Yesterday I went up to the Seattle Conservation Corps to pick up some composters: two green cone things for food waste and one for yard waste. The cones at least are sold at an 80% discount from retail; the yard waste thing not so much IMO (I got it because I did not want to make one). The cones are the type where you just toss stuff in until it is full and then just let it sit until it composts… good for the city I suppose so people don’t have to worry about turning it. They are buried in the ground (with a plastic “cage” covering the bottom to prevent rats and whatnot from entering).

The pickup place for these things was past Magnuson Park in a large complex of buildings that were, I assume, formerly a military base of some sort. It did not look like some of the buildings were even occupied which was a bit creepy. Actually, the area looked like a level in a FPS video game. The pickup office was in a nondescript building that you entered via a rusty white staircase up to the third(?) floor and then followed many paper signs and arrows to the office.

It has been raining hard, so I have not set up them up.
Since I was in the area, I met Amanda for a late lunch at World Wraps in University Village. I also picked up a book at Barnes and Noble.

The book is Tiassa, a fantasy novel by Steven Brust. It was good; I managed to read it twice last night (well, once fully then skimmed). I have read all of his books since his first in 1983, and he is really the only SF writer I whose books I buy right when they come out nowadays. A good thing, too, since hardcovers are like 25 bucks a pop minimum now. It is the library for everyone else.

There is a flood watch here. Good thing the rain let up last week during our week of projects otherwise we would have gotten nothing outside done.

I managed to stuff a few of the yard waste bags that we generated last week in our container. It will still be a while before they are all gone.

My lifestyle modifications also included only drinking one serving of caffeine a day before noon. Of course, now I have a splitting headache because who knows how much I had been consuming before (and at all hours). Ten? Twelve? More? Ug.

Whine whine whine (or HONK! HONK! as the Kai would say to me)

I forgot what we did on Sunday. Damn, getting old sucks. Although it probably wasn’t too exciting, more house stuff is the most likely thing. Ah, Amanda did go grocery shopping.

My blood pressure has been pretty high over the past year with I find alarming. Most likely it has to do with the fact my exercising has been very erratic since LK was born, and violent exercise covered up some of my other questionable dietary habits. My CPAP usage has been erratic, too, due to a variety of things, but I have been much better with it in the past month. It can take a while for that to effect BP, but I would have thought that it would have started trending down, but it has been trending up the past week.

A medical professional would probably suggest lifestyle modifications first (obviously), so I suppose it is time to get more serious about it. I am already regularly using CPAP again which is good. I will start exercising a lot more (either running or bicycling). And I am going to clean up my diet for reals this time. Amanda “I can help you!” wanted me to twitter everything I eat as, among other things, my memory cannot be trusted which she “proved” by asking me what I ate that day. My food consumption was pretty good, I thought, but I did innocently forget about the ziploc bag of cookies I had gulped down. Oops.

So, yes, I have started twittering my diet. Not on my main twitter account, though. It will be fascinating, I am sure. As I do not think it is really necessary, Amanda has to twitter, too. So far things are pretty innocuous, although I have to put in the tea and cookies I just ate.

2001 MAR 25 : FRIDAY
(continued from previous entry)
After putting the Kai to bed, we watched a Netflix streaming movie From Paris With Love. I was entertained. It was better than The Tourist which we saw the previous day (which was ok).

2011 MAR 26 : SATURDAY
We just did random house stuff in the morning. We did end up going to Costco and bought a lot of stuff… mostly food items like bulk soy milk, veggie patties, butter, veggie sausages, cat food, and the like. Amanda also got some bathroom towels that ended up being the wrong color for our upstairs bathroom, so I will have to return them at some point.

We ran into AC-MC and family there. They managed to get out with only a couple of items, but they did make an impulse purchase of a doggie bed.

While Kai napped, I attached chicken wire to the chicken run door I made the other day. I am tired of messing around with the chicken coop.

AC-MC and family came over for progeny play and dinner. I made fresh pasta. Tasty!

More yard projects.

Amanda finished mulching the front and sides of the house. She had to return some plants and get some ground cover as some parts of are front slope are basically a few inches of mulch, then a plastic barrier, and then sand. She also planted asparagus and grapes on the side terraces (yesterday, she planted blueberries, raspberries, and huckleberries (maybe?).

We had to make a couple of runs to the hardware store to get mulch. We just got a lot of bagged stuff since we are not sure how easy it would be to get stuff delivered up our driveway (which is a bit narrow), and Amanda thought it would be a massive pain to cart the stuff from the driveway to where it was needed. And there is the delivery charge. As it turned out, we probably spent the same amount of money as it would’ve to get something delivered, but got less mulch (but we did not need more).

Aside from helping Amanda for time to time, I spent the time dorking about with the chicken coop. Today was mostly fabricating a door to the chicken run and covering the frame that I made with chicken wire. The door still has to be attached to the frame and the last few sections of wire attached.

Amanda and I had lunch at Huarachitos Mexican Taqueria a couple of blocks down MLK from us. I had a beer because I was tired and hot and starving. Amanda was also starving as she slurped down her enchiladas. I had three of their very tasty fish tacos.

A couple of chickadees flew into the house; I heard them thumping against the window while I was outside messing with the chicken run. When I ran inside, I saw Armando hunched over one with jaws agape. I grabbed the poor birdie while Amanda tried to open a window to let the other one out. The predator Armando kept swatting at the one still flying around, but it managed to get out safely.

The one I rescued from Armando look to be in bad shape. It was hyperventilating, and I thought it had broken a wing. I went outside to look for a place to let it live out the rest of its life in relative peace, but it started looking a bit better, although I still thought it had busted a wing. I placed it on the feeder and considered what to do. To our surprise, it flew a couple of feet up into the tree. It still looked out of sorts, and it did not move in a long time, but eventually it must have flown off, as we could not find it later, and it was not on the ground. Perhaps it was merely in shock.

Amanda thought the chickadees would avoid us forever, and in fact they did not visit us again until very late in the day (which was unusual). Free food is hard to resist.

We had pizza and salad and wine for dinner. AC and MC were going to join us, but their progeny was being bad, so they stayed at home.

Amanda is tired of house projects and needs a vacation.