Grande Pescados

Dark Knight Viewing Eve

The Better Half and I have tickets to see 'The Dark Knight' tomorrow at 9am.  We'll be meeting Tacoma Eric at the Supermall Regal Cinemas at 8:30am - by 8:47am he'll be elbow deep in a large order of nachos with extra jalapenos.  I'll try and keep myself (and diet) in check as I'm still trying to lose some elbees for the big 20 year reunion in a couple of weeks.

Anyhoo, I'm so excited to see 'The Dark Knight' that I may have trouble sleeping tonight.  I'm planning on firing up 'Batman Begins' here in a few moments as an appetizer.  A friend of mine at work gave me some klonopin to deal with my sleep issues, but I'm thinking I should have done some research into the drug before knocking one back last night.  Let's just say I had an interesting night as klonopin really isn't primarily used as a sleep aid but as an anti-convulsant.  Klonopin also disrupts REM cycles, so I woke up groggy and feeling slightly hungover...and then there was the absolutely insane dream about Madonna pelting me with Grilled Stuft Beef Burritos from Taco Bell.  In my dream I was with the kids at the library checking out children's books. Madonna sprung out from behind the card catalog and microfiche readers and began chuckin' burritos at me with taunts that I could nothing to stop her because she was Madonna.  That was pretty bad.  Even worse was that the burritos must have been hot off the grill they were 'stuft' on because they exploded on impact and the beef/bean filling stuck to my skin and burned like goddam phosphorous.  I woke up slapping at my torso and arms trying to get the burning to stop.  I may have even screamed for sweet merciful death.  Anyhoo, I think I'll be leaving the klonopin Krazy K-Car parked in the garage tonight and go to sleep the old fashioned way...counting down the seconds until I'm at the theater and watching 'The Dark Knight'.   

And I Thought I Had Coffee Issues

All kinds of coffee drama has been brewing (zing!) over on the other coast.  Apparently, a place called Murky Coffee refuses to sell espresso shots over ice, citing quality concerns and that it is against store policy.  This policy has lead to a hilarious exchange of insults between the owner of Murky Coffee (see the 7/14 post) and a disgruntled customer by the name of Jeff Simmermon that ends with one threatening the other with a dick punch.  Good times...

A lot of comments on both sites bring up that the Murky Coffee policy is an attempt to prevent customers from whipping up 'ghetto lattes'.  I had no idea what a 'ghetto latte' was so I went and Googled it.  Sweet Jeebus.  People really do fix themselves ghetto lattes to save a buck?  Criminey...

'She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid.'

Best. Cake. Ever.

(Although I don't know how much of the cake is actually edible)

Viva Vivanno?

Yesterday was Starbucks 'Vivanno Launch Day'.  The new Vivanno line of drinks are described by Starbucks as a 'Nourishing Blend' of fiber, protein, and carbs and the company has promoted it to health clubs/gyms as a meal replacement drink.  Vivanno drinks are also being marketed as a healthier alternative to other blended beverages for those concerned about such things.

Every now and then when Maddy is being fussy about breakfast I'll whip up a 'smoothie' made from milk, Ovaltine, and banana.  I'll throw some protein powder into my own to maintain my fabulously lumpy bod, but Maddy's is sans protein.  Anyhoo, the Vivanno tastes exactly like the breakfast alternative I make for my kid every now and again.  It fell far short of being spectacular and the $3.85 price tag was what I like to call 'expensive'.  Still, it was very 'fresh' tasting and was relatively light in texture, just cold enough to be refreshing without visiting a brainfreeze headache upon me.   

However, if Starbucks is hoping the Vivanno will help them regain their footing in the marketplace it will be imperative that they streamline the production process.  The poor barista at the Starbucks I sometimes go to took forever whipping this thing up.  And this morning the line was especially long due to the barista on duty having to blend up multiple Vivanno drinks for five very annoying and loud women on break from the hairdresser's convention taking place in a nearby hotel. 

In my opinion, I don't think the Vivanno will really assist Starbucks in the long-term.  It is a niche specialty drink with a hefty price tag for what you get.  Like a lot of people I know, I just go to Starbucks every now and again for green tea and the occassional americano.  I feel the Vivanno further dilutes the Starbucks brand and is another indication that the company is steering away from wanting to be a premium coffee house.

By the way, whatever happened to all the talk of the 'perfect espresso shot' and getting 'back to basics' for Starbucks? 

Give A Hoot!

While mindlessly watching clips on YouTube this evening I heard a plaintive wail come from Maddy's room.  As I walked towards her room she said, 'There's some kind of animal outside my window'.  Since all the bedrooms in our house are on the second floor I became slightly alarmed...if it is outside her window it would have to be a gigantic animal like a T-Rex or that stupid Cloverfield monster or an enormous ape. 

When I reached her room she just pointed to the window, fearing the worse I cautiously peeked outside and saw....an owl, perched on the corner of one of the gutters.  I've seen plenty of owls on my morning walks hootin' away up in trees, but I've never seen one this close.  He was about 5 feet away.  I wanted to snap a picture, but by the time I went back to my office for my camera and came back the owl was on to us.  He spun his Linda Blair head around our way, gave another hoot, and then soared to a tree in the greenbelt behind our house.  The wingspan on this bird was impressive, so were its talons.  I'm just bummed I didn't get a photo...

We've had quite the nature show going on around us.  Late last week we spotted a large buck down in the greenbelt...and we still hear coyotes from time to time....and we have a couple of chipmunks splitting time between our azaleas and the neighbors rhodies...and there are rabbits running around the backyard as well...and now an owl in the gutters...next thing you'll know an otter will pop up in the crapper.  Yeah!

Talent Show

While perusing YouTube for more Texas clips I came across this live Replacements performance of 'Talent Show'.  I don't remember this award show being aired and, frankly, have no idea which award show this clip is from.  All I know is that the censor cut out the line 'feeling good from the pills we took' (I love the exasperated shrug Westerberg gives after the lyric, knowing it is going to be censored).  He gets back at the network by changing the last couple of lines of the tune from 'too late to turn back' to 'too late to take pills'.  Good times.

Sharleen Spiteri Is Incredible

Sharleen Spiteri is not only quite lovely and possesor of an incredible voice, she is also a bad ass.  The stunning Scottish beauty (and front lady of the band Texas) recently threatened to beat the living piss out of Paris Hilton.  From Crazy Days and Nights:

In an interview with Metro UK, Sharleen stated that she initially got pissed at Paris because Paris was dancing on her friends' coats at a party and refused to move. Not couldn't move, refused to move, because obviously Paris feels that her feet cannot touch the floor. It is why she has a magical carpet named Benji that she can walk all over to get from point A to point B and also just in general.

Anyway, here is what Sharleen had to say. Remember, this is after Paris had refused to move despite being asked, told and cajoled many times.

"I took some of my drink in a straw and blew it over her, that moved her. She went: 'Who are you, you f***ing bitch?' Then people threw ice cubes at her and it all went off."

"I was embarrassed to even be exchanging dialogue with her. She just went on and on. I got up out of my chair and said: 'Look, if you don't f**k off, I'll kick the s**t out of you.'"                                             
So, Paris did what she normally does in such a situation. She put her fake smile on, got the collar and leash for Benji and rode him out of there.

I've always had a mad crush on Sharleen Spiteri, but now I think it is a full blown case of being madly in love.  I'm not sure what I would be feeling right now if she had followed through and smacked Hilton in her worthless sleepy-eyed face.

Here's Sharleen Spiteri rockin' a black leather suit with her band Texas.  This is my second favorite cover version of 'Suspicious Minds'.  The band is just cookin' on this track:                                                                  

Going down, down down.....

As the housing market crashes it will take a lot of spending down with it.  Here's my short list of businesses/industries that will start to feel a serious goosing as real estate and mortgage lending goes up in flames:

Landscaping, interior design, custom painters, cabinet makers, granite countertop manufacturers/installers, truck drivers, nurseries, big box home improvement stores, mom and pop hardware stores, tile cutters, roofers, dry-wallers, real estate agents, title agents, escrow agents, house stagers

Those are just jobs related directly to housing.  Some non-housing related sectors ready to take one in the financial junk are - the wedding industrial complex (wedding planners, florists, bakers, caterers, DJs, reception halls, tux shops, limo rentals), resort desinations (no more HELOC vacations), small niche clothing boutiques, small niche specialty stores (scrapbook shops, candle stores, etc), Best Buy/CompUSA/Pottery Barn/Crate & Barrel, cruise lines, Las Vegas.

The wedding industrial complex will get boost from same-sex marriages in California, but it won't sustain the industry. 

Are there any that I forgot?

Future Of WAMU

I've been rather down on all things mortgage related for the last 18-24 months, but even I never would have predicted that WAMU would be clinging to life at this stage in the game.  As of this writing WAMU stock was sitting a 3.23 a share, which is 92% lower than what it was trading at last year.  This latest decline has wiped out the 7 billion dollar capital infusion the bank received from TPG in April.  A provision in WAMU's aggreement with TPG makes it extremely costly for the bank to raise more capital or be acquired.  From Bloomberg:

"If WaMu is sold for less than $8.75 a share or is forced to raise more than $500 million in equity, it must compensate TPG for the difference, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission."

Sadly, it is my opinion that WAMU is going to need to raise more capital to cover mounting losses.  Option ARM resets are still lurking in WAMU's not so distant future, unless those losses have already been accounted for...I don't think they have.  WAMU is going to need some serious help from the Feds (I just don't think the FDIC can deal with a WAMU failure and Fannie and Freddie being all but insolvent)or get taken over by JPM and stripped for parts.  They are in a death spiral.

If you have more than 100k in a deposit account with WAMU, I'd be thinking about withdrawing it and stuffing it in your mattress until this storm blows over sometime in 2010.....2009 is going to be just as bad.

Anyhoo, if things break poorly for WAMU in the next couple of weeks, I think they'll be flatlining before year's end.  If it does survive, the bank certainly will not resemble the bank it is today or was even two years ago.

Update - More layoffs on the way.

Housing Crash

I have not posted much about the now global real estate crash lately, and yes, this crash is global.  While I do not think we are knocking on the door of a financial apocalypse I think it is safe to say that we are within earshot.  The Fannie/Freddie non-bailout bailout is not good...neither was the collapse of IndyMac.

I'll be linking to some articles from news sites from different geographical locations over the next couple of days, but right now I'm a little preoccupied at home and at work.  We are getting crushed at work because every yayhoo broker that had a loan in Indymac's pipeline is scrambling to get those loans funded elsewhere.  We are one of the few elsewhere's still taking on wholesale loans (and that makes me a little nervous, although our UW guidelines are strict - I'm hoping we are not going to be the last of the knife catching lenders out there), so the phones are blowing up...and these desperate brokers don't care if they are reaching tech support - they just want someone to UW and fund their loans.  They gots bills to pay too....

One quick observation - from the handful of loans I have looked at that have been submitted I am still seeing too many borrowers that are stretched to the max and are refinancing to the hilt.  LTV's are too high and income just isn't there to handle the mortgage and everything else....like food.  My opinion is that we are in the last quarter of propping up housing prices and that the last of the once 'bullet proof' markets will begin to tank heading into 2009 - and yep, I'm looking at you Seattle/Bellevue - prices are already deflating in the outlying areas like the Highlands and Snoqualmie, but also closer in like Shoreline and Lynnwood.  Too much inventory, too high of asking prices, and too low median income is the perfect storm - and shove your Microsoft nonsense up your arse if you think that makes this area immune to the deflating bubble.  A little research and common sense will smack that idea out of your bubblelicious head in a hurry....

Jocelyn

Some of you may be wondering why it is that I rarely post photos of Jocelyn, yet Maddy appears regularly.  Trust me when I say it has nothing to do with favoritism, I love both girls completely and equally yet see them for the unique creatures they are.  The truth of the matter is that Jocelyn is damn near impossible to get a photo of.  She's always in motion but in ways that makes no sense to the camera.  All during the kite flying and sprinkler running episodes I was snapping pictures, but they were all crap and she almost always managed to spin away at the last moment.  I'm starting to think I'd have a better chance at getting a clean photo of Sasquatch than I am of Jossy. 

Here are a couple of photos of Lil Squatch from over the weekend:

The last photo is of the girls on the Fourth - Jocelyn was a little excited to go outside and blow things up....the middle photo is of Jossy watching with great interest a pick-up basketball game in the background...and the top photo is of her doing her best to climb a jungle gym at the school playground.  She's a fearless climber, which is absolutely nerve-wracking sometimes.  She is also freakishly strong and loves to chin herself up on anything and everything - we now have three cabinet drawers in the kitchen that need repairing thanks to her would be acrobatics...

Auburn Waterpark

We were going to take the girls to the wading pool/waterpark over by the library Saturday evening - but then I got a crazy idea.  Whenever the temperature hits 80 for more than two days around here, my lawn starts to die.  It's nuts, but true.  Even with the sprinkler system running every night the lawn still begins to turn that unfortunate and sad blue/black color that indicates when the mercury tops 80.  My theory is that the glacier pack underneath the top soil is piss poor at holding water, so it just pools at root level and rapidly evaporates when the sun is out.  This is also my theory to explain our backyard turning into a bog every winter when the rain comes.  Glacier pack is whack, I can't stand the stuff, but that's what we have to work with out here in the shadow of Mt. Rainier.  My idea was to turn a couple of banks of sprinklers on in the back yard and just let the girls run through those while The Very Pregnant Better Half and I cooled our heels on the patio. 

I think it worked out quite nicely, the lawn got some much needed water and the girls got to cool off and burn some energy (they were both in bed and out of it by 8:00).  Here's a photo of Maddy at the end of her last sprinkler run:

Summertime Blues?

Yes, it does seem like we rarely speak these days, my nine faithful readers...but there is so much going on right now...like the due date for daughter number three, which is now just around the corner...

We spent part of Saturday afternoon touring the hospital where baby three will be born (for those scoring at home we are naming her Katelyn Rose...if it is a boy we will name him, um, Aragorn?  Yes, well - probably not, then again the chances of this baby being a boy are very slim.  I tell ya what, in the off chance every ultrasound was wrong and baby three is a boy then I'll name him Aragorn.  Aragorn Strider Taylor.  There ya go.).  The birth center, as it was called, was very nice.  Every room was decent sized and was decorated as tastefully as a hospital birthing room can be.  We'll even have wi-fi!  Woo hoo!  Not that we'll have a chance to use it.  I don't think we even used the TV during the last two labor sessions/recoveries, so I doubt I'll be firing up the laptop this time.  And The Better Half will more than likely not be in a web surfing sort of mood.

After the tour we drove out to Buckley for no better reason than I had never been there before.  On the way out there we kept passing signs for an Elk Heights Estate Homes development and decided to check it out.  Estate Home signage always crack me up, especially when said 'estates' will be in Buckley.  Now, Buckley was a lovely small town, and I do mean small town - so where all these estate owners will come from is beyond me.  The real estate crash is taking a toll on prices in our area (which were wildly inflated the last two years), so where buyers with incomes to support asking prices in the high 800's to mid 900's will materialize from has yet to be seen.  Plus, some other homes by Lake Tapps, the aptly named Bohemian Estates, came on line late this spring.  Asking (wishing is more accurate) prices for those homes are in the same price range.  Again, where all these people with incomes that can afford these mortgages will be moving there from is a mystery...and don't tell me Microsoft.  The next idgit galoot that tells me 'people from Microsoft' will buy these homes is getting a full on nut trample.  Sweet mother of mercy, as if Microsoft has employees willing to drive close to 2 hours to get to and from work just to have an estate in goddam Buckley or Lake Tapps....

Anyhoo, at the end of the day I took Maddy and Jocelyn to the local elementary school (the one Maddy starts kindergarten in soon) to fly a kite.  I picked up a $2.99 Princess kite at Fry's after work on Friday.  Now, buying a kite at Fry's is like buying a wok at PetSmart - it's almost nonsensical.  Fry's is an electronics superstore, not a kite store, but I got roped into a $2.99 impulse buy so they most know what they are doing. 

Still, I hate Fry's - it's nothing buy a gigantic Radio Shack, but with borderline retarded employees.  Honestly, asking any of the Asian kids working there for assistance is futile.  You'd have better luck talking to one of the Anime cutouts in the DVD section, that is, if you can wade through the body funk wafting from the black Diablo II t-shirted mouth breathing loser pervs perusing the anime DVD cases in hopes of finding a title that shows some pencil and ink T&A.  Anime is for chumps.

Anyhoo, Fry's.  Yes.  So, I go to Fry's to purchase a new battery charger for our Canon digital camera.  I apparently forgot ours in San Diego.  This set me back $24.99 plus the $2.99 for the kite - then I bought a Vista guide because I am thisclose to punting my Vista laptop out the window, so to speak.  I hate Vista more than damn near anything else in the world at the moment.  Every single operation I attempt is a profanity inducing labor and study in futility.  Vista is the nagging wife or self-esteem lacking husband of operating systems - it's constantly asking permission to perform the most mundane task, as if it is unsure of itself.  I've turned off everything I could think of, but every time I try to rip a CD I have to persuade Vista that yes, it is okay to rip this CD, and please stop asking and just get it done....ugh.  That was another $19.99 I may as well have set on fire.

But back to the kite - for $2.99 of paper thin plastic, thread as kite string and a balsa wood stick, the kite flew high and true.  Below is a picture of the kite soaring high above us and a photo of Maddy watching it in the sky:

    

Red Dawn 'Reboot'

Sweet mother of all that is merciful, the dimwits that run the movie business are going to remake 'Red Dawn'.  I shite ye nay.  Now, 'Red Dawn' just may be the most ridiculous, stupid, downright silly, and borderline campy totally faneffintastically awesome movie ever created...it's even better than 'Road House' in the bad, yet great, movie category. 

I have no doubt that this 'reboot' is going to suck a motherload of putrid donkey arse and will somehow paint the United States as either 'deserving' the invasion (probably over something like our carbon footprint, global warming, or not providing universal health care for illegal immigrant terrorists or something) or it will be a moral equivalency steaming pile of lefty dreck. 

A Venomous Thank You

A hearty 'Thank you!' goes out to Venomous Kate for her fantastic French onion soup recipe, it was delicious and will now save me from having to spend money at the ridiculously overpriced Panera.  The only draw back is that I had a literal cauldron of the soup left over as The Better Half and the girls are not big on French onion soup.  So, I was on the French onion soup diet for a few days and managed to drop 4 pounds.  The trick is not loading up the soup with the bread/croutons and cheese every time you have some...and working out during lunch. 

Anyhoo, thank you very much VK for the recipe.  I'm going to experiment with halfing it next time I make it, but I've had mixed results in the past with that kind of recipe tomfoolery....