Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Monday, March 26, 2007
Uff-da. Been busy. Friday night I had my 3rd beer festival in 20 days. This was the old Hops on Equinox spring beer festival. Last year they added a scotch tasting, and it was popular enough that they renamed the festival to "HopScotch". I was going with my brother, his salon co-owner, her husband, and a friend of mine. My not-brother-in-law decided to go as well, bringing a co-worker. When I showed up to pick up my brother and his group, they were still busy, the salon is open late on Fridays. Apparently we'd managed to get which day we were going confused, I thought Friday and he thought Saturday. Fortunately the advance tickets didn't have a date. It was fine, but my evil not-brother-in-law talked me into drinking more than I should have. Holy uff-da. When I got home, I blew a 0.31. That makes me wonder how accurate the damn thing is, I know I was shit-lipped, but that should be enough to where I couldn't walk or talk, and I was still well into the euphoric stupid-drunk stage. Needless to say, I was a hurtin' unit on Saturday, hung like the proverbial French monkey. Saturday night was B's monthly mom-group friend dinner, very fun. B made a seafood penne casserole-y thing with lots of shrimp, crab, and cheese. After the guests left and the kids were in bed, B and I watched "Gridiron Gang" on OnDemand. Pretty good movie if you're a sucker for cliched sports movies like we are. Sunday we got up early to take the kids to Snoqualmie Pass for their make-up ski lesson, to make up for the one they missed because the pass was closed due to an accident back in January. Unfortunately, when we got there they said "Didn't you read the sheet we sent you? Make-up classes are at 1pm, not 10am. Gah! B went into the office and raised some hell and they stuck Harry in a private lesson and Isabel in a class. Harry did great on the magic carpet on the bunny slope, but poor Isabel was stuck with a group at about Harry's skill level. She's up to riding the ski lift and going down bigger slopes, but spent most of her class waiting for the other two kids to stand back up and catch up. After her class we got to have our first daddy-daughter ski experience. We went up the lift 4 times, having a fun talk each time. The first run she fell about 5-6 times, the second run she only fell once, and the third run she didn't fall a single time! Woo! She's going to be awesome. By the fourth run she was getting tired so she fell 3 times, and we called it a day, joining B and Harry at the truck. Sunday night we had dinner at one of Isabel's kindergarten classmate's house, B had arranged it with the mom. I met the dad, he was pretty cool, a grad student, but one who was a gun nut and loved talking about hunting and reloading. Wow, not what you expect to find in Seattle, but I am from Spokane and have been hunting a few times, I can hold my own in that company and have fun. He was super happy to not have yet another Seattle liberal who has never seen a gun before and is horrified at the thought of shooting a deer. Last night our sunday night World of Warcraft group did great. We're sadly down to 4, since our good friend and healer died two weeks ago, so we had our Shaman respec to healing, and he did great. We did the bottom half of Marudon, and killed all four bosses, including the Princess, without anyone dying, let alone the party wiping. The Princess is about the nastist creature I've encountered in the game, a four-armed ogress with weird platform shoes. One of her attacks is this weird bend over and emit a huge brown area-of-effect gas cloud, basically farting us to death. Super. Glad we don't need to do that again. Wer're mostly level 51, with one at 49 now, and two of us are damn near 52. We'll start on Sunken Temple next, it will be tough with only 4, but the group doesn't want to add a pick-up 5th. Thursday, March 22, 2007
Last night we once again didn't have enough guys for poker, since one of the girls had a birthday which resulted in one of the guys stuck home on babysitting duty, so three of us went up to Goldie's cardroom again for some more limit Texas Hold'em. Once again I was at a $3-$6 table. I bought in for a rack (100 $1 chips) and before the deal had gone around once I'd won over another $100. They have a $500 high-hand jackpot for each 2 hour block, and I hit quad 8's. That got me a $50 bonus (not like the SOB who got quad 2s and won $450 since it hadn't been hit in a while) and it got me the *second* highest hand, some other SOB hit a 8 high straight flush. Gah! Quad 8s would have taken the $500 jackpot the next two hour block. Oh well. After a few hours my table converted to $4-$8, so I played that rather than move to another $3-$6 table. I went up and down, and finished the night up $100. Playing in a card room is so much fun, most of the people are really funny and having a great time. Sunday, March 18, 2007
Friday night we held the wake for my good friend Chuck Lasseter. It started around 5pm, we had about 50 people, consumed 17 bottles of wine, 4 bottles of port, many cases of beer, lots of food, and I think it was a big success. I was expecting it to be a lot like last sunday's min-wake, but it had quite it's own mood and flavor, and was quite different. More of a celebration, and the whole thing had had some time to sink in, less of the immediacy of last sunday. B had given me my birthday present early, an Alcohawk ABI digital breathalyzer. We had a lot of fun with it. I blew a 0.18, but I'd had like 17 glasses of red wine and port, so I wasn't really surprised. I was surprised how in-control I was at that level. WOPR blew a 0.04 after drinking nearly half a bottle of Old Overholt rye whiskey, showing the world that he's bulletproof. He does have lot more mass to store booze in than I do, but dayum. One friend blew a 0.24, but he apparently failed my specific instructions that you can't eat or drink for 20 minutes before blowing or it throws the reading off, your saliva has alcohol evaporating. Another friend from out of town blew a 0.23, and swore he wouldn't be one-upped, so he sat down to drink a 13% alcohol beer. (shudder) The ports were excellent, one of them was a Sandman's 1982 vintage port, aged 25 years. Very VERY nice. On Saturday we had the service for Chuck. The place was packed, with people standing in the back and a side overflow room opened up. It was nice, the service itself wasn't my cup of tea but there were nice moments. Chuck's brother-in-law, who is an orthapedic surgeon and like 6'11" tall sang some Irish dirge that made everyone cry. Chuck, we miss you. After the service there was a reception at Luau, a Polynesian restaurant. We filled up the banquet room and were spilled out into the restaurant and bar, but it was a polynesian joint in the middle of the day on St Patrick's Day wasn't packed with customers. They had a big punchbowl of mai tai and many buckets filled with ice and coronitas, the little 7oz baby coronas. Chuck's brother-in-law bought a few trays of Jameson's shots, we toasted Chuck, and I got pretty sloppy drunk. I told some great Chuck stories to some of his family, it went very well. I got a ceramic tiki mug from the bartender that I poured my beers into, since Chuck always loved drinking out of a tiki. A few years back when Chuck roasted a whole pig (see my Aug 15, 2004 entry) he gave me a 32oz Nalgene bottle in a tiki shape as a thank-you for helping with the roasting, and to this day I use that at my desk at work as my water bottle. After we got home (no, of course I didn't drive, I was barely able to operate my pants) we loaded the kids up and went over to Chuck's inlaws house, where I had some Guinness with his brother-in-law and played with his 2 year old daughter, Chuck's niece. Later we took one of Jeannette's friends to the airport, she'd flown in from Belgium when she heard the news, and we were going to the after-party, but didn't have directions and couldn't get ahold of anyone who did, so we went home, watched some TV and crashed. I got lots of good crying in, and have a small to-do list. I need to go back to Luau with B to have a pupu platter, we sat at the biggest table and ours got scarfed everytime time it arrived before we could get much of it. I want to go to JaK's grill for steaks with the other four guys who shaved their heads for Chuck. This week will certainly be easier than last week was. Thursday, March 15, 2007
I think I'm going to write some memories of my friend, Charles "Chuck" Lasseter. I met Chuck nearly 20 years ago, back in college. He was in the fraternity most of my friends were in, and went by the nickname "Beef" back then. He was trying hard to live up to the model set by John Belushi in "Animal House". He spent a few years working in the kitchen at "The Unicorn", a British pub on the Ave near the UW run by an expat Brit, the type of dark place where if you left the front door open too long the proprieter would say "Ah Lads, close the door! You're letting out the dank!" Afterwards, he spent a few years working up at Dutch Harbor, Alaska. He cooked at the kitchen of the hotel there, and spent some time cooking at fishing camps. It didn't sound like a lot of fun, but he did make a pile of cash to bring back. After he got back, he spent a winter working as a cook at Crystal Mountain ski resort. He told us a story about one time the ski patrol needed practice hauling someone down in their toboggan sled, and he volunteered under two conditions: He could wear his Hawaiian shirt, and he could have a halfrack of beer on his chest and drink beer the whole way down. He said it was awesome, he got to high-five everyone on the mountain on the way down, toasting them with his beer. Chuck loved to ski. In March of 1997, he moved into my house. He was working for a caterer then, planning on going to culinary school. Around that time we had a gang doing my form of a pub crawl, going to a new bar every week. On August 4th, 1997, we went to the Triangle Tavern in Fremont, near where Adobe would be where Chuck would work years later. I went into the men's room to pee. There was a stall and two urinals. As I was returning my beer deposit, a large guy approached the urinal next to me, visibly looks me up and down, and says in a deep voice, "Heeeeyyyy" Gah!! Then I realized it was just Chuck fucking with me. That rat bastard! Chuck had no sense of proportion. I guess after cooking huge quantities all his adult life, it was just ingrained, but if he was cooking for six, he'd make food for 24. It was always slightly insane, but could always be counted on. That first summer he lived with me he was so happy to be out of an apartment that he wanted to grow a vegetable garden. My backyard at that place was a ravine with a creek, and the front lawn wasn't big, but he convinced me to let him turn the yard into a vegetable patch. Whatever, less mowing for me. I only really used the porch for drinking gin & tonics in the summer anyway. He arranged for something like 3 or 4 cubic yards of manure to be delivered, when he only needed a quarter of that. Uff-da. It was due on a saturday. Friday night some friends had gone up to Whistler. We were home watching movies and drinking beer, around 11pm, when the phone rang. It was a friend up at the condo in Whistler, drunk, saying "Dudes! We've got tons of room! You should come on up!" We figured that was a great idea, so we loaded up Chuck's old Honda Civic Wagon 4WD (to this day if I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have believed Honda had a 4wd civic!) with me, Thom, Chuck, and Bridget, and drove up the 2 hours to Canadia, through the border, and the 2 more hours up to Whistler, arriving at like 3:30am. We found the condo, and when we rang the phone to be let in (it was bitter cold out) it rang and rang. I had to do that like 10 times before the guy who arranged the condo answered. He had NO idea what I was talking about, since the friend who'd invited us hadn't told anybody before passing out. Finally I got him to let us in, and we crashed for a few hours. After skiing all day, and drinking the evening away, we had to find a place for Chuck to sleep. He snores like a Cummins Diesel that's about to explode, so we found that there was an unheated storage bay behind the fireplace in the attic eves, and stuck him in there. It was just tolerable with the loud techno club dance music from below. Oh, and that was the weekend the manure was to arrive. Chuck left a sign on the stick in the driveway saying "Leave Shit Here". Needless to say we came home to a MASSIVE pile of manure. To put it in perspective, we got 4 yards, and 5 yards entirely fills a full sized dump truck. Chuck made a great garden, but didn't pay ANY attention to spacing requirements. Plants that need 2' got 6", plants that needed less got 4". Then wedding season hit full blast, and as a caterer Chuck was busy 16-20 hours a day, 7 days a week. The plants LOVED the manure and grew like friggin' gangbusters. Pretty soon we had a ludicrous jungle growing in our yard, and he never had time to prune, harvest, or deal with it in any way. Most of the veggies rotted on the vine, and it was quite the mess. Oh well. *I* sure wasn't going to deal with it, I'd had my fill of gardens as a kid. He only stopped living with me after B and I got engaged in Feb of 1998, and in July of that year we offered to either move out and let the two guys rent the joint, or they had to move out. Thom bought a house, and Chuck moved in with Wendell. Uff. That's all I've got the energy for for now. Huge wake tomorrow, and service on Saturday. Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Neither B nor I feel much like eating these days, so yesterday when B didn't feel like cooking, I was looking outside and saw my BBQ. That got me thinking about grilling, and the thought of a juicy ribeye steak made me hungry for the first time in two days. I decided we'd try a local place, Jak's Grill, aabout a mile away. I'd read that they had Morton's or Ruth's Chris-quality steak for a reasonable price. It was pretty fancy, and they didn't have a kids menu but did offer grilled cheese sandwiches with fries for kids for $4. My 18oz ribeye came with a salad, brocolli, and garlic mashed taters for $28. It was phenomenal. I mean, even the veggies were awesome. Very much well worth it. The salad with blue cheese was basically a ceasar salad, romaine with caesar dressing, and big chunks of an awesome bleu cheese crumbled over it. Isabel ate about a quarter of my salad and as much of my ribeye as she could con, and stated that "next time I want what you got". Heh. Tonight we only had 4 for poker, and we're down one poker buddy permanantly, so three of us went up to Goldie's Casino on north Aurora (just past the city limits and laws) for some poker room action. They had a $500 high-hand jackpot for every 2-hr block, but minutes before we sat down someone hit the royal flus diamonds, $3500 plus they were high hand. 20 minutesw before 10pm, another guy hit royal flush spades, winning $2100 plus half the high hand. Sheepdogs! I won $93 plus had 5 beers and tips covered, not shabby at all. The one hand I regret was pocket queens, one other player. Flop was 7-7-Q, so I had a full house. Other guy checked, I should have as well to try to hit quad queens for a $200 jackpot, or lure the guy to bet. Oh well, no biggie. Tuesday, March 13, 2007
It's been really sad around here. I haven't been back to work, hope to do that tomorrow. This morning after my shower I leaned my head again the wall for five minutes, then figured out I couldn't function at work. Our friend's widow (who is also a friend) has been staying with us. They were due to move into a new condo in 2 weeks, and nobody thinks it would be a good idea for her to sleep by herself at their old apartment. All the furniture had been already hauled away a week ago except for the couch Chuck died on, since they'd ordered new furniture for their new place. He was the friend who gave me the admittedly-slight push to start World of Warcraft. His guild there is pretty bummed. We're having a huge wake for him on Friday at our house (it would have been his 38th birthday), then the service is Saturday. Monday, March 12, 2007
So very strange. My good friend who had been suffering from cancer passed away Sunday morning. His wife came home to find he'd passed in his sleep while napping, and after calling 911 and her parents she'd called my house, so I went over there to be with her while we waited with a police officer for the funeral home folks to come for his body. B had been with the kids at a birthday party and came as soon as she could, and we arranged a mini wake tonigh at our place, which went very well, all things considered. Uff-da. I can't believe he's gone. Saturday, March 10, 2007
I am SO not winning "Dad of the Year". Last night B was having a hen party, and I was going to go see "300" with some guys. We were going to see it at 9:45pm at the Cinerama, but that showing sold out on Thursday, so as Plan B we went to the 9pm showing at Pacific Place. The only problem was I had to put the kids to bed at 8 o'clock bedtime. That doesn't leave a lot of time to get downtown, get the tickets, and get a seat, especially for a sold-out opening night show. First I tried bribery. "Hey kids, I'll give you each a nickel if you let me put you to bed 10 minutes early...". Harry was all for it, but Isabel balked. Gah! Stupid smart kids! Next, I tried trickery. I set the stove and microwave clocks ahead 5 minutes. Hey look, it's 8 o'clock bedtime! I called the kids in, and Isabel said, "This clock is actually fast, that means it's really 8:01! Off they went to bed like the good little troopers they are. I speed-read their stories and up-tempoed their bedtime songs, and off I went. Well, I did put the kitchen clocks back to their correct time first... Kids, when in the future you read this: Sorry! Daddy still loves you, but he wanted to go to a movie. When we got downtown, a friend and I bailed out of the car while the other guys parked, we ran upstairs, picked up the tickets I'd ordered online earlier, and I waited outside for the other two while my friend went inside to secure seats. When we got up to the theater, there was a ludicrously long line inside for people waiting to be let in the theater. Uff, it was a good thing we'd rushed. The movie itself was ridiculous, and by that I mean retarded. I was laughing my ass off at how stupid parts of it were, and I was very happy that I'd brought Captain Flasky(tm) filled with some delicious Lagavulin 16-yr-old single malt whisky, it went down very smoothly. I think the moral of the movie was "never pay a sleazy polititian in advance". After the movie I went with two of the guys to the Wedgwood Ale House for some beers, having a Laughing Dog IPA (but not their Devil Dog Imperial IPA that won Best of Show last week, sadly) and a Deschutes "The Abyss" Imperial Stout, which was sooo good. We played darts, and by some strange reason I ended up winning at cricket. I think it's because we were too close to the dartboard, and I am tall with long arms... I did get two double-bulls and a single bull in my first 6 throws, unexplainably. I am not good at darts. Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Friday afternoon we packed, loaded up the van, and drove over to Capital Hill. We picked up my youngest brother Kurt from his salon and started driving towards Spokane. Snowy in the pass, but the road was in good shape and it wasn't too crowded. We stopped in Ellensburg at the Matterhorn family restaurant, it's owned by some guy from Germany who makes his own sausages, I had their excellent bavarian stew again, it's got all kinds of sausages bits in it in a rich broth. B drove the rest of the way, and when we got to Spokane around 10pm we went to her sister's new house and put the kids to bed. I drove Kurt to my brother Johnny's house out in the valley. He was holed up in his 36'x36' backyard garage (as opposed to the two-car garage attached to the house). He's got a franklin stove there that he had stoked up so it was 92F nearby, and has some old couches to sit on while watching Modern Marvels from the History Channel on the TV. He was drinking beer with his HUGE friggin' new truck. He'd been shopping for this truck since November. It's a Dodge Ram 3500 Heavy Duty, Quad Cab with full-length bed. Tinted windows, diesel, lifted, monster custom wheels and mudder tires, running boards that pop out when you open a door, the back slider window is powered so you can open it from the driver's seat, rhino lining on the bed, it's quite a truck. If you like trucks. :) I think it's awesome. We had a few beers with him, then I took off before I was up until all hours. On Saturday morning we took the kids to the mall to play at this drop-in daycare center, it's half price if an adult stays. Afterwards we went to Chilis where I proceeded to eat as much as I could stuff in, since as the boozy (not the pedophile) Michael Jackson says, "When sailing upon rough waters, it's always a good idea to take on adequet ballast". After lunch we drove home and got ready. B took a lot longer than I did, so we were a little late leaving, but when we got to my brother Johnny's house, he was showing off his new truck to his neighbor and not dressed yet. Sigh. 20 minutes later he was in his suit and we were off to pick up my brother Steve. We were almost half an hour late at this point, so after we got Steve and drove towards Stateline Idaho we were just barely going to make our 3:30pm start time. Start time for what? The 2007 Post Falls Education Foundation's Wine, Stein, and Dine fundraiser, for which the four brothers are the official beer judges. My second year, my two older brother's third year. We had B along as our designated driver and assistant. This year they had 60 beers to judge, and thankfully the categories made more sense. They'd even wrapped the beers and numbered them, which saved us the effort of each team pouring for the other one. B opened beers and fetched for us, also saving time and effort, which made things run smoothly. Best in Show was a local north idaho brewery, Laughing Dog with their Devil Dog Imperial IPA. Best Pale Ale was Deschute's Mirror Pond, with Snoqualmie Falls' Copperhead running 2nd, Full Sail took first and second in the Lager category with LTD and Session, Deschutes took another first in Best Amber with Cindercone Red, with Georgetown's Chopper's Red taking 2nd, Laughing Dog's winner took best India Pale Ale with Diamond Knot taking 2nd, the best Stout and 2nd best in Show (no award for that sadly) was Victory Brewing of Pennsylvania's Storm King with Deschute taking 2nd place and their 3rd award with Obsidian Stout. It was awesome. I love judging beer, and strutting around the rest of the event like the cock of the walk with my "Beer Master Judge" nametag. Our drive home on Sunday was delayed a bit since B's sister had to take her husband to the minor emergency center where they confirmed he's got strep throat. Ugga. Friday, March 02, 2007
Ok, seriously freaky. A kid I interviewed three weeks ago turned up dead in his UW dorm room Weds night. No cause of death has been released, but they say it wasn't suicide, homocide, or illness. He was a nice kid, up from Galveston on a baseball scholarship. His poor family. Uff-da. The only reason I didn't hire him is he wasn't going to be around this summer, and I can't put tons of effort into training someone for a quarter and a half. Uff-da! Check out http://thedaily.washington.edu/ or the Seattle Times or PI for articles. Thursday, March 01, 2007
Last night after I took the kids to the library we went down to QFC to buy B a birthday present. She'd wanted a bottle of Dolce ice wine, but after calling a bunch of local wine shops I couldn't find it locally. It's like $70-90 for a 375ml bottle on the intarweb. At QFC we bought her two 375ml bottles of Yakima valley ice semillon ice wines. The kids both dipped a finger in the swirly power chiller they have, and laughed at how cold it was. We cracked one of the wines, damn it was good. I stuck with my 22oz Stone IPA that I'd bought myself as a "B's birthday present to myself". My friend with cancer and his wife came over under the misapprehesion that we were having poker, so we sat around and talked with them until 10pm. They'd bought a ton of new furniture and a 42" plasma TV for their new condo, they move in a month. It was great hearing my friend, his voice is almost back to it's normal strength, and he's not grey anymore. |
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