My Words Are NOT Backed By Nuclear Weapons

Bah. The GameStop we went to sold out. Good for Sid Meier. Bad for me.

Kathy suggested we stop at Target and go look for a copy of the (apparently elusive) Civ 4. Instead we had dinner (bike ride = hungry).

Perhaps tomorrow I will find a copy.

How Cool Is This?

frozentundra_mhky_05_02at
Originally uploaded by sethsdisciple.

Wisconsin and Ohio State play an outdoor hockey game. At Lambeau!

I'd love to be there. Heh, outdoors at Lambeau in February. The players better bring their woolies!

Link

Thats a Lot of Mulch

Bed10
Originally uploaded by sethsdisciple.

I went around the yard today and chased down an actual count of how many planting areas there are around the yard. 17! And a couple of them are pretty big.

Want to see them all? Go here.

I don't know what half this stuff is, or if it is going to come up come spring (is it annual or perenial?). I guess we'll see. By then I'll have to figure out how to get a bunch of mulch out here without having a pickup truck.

I just know this, mowing around all this stuff is a pain! But with some work, it will look nice.

Some Help?

Deck1
Originally uploaded by sethsdisciple.

I really love our new deck, and am looking forward to spending some time out there. I've seen my sister in law reading on theirs, and that looks splendid, especially with A Feast For Crows about to come out.

But I need some help.

What is a good place to buy deck furniture? I've seen a few things at Lowes or Hope Depot, and it was ok. But nothing grand.

Any suggestions? Any types of deck furniture that is worth of recomendation?

Fall

Fall
Originally uploaded by sethsdisciple.

Don't you just love the Fall? It has always been my favorite season.

I love when the air gets crisp.

I love when the leaves turn.

I love the smell of rotting leaves on the ground.

I love the smell of burning leaves (though with it being illegal most places, you don't get it much anymore).

I love driving along the Mississippi and seeing all of the colors. I told Kathy that if the yung'un wasn't about to arrive, I would like to make the drive up to Minnesota. Maybe next year.

And I am happy to be back in a place where fall happens. The pine trees just don't do it. The picture above is from our back yard. Dig it.

One Thing In Football That Is Always True...

Brady
Originally uploaded by sethsdisciple.

It is so much more fun to watch when your team has a QB who can play.

The game last week against USC was unbelieveable. But one of the things that really made it so was the fact that I could finally really believe that Brady Quinn was a very good (great?) QB. He's tough and he's got the chops to throw the shrot ball and the bomb. He can also throw a decent fastball (though it is hard for me to evaluate fastballs having watched Favre for years...spoiled).

Quinn played a great game against a great team last week, and now this week he is doing what top college QBs do...blowing out a dog and padding his numbers. His numbers through 3 quarters:

32/40, 467 yards, 6 TDs, 0 Ints.

The announcers called them "Arena Football numbers."

Charlie has been getting lots of credit, but give Brady credit for digesting an NFL offense in 6 months and executing it beautifully. It doesn't look like they've held anything out of the playbook to keep it simple. The offense is unpredictable and wide open.

Now if only they can get some defense for next year.

Here Come the Irish

Perhaps I'll rent Rudy to watch before the game tomorrow. I don't think I can find a copy of Knute Rockne, All American in time, the traditional pregame movie.

I Hate To Kick Him When He's Down....

You'll Never Take Me Alive Coppers
Originally uploaded by sethsdisciple.

But really, I can't help myself.

Who doesn't think the Rams are better off without the dumbest man in football?

Disaster!

What a disaster I was today.

For starters, I slept horribly. I was up until 2, and the alarm goes off at 6:15. I thought I was going to have the bad night sleep on Sunday night after running Blackfathom until X a.m. I'm not saying what X is because I want Kathy to believe I didn't see the sun come up (actually I didn't, but I wasn't that far off). But I surprisingly slept like a babe that night (must have been the paint fumes from painting two rooms that day). But last night I paid.

My lovely wife made some coffee while I was laying in bed and brought it up to me. I moved it to a safe place and my head didn't make it off the pillow. I hear the sound of what can only be a coffee cup getting blown over onto the carpet by the beside fan (how the fuck does that happen?). Ug, mad scramble. Douse it in water, get it sponged up. Kathy hits it with carpet cleaner. At that point I was hyper grumpy. If I had known my boss's phone number, I probably would have taken a sick day (I was thinking of doing it until the coffee showed up bedside, and then I felt too guilty for letting Kathy get up).

Hop in the shower (now running very late). Get out, set my coffee mug on the ironing board to grab a shirt from the dresser right behind it. Open drawer. Knock coffee mug onto the carpet AGAIN!!! Ug. Mad scramble. More dousing. More carpet cleaner. Kathy pushes me out the door to work (late). She is a saint.

Get to work. There is a small concession stand at the door which sells all sorts of stuff (starbucks, popcorn, etc.), including doughnuts of the type that have lots of jelly filling and frostingesque glaze. Normally I can resist my second favoritest of all doughnuts, but my main source of "wakemeup" was pissing on me, so I went to the sugar/fat bomb combo.

Relatively effective. Made it through the morning. Little did I know that coffee is a jealous mistress. The third incident of the day came when I dumped my work cup of coffee onto my keyboard. WTF.

But the day is over now, and there is stew, a little time on the trainer, and maybe some red shell action at my brother's.

Drabs and Dribs

Quick hitters (as usual lately I guess).

The big plan for the weekend is getting the baby room painted, and getting set up to paint the library next weekend. When those two things are done and the debris is cleared out, I think we might be fairly officially "moved in." Oh, and when the new bed and loveseat arrive, but that happens this week anyways.

Bought a new lawnmower. I know, exciting. In fact, I'm making this post right now as an excuse to put off going and using it for the first time. In truth, we already had a lawnmower, but it was a push mower that I had hoped would work far better than it does (the old mower uses a reel instead of rotary, and the things used to cut greens at golf corses use reels...but I think the fact that they have a motor spinning the reels means that they cut better). Oh well.

Rode along the Mississippi with my brother again this week. Need to dig out all of my nightriding stuff, as we are about to complete the switch of seasons and loose the effective light...on the plus side, most of my nightriding stuff also is of the cold weather variety, so it will match the intended use.

Managed not to take leftovers home from fish fry this week. Still was a calorie catastrophy, but I started using Fitday.com to record calorie intake again, so fear of that fended off leftovers.

I feel bad for Brett Favre. He doesn't deserve to suffer through something like this. I hope they get things turned around and he sticks around like Elway did to enjoy it in the next 2 years. Doubtful, but we'll see.

How about Notre Dame! I'm very excited about the USC game next week...we'll see exactly what kind of a preparation coach Charly is, as he has 2 weeks to get ready for the Trojans. I can't imagine a better place to be than South Bend in early October for a football game. South Bend is one of those places in the country where Fall is truly Fall, and the leaves should be glorious next weekend. Plus 2 of the best college bands in the country and a great football game. It is days like next Saturday that suckered me into going there for 4 years.

And my last smidge of sports crap is to mention that it is gratifying to this diehard Brewers fan to see that there actually was/is a baseball fanbase in Milwaukee, it had just been in a deep deep slumber due to the Sal Bando GM era. Who could blame us? But it is fun to see them crawling out and realizing that there are more of us in the world. It is a little like the survivors of a nuclear blast coming out of their shelters and meeting the other people who made it through.

Sooooo....

It is midnight and I'm finally getting sleepy. That changes the fact that the end of Neon Genesis Evangelion (or whatever the stupid spelling is) is idiotic and one of the greatest wastes of potential since Cledius Hunt not at all. What crap. What was this guy smoking.

The Brewers are officially not losers this year! Here's hopin' for either one more win this weekend, or some fricken rain so they can be winners! It was fun to see them check in at 13 (out of 30) in the power rankings today on ESPN.

Kathy just came down to check on me, but just snuggled up and went to sleep leaning up against me. I like when she does that.

Fish fry is tasty. But we need to buy less fish. The goal should be no leftovers. As Joe now knows, the leftovers never make it past midnight, and Kathy doesn't eat leftovers. You do the math.

I'm going to sign up for a post birth class that is just me and the young'un. Should be fun. No idea what the subject matter will be. Probably "How to change a diaper without mangling the young'un or yourself (you sad fool)."

Mercifully, NGE is over. What poo. They fucked up the ending of the TV series in Japan so badly that they made the guy try again with a movie. I think that he intentionally fucked it up worse just to spite them!

CK, lunch was at the U City Grill today, LWC's favorite place, haha. I had Biminbob (or something like that?). Marinated beef which is grilled, a fried egg, served in a big bowl over rice, some hot sauce, some cucumbers and carrots cut up with a mandolin. TASTY. The boys that I used to work with at Boeing in my first stay know the good spots. Costs me an extra 1/2 hour at the end of the day to go to lunch with them (espically as they now work in a different building), but worth it ever 2 weeks or so.

There is a long to do list this weekend. I would like to get 2 or 3 of them kicked out at least (buy a mower, fertilize the lawn, set mole traps...moles, yuck, select paint for the pink room and/or baby room?).

And Cheer Cheer for Old Notre Dame tomorrow (tonight!).