Chuggnutt!

Month: March 2006

  • Thirsty Thursday

    After work today I swung by Newport Market over on the westside for their Thirsty Thursday beer tasting. I just found out about these Thirsty Thursdays recently; they’re every, er, Thursday from 3:30 until 6:00. Free beer! Can’t go wrong with that.

    Today it was a rep from Deschutes Brewery doing tasting of their two newest: Inversion IPA and Buzzsaw Brown. Both good, but the IPA was really good. So I picked up a six-pack of it, and then, to my amazement, found a bottle of Deschutes’ Mirror Mirror, which I’d heard about but hadn’t seen anywhere. I’m excited! But it’s a big barleywine, so I’m saving it for the weekend. Or Friday night.

    So remember—Thursdays at Newport Market.

  • Smoke alarm batteries

    Beep! Yesterday afternoon one of the smoke alarms started the intermittant beeping that indicates when the battery is getting low. These are smoke alarms that are actually wired directly into the electrical system of the house, but have nine-volt batteries in them for backup (in case the power goes out). No biggie, I knew we had newer batteries.

    Beep! Well, a bigger task then I thought; I couldn’t figure out at first which smoke alarm was beeping. We have a total of seven in the house, one down at the bottom of the stairs and six others upstairs. And due to the acoustics in our house, I was moving from one alarm to another waiting for the telltale beep, but everytime I’d get close to one the Beep! would chirp out, seemingly from behind me.

    Beep! I finally traced it to the smoke alarm in my bedroom. Popped out the battery, replaced it with a fresh one. All good, the beeping stopped. Case closed. Had dinner, went to bed.

    Beep! Wha—? Huh? I roll over in bed, echoes from whatever dream I’d been having shredding away in the onset of consciousness. Peer at the clock; 4:40. In the morning.

    The hell—?

    Beep! Oh, shit. Another smoke alarm is warning me its battery is too low. I do not want to get out of bed for this—

    Beep! Beep! Uhhhh… If I’m not mistaken, that was two different beeps. Son of a bitch.

    Beep! So for the next 30 or 40 minutes I’m stumbling around the house, trying to catch a smoke alarm in the act, failing miserably, swapping out fresh batteries only to find I don’t quite have enough because I just know that all the damn batteries have chosen 5:00 in the morning to sputter out, and all the while Beep! Beep! and I can’t figure out which ones are chirping.

    Beep! Screw this, I get vicious and pull the batteries out of all the smoke alarms. They’re wired anyway, and I’ll just buy brand new batteries tomorrow to make sure I’m covered.

    …Did it work? Did the beeps stop? Looks like I was—

    Beep! No. No no no nonononononononononononono.

    It dawns on me that we have a carbon monoxide detector plugged in to the wall in the hallway. It’s supposed to beep when it detects high levels of CO gas… and I think there’s a battery in it too.

    Check it… sure enough, the damn thing says “Err” on it’s tiny beeping fu—ahem, LCD screen. Okay, pull the detector, pull the battery, and…

    Silence.

    Ever notice how peaceful it is at 5:45 in the morning?

  • Boys’ week

    All this week (since Saturday, actually) it’s just me and my son at home. My wife and daughter took advantage of spring break to head down to San Diego to visit my brother and sister-in-law. Sadly, spring break doesn’t cover work or preschool/daycare, so we were left behind.

    It’s all good. We’re having a good time so far, despite the logistics of being a single parent for a week. No big plans, otherwise, though.

  • The Skittles beard commercial

    Okay, just a little while ago I saw the creepiest, randomest commercial for Skittles ever… I won’t even pretend to try to understand it…

    Anyone else seen it? Basically, a guy with a weird, long (like, three-feet-plus long) beard is at a job interview, and the beard is moving like an elephant’s trunk, feeding the guy skittles from the desk. The woman conducting the interview is trying to turn him down, and—

    Yeah, freakshow—

    —and the beard feeds the woman a Skittle and strokes the side of her face, while he just chuckles in a creepy way.

    And that’s it.

    I can pretty much guarantee I’ll never buy another pack of Skittles again.

    …You didn’t think I wouldn’t give you a link, did you? Here’s the video on YouTube.

  • Crazy skull

    I admit, when I first saw this skull, I would not have guessed what animal it ultimately came from. I mean, that is some crazy wicked toothwork…

    Wicked crazy skull!

    So, who can identify it without cheating?

  • Lost book: Judy Blume

    It’s like my regular Lost Book Watch feature or something. Anyway, right there on the screen in your face, Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. I don’t know that it has anything to do with the overall theme or plot of the show; since Sawyer was reading it, I rather suspect the producers are just having fun with us.

    “Us” being those people like myself who have nothing better to do than blog about the books that show up on Lost…

  • The Paperback Exchange is closing

    Heads-up, Bendites: The Paperback Exchange, which is one of the oldest used bookstores in Bend (if not the oldest), is closing! Right now they’re having a huge 75% off sale on everything. I stopped over there after lunch and bought four books (for only $4.50, which would have been regularly priced at $18) and talked with the owner a bit.

    They have to be out by April 30th, but will probably close a week or so before that to empty out the store. So, you’ve got about a month left to get there and get some great deals.

    It’s located at 184 NE Greenwood, on the corner of 2nd and Greenwood. Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

  • Vote for Pedro – and other shirts

    Vote for Pedro t-shirtOver browsing at JCPenney this evening, and I saw that they had “Vote for Pedro” t-shirts for only $9.99. Some other good ones, too.

    Just a heads-up to y’all. :)

  • Jack Bauer Facts

    If you enjoyed the Chuck Norris Facts site, and like the TV show 24, well then, this is the perfect mashup for you: Random Jack Bauer Facts. Same exact premise (some are even lifted from the Chuck Norris Facts!), and some are really funny:

    The city of Los Angeles once named a street after Jack Bauer in gratitude for his saving the city several times. They had to rename it after people kept dying when they tried to cross the street. No one crosses Jack Bauer and lives.

    If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Meyers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he’d shoot Nina twice.

    Jack Bauer’s calender goes from March 31st to April 2nd, no one fools Jack Bauer.

    Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.

    Funny mashup goodness! Now, I need to set about creating a similar ripoff mashup site with some other larger-than-life character…

  • Pi Day

    For the mathematically-inclined, today is Pi Day. Because today is 3-14. Get it? Even better, the celebration begins at 1:59 p.m.

    Curiously enough, today is also Albert Einstein‘s birthday. Odd coincidence, considering.