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Glub dang. The weather today is 35F and drizzly rainy. Biking in this morning, I got passed by a guy wearing long knee-length khaki shorts, with no fenders. His whole butt/back was drenched. I've got to guess that he had clothes to change into, but I was cold enough wearing proper clothes and swathed in gortex, he had to be freezing!

Happy 39th Birthday B! Last night we went downtown to PF Changs for dinner because B's mom had a gift card from Christmas. B isn't allergic to MSG, but it is a severe migraine trigger, so I basically never have Chinese cuisine. Corporate chain chinese food when we have a thriving Chinatown seems a shame, but it wasn't my decision. The food was good and the kids had a good time, Isabel having sweet-and-sour pork for the first time and loving it. I didn't mention that she had Garfield on her chopsticks. Mrow!

Afterwards B and I went to Barnes and Noble in U Village once I'd put the kids to bed. She had a gift card from her bowling birthday party last Friday, and I had one from Christmas that I haven't spent yet. She ended up with a stack of books, I didn't find anything I need since I'm currently deep in volume 8 of the 12 Flashman novels, and I finally finished James Herriot's "The Lord God Made them All" which had been in the bathroom for the past year, so I added Frederick Marryat's 1836 novel "Mr Midshipman Easy" as it's replacement.

Work has been busy. I've had the same two student helpers since 2003. One graduates this quarter, the other this fall, so I hired two new ones. I haven't had to train someone new in 3.5 years, and for the moment I have 4 student helpers. Uff-da.
posted 8:17 AM | link | 2 comments

Woooo! Happy Mardi Gras everyone!

B made an awesome gumbo yesterday, she even got file powder for it. MMmmmmm! Today she made a King Cake, a Mardi Gras tradition.

Last Saturday I heard an ad on the radio for the Guiness Toast, which was the night before, and if hearing an ad for an expired event wasn't stupid enough, they described it as "kicking off the St. Patrick's Day season". Season?!? It gets a SEASON now? Geez.

We're a tad freaked out around here. Last Thursday we got email from Isabel's teacher saying the kids were going home with a VERY IMPORTANT announcement. The annoucement was that a 2nd grader in her school had died the night before of the flu, the second kid in the area in the past two weeks. Very freaky! Apparently the little girl had been to school on Monday, then was home with the flu for two days, and brought into Children's Hospital, and died that night. Ugga! Those poor parents.

They won't say, but I'm guessing neither kid had a flu shot, since it's for the exact strain that killed both kids. If they'd had it the media would be reporting "Flu vaccine doesn't help!!" scare stories. As it was, over 1,000 people got their kids flu shots on Monday, a grand case of closing the barn door after the cows got out.

Even more freaky was Isabel waking up with a fever on Friday morning. Gah!! She's fine, but it's unsettling.
posted 6:33 PM | link | 2 comments

Today is the 10th anniversary of Bridget and I dating. It's been one damn good decade.

Isabel was very trhilled on Sunday morning, the loose tooth she's been working on for months finally came out. For Christmas a friend had given her a children's book about the Tooth Fairy, and a little plastic glow-in-the-dark tooth that has a felt-lined tooth compartment inside. In the book the Tooth Fairy leaves some kind of treasure, and great teeth qualify for the "Hall of Perfect Teeth" in her castle which is made out of teeth. She was super excited to wake up Monday morning and find some new hair clips with butterflies on them, as well as a buck worth of quarters.
posted 1:18 PM | link | 1 comment

B and I went to our school PTA auction on Saturday night. Boy howdy was THAT crazy. I mean, uff-da.

Of course, being us, since the auction was held at the former elementary school 5 houses away from our place B had to throw a pre-auction cocktail party. Since the auction started at 5pm, most parents didn't have babysitting early enough to go, only one couple showed up.

Isabel's kindergarten class had split into groups of 5 and done Jackson Pollock-inspired splatterpainting, and Isabel *really* wanted us to buy it. I didn't really like it, and the starting bid was $100. B got us to bid $125, but it went for at least $150.

B bid on a number of things in the silent auction part, but we ended up not winning any of them. About the only thing I was interested in was the bottle of cognac from 1900. Not too often you see a bottle of hootch that predates manned heavier-than-air flight. The next bid was $285, more than I'm willing to pay. Maybe for a great bottle of scotch, but I am not enough of a cognac drinker. We did buy two of the $30 "grab bag" wines, each worth at least $25, but some worth up to $150. Dunno anything about the two bottles we bought.

We were given 8 drink tickets, good for beer or wine, and the wine glass fills were to the top. They were trying to get people liquored up.

The live auction was run by the host of the local "Evening Magazine" show, apparently he does about 50 charity auctions a year. First they drew "the golden ticket", they were 4 for $100, and the winner got to pick their choice of the live auction items.

The first item in the live auction was a cute kid desk and chair, with kid-art applied to it. It sold for over $2k. The amount of money being bid stunned me, I was laughing my ass off. Case in point: One of the items was an italian 4 course meal for 8 at some parent's house. Not like a famous chef parent, just a parent. Two groups bid the crap out of it, and it sold for like $5,100. Yeah, five grand. Crickey!! The lady offering it said she'd do a second one for the 2nd place bidder if they wanted to pay $5k too, and they said yes. Gahoobah!

They haven't said how much money they raised, but it's gotta be at least six figures, possible over $200k. Dayum.

One of the headlights in the Kia went out, so after a week of being lazy I opened up the owners manual and figured out how to replace it. Not exactly easy, but not too bad. I knew not to touch the new $16 bulb with my flesh, since the oil on my skin would cause the halogen to overheat.

I also decided to look into what it would take to use the HomeLink garage-door opener buttons inside the van to open our garage door. Turns out you just program them to do so, they pick up the signal from the other opener. The range on the HomeLink one sucks, however.

Harry is playing Wii baseball right now. He's totally excited that he just pitched two doubles then a home run. Explanations that it's the other team scoring aren't registering... Heh.

Last week the kids checked out the book "Everyone Poops". It's translated from the original Japanese. It's pooptastic, if you like seeing everyone poop.
posted 6:50 PM | link | 2 comments

The kids had their second ski lesson two weeks ago, what was supposed to be their 4th (first canceled due to the highway being closed, the second because getting there an hour early wasn't nearly enough time to rent skis with the ridiculous crowds). Isabel did great, and half way through the instructor asked if it was OK with us if Isabel went on the real chair lift. Wooo! She did great, the lift is a super low speed quad, and they had 1 instructor with 3 kids. She skiied down the mountain, then they got on the lift again and did it again. Isabel TOTALLY loved it, she thinks skiing is awesome. "I went FAST, Daddy! Now I just need to learn how to turn..." Heh.

Later that night we were at a friend's house for a dinner party. This friend has an espresso robot. I mean, it has reservoirs for coffee beans and water. Press a button on the front and it goes GRRRRRRRRR as it grinds beans, then THUNKA THUNKA THUNKA as it stamped them into the disk-thingy, then it forces the hot water through to make the espresso, and then it automatically dumps the disk of grounds into another storage container. A red light appears if any of the three reservoirs runs empty or full in the case of the dump. Awesome. Apparently $800, but her parents bought it for them as a gift.

Now, I've never had an espresso drink. Zero lattes, zero espresso drinks of any kind. Lots of times in the past 20 years I've been offered free espressos, and my work sponsers a free espresso stand every December, but although I love coffee, I've always taken a pass on espresso, since I did NOT want to know that I loved it and be on the hook for $3.50 a day. Strange, I know, but my mind was good with it.

After not having espresso for SO long, it was easy to pass up, plus I normally eschew caffeine unless I need the jolt. However, for a while now I've been thinking I'd like to try it, but only in the right circumstance. Not a friggin' latte at starbucks, but maybe a single shot by itself at Tutta Bella after some tasty pizza, or when I went to Munich in May. However, this seemed ideal. I got out a cup, and pressed the button. Thick creamy espresso came out, and OH MY GOD it was tasty. Excellent flavor, superb mouth-feel, truly ambrosia.

Makes me wish I had an espresso robot.

Last week was damn cold here in Seattle, at least for us. Temps at night in the low 30s. This made our master bedroom kinda chilly, the central heat isn't well set up for this house, it keeps the main floor warm but barely any air gets to the upstairs vents, plus I have it set at 60f at night, which translates into mid 50s or below in the bedroom at night.

Normally this isn't a problem, but my wife likes to change the blankets on the bed all the time, and our current set isn't super warm. I hate wearing clothes to bed besides socks, and I have a hard time sleeping if I'm freezing. Finally I had an epiphany, my bald head needed extra warmth, and I had my old Marine Corps sleeping tuque downstairs. In the military, if you are issued a brand-new sleeping bag, it comes with a little olive-drab soft cloth hat with velcro flaps, it sorta looks like something a middle ages peasant would wear in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It does a damn good job of keeping your exposed head warm in cold climates, and even better, it looks completely totally ludicrous. I mean, Grade A #1 retarded.

It totally did the job, sleeping with it on kept me toasty warm and sleeping great. Of course, this week the weather is back to high 40s, so it's not nearly so cold, yet I was having trouble sleeping without the tuque. Damnit, I don't want to be addicted to it. Sigh.

(I do love the Canadian phrase "tuque" for hat, even if my sleeping tuque isn't technically a tuque, which is a knit stocking cap...)

Last weekend Bridget decided we'd do an early Valentine's dinner. We first started dating 10 years ago this Tuesday, the day before Valentine's day. Our first date was to Cucina Cucina, an italian chain restaurant, so B wanted to go there. We went to my work kegger, then took the kids home and left our place around 5:30pm. Arriving, we see that some new restaurant is in that location. Gah! There was a Daniel's Broiler right nearby, so we went there. A huge line for the valet parking, and due to the nearby Seattle International Boat Show there wasn't any other parking choices. B went inside and found out it'd be at least two hours for a table, and the bar was jammed as well. I decided we'd go around the south end of Lake Union to McCormick and Schmick's Harborside, the restaurant where we'd had our wedding reception. They were packed with boat show folks as well, but said we could get a table in 45 minutes. It was about 6pm at this point, and I knew we'd never get a table anywhere else any faster on a Friday evening, so we went to the upstairs bar. There were two open seats at the bar, and we were about to just eat there with the lovely view of downtown right in front of us when they came to seat us. 45 minutes was actually about 8 minutes.

Since it was a celebration, we went a little wild. We had mixed steamer clams and mussels for one appetizer, and snow crab claws with 3 dipping sauces for another. B had a salmon and halibut entree with a berries-and-cream sauce that is amazing, and I had a whole steamed lobster and caesar salad. The lobster was a trifle overcooked, but all-in-all it was a delicous and ludicrously rich dinner. We called up my friend Thommer and his wife Vesya to see if they wanted to go to the Wedgwood Ale House for beers, and they said sure. It was Thommer's 40th birthday the next day, so we wanted to celebrate his last day in his 30s.

When we got there the place was jam packed, they've been busy as hell ever since the smoking ban. We stood around drinking Diamont Knot IPAs for a while, then a lady came up and said to my friends, "Excuse me but I know you. I'm getting married this summer and looking for a photographer, and I recognize you two from his web page. Can I ask about him?" Pretty funny. After they talked she was leaving, so we took her table and had a fun evening.

Later that night I woke up feeling pretty queasy. Ugga. Too much rich seafood, not enough starch. Ugga. I didn't want to bother B so I went downstairs and watched TV for a while. Quick review of the movie "Amazon Women on the Moon": Bad sketch comedy movie. Like an R-rated episode of Saturday Night Live without comedians doing the skits.

Anyway, I finally failed to resist and went into the bathroom to hurl for a while. After that I felt much better and mostly slept on the couch until morning.

That night we went to Thom's parent's house for his 40th birthday dinner. Fried chicken, rolls, mashed potatoes, bacon salad, it was a yummy meal and a good time was had.

Afterwards we'd arranged to go to a dive bar near Thom's house with a bunch of friends. It's called the Reservoir Tavern, but everyone calls it The Rez. I'd only been twice, once pre-smoking ban and once post. The place was packed pre-ban, but a nearly dead post-ban. Unlike the Wedgwood, dive bars didn't do as well with the ban.

We played a bunch of games of shuffleboard, drank pitchers of beer, and had a great time. B and I left at midnight, and Thommer closed the joint out at 2am with his other friends.

On Sunday we had a Superbowl party. I was rootin' for the Bears, and everyone else was for the Colts. B had gotten bear and horse cookie cutters and made frosted sugar cookies for both teams, chocolate for the bears and blue for the Colts. It was a good time.

I'll end this with some sad news. My friend with cancer had a scan to see how much effect his two super nasty bouts of chemo had on his big cancer lump that's collapsing his lung, and there was no change. He can't take another round of chemo like that, so now he's going to get a low-grade chemo once a week to try to reduce the spread. Things are pretty grim. Very sad. He and his wife did just buy their own place, a condo just 6 blocks away from us, they'll be moving at the end of March.
posted 10:46 AM | link | 2 comments