Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Thursday, September 27, 2007
On Monday, B took Isabel out for another practice run with her bike. Due to one thing or another, I think it was like her 3rd try. She got it! Man oh man is that little girl proud of herself for learning to ride a bike. Super huge smile on her face. We've done more practice each night this week. She's really loving it. Moments like that are some of the most priceless in parenting. She's come so far in so short a time. I'm doing my best to enjoy the next few years before she hit puberty and we have to deal with a teenager. We're on the 4th Narnia book now, "Prince Caspian", having finished "The Horse and His Boy". (My 7-volume-in-one-collection is in chronological order, not published order.) Things I've read recently: Strega, the second in the Andrew Vachss "Burke" series. Very good, and reminds me of why I support Roe V. Wade: How bad the crime rate was in NYC in the 80s. Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel. I read a good review of it, but for the life of me I can't now remember where, and that is bugging me. It was fun. Maus, by Art Speigelman. The comic book version of a Holocaust survivor's story. Everyone should read this. Hearing a survivor talk about going to the bathroom at night (because he had typhus) in Dachau and having to walk on the dead filling the hallway, and seeing the picture which is exactly like the sample barrack there was extremely creepy, even more so because I've been to Dachau. I do NOT want to visit Auschwitz. At the moment I'm reading a David Weber "Honorverse" book, "Crown of Slaves", but I'm not really into it. I'm at one of those rare junctures where I don't have a ton of things I want to read in the near future, I don't know what I'll read next. Thursday, September 20, 2007
Last night B and I got babysitting and went to see Luly Yang's annual fashion runway show. It was a lot of fun. It was held at the Paramount Theater and was a fundraiser for Children's Hospital. My friend is Luly's husband, and afterwards he was trying to get us into the private after party but since the security guard didn't know him he wasn't have any luck. Pretty funny. Finally he got some invitations that got us added to the list. It's been a while since I've been in the Paramount, this was the first time I got to see it with the seats removed, not set up for concerts. Sunday, September 16, 2007
Aw man, both my football teams lost this weekend. I didn't expect the Huskies to win, but after a gusty first half I wasn't expecting to get blown out in under a minute... Sigh. The Seahawks spotted the Cards 17 points, came back to take a 20-17 lead, then with the game well in hand proceeded to try a handoff to our one-armed running back for a fumble and a lost game. Bah! B flew to Spokane for the weekend, her youngest sister was having a slumber party for her 30th birthday. Her husband took the kids to Grandmas. No word yet on hidden camera pillowfight footage. Harry lost his second tooth this afternoon. I figure by the time he figures out how to read this, he'll know there isn't a tooth fairy. In the meantime, I called B in Spokane to pick up some little bit of treasure like a Hotwheels car or a dinosaur for the Tooth Fairy to leave for him. Last night, in my continuing quest to not win Dad of the Year, I took the kids to Costco for pizza slices for dinner, feeding them Barq's rootbeer which has caffiene, and then keeping them up late watching Star Wars on DVD. They slept fine and didn't act up at all today, so I guess things are fine. They've been super well behaved. Isabel spent the whole afternoon today up in her bedroom playing quietly with her Polly Pockets and Littlest Pet Shop toys. Harry spent a few hours building with blocks, but then spent half the football game wrestling with me on the couch. I bunked their beds the other week, they've been loving it. One problem was Isabel had just gotten a nightstand a few weeks prior, and was loving having a digital clock so she could always tell what time it was. Since her top bunk was way too high to read this, today I installed a small shelf up high to hold her clock, box of kleenex, and ceramic turtle that she painted in Cabo. WOPR turned me on to the USA Network summer series, "Burn Notice". Super fun, and as a bonus it has Bruce "Name's Ash. Housewares" Campbell. Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Oh man that Husky game on Saturday was totally awesome. First off, we still had babysitting, so B was able to go with me, which is always great. Secondly, we arranged to go to the tailgate party thrown by friends of no less than Captain Husky himself. (For non Husky fans, Captain Husky is a guy who sits in right next to the vistor section, and dressed up in a purple cape and mask does a little skit in the 3rd quarter where he shreds a stuffed mascot of the opposing team, then leads the entire stadium in a spellout cheer) We brought a 7 layer dip and a bag of chips. It somewhat amazes me that in the 15 years that I've had season tickets, I'd never gone to a real tailgate party. The people I was with all have kids at our kids' school. Very fun group. What can I say about the game itself other than it was awesome? We beat a ranked opponent who last lost in 2005, and we did it with stingy defense. Our QB looked good, but he's still a freshman. The receivers looked like they were trying out for the Seahawks with all the dropped passes, but a 14 point lead at the half held up through a long and scoreless second half. WOoo! It's been a long time since we started a season 2-0. This week we're only 4 point underdawgs to Ohio State. Who would have thought that two weeks ago? After the game we went back to the tailgate party for another hour. I walked with the host to the Hop In Market there at the corner of highway 520 and Montlake to buy more beer, the last of it had been drunk at halftime. On the way back a female police officer who was directing traffic saw me carrying two halfracks of beer and ran over to give me a big hug. I laughed, and said, "Sorry, if you were allowed to drink one now I'd be more than happy to give you one!" I guess directing traffic in the hot sun is thirsty work. That evening I went to my friend Mark's birthday party. It was a really good time, we drank a ton of really nice French wine, ate a bunch of tasty BBQ ribs, fancy cheese, and other snacks, and I finally got to try Absinthe. Little did I know it's basically pastis, at least once the sugar cube is disolved into it. I tried one without the sugar and WHOA NELLY is wormwood bitter. Uff-da. Needs the sugar cube. Great party. I had to leave around 10pm, I'd been partying for 12 hours by that point. Fortunately I was able to bum a ride home. (I'd already bummed a ride there, knowing I wouldn't be able to drive home and B was with the kids). Amazingly, despite drinking 6-8 beers during the day, at least that many glasses of red wine, a scotch (mmm Ardbeg!), and two glasses of Absinthe, I felt 98% fine the next morning. I was sure the red wine would give me a humdinger of a hangover. Sunday B was feeling sick with a cold and she slept a ton, I invited WOPR over and we watched the Seahawks-Bucs game on TV. Woo! Nothing like having both my football teams win! Today marks six months since my friend Chuck passed away. So strange to think that six months ago this morning he was alive, and six months ago this afternoon he wasn't. I can still hear him commenting on things in the back of my mind. Tomorrow I'm going over to his widow's condo to help her hang some art piece. Friday, September 07, 2007
Since my mother-in-law will be leaving soon for her annual two months in Colorado Springs, B and I took advantage of the remaining babysitting to go out on a date last night. The plan was since it was the first thursday of the month and all the museums are free, we'd finally hit the Experience Music Project and it's included Museum of Science Fiction. EMP has been open for seven years now, but we've never gone. Rock music isn't that great a concept for a museum in my mind, but it turns out it's almost better than SciFi. There were some cool items in the scifi museum, like the captain's chair from the original series Star Trek, the only model of the Death Star from the first Star Wars, the original Muffit the robo-daggit from the original Battlestar Galactica, and on loan from 20th Century Fox they've got Ripley's power lifter suit from the finale of Aliens. Some way cool stuff, but most of it is copies of famous scifi books, which makes for a boring museum. One cool thing was their SETI exhibit had a tube with 1 million small yellow balls and 1 black ball. You could turn it over and over to see how hard it is to find 1 in a million. I failed. Afterwards we went to dinner at Daniel's Broiler, a high-end steak house here. We had some damn tasty steaks, a great time. Thursday, September 06, 2007
On Sunday we went on a 10 mile round trip trail-a-bike ride with the kids, having a picnic on the hill at Gas Works Park. Man that is one heck of a nice view there. The bike ride was easy and lots of fun, everyone loved it. In the evening we threw a dinner party BBQ, I cooked up shashlik with both lamb and beef. I wasn't thrilled with the pomegrate flavor in the marinade, but everyone else loved it. On Monday we took Isabel's training wheels off her bike and let her practice it some. She still doesn't have the hang of it, but she was willing to try. In the evening we went to a BBQ hosted by some friends, they had a keg of Elysian Immortal IPA, very tasty. They also had a ton of seafood, with peel-and-eat shrimp, salmon, blackened rockfish and regular rockfish, flanken-style ribs, and someone brought a tureen of mussels and garlic. Damn tasty! Yesterday the kids started school. Isabel is in first grade, and Harry is in full-day kindergarten. B dropped them off then cried. I still don't understand. The kids did great and loved it. For dinner Harry got his pick and decided we should go to Chinooks. Ugh. Nice restaurant, but WAAAAY across town. Oh well, they were happy. Worn out too. Saturday, September 01, 2007
Last weekend we were supposed to rent a cabin on Port Gamble bay, a little protected bay on the other side of Puget Sound. Unfortunately, the friend of B's who was renting it to us flaked out and when we called, said "oops, my aunt is there this weekend". D'oh! Damn flaky people are a pain in the ass. With almost no other options, we went camping at Tinkham, a campground right off I-90 near Snoqualmie Pass. When I say "right off I-90", I mean it. The campground is probably 200' from the freeway, just across a little river. The campsites were really nice, thickly forested 2nd growth, and the freeway noise isn't that much diffferent than heavy river white noise. If you concentrated on it, it was noticable, but otherwise you quickly ignore it. It was fun, but damn if it didn't start to rain Saturday afternoon, and since we were only 45 minutes from home, we said "shine it" and went home. The cane sugar mexican coca cola is awesome. Last night my Huskies had the first game of the year on the road against Syracuse. It was the college football debut of Jake Loker, our new redshirt freshman quarterback, supposedly the savior of the program. Holy crap, after a shaky first two possessions where we went 3 and out, he settled down and started scoring. The next five drives resulted in touchdowns, these were 70 and 80 yard drives. He and the main tail Louis Rankin combined for 300 yard rushing, and after missing 3 of his first 4 throws, he only missed one the rest of the night. The coaches pulled this freshman at the end of the 3rd quarter since at 35-6 we had the game in the bag. Our defensive line dominated, holding the Orangemen to 8 yards rushing. Now, Syracuse isn't a great program, and we just did really bad things to their rebuilding effort, so we'll see this upcoming week when Boise State comes to Husky Stadium. If we can beat BSU, maybe we've got a shot. We didn't use most of our playbook, since there wasn't a need to. Basically, Locker sits back in the 'gun, and if he's covered, he pitches to the tailback, and if both are covered, he passes. Very hard to defend a guy who can run like he can. What a beast. If he stays healthy, the next few years will be fun. This morning I took the kids to Top Pot donuts for a little treat for a 3-day weekend. Afterwards we went to the farmer's market, and once we got home B decided we'd take the kids to the Evergreen State Fair up north in Monroe, WA. Funny how there are near constant fairs within an hour of here in August and September. It was much larger than the King County fair we went to last year, but not nearly as large as the Puyallup Fair which starts next week. Sort of a happy medium. Harry was super excited at the gate to see kiddie rides, he pumped his arms and said "Do you see that?!?! They have AWESOME rides for kids!!" Very fun. Mr Scaredy Harry actually rode the kiddie roller coaster! A great afternoon with the family. |
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