08 MAY 2007 : TUESDAY
Amanda and I went to Claudine’s birthday party at Christy’s house. It was fun. Christy had just recently run a marathon perhaps the week before. As one might expect, there were a lot of medical professionals there.
09 MAY 2007 : WEDNESDAY
There were many things to take care of before heading out to Pasco and Amanda’s conference/assembly/continuing education thing…. Technically the Washington Academy of Family Physicians “House of Delegates and Annual Scientific Assembly”. Amanda was able to get home 30 minutes earlier than anticipated and was annoyed that I could not be magically ready 30 minutes earlier than her previously stated leaving time. We picked up Rachel, an R1 at Roosevelt, at Haborview before heading off.
It was a bit over 220 miles to the Tri-Cities area. Rachel had been on call so she slept most of the way. It was a nice drive otherwise. I had not been down to the area since we drove up to Seattle when we moved here.
We got to the Red Lion hotel in Pasco at around 7pm. Amanda had some initial meeting/social/dinner thing to go to when we got there, so that is what she did. Rachel was still wasted, so she did not go. I did not feel like exploring the area, so I just had dinner at the hotel.
The hotel room was pretty nice actually. The fitness center was very very lame. As was the nonexistent “Business Center” that was promised in their propaganda. Normally, I do not care about hotel business centers, but in this case our computer would be out of commission.
By this point I knew that I forgot to bring the power supply to our notebook computer, which was unfortunate as there was a lot of stuff I was going to do. I spent a bit of time checking to see if I could get a replacement, but that was not going to happen without a lot of $$$.
10 MAY 2007 : THURSDAY
Amanda spent the day doing WAFP delegate stuff. I decided to go for a long drive. I headed south to the Oregon Border and followed the Columbia River west. I stopped at random points along the way.
Eastern/Southeastern Washington is quite difference than the Puget Sound region. It is much drier and a lot sunnier (300+ sunny days a year). The terrain tends to be flattish with rolling hills due to an ancient sea according to Rachel with scrubby grass and brush except near the rivers where there are trees. But otherwise, things are dry and scrubby. There is a lot of irrigated agriculture going on… mainly grapes, hops, and fruit. And asparagus apparently, but I did not see any of that.
It was cool while driving to see random singular volcanic mountains pop up… Rainier, Hood, and Adams during this trip.
I saw the Stonehenge Memorial which was a recreation of the original in England that was dedicated to local soldiers killed in WWI. It was an interesting if slightly random thing. There were other memorials as well to other veterans.
I also stopped at the Maryhill Museum. It was founded by the same guy who made the Stonehenge recreation. It had a random collection of things: artifacts from the former Queen of Romania, guns, random busts, lots of Native American artifacts, a large collection of chess sets, French fashion dolls, and a lot of Rodin sculptures and drawings. There was also a nice sculpture garden outside, but I did not see a lot of that because they were watering the grass and plants (and the sculptures).
I eventually made it back to Pasco at around 5pm. There was a picnic thing going on at Sacajawea State Park, so we went off to that. As one might expect, there were a lot of family medicine doctors there. And mosquitos! as we were right beside the confluence of two rivers. Jeff H., who was also attending, apparently is really into river confluences. Who knew?
The food, beer, and wine were pretty good. The park also had a little Sacajawea Museum that the authorities kept open later for the benefit of the WAFP members. It was nice place and not really the kind of things one expects in a little state park.
We headed back to the hotel and hung out with Rachel, her husband (who had driven up that afternoon), Jeff, and Mark B. (a Roosevelt attending) in the hotel bar. It closed down pretty early, so we headed to the WALP “hospitality suite” were there was a lot of refreshments and whatnot. Perhaps we should have come by earlier instead of going to the bar. We yakked with various other people before calling it a night. Amanda found out that there was a meeting at 6:30am the next morning that she probably should go to.
11 MAY 2007 : FRIDAY
Amanda spent the day going to workshops and the like. I bummed around the Tri-Cities area all day, and I am certainly a lot more familiar with the area. I did get a couple of new pairs of jeans and a book.
We had dinner at Tagaris Winery in Richland with Rachel and her husband. It was a good choice in spite of the fact we basically chose it out of a local guide I had picked up. We had a lot of tapas and their house wine… all of which were very good.
12 MAY 2007 : SATURDAY
Amanda still had a few events to go to. During one of her breaks we packed up and checked out of our room. I then bummed about more until noon. I was going to try to get some bfast (Amanda got all that free) but I could not track down a BK for some greasy hash browns and a egg and cheese croissanwich (like the old days driving back from Buffalo to Ithaca). I did go to the Pasco Farmer’s Market. It was a lot smaller than I would have thought, smaller than Columbia City’s, and was more artsy-crafty.
I returned to the hotel to pick up Amanda. Rachel and spouse were staying for the final lunch, but Amanda had not paid for me and I was not into a lecture meal nor was Amanda into another lecture/speech at that point. We stopped by a Subway on the way out for lunch. The workers there were very genial, and they revealed that all their sauces and mayo and whatnot were sneakily lowfat/fat free. Although that is supposed to be a secret just at their place.
We thought about doing some wine tasting on the way out, but I was feeling kinda blah and we did have a long drive, so we just took off for home. Amanda was shocked that there were rattlesnake warnings at one of the rest areas we stopped at.
Little piglet was glad to see us. She did make a mess. We checked out the P-Patch, and much community work had been done by others while we were gone. Heather, Kevin, and Greg were still there doing stuff, so we gave them a bunch of our radishes because we have a hell of a lot of them. We picked more spinach, radishes, and onions for dinner.
Afterwards, Amanda tried to catch up on work while I cleaned up the pigletness and the house in general.
13 MAY 2007 : SUNDAY
Amanda went off grocery shopping with Mandy in the morning. Mandy, Bryan, Kelly, and Mike are going to Thailand in a few days, so it was a quick trip as Mandy did not need much.
Amanda wanted to have brunch with Carrie and Eric, but she forgot it was Mother’s Day, so brunch was probably out of the question. We had brunch with Mandy at our place; Bryan was off having brunch with his Mom.
Amanda then went off with Carrie for shoe-shopping and knitting. I caught up on life admin tasks. When she came back, we did a lot of P-Patch work. Weeding, clearing the vegetation behind our plot, fixing up the Kid’s plot beside us, and putting up trellises for the peas.
Shockingly, we had more spinach for dinner, but now we have none until the next batch matures.