Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Saturday, December 30, 2006
Man, what a totally worthless day. B is sick as a dog and has been in bed all day. I tried to get the kids motivated to get out of the house this morning, but Harry refused to put on his shoes so I said "F it" and took a nap. All I've done all day is nap, watch bowl games (I can't believe Iowa blew it against Texas), play kdice (a multiplayer version of Dice Wars), and play Wii. Friday, December 29, 2006
Last night B and I had nothing to watch on the DVR, so looking for something on the On Demand we found "Bell, Book, and Candle", a 1958 romantic comedy starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, which is apparently the origin of the TV series "Bewitched". Pretty good movie, very funny to see a glimpse of 1958, almost 50 years ago. IMDb reports they're making a remake, due in 2008, the 50th anniversary. Tonight B went to lie down after dinner because she's got a nasty cold, so I fired up Star Wars with the kids. I've probably been waiting 20 years to watch Star Wars with my kids. Isabel loved it, Harry was a little scared at parts. Both were pretty confused, asking a ton of questions. I have GOT to get the original version DVD set, these special editions have too much stupid crap added to the backgrounds. It just doesn't fit.
Heh, in Wii Sports Tennis, when the score is tied at 40-40, they say "Deuce". Every time I say "I dropped a deuce". Now Isabel says the same thing, not having a clue why I laugh so hard to hear it. Thursday, December 28, 2006
Uff-da, that's over. Bridget's brother and his family left last night on a redeye back to Texas, and our house can slowly return to normal. It was a great holiday, I have to admit. Lots of fun. Of course, with six kids between 1 and 5 in the house, someone was melting down about every 15 minutes, but you've just got to laugh at that. Only two Wii-related injuried, both times small children got too close behind someone bowling and they got smacked in the head. Madden football seems pretty fun, but it was Wii Sports that was the big hit. I managed to bowl 210, getting six strikes in a row, but my brother-in-law Kyle bowling something like a 224, and was the first person to get to "Pro" skill level at 1000 points. I've been wavering between 920-980, still haven't done it. I did get my Wii fitness age down to 27, so of course Kyle got 25. Still, my score is a lot less than my age than Kyle's. Saturday we took the kids to the children's museum, then the boys were supposed to go shopping but we went to the Wedgwood for more beer instead. Saturday night we had B's family's traditional christmas dinner, fondue, then the boys got their night out, so we went to BigTime to play shuffleboard. I had a pint of their Bhagwan's Best IPA, then just after I got a pint of their Coal Creek Porter I noticed they had Decade IPA on tap! This was a beer they brewed special for their 10th anniversary about 8 years ago, first shown at the Portland Brew Fest (and the best of the 72 beers there that year!) and now only brewed for special occasians since it's costly to make. I ended up having two pints of the Decade, awesomes stuff. When we got there to play shuffleboard amazingly there was a group already playing. I virtually never see people playing shuffleboard so that was strange. Kyle and I ended up playing the winners of that game, with their weird rules (pucks short of the scoring line are removed immediately and don't work as blockers, and all the ones past the line score on both sides). They beat us and then left. We had Kyle and Buddy on one team and me and Bill on the other, and we lost the first game, won the second, so we had to play a tie-breaking game. The first toss I ended up with a leaner off the back (4 points) plus one in the 2 zone, total of 6 points, but Buddy's last puck managed to clear BOTH of them, leaving us scoreless. They proceeded to rack up 13 unanswered points, then Bill and I proceeded to slowly take them down, a point or two at a time, until we finally got it to 13-9. We racked up five points but Kyle got the last throw, and he managed to bump a one past the two line giving us a miracle 15-13 win. WOooooo! Tonight the kids were playing Wii Tennis, and everytime one would do well they'd exclaim, "I steamed you!". I was like, "wtf?" until I figured out they meant that they were "smoking" the other one. Heh. Smoke, steam, close enough. Sunday, December 24, 2006
My brother-in-law was looking for a book to read, and found an old bookmark. It's a laminated card from one of my old roommates, given to him by his girlfriend, reading "10 blow job punch card". My brother-in-law laughed and said, "Hey, you should see if Bridget honors competitor's coupons. That's just plain good customer service!" Ha! B said nofuckingway. Friday, December 22, 2006
Uff-da. Right now we've got 13 people in the house, seven adults and six kids ranging from 18 months to Isabel at 5 and a half years old. All of B's out-of-town siblings and their spouses and kids. It's a little nuts. Everyone is having a blast playing Wii. This afternoon the boys and I went to the Wedgwood Ale House for a few pints, then came back to nap. This morning we took the herd to the inflatables where the kids bounced and slid and played soccer for an hour. B is as happy as can be. Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Man, that was some storm. Driving home from my drinking club meeting last night, there STILL isn't power over across the lake in Kirkland, four full days later. My friend who lives out between Redmond and Fall City had a 120' tree smash into his house while he slept. Crushed his master bathroom, broke and the top smashed his entryway on the opposite corner of the house. They immediately called their insurance company so they were getting assistance (tree guys, plywood/tarp guys, estimator) out the next day. They finally got power on Sunday after 2 nights of 40F temps indoors. My head is polished nicely, smooth as can be since my friend started chemo yesterday. Hope things go well for him. Sunday, December 17, 2006
Last night B and I went to see Casino Royale. Wooo! Very fun, very NOT like recent Bond flicks. As a poker player, I do have to comment upon one thing: At one point there was a hand with an ace in the flop. A king came up on the river, and one of the players bet heavily. He was called by someone with pocket aces, who won the hand. My beef is that anybody who can play in a $10 million buy-in poker tourney knows that when holding pocket kings, if an Ace hits your hand is trash. There were tons of ludicrously unlikey hands in the game (four players all-in, player with nut flush shows his hand, player with low full house shows his, player with higher full house shows his, player with straight flush shows his) but at least the rest of them were played mostly properly. Afterwards we went down to the Barnes and Noble there to shop for a bit, I picked up "Alas, Babylon" finally, and we got some kids' books for the kids. There were people there at 11pm with their SMALL children, younger than mine. Geez, people. Get a grip. Today I needed to take the kids to the mall so they could buy some presents for B. What an unholy nightmare the mall is today. It doesn't help that the short-bus patrol running the mall decided that this would be a good season to have a quarter of the parking lot demolished to make way for an incomplete parking garage. Glad that's over. Isabel brought a small stuffed elephant that she'd taken a 6" by 12" piece of pink fleece fabric and tied it around the elephants neck like a cape, and told me, "Daddy, I have to take care of this poor baby elephant. Her momma was driving and was in traffic and did NOT hit the brakes in time, got in a traffic accident, and died. That's why I have to take care of her! Poor thing." What the hell?!? Where does she GET stories like this? B's at a tea party at a friend's house. They used to go to the tea house down the street from our old house, but that place runs like $30 a head for tea, so they figured they'd save money if everyone just made a couple kinds of finger sandwiches and desserts and just did it at one of their homes. Saturday, December 16, 2006
Aw man. I've been a little sad lately, to put it mildly. My good friend who had tongue cancer last year had a cold recently, and it turned into pneumonia. The chest xray showed that the reason he had pneumonia was because there was a golf ball sized lump growing inside his chest cavity, which was partially collapsing that lung. It was not there when he had tests done in August. Further testing found growths in his sternum, two in his spine, and one in his pelvis. He starts up chemo again next week, probably for six months this time. Looks like I'm going to be shaving my head again for the forseeable future. This REALLY sucks. Friday, December 15, 2006
Wow. That was some storm. Around half of Seattle is out of power right now, thankfully not me. The Seahawks stunk up another game. They've got a decent shot at making the playoffs with a 8-8 record... Gah! Thursday, December 14, 2006
Holy freakin' glub! We've had some serious rain this afternoon, wrath-of-god 40-days-and-40-nights monsoon type of rain. I mean, I'm not sure I've seen it rain this hard anywhere EVER, including tropical storms. Visibility in a car was only a few hundred feet, all the streets were awash so you couldn't see the lines, the curbs were huge pools of water and raging torrents. My friggin' *sidewalk* had a river, in addition to and above the curb flood. My front yard was awash, and a couple of gallons of water leaked through the concrete into my garage. (Fortunately I don't put anything on the ground in the garage that isn't in a plastic bin.) I had to go over to my friend's house, his wife called in a panic because one of her basement window wells was full and the water was coming into her basement. I gortexed up and went over there, dug out a new drainage channel along the side of her house through the lawn, and got that under control. Next we get 50-60mph winds all night. Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Last night B and I watched the second half of the extended "Two Towers". We're now 2/3rds of the way through the trilogy, having watched the extended "Fellowship" on the plane to and from Albuquerque. Being sick sucks. I slept over half of yesterday. Today I'm just hopped up on goofballs at work, wishing I was asleep. Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Our christmas party was super fun, probably our best party ever. We had 41 guests, and I'd hired one of my student helpers to tend bar, which worked out awesome. I got to enjoy the party instead of making drinks for people all night long. Bridget had made a baked artichoke heart and crab meat dip that everyone was raving about. The last half-dozen guests left around 2am. I've been home sick the past two days, sleeping in. I finished reading "The Protector's War" by SM Stirling, the second in his "Emberverse" trilogy. Good, I can't wait to get ahold of the final volume, "A Meeting At Corvalis". I've been reading the George MacDonald Frasier "Flashman" series. I'd loaned out the first to someone and not gotten it back, and my friend in Spokane gave me a copy when we were there last summer, and it had been hiding in the seatback pocket in the truck since then. I found it on the ride home over Thanksgiving weekend, and finished it, the second one "Royal Flash" in between sleeping a ton, and am halfway through the third, "Flash for Freedom!". They're very funny books about a coward scoundrel who always ends up looking good, set in many historically famous situations. The first was published in 1969, and the most recent was just last year. Thursday, December 07, 2006
Last Thursday B stopped by our local christmas tree lot and inquired about large trees, and ended up buying what she calls "the perfect tree". The thing is 9' tall and about 7' in diameter, really freakin' big. Since it's already a week old with 3 weeks to go, I'm betting it's all dried out by Christmas, but we'll see. On Friday morning B and I got up at 3:30am, left the house at 4am, arrived at the offsite airport parking at 4:30am, for a 6am flight to Albuqueque via Salt Lake City. MUCH better flight than my last trip to ABQ (Seattle-LA-Dallas-ABQ, shudder). We landed around noon. I was very happy to see my closest brother(#4) Lance, it'd been 22 months since I last saw him. His new baby is SUPER cute! She was all swaddled up in this new high-tech velcro swaddling thing, we just used blankets for our kids. Super sweet. My folks arrived four hours later, and B and my mom and I basically fought over who got to hold the baby all weekend. Lance taught B how to bake damn tasty bread and pizza crusts. Dad and I helped assemble Lance's new utility trailer, which was a total pain in the ass. Dad and Lance and I went for a hike in the hills with the dogs while B and Deann went shopping. We all had a great time, but it was too short. The flights home were nice as well, and the kids sure missed us. They were very well behaved for their grandma however. The Seahawks won again, with a 3 game lead and 4 games to go, and apparently the Trojans totally couged it against UCLA. B got me a silver or grey cummerbund and bowtie for my tux to match her dress for our party this weekend. I've hired one of my student helpers to tend bar, and we've got like 45 people RSVPed. Should be a good time. |
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