have no idea who the woman was who claimed she was physically threatened, but the lady B talked to said if one of their movers does that, call the police and have his ass thrown in jail, then call them so they can fire him. Eh, the person we know who used them had a great experience, and she was a single female, so I'm sure they're just as good as any other moving company. I mean, it's a business that is going to get complaints no matter what. Tuesday, September 27, 2005
I'm feeling better. Sunday afternoon was spent watching the Seahawks play a full game for once, but against a crappy Arizona team. I don't know what they were smoking thinking Arizona was going to win the NFC West. Still, I've been here too many times recently to give them much credit early on. Of course, looking at their schedule, they've got what has to be an NFL record for easy schedules this year, they could suck and go 13-3 with this schedule. I'm guessing most of the teams we play will have losing records. Last night I went to my drinking club. Now that we've pared away some of the dead wood, we got almost perfect attendance, the only one who didn't show was the guy who was on the hook for a presentation. According to the bylaws, he now owes us a case of porter or a bottle of good scotch. Mmmm! When I got home there was still time so B and I watched the West Wing season premiere off the DVR. Yawn. Typical mediocre West Wing. When the show is great, it's really great, but that doesn't happen as often anymore. I wonder what Aaron Sorkin is working on these days... Locally, our politicians have two major hot-button transportation issues. The 520 bridge over Lake Washington was built in 1960, it's a bunch of floating concrete boxes with a road on top of it. Designed life was 50 years. Yeah, you do the math, it's not pretty. Why design a bridge to last 50 years, that's incredibly short-sighted. The freakin' Brooklyn Bridge was built in like 1870, that's well over 100 years old and still going strong... The other one is the Alaska Way Viaduct, it also handles an assload of traffic along the Seattle waterfront. It is a double-decker road built on cheap slurry landfill, and is supposed to fail in any decent earthquake. Apparently if the Feb 2001 quake had lasted 15-20 seconds longer it would have collapsed, pancaking the people on it like that Oakland bridge in 1989. The state keeps punting on funding for these, they're going to cost something like 3-6 billion apiece. Finally last session they passed a 9.5 cent gas tax to start funding. Of course, now there is a citizen's inititive to roll back that gas tax. Crickey, like a dime a gallon matters much when gas is nearly 3 bones a gallon. Anyway, the politicians are saying "Katrina proves that delaying problems cost a lot more to deal with afterwards than preventing it beforehand". Hogwash. If we gaff these projects off until an earthquake destroys the Viaduct or a windstorm sinks the 520 bridge, Katrina proves we'll get a huge Federal bailout and it won't cost us a dime extra. Not even a dime extra per gallon. Sunday, September 25, 2005
The Husky game yesterday was a lot of fun for a loss. We were in the game for over half of it, and might have possibly won it if we'd been able to control inside-the-10-yard-line turnovers. I went with Sophie, one of B's Peace Corps friends, she used to rent our mother-in-law apartment when she was a grad student, and about five years ago told me she was reserving my extra ticket to the game in 2005. I laughed, but first come first served. She's pretty funny, when she enrolled at Notre Dame she didn't even know they had a football game, but she got throughly indoctrinated while a freshman and is a fanatic Irish football fan. At least the game was great for her. We didn't get totally blown out or totally stink the place up, so I was happy. About halftime I started feeling pretty queasy. I'd felt a little off the night before, we'd had a dinner party but pot roast and mashed taters aren't exactly too spicy. Anyway, I was feeling pretty nauseaous all through the second half of the game. Afterwards Sophie caught a bus home and I did a slow walk home with my whole GI tract in revolt. After having a liquidation sale at a U Village Mall restroom ("all shit must go!") I figured I must be dehydrated so I stopped in the grocery store for a quart of gatoraid and slowly walked home. I would have called B for a ride but traffic leaving the game blocked up everything anyway. Once I got home I basically went up to bed with a barf bucket, and made various trips to the bathroom, often bringing my bucket so I could go from both ends at the same time. So much fun. I did get to half-watch the USC-Oregon game, where Oregon took a 13-0 lead and gave up 42 unanswered points to lose 13-42, and the start of the ASU-OSU game. I managed to get a bunch of sleep, B didn't want to be near me so she slept on the futon in the living room (the guest bed is in storage). This morning I feel a lot better, but weak as hell. I've drank two 20oz gatoraids so far and yet do not need to pee. I am sure I'm still seriously dehydrated. B went on an expedition to get more moving boxes, but the shurgard is closed. Amazing we need at least another 40-50 boxes. I'm trolling craigslist right now for ones worth the drive. Friday, September 23, 2005
Ha! Here is a great article about the moving company we were going to use. All My Thugs. Eh, I dunno. The two people we know who used them both had zero problems. It's not like they're going to successfully physically intimidate ME, not without getting throw in jail. Still, VERY damn funny.
Well, we've got movers lined up for three weeks from today. It's getting to the point where I have too much stuff to move myself, and my friends all seem to have bad backs or aren't willing to help. Funny how that works, all the people I help move (aka I have racked up moving karma with them) are never to be found, and the people who help me tend to be the ones who never need help themselves... Regardless, I think it'll be worth the $129/hr for 3 guys, a big-ass moving truck, and all the proper tools for moving. What I'll *really* need is for someone to watch the kids so B can be productive. It's so nice to not have to keep the house spotless all the time. Thursday, September 22, 2005
I am so excited that our house is sold. The buyer's realtor put the SOLD signs on our For Sale sign, and our realtor got all the paperwork faxed to her. The whole move is going to happen. We're getting the awesome new house! It doesn't seem real yet. Let's see, we've got to finish packing in basically the next week, because we've got our trip to New York City a week from Sunday, from Oct 2nd to Oct 8th. Then 3 more days to pack, and hopefully both houses close on Weds the 12th, otherwise our house closes on the 12th and the new place closes on the 13th. Movers on the 14th (since we can't be sure to have possession on the 13th) and we have to be fully out of our place by 9pm on the 15th, ending nearly exactly 6 years of very happy ownership of this house. I gave Isabel a tour of the place when she was less than 48 hours old. The kids are very excited. Everytime last night we said "We sold the house!!!" Harry would yell "Yippee!". Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Well, I got a lot more sleep last night, thankfully. Uff-da. The stress diet has been chugging along just fine, after exactly a month my 10-day moving average weight is 193 (from 200.3), a loss of 7.3 pounds in 31 days, 824 calories a day. (My weight this morning was 189.8). B got a call from our realtor, apparently the buyers are going to accept our $2k towards repairs offer and the house is sold. The rollercoaster ride continues. Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Well, as evidenced from my 4am blog, I went to bed at 11pm, woke up at 2:30am and couldn't stop thinking about things. I sorta got to sleep at 6:20am just before my alarm went off, then emailed that I was going to stay in bed. B's alarm went off at 7:15am, and then Harry threw a tantrum downstairs, so I figured if I'm going to be wide awake anyway may as well be exhausted at work as at home. Stupid stress is going to kill me.
Well, at least the Monday Night fooball game was exciting. I didn't think it would be, since the Redskins did nothing for the first 55 minutes, but two quick touchdown passes in the last 5 minutes gave them a 1 point lead that their defense managed to hold on to. It was strange seeing Mark Brunell vs Drew Bledsoe, it was liking seeing the 1992 Apple Cup all over again, except instead of being buried in snow, the game was 99F. Damn, I am so glad I don't live in Dallas. 99F at night in September, how awful. I bet that stadium smelled wonderful packed full of sweaty bodies... Monday, September 19, 2005
Great. The buyers have been told we don't have any money to fix anything, the house is priced as-is. Right now my money is on they found a house they like better or they got cold feet, or they've never bought a house before and inspector freaked them out and their newbie realtor freaked them out as well, since they want maybe $15-$20k in things fixed, that's their 'hot five' from the list of 30 the realtor talked them down from. 1) Replace knob&tube wiring from house. Reply: WTF? I've never seen any, and I've been in places I am sure the inspector hasn't gotten to. 2) Have roof professionally cleaned, ridge re-roofed, some shingles replaced. Basically a new roof. Reply: The roof isn't new, but it's steep and it doesn't leak. Sure it needs replacing sometime in the next decade or so, but it's freakin' fine now. 3) Have drain at bottom of driveway cleaned so house doesn't flood when it rains. Reply: We've had some wrath-of-god type rains in the past six years, the garage has never flooded. No signs of flood damage on garage walls, either. The drain is soil-clogged and slow, but fixing it would require jackhammering out a big chunk of concrete and digging up a few cubic yards of soil and replacing it with gravel and a french drain. Would be nice, but since the current arrangement doesn't flood it hasn't been worth the effort. 4) Have fireplace professionally repaired. Reply: The fireplace is fine, we've had it inspected and they said it was fine. 5) Have main floor bathroom removed to the studs by licenced professional, any potentially rotting wood replaced, and entirely replaced. Reply: Sure the shower enclosure needs work, and if you'd asked nicely I'd have done it, but that's simply insane. It's nice to dream. Anyway, since we had to reply "no" or "you are stark raving mad" to their entire list, I think this deal is not going to work out. Great. More stress. I need a beer.
If you want a tour of our new place, I've got some pictures thrown together here. I'll readily admit to being a crappy photographer, house photos need a wide-angle lens, and for some of them the camera was in some mode other than auto, which made the photos look yellow. Nothing in the house is yellow. Some of the photos are from the realtors, those don't expand like the ones we took. I also tossed in a pair of quick floorplan sketches to try to help make sense of the layout. Sunday, September 18, 2005
Last night we left the kids with grandma to go to a friend's birthday party. (The kids left with grandma before we did, waving goodbye as they excited went to 'Old MacDonalds' for a 'special dinner with grandma'.) It was fun getting out of the house without kids, and we both felt like celebrating since our house is almost sold and my Huskies had finally gotten a win. The party was a lot of fun, I drank too much red wine, then we broke out some single malt scotches and cigars, and he fired up the hookah he'd bought that day. He actually loaded it with flavored tobacco, not hippy lettuce. Huh. Anyway, this morning I was pretty hung over, and the kids came up to wrassle with me in bed for a while. We had to leave our house all afternoon since we'd scheduled a realtor open house, so we went to one of B's friends house where I sat on a couch with her husband watching football and the kids ran wild playing. The Seahawks had one of the most painful wins possible, totally owning the Falcons for the first half, up 21-0, and totally being owned the second half, winning 21-18. I was positive they were going to give that game up. Once that inspection contigency is waived, we've got to start packing, since the closing date would be Oct 12th or 13th and and we're going to New York City Oct 2nd through Oct 8th. Saturday, September 17, 2005
Wooo! My Huskies won a game today, beating Idaho 34-6. We held them to -3 yard rushing. That's the first Husky victory I've seen since the 2003 Apple Cup, since I was out of town during our only win last year. This morning Harry was patting the living room wall and said, "Daddy, I love the new paint". Isabel had to reply, "That's Silver Sage, Harry. The dining room color is Saffron. Can you say 'Saffron' ?" I was dying laughing.
This morning the kids asked me to make pancakes for breakfast, so I did. I always find it funny that B eats two pancakes, my mother-in-law Peggy eats two pancakes, I eat 4 pancakes, and Isabel and Harry each eat four pancakes. My 3 year old eats as much breakfast as his mother and grandma combined. Speaking of big kids, our friend's sister is 6'2", and her husband is 6'10". Their 11 month old baby is bigger than Katie (2.5yrs), just freakin' enormous. Cute girl, but damn she's going to be a big 'un. Here I thought Harry was freakishly large. The buyers are having our house inspected at noon on Monday. Friday, September 16, 2005
Awesome. They offered $538k, we give them $3k towards closing and either $2k toward refinished the wood floors, or refinish them ourselves before the sale. We countered with $540k, giving them the $5k they wanted, and they counter-countered with $538k again but only the $3k for closing, dropping the $2k for floors. We're good with that, it's close enough that I can make it work. Now, we've got a deal as long as they don't get weird about the inspection, since they're going to have to accep the house as-is, we're not comping them for anything they want fixed. I mean, there is moss on the roof, but it's a steep pitch, the shingles look like they're in good shape, and it's never leaked, so if their inspector says it needs to be replaced, they're going to have to deal with that themselves. No 97 year old house is perfect, crickey no new-contruction house is perfect either. We certainly took our share of blems in the new house, but this house has been basically rock-solid since we've owned it, I don't see why it wouldn't continue. Man oh man. My brother and I put another two quarts of tranny fluid into my Vista beast last night, on top of the 1.5 quarts I put in a few weeks ago to get the tranny to function again. It was driving fine, but amazing to think it was almost a gallon low. It seems to shift just dandy now, and as always the engine itself purrs like a kitten. Well, a loud kitten, but even a well-tuned 350 V8 isn't quiet. We also got all four tires up to 35 psi, they were at 18, 24, 24, and 24. Uff. No wonder the one tire went flat. I have to admit, changing that tire was by far the most pleasant tire-changing experience I've ever had. The car comes with a high-lift jack that has an attachment custom-fit to the bumper, and there are two spots on each bumper with notches to secure the jack attachment. A broad flat base on the jack made extremely stable and easy to deal with. I understand that modern cars get some milage improvement with ultralight crappy jacks and compact spare tires, but all three of my vehicles get about 14-15 mpg in the city and 18-20 on the highway, the Vista Cruiser included. Milage was one consideration between the Kia Sedona and the Honda Odyssey, but I calculated it'd take nearly forever for gas milage to make the Honda worth the price difference (over $8k, maybe it was over $12k difference, I forget exactly). Of course, that calculation was made when gas was a buck fifty, not three bucks, so the scale would tip in the favor of the Odyssey more now. Thursday, September 15, 2005
Apparently we're getting an offer this afternoon for $538k, with us paying them $3k of closing costs and $1k towards refinishing the wood floors. That's SO damn close to what we can take that I think we'll go with it, but I'm going to try to see if I can get all four parties (buyers, sellers, both sets of agents) to split the difference $1k each. Hey, three grand is three grand. Wednesday, September 14, 2005
I'm over my funk. Bridget is the greatest wife ever. (Well, perfect for me at least.) We got an offer on our house last night. $520k. We countered with $538k, since that's what we need, and they refused like I expected. Still, a good sign. Monday, September 12, 2005
Friday B and the kids took off at noon to go to her sister's house in Spokane. It was the easiest way to keep the kids out of the house all weekend while people looked at it. I went to the dept. kegger after work, then since I wasn't supposed to go home before 8pm, sat in my office doing nothing much. I made plans to go out drinking with my friend Sean, and took the Vista Cruiser over to his house. We had a good time having a few beers at the Wedgewood Ale House, I had a pils and a stout. I was in bed and sleeping by 11pm. Saturday I got up at 6:30am because my sleeping-in muscle is totally broken. Some friends were having a luau party that night and needed me to help them haul some folding tables and chairs from Thom's house. I picked them up as well as my portable awning since their house is tiny and it was drizzling rain. After dropping that off I went to a friend's house, watching the Notre Dame - Michigan game. Since we play ND in two weeks I wanted them to win, normally I pretty much hate both teams. My friend Jack came over and we watched the game until it was time to go to the Husky football game vs the Cal Berkeley Bears. This is a team that was a total doormat for many years. Until 3 years ago, the Huskies had not lost to Cal for 22 years, 19 games. Crickey. Anyway, after a 1-10 season a few years back they hired Jeff Tedford to coach and he's got them turned around, they were 10-2 last year. Needless to say, they mauled us. 56-17. The QB looked good, but we've just flat-out got no defense, and our running game was also non-existant. The game started off great, the first play from scrimmage was Cal throwing an interception. The next play from scrimmage was us throwing a 56yd touchdown pass. 20 seconds into the game and we're up 7-0. Man, I don't even want to talk about it anymore. It's just sad. Maybe I jinxed the team when I stated that "at least we can't do as bad as last year". Fuck, we're on the fast track to 0-11. We're looking totally non-competitive. If we lose to Idaho this week (would be the first time in like 80 years or something) it's all over for the year. The bright side of the game is low attendance and a blowout means traffic isn't bad, and the weather turned sunny and warm. We went to the party after the game. Chuck had gone nuts and smoked over 60lbs of meat for an expected 30 guests, and maybe 20-25 showed up. It was nice, lots of tasty meat to eat and fun people to talk to, but damn that's just too much food. A select group of us went inside to watch Texas play Ohio State, and laugh when Ohio State totally gave the game away. Crickey, I could have been watching my Huskies play, it was giving me flashbacks. Hook 'em Horns, I guess. Crickey. Again, I was home and in bed by 11pm, missing my family. At 3:30am on Sunday I awoke to my gut roiling, very unhappy. I'm guessing a combo of too much rich meat and stress isn't good for me. I was up two hours watching Clint Eastwood in "Heartbreak Ridge", a pretty terrible Marine Corps movie from the 1980s. Sunday I needed to be out of the house and my friend said to come over, but when I got to his house there wasn't anyone home. I went through the list of friends with HDTV, and ended up at Thom's house watching the Seahawks stink it up in Jacksonville, then watching Green Bay choke to Detroit. I'm not sure I've seen a football game this year that I've enjoyed. Sigh. When my family finally got home, they were in a slight panic because Harry had gotten motion sick in the car just moments earlier, so we had to clean up a bunch of puke from him and the car seat. Joy. Good to have my family back. Tonight we were going to accept offers, but of the three groups most likely to make an offer, two changed their minds, and one has realtors telling them the house should be priced at $500k or so, and they're thinking of offering $525k and we pay their closing costs, which is right out, we simply can't afford that. Thus, right now I'm in a pretty serious funk. At this point I am TOTALLY sick of having to keep the house spotless, having nowhere comfortable to sit, having to be out of the house all the time, etc etc etc. I'm in full-on negative mode, I don't think the house will actually sell now, and moving back in is going to suck. Sigh. Time to count my blessings, I guess. Friday, September 09, 2005
Mmmm, nothing like eating a big old stress sandwich. To illustrate, I'll use my weight. On August 21st, when I woke up I weighed 200 pounds exactly, and my 10-day weighted average weight was 200.3. That was the day we first found the new house. This morning, when I woke up I weighed 192.6 pounds, and my 10-day weighted average was 195.5 lbs. That's a loss of 4.8 pounds in 19 days, or a loss of 884 calories per day. (3500 calories per pound). It's not like I'm not eating... Man will it be nice when this is all over. Thursday, September 08, 2005
Man, selling a house is a real grind. On the one hand, most of the work is now done. On the other hand, the house needs to be abvialable between 8am and 8pm for showing, so either I can't be home, or I have to be ready to leave at the drop of a hat. Plus the house has to be kept spotless, and frankly I'm somewhat of a slob so that's annoying. Plus the stress of wondering if it's going to sell, and the dread of all the bullshit lowball offers I'll have to reject. Pretty much if you don't want it as-is full-price, don't bother making an offer, I won't accept it. Yesterday was the realtor open house. We've now had 29 realtors come look at our place in the first day and a half, plus who knows how many clients. We're not accepting offers until Monday. I've got to stop thinking about it. If anyone cares, you can visit the web page I made six years ago (before I was blogging) with pictures of our current house when we bought it. (All the furniture is the previous owners). Hey, looks like our very own Luke Thayer has made the bigtime. Check out his IMDb entry for "The Island". He's at the bottom. Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Saturday, September 03, 2005
After a full day of packing and moving stuff, my sister-in-law and her boyfriend came over, and he and I took several loads of stuff to his garage, and B and my sister-in-law painted the dining room. They ran out with one small part to go, so we were sent off to Sears to get a quart of that exact color. Turned out they couldn't make that color in a quart, and then when we got home they had made the wrong color anyway, so we were screwed. Gah! This morning I had to get up with Harry crying at 6:30am. I got some work done while he watched TV, then I started loading the truck for a dump run. I was pretty brutal tossing things I'd kept for years, until the truck was totally full. I got the kids dressed and loaded and off we went. They liked watching the bulldozer in the pit push things around. 540lbs of crap and $27 later, we headed towards home, but stopped off at the farmer's market first. Once home B and I quickly loaded the truck full of boxes and bins and took it to our friend's garage where we're stashing everything, and got back in time to quckly shower and get ready for the first Husky football game of the season. It was at Seahawks Stadium, which Air Force was using as their "home field". The deal had been booked back in 2001 when Air Force was doing well and the Huskies had just won the Rose Bowl, so I can see how they thought it'd be a good matchup. Only 26,500 people showed up since the two teams combined for 6 wins last season. The game started off with a F-15 flyby, and then a C-17 dropped 6 parachutists, one with the game ball. That was some of the scariest stuff I've seen, because the wind was gusting strongly in various directions, some of them barely made it into the stadium. One of them failed to clear the guy wires the hoist the net behind the goal posts, so he dived down and got his chute wrapped up in the goal post. Fortunately none of them were seriously hurt, but I can totally see them getting killed trying stunts like that. The stadium is partially open-air, but the stands are mostly covered. Speaking of covered stands, the weather was supposed to be 68 and rainy, but practically as soon as the game started the clouds disappeared and the sun started frying us. I've got a nice sunburn on the left side of my face. My poor Huskies. They looked SO much better than last season, yet with a 17-6 lead and 10 minutes to go they gave up an 86 yard TD pass, then another TD drive to lose 20-17. Drove me frickin' nuts. Ty Willingham has done some good work, but we let that game slip away. We'll see how we do against more orthodox teams. Tonight I did a crapload of pruning on the two large London Plane trees in my front yard, the realtor wanted them pruned back to let in more light and make taking pictures easier. B likes the look, I liked the canopy better but can understand why this is preferred. About halfway through the truck was totally 100% overfull with branches, but I kept grunting and stuffing and it kept taking it. I've always been rather good at getting large objects into tight spaces. Friday, September 02, 2005
Man yesterday was stressful. I got some packing done in the morning, and had a 1pm meeting with the home inspector at the new place. Crickey, inspecting a house that large took 4hrs 10mins, so by the time I got the truck unloaded and got home it was 5:30pm. The only major thing wrong with the house is the roof needs replacing. Mostly it's really solid, mostly new plumbing, mostly new wiring, double-pane wood windows, bathroom vents to the outside, furnace is 9 years old, water heater only 2 years old. However, now I feel like I'm totally behind. We painted and packed like crazed weasels last night, and I took two truckloads of stuff over to my sister-in-laws place. I also unloaded 2.5 yards of beauty bark my brother delivered. This morning has been productive. More stuff got loaded, the bark is almost done being spread around, and best of all, Fishpimp came through with about 50 boxes, all beefy and a perfect size for moving. Awesome, totally above and beyond the call. Writing this blog I don't really think about it being something that can help me in real life, but once again everyone I've met online has been great in person. |
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