Friday and a nice night out!

The Babe got off work and she, Susan, and I went out for steak at a steakhouse that had been recommended to us... but first, we drove by the new house site and looked at the hole in the ground.

Except that it's no longer a hole in the ground: they've got the forms up for pouring part of the foundation. The Babe was concerned that what we were seeing wasn't the same layout as we'd planned. I said that I'd phone and make sure on Monday. We drove around the corner to look at the other house that's ahead of ours. Susan really liked the look of it and was particularly pleased with her bedroom. There's now a skylight in the upstairs bathroom and the tub deck and shower floor are installed in the master bath. The shower looks much bigger now than it had without and the tub deck for the master bath looks huge (hot damn!). There's a step up from the garage into the house, alas, but only the one, so it shan't be horrible and we may even be able to put a ramp on it if we need to at some point. All in all, it's looking quite nice so far.

We went off to dinner at the Rodeo Steak House in Springfield, which proved to be a peanut-shells-on-the-floor kinda place (which the Babe doesn't like). It was Friday night, so there was quite a crowd. While we were waiting, Susan noticed the standard "Pregnancy and alcohol don't mix" and proceeded to tell us "Pregnancy and alcohol don't mix. Pregnancy floats to the top every time." This cracked us all up and when we got home later, I sent it off to the button company to see if it'd fly. (Saturday morning, we got a note saying that it was "offbeat enough to test" so we may have a winner!) Dinner was pretty nice, definitely worth going back there again.

Susan had wanted to go out bowling Friday night and the two of us were interested in that, too, so at 9:00pm, when the Friday leagues had cleared out, we headed over to Emerald Lanes. We got a lane and started bowling. Susan was doing wonderfully: she had great form and was really clobbering the pins. She and the Babe were both using their spiffy new bowling balls, and I used a couple of the house balls. I was still trying out the differences in weights, although after last night, I'm decided I'll go for a 15-pound ball. Susan and the Babe were both pointing things about my form, which I truly appreciated. And it helped, too: I had a 140-point second game. Not bad at all! The things that Susan and the Babe were telling me helped me lay the ball down much smoother and, when I did it right, the ball felt very light. In fact, a 14-pound ball felt too light.

Doing things with the Babe and Susan makes for a wonderful time. We came home tired and pleased. It was a very nice day.

Friday and a nice night out!

A lovely day!

The Babe and I went out to the Emerald Lanes to see if her ball was done and to go bowling.  But when we got there, it turned out that there was a women's bowling tourney about to start so there was no bowling to be had.  However, Forrest did get her ball drilled and fitted--this took almost an hour as he had to do other things as well and it's not a trivial operation to get it drilled and adjusted.  I was worried that it wasn't going to be right, but he did a lovely job and it fit nicely.  We even got her initials in it.  :)  The Babe said that she'd done bowling league stuff from when she was 6 to after she graduated from high school and she'd never had a new ball.  She was pleased and I was very excited also. 

We went to another lane in town, Southtowne Lanes, to try it out.  It's not as good a lane as Emerald in our opinion but we did have a chance to see how her new ball felt.  (Perfect!)  I'm rather keen to figure out the weight I do best with so I can order a ball of my own.  (Yes, I'm going to go for that blue-and-gold "Scout" number.) 

We didn't want the fun to end, so we went out to see "Mrs. Henderson Presents" this evening.  Judi Dench is, as always, an amazing actress and I think that it's impossible for her not to look alive and beautiful and scrumptious.  (Yes, I'd probably run off with her if she asked, so it's just as well I don't know her. <G>)  Bob Hoskins is aging beautifully as well.  The two of them were amazing.  I'm interested in reading the two books that Vivian Van Damm and his daughter, Sheila, wrote about the theater and the happenings.  Both the Babe and I were very impressed at the quality of the casting: they had several dozen showgirls and they all looked like real, 1937 English women, with the chunky thighs and everything.  The costumes were delightfully authentic, too.  The whole film had that lovely "small" feeling that so many British films do and that most American films don't.  And it's really quite emotional to see the bombing of London and knowing that the war was going on for 6 years for Britain and that this was only the start of it. 

At one point, one of the characters flips off the German planes with the classic two-finger gesture Brits use.  It was only a few years ago that I finally made the connection between the gesture and Churchill's "V for Victory."  Yeah, it was a V, all right.  What a wonderful joke for flipping off the enemy.   <G>

A lovely day!

Sattidee at last!

I turned in the draft of the article I'd been working on this week (which had to go in two days early for a meeting--I am a tree; I can bend).  I've got another interview they'd like me to do for it, which sounds fun: someone in a PNW Department of Corrections who's going to talk about thin clients versus desktop computers, which will be interesting.  30 seconds to breathe and then I start the next article.  :)  Nice having work on the desk. 

Actually, we're going to go bowling today, too: the Babe's new bowling ball is likely to be done by now, which'd be really nice.  Might even do that right after breakfast and beat the Saturday rush. 

BC is sitting right next to me, periodically putting his head down and bumping my left hand while I'm typing.  It's very sweet and all, but it's annoying, too.  His fur's growing back on his side, too.  I noticed this morning that he's actually rather thickly furred now, but it's all dark undercoat, which is black, and the cinnamon-colored top layer hasn't regrown yet.  (So thaaaat's how he does that! <G>)

Breakfast is in the offing.  And bowling, of course. 

Sattidee at last!

The new house news, bowling balls, and the neat quote du jour

It's Saturday afternoon.  I went out to a MeetIn.org event last night--playing Texas Hold'em with other local MeetIn.org folks.  We'll be doing some other things locally as time permits so we can keep expanding our social circle here in Eugene. 

The Babe and I went out for a little bit this morning.  We had heard that the stairs were going in on the "Kingsley" style house (that's the one we're getting) in the other lot, so we could see what upstairs looked like.  There were workers there, so we couldn't go in, but we were able to see on a drive-by that the stairs weren't finished: only the sides with the notches for the risers had been placed at this point.  It'll doubtless be in later today or very shortly thereafter, so we'll see the upstairs soon enough.

The dormer's also been put on the front of the house (where my office is going to go).  I was a little apprehensive of the deep slant to the room's wall (which is up against the pitch of the roof there), but the Babe reminded me that the floor area on my office is 10' x 20', so I should have enough room.  I can put the couch there against the window as one possibility--that'd be nice.  It may make putting the treadmill in the office a bit problematic, but we'll see.  I can almost certainly put the exercycle there so I can do the thing I used to do of exercycling while working on the computer (which is tres geeky, but really fun). 

Groundbreaking on our house should be happening shortly, the builder says.  You'll be seeing lots o' pix when this happens, you can count on it. 

After driving by the house, we went over to the bowling alley.  I'd gotten two bowling balls through Freecycle, one for Susan and one for the Babe.  We'd dropped them off last week to have the one for Susan engraved with her name ("Sooz") and the ball for the Babe plugged and patched (there were a few dings) and then drilled for her hand.  We got to watch today while Forrest, the proprietor, engraved her name and then rubbed it with white wax crayon to make the letters stand out.  We then looked at the other ball for the Babe, a nice 12-pounder with a blue sparkly finish.  The big ding had been plugged, bless 'im, but there was still a small ding in the ball.  It wasn't worth patching, Forrest said, as it was going to be on the side where it wouldn't affect the rolling at all for a right-handed bowler, but it did spoil the look having the ding in it and the Babe looked disappointed.  "Not to worry," I said, "I'll be glad to take this ball and we'll get you another one."  "Yes," Forrest said, "we could plug and patch every little ding but a new ball only costs $62 so you'd spend more than a new ball fairly quickly."  Our ears perked up: only $62 for a new ball?  Which balls were $62, we asked?  Apparently, a whole row of very colorful balls on the counter.  Well, heyyyyyyyyyy! 

"You want a new ball, sweetie?"  The Babe had never had a new bowling ball and we looked over the ones out there.  Forrest said there were more balls, too, and showed us several selections in the catalogs.  He also showed us the more expensive balls and gave us a quick course on how bowling balls work with the different finishes on them.  (All this while dealing with a very busy Saturday mid-day crowd.)  After some selection, the Babe selected a nice swirly "Magenta Sky" 12-pound ball from Columbia in their White Dot line, like this one:



Well, I like the blue sparkly ball okay, but Forrest asked if it was heavy enough for me, pointing out that you want to use the heaviest ball you're comfortable with, as you're hitting 36 pounds of pins.  I don't know if that's heavy enough but I was feeling a bit disappointed, as I was going to be spending more than half the price of a new ball on a used ball.  Not to worry, Forrest said, if I wanted to buy a new ball, he'd charge me only $10 for the plugging they'd done so far and then we'd be square.  Hey, now, that's something!  So I told him to hang on to the ball (which we'd measured me for at that point) and then the next time I came in, I'd try out different weights (he recommends a 14- or 15-pound ball) and see if I wanted something heavier.  I may well be able to handle a 14-pound ball okay, and if so, I'll buy a new ball for me, too.  MY problem is figuring out what color to get.  At that price, I'm partial to another of the Columbia's that we saw in the catalog, the "Blue Pearl."



Having said that, I'm not completely sold on the color of this one.  And Forrest points out that you should really like the color of the ball you're using.  (I agree with that--why buy a ball you don't like, after all?)  The bowling ball that I'm leaning towards is a little more expensive, but much more colorful and it's something I like a lot more:

I'm going to think about it and, in the meantime, I'll try out different weights to see what I want to get. 

Finally, here's a lovely quote that I ran into:

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. ~ Galileo Galilei

The new house news, bowling balls, and the neat quote du jour