Babes and Beer |
||
|
Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
Family Pictures Active blogs: Carpe Datum Cognitive Dissonance Dubious Quality Joe Delta Fishpimp A Clan Lord Journal Fun Turns to Tragedy! A Stitch In Time Free Market Fairy Tales Timmerov LJ & her dog The Phone Booth Chuck Pierce T-Homo The Brad Hole Greg Costikyan Phil Steinmeyer Ty Robin Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools Mostly inactive blogs: WOPR Spring Tide The Tangential Jeff Schell Clan Lord blogs: Fierce and Furry: The Adventures of Hor |
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
One of the main entrances to campus divides the two halves of the people I support, so I cross that crosswalk a bunch. Yesterday afternoon as I was heading to my bike locker, I was nearly run down by a lady in a blue Kia Sorento. This morning as I was crossing, there she was again, again on her cell phone. This time she stopped, however. I passed that first boss fight in Guitar Hero III. I ended up playing for about 40 minutes yesterday, and didn't even get "The Claw". My fake-guitar-strumming mucles are developing nicely. I can now 4-star many songs, but have yet to 5-star one. (Mind you, this is all on Easy, where you only have 3 fret buttons to deal with. I'm not even sure how to do the modes with all five...) I'm slightly amazed at how much better I am after only playing maybe 20-25 songs. It's still fun, I'm glad I got it. (I do wish I could get YYZ from GH2.) Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Both kids seem fine now, thankfully. I was getting my butt kicked at the stupid mandatory "boss fights" in Guitar Hero III. Mind you, I'm in no way coordinated, so I'm playing on Easy, and have only 4 starred one song, 3 starring the rest. However, you only get 8 songs before you have to pass that Boss Fight to continue, which sucks. I was pretty irate, but then I searched for a cheat code and unlocked all the songs in non-career mode, so I can now play any of them. I had fun playing "Rock you like a Hurricane", didn't even get booed off stage. I tried the game on Expert, with Slow Ride, the first of the easy songs. Made it 6% of the way before being booed off stage, I'm not sure I hit a single chord. I just finished reading Jumper, a 1992 first novel by Steven Gould (not Steven Jay Gould!). Fun read. I bought the book when it was new, enjoyed it, read some others by that author, then he dropped off my radar (by not publishing for 5 years) and I forgot all about it. Apparently it's going to be a movie next February, but the movie doesn't look anything like the book other than it's about teleportation. Monday, October 29, 2007
If it's not one kid, it's the other. Isabel is feeling better, but last night poor little Harry had a bad case of diarrhea. He was extremely distraught and embarrassed, but we got him cleaned up and tucked back into bed. Isabel was on the top bunk with a pillow over her head and plugging her nose, saying there wasn't any way she could sleep with it smelling bad like that. She did have a point. I moved her into grandma's parlour, where she happily slept on the futon. In Harry's room we turned on the heater and opened a window, but it's still pretty reeky in the morning. Yesterday we spent a while cleaning up the playroom. B had several of those cute racks that hold little colored bins, but the toys are NEVER cleaned up. I finally convinced her that unless one of us sorts the toys nightly, that method just doesn't work with real kids. Dumping them into several huge tubs is the only thing that works. We went to Target to get some, and while I was there they had three copies of Guitar Hero III for the Wii, so I picked one up. WOoo! Guitar Hero is a ton of fun. I suck at it right now, but after an hour or so (two half hour sessions, otherwise you get 'The Claw' aka carpal tunnel something fierce) I am already much better. I had to look up that you have to play on Career mode to unlock more songs. On the reading front, I finished Jack Vance's "The Dying Earth" series. It's four novels, the first of which is just a bunch of weird short stories, only a few of which were any good. The next two are one long story about Cugel the Clever, a completely amoral anti-hero. It consists of Cugel in a new situation, he figures out how to screw someone over, someone smarter than he is out-screws him but Cugel is too narcissistic to figure it out, Cugel loses his ill-gotten gains and is run out of town on a rail. Repeat over and over. Still, Vance has the chops to pull it off. I have to say I was surprised and impressed. The last book is 3 stories about a group of wizards, and is pretty good as well. I also re-read Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer". Good time-travel yarn, but funny to see what futurists in the 1950s thought the world would be like in the 1970s and the year 2000. Sunday, October 28, 2007
Poor Isabel had a slight fever on Friday, so she couldn't go to her school carnival. I stayed home with her while B took Harry. Isabel asked me if there was any football on TV (awww) and it turned out there was the Boise State-Fresno State game, which was pretty fun to watch. Yesterday I got up early, went to Safeway to get some more ibuprofen for my little girl, then took the bus down to Husky Stadium to go tailgating. The bus was 30 seconds from the turn onto campus saving me a half mile walk when the speaker annouced all buses were now on the Husky football reroute, so I had to get off at the foot of the 45th st viaduct at U Village instead of going onto campus. Bah! I got to where our friends tailgate, they were both hung over and running late. I helped them set up, and we sat around shivering in the cold misty 45F morning drinking and watching the early football game on their TV. B was going to go to the game with me, having her sister watch them for a few hours then drop them off at a friend's house for the rest of the afternoon, but B cancelled the second part because Isabel was sick, so I had NotMe come to the game with me. They both met up with me around 11am and we went into the Dempsey Indoor practice facility where the Husky Huddle pre-game event is. My work had a large booth reserved with a breakfast food spread, scones, eggs, pancakes, bacon, and crab cakes. It was alright, but not that many people were there, and the drinks were $5.50, so after we ate we went back to the tailgate party for more beer. Once the game started B went home and NotMe and I went into the game. Our offense was amazing, but our defense gave up over 500 yards passing. We've now done something I doubt has ever happened before, in consecutive weeks we've given up school records for rushing yards and now passing yards. We're on pace to beat the worst defensive season the Huskies have ever had by over 50 yards a game. I've officially lost all hope in our coaching staff. I don't think they deserve the rest of this season, let alone all of next year. I wish we could get Jim Mora. Last night we went to a Halloween party at a friend's house. Holy smokes she goes ALL OUT on Halloween decorations. You know those houses that go totally overboard for Christmas decorations? Both inside and outside her house is like that. Amazing. This year Harry is the cutest Knight ever. He got the costume (sized for an 8 year old) when he was 3 from my brother and his wife, who love the fact that his middle name is Gilgamesh and want him to be a warrior king that people sacrifice white oxen to. At 5 he now sorta fits the costume, the sleeves are too big, but the head part is too small. Isabel was a black cat, looking very cute. B went as a wench, mmmmm. I glued some googly eyes to the back of my head and wore a shirt, tie, and pants on backwards. Not very comfortable, but kinda funny. Saturday, October 27, 2007
Last Thursday (a week ago) my friend Nate came to town. We've been friends since the 4th grade, which is now three quarters of our entire lives. I picked him up from the bus station, he was in town for a reptile show and had a few baby lizards with him. We went for dinner to Tutta Bella, for some awesome pizza. The waitress (who was damn hot) couldn't believe that Nate could eat a large salad and two pizzas. (As a kid he'd eat an entire box of cereal for breakfast every day, using the bowl from his mom's Kitchenaid stand mixer and a quart of milk. He's 6'6" and maybe 210, 220lbs. I swear his digestive track must only pull 10% of the calories he consumes.) Afterwards we stopped off at QFC to pick up three pints of ice cream. Mmm, Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra, with a core of carmel down the middle. Nate of course ate his entire pint. Both of us were tired at this point, so after a beer and lots of conversation we called it a night. I'd taken Friday as a vacation day, so I got up before the kids and made some bacon and pancakes. For myself I made bacon pancakes, crumbling bacon bits into my pancake batter. Yum! Nate and I loaded Isabel and Harry and drove them to school. B always parks like 5 blocks away and walks the last bit, so I did that too. Once they were at the school playground they took off to be with their friends and totally ignored us, so we left. Next stop was Top Pot Donuts for some tasty donuts. Maple covered old fashioned cake donut, uff-da. Almost too sweet. Nate said his chocolate raspberry cake donut was the best he'd ever had, and he knows some place in Portland that makes bacon filled maple bars. Our goal for the day was to get my Vista Cruiser cleaned up and running. It's been sitting on my driveway under a tarp for the past year, I haven't gotten around to it. Before this, it's always started. I'd pulled the battery (new last year) and slapped it on a trickle charger earlier in the week, so it should be fine. The engine turned over maybe twice, then the started solenoid clicked a few times, then nothing. Hrm. Sounds like a dead battery. We hooked up jumper cables from the truck and tried again, no dice. We banged on the starter, no dice. Bah. We figured the starter must be dead, so we drove to my brother Dan's house to borrow his ramps, used a tow rope to pull the Vista up onto the ramps, and removed the starter. Called Schucks, the local one didn't have the right starter in stock but the one waaay over in Ballard did. Drove to Ballard. Got new starter, giving them the greasy old one to save the $20 core charge. Installed new starter, same result. Gah!! We weren't thinking things through, if we were we'd have taken the battery with us, and had them test the battery and the old starter. Yank the starter, drive back to Ballard. Have them test the old starter, it's fine. Gah! Battery tested fine too. Well, how about the cable from the battery to the starter. It's older and kinda corroded, we'll replace it. Did so, no change. At this point, if it was a weak battery, we should still get clicking from the solenoid, but we get nothing. It's probably something in the ignition circuit, either the switch in the steering column doesn't go from accessory to start (all accessories work great, headlights are bright, horn works, etc) or a short in one of the wires somewhere. Bah! I'll just have to get it towed to a garage, I've pretty much exhausted my car diagnosic ability. You know, with 20/20 hindsight, I wish I'd taken auto shop and electronics in high school. I enjoyed the science classes I took, but since I ended up getting a Business degree in college and working with computers, they ended up just being cool trivia. Friday night after fighting the car all day in the cold wind and rain we were more than ready for my monthly Drinking Club. (err "book club", except we don't read any books, we just meet on the 3rd friday of the month for suds). Large turnout this month, lots of fun. I loaned Nate my truck for the weekend so he could drive to Tacoma for his reptile show. Last Saturday I had to give away my Husky tickets because they moved the game from 12:30 to 4pm, and I had my other drinking club, the one with the investing problem that night. Our big annual meeting, this time held at Jak's Grill over in West Seattle. The bartenders there gave us huge pours, lots of bourbon and scotch were drank, steaks were eaten, and NotMe, our treasurer, did a KICK ASS job doing an annual report plus he did a 40 page review of all of our stock holdings. Woooo! Way to rock NotMe! The Huskies lost for the 5th consecutive time, but they've lost to 4 of the top 12 so far, and now enter a MUCH easier part of the schedule. We'll see if we actually suck or if we just suck compared to the best of the best. Sunday I was hung like a french monkey and sad about the Vista starting failure, so I never got dressed, just sat on the couch and watched NFL all day long. Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Here is the amazing "Last Lecture" given recently by Randy Pausch, who was recently diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, giving him only a few months to live. Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Quote from a crying Isabel: "Why can't you just always say YES when I ask you things!?!?!" Ha! Right now I'm reading "The Dying Earth" by Jack Vance. He's the guy who came up with the magic system that Gary Gygax used for Dungeons and Dragons, where a magician memorizes a certain number of spells per day and when they're cast they're forgotten until rememorized the next day. Uff-da. His book is all nouns and adjectives with no plot. Here's a made-up example: "Lor-Jar strenuously viewed the sable sky atop the vast cliffs of Nork-La, looking out past the rolling hills of Joram where the exquisite Narla vintage wines were once grown back in the rule of Borf the Mad." Monday, October 08, 2007
Last weekend B and I went with the kids on our annual anniversary weekend getaway. We didn't have babysitting for the kids so we weren't able to go by ourselves. Man, I can't believe it's already been nine years we've been married. Every year we go somewhere for a weekend around our anniversary. So far it's been: 1999: A week in Kona, HI 2000: Vancouver, BC (B was nauseous pregnant) 2001: Lopez Island (with baby Isabel) 2002: Ocean Shores, WA (with baby Harry) 2003: Victoria, BC (first weekend without kids) 2004: Portland, OR 2005: A week in NYC with the kids. 2006: Ocean Shores (with both kids, no babysitting) 2007: Skamania Lodge, Stevenson, WA (both kids, no babysitting) Next year for our 10th we're arranging SOME form of babysitting! This year B planned it, so I didn't know anything about where we were going, it's usually a surprise and we alternate planning. Friday night B had a dozen women over for some henfest tupperware-style party, for those silpat type nonstick cooking dealies. We got up early on Saturday, got the kids dressed, got packed, and got on the road. Our first stop is almost always at Sunflour Bakery on 65th for breakfast. Grrr, the kids behaved pretty atypically terribly, with Isabel nearly having to go out to the car. That angered up Daddy's blood. In addition, I failed to ask for the kids' french toast before our meals arrived, so when everything arrived at once my breakfast (corned beef hash and eggs) was cold by the time I got Harry's buttered and syruped and cut up. Not a great start. The drive south down I-5 was pretty pleasant. We stuck the kids in the 3rd row in the van so we could play some of their Magic Treehouse tapes, with the speakers set all the way to the rear so we could barely hear it. Very nice to have a few hours of peace and calm. B remembered that she needed to buy tickets to the Transiberian Orchestra for herself and her mom, so I called up her sister to have her take care of that, and have her figure out if she wanted to go with her sister and mother. I thought we were going to Portland, but it turned out we were going to Skamania county, which is along the Columbia River a little east of where I-5 crosses. We stopped on the way at Beacon Rock, a cool 850' monolith alongside the highway next to the river. There is a trail up to the top of the rock, it has a zillion switchbacks. The kids did great hiking up it, I was quite impressed. Awesome views of the river. Fortunately, the rain in Seattle only followed us to about 20 miles north of Oregon, we basically didn't get rained on in the Columbia River gorge. After the Beacon Rock climb, we drove to Stevenson, WA, where the Skamania Lodge is. For some reason I always thought it was a hundred year old historic place, but no, it's just a 20 year old modern luxury hotel/golf course. The kids loved the pool, and it was fun playing with them. It's a long shallow lap pool, and Isabel was able to swim the entire length. Harry's swimming is OK, but he suffers from the same fate I had as a kid: So skinny that it's really hard to float. I couldn't swim for crap until I got a bit older and could finally float, maybe age 10 or 12, I forget exactly when. A good buddy of mine from college took a job there 5 years ago, and we met him and his wife and 11 month old boy at the Walking Man Brewpub. I was interested to see a Washington brewpub that apparently never makes it to any of the Seattle beer festivals. I'd never heard of it. Most of their beers were OK, but their IPA and Stout was good, and their Imperial IPA was quite good. The pizza was good too, but the service was on the terrible side. The next morning we were debating what to do for breakfast. We knew the hotel had a fancy buffet, but I figured it'd be like $30 for adults and $10 for kids. B called, and sure enough that was nearly exactly the price. Heh. We asked Isabel if she'd like that or to just go out for pancakes and bacon and eggs, and she thought the fancy buffet sounded great. (Neither kid had ever been to any type of buffet). Holy uff-da. It was quite a nice spread. Prime rib and ham carving station, alder-planked salmon, crab legs, peel-and-eat shrimp, tons of pastries and desserts... I started out with a decaf coffee and grapefruit juice, and Isabel and B got apple juice. The apple juice was fresh-pressed, amazingly good. I got one after I finished my grapefruit, super good. Since I was pretty dehydrated from the day before (I should have brought a gatoraid for post-beer rehydrating) I asked for another apple juice, and when I got back from a food run the waiter had left me a pint glass of it. I laughed hard. Harry ate a couple of pounds of fresh fruit, probably 30 strawberries. He loved the peel-and-eat shrimp as well as long as I'd peel it for him. Isabel had like six pastries and several eggs worth of scrambled eggs, then she had 3 or 4 desserts, including a lucious-looking slice of chocolate cake. B had gotten a chocolate-dipped strawberry for Harry, but he peeled the chocolate off and just ate the strawberry, nearly making B cry. (You know, in slow motion she yells "Noooooooooooo" as she jumps to try to prevent the tragedy....) Good crickey, we were quite swollen after that, so we took a 1.5 mile hike after breakfast. The lodge has 3 hikes run through the golf course, which is very lovely. The hikes weren't just on the green, they were set back in the rough and blackberrys, as you'd get up a hill you could see the greens. When we suggested taking the hike, Harry protested vehemently, "I don't want to hike! No more switchbacks!!" but was happy to do it when we told him it was basically flat, not climbing a 850' rock. Ha! After that we had less than an hour before we had to check out, so I took the kids for another swim while B took a shower and packed. We got some hot chocolate from the lobby before we left, then took the Bridge of the Gods, paid the $1 toll, and headed down I-84. First stop was the fish hatchery at Bonneville Dam. We got some food to feed the rainbow trout , which was hilarious, they were swarming so thick that the top ones were out of the water. Next we visited Herman, the 100+ year old sturgeon, it's simple enormous, something like 10' long. We stopped off at Multnomah Falls, the second highest waterfall in the US. Pretty cool. We got some soft serve ice cream cones, then hit the highway again. We drove up I-5 through some serious monsoon rain north of Centralia, then stopped off at B's aunt's house in Olympia and visited for two hours. We were going to eat at Fish Brewing, a great brewery, but it's adults only, so B and the kids got McDs instead. By 7:30pm we arrived at home. Yet another "restful" weekend. Heh. Saturday, October 06, 2007
The week before last through last Tuesday the two main kids that B watches were in Boston for their aunt's wedding, so with Isabel and Harry in full day school she had mondays and tuesday completely off for the first time in six years. I took last Tuesday off work so we could spend the day together. We took the kids to school, dropped them off, and went downtown to Pike Place Market. First stop was at a french bakery for delicious croisants, B got almond and I got plain. Then we walked through the market, buying some raspberries to eat, some hailbut cheeks for dinner, watching the fish guys toss salmon around, and getting some cheese curds from the cheese place. After that the plan was to hit the Seattle Underground Tour, but since it was October they dropped their 10am tour, and when we called at 10:45 they said the 11am and noon tours were already sold out. Bah! I've been wanting to take it for almost 20 years and when I finally try I get denied. Instead we went to the newly remodeled Seattle Art Museum. It's no Met, but it's still pretty nice. My original plan for the day (acting like tourists) was to have lunch in the Space Needle. I haven't been up the Needle in 20 years, but it was a rainy foggy day, so there wouldn't have been any view. Instead we drove out to Shilshole and had lunch at Ray's Boathouse. Afterwords I was craving a macaroon, so we stopped by Whole Paycheck and picked some up, then drove home where B took a nap. A bit before the kids got out of school we hooked up the trail-a-bikes and biked to the school and met the kids at the bus line, they were thrilled to be able to bike home with us instead of taking the bus. A very fun day. |
|