22 JUL 2005 : Friday
Amanda was post call today… an odd term, since it seems to imply to me that you did not work after your overnight when in fact she did not get home until 3pm or so (i.e. basically working another full day). Obviously, she ended up sleeping after getting home and only roused enough to eat the scrumptious dinner I had prepared.

I spent the evening cleaning up. Amanda and I argued yet again about cleaning and organization processes last Wednesday (although this discussion was more low key than previous discussions in past years). The basic upshot is that all of our cleaning and whatnot will be done by both of us sometime in the evening (and not at other times). We will see how it goes, although the plan has already been imperfectly executed due to Amanda’s call schedule.

23 JUL 2005 : Saturday
Amanda worked again today. She had hoped to get out by noon, but that did not happen, and she eventually came back around 3:30 maybe. I worked until about noon, but then kept expecting Amanda to show up so no more constructive stuff was done until she got home.

We headed downtown to Far Fetched furniture to buy a couch that we saw weeks ago. After spending too much time looking at couches, Amanda decided to get one we saw long ago. She had originally disliked it because it came in the faux suede upholstry that kinda changes colors, but experience has shown couches are hard to find. So, since she wanted a couch sooner rather than a nebulous “later” we finally pulled the trigger and bought one.

Piglet has been very very bad and is peeing on our inflatable bed that we have been using as a couch, so it will be good to get something that she hopefully will not destroy (translation: she better not mess with it).

The couch will be delivered sometime next week (Wednesday, it looks like now).

Since we finally blew the money on a couch, we went out to eat at Cactus. The food was good.
After dinner we walked about a bit and sat at the nearby “beach” watching people swim about and whatnot. The beach is basically a roped off area in Lake Washington that is watched by lifeguards. We amused ourselves by watching the divers jump off a springboard platform set up offshore. Amanda thought it was funny that I would score the dives (0.5! awful! 0.25 point deduction for holding his nose!). A couple of nearby people thought it funny as well. A couple of kids were quite good though.

We briefly considered hiking the next day, but decided to see when we woke up first.

24 JUL 2005 : Sunday
Amanda had the day off. We decided not to go hiking. Instead, we bicycled down to the Seattle Center to check out the last day of the Bite of Seattle. It’s basically a big food exposition thing where restaurants demo their stuff. And there is music and other entertainment.

What happened?

• We drank desserty fruity beverages
• Amanda had mac and chesse
• I had great catfish and chips… the restaurant is right by our apt!
• We had really good free haagen daz ice cream
• We listened to Thai music and watched Thai dancing
• Amanda got mad at some rude people while watching Thai dancing
• Sampled some very bad Washington wine. $10 for four glasses (not taste portions, but still expensive). They were all pretty disgusting.
• Walked around a lot.
• Kept walking by the guy shouting: “Free bag for your stuff!”

Afterwards, we bicycled to REI so that Amanda could check out some cycling gear and possible get clipless pedals. I also wanted to look for fenders for her bicycle. And we wanted to look at getting another set of hiking poles… one that Amanda had was effectively lost in India.
None of that happened, and we did not get anything. Except we did buy a Wilderness Forest pass as that seems to be required to park cars at trailheads around here. Our lack of one was another reason we did not go hiking.

We returned home, and then headed out for our weekly run at the grocery stores. Two years ago was the wedding celebration we had in Ithaca, so it was an anniversary of sorts.

Amanda considers our dinner… the picture is bad as I was hungry and in a rush to eat and should have moved that wine glass over…

A closeup of dinner. Look at the tasty tuna steak! Amanda had stuffed portobellas instead. Piglet had her usual dinner and was undoubtably wandering off in the planters eating vegetation.