It’s been a sad time without weblog entries. I have not even been running my twitter updater. There was a good reason, though, as we have moved to a new house. The past couple of weeks have basically been a lot of moving and house stuff and whatnot. Amanda also started her new job (and obviously quit her other two).
Maybe I will recap the past couple of weeks (ok, that is highly unlikely). In between work I picked up Amanda’s dry cleaning, dropped off some forms at the post office to update our addresses with the DMV or Department of Licensing as it is called in Washington, went to Safeway for the first time in a long time to get some random supplies, and went to Lowe’s to get a little trash can for litter box deposits. I also picked up some deck/fence cleaner.

I need to treat our new fences and deck before the fall rains come, although it appears they are here already. I had tried to just using a bleach solution, and I wanted to compare the bleach to a specialized (and more expensive) mixture that is mostly bleach. It turns out that the specialized mixture works better. Bummer.
Other than work and whatnot, today I went over to MC/AC’s place for a pizza dinner. MC actually came to pick me up since Amanda had to go to a work dinner. It was fun. MC let me just let me drive their car home. He said they will just pick it up tomorrow.

Amanda came home late around 930pm or so. She was tired and went to bed quickly.

We also found out today that someone had stolen her credit card number and ordered a bunch of dish network things and paid a lot of money to Qwest for some reason. She cancelled the card. Hopefully they will take care of it, as Citibank !@%$!@% me over when I had a unauthorized charge a couple of years ago.

Amanda has another work thing tomorrow. Then we will be off for MM and BG’s wedding. The Kai will stay with his grandmother for the night.

• Something bad happened to my back on Saturday; it’s getting better, but it’s still stiff and kinda painful; drugs to the rescue?
• Amanda and I and the Kai went to the Japanese Garden on Sunday. We fed the koi. The Kai ran around in circles and chortled.
• It looks like we might actually close on the house in time (i.e. this Friday). We have a tentative date to sign the papers on Wednesday, and we have planned to start moving this weekend. Our lender should be getting the results of the appraisal tomorrow and then should be able to finish the loan docs. Hopefully there will be no snags. I will call to set up the utilities and whatnot when we sign, but I will call to setup our internet services early so we can get it asap.
• I made potato chips from our home grown tubers. They were tasty.
• It has been a crazy week in the Rainier Valley… a few shootings, ten year olds mugging people on the bus and then getting shot, people getting set on fire… wtf?
• Our tomatoes are starting to ripen, but despite the heat wave we had earlier in the week, it has been pretty cool, so it may take a while for the others.
• I went to see our PCP with regards to allergies, hacking coughs, and high blood pressure, and left with a prescription for fluticasone… as nasal steroid that will hopefully help keep the hacking cough down and enable me to use CPAP regularly which will then lower my blood pressure.

As usual, there is a lot of stuff happening but nothing gets entered into the weblog. When not much is happening, I write detailed entries about random things, and when life is busy and it would be good to write in the weblog, well, nothing happens. Of course, since the arrival of the Kai life is always busy.

So lets go for a quick list of things that happened (not guaranteed to be in order)

• had lunch with Larry at Sushiland in Tukwila. I had not seen him since last December!!! He had a new iPhone
• Amanda’s parents are here after their drive across the country
• had summer BBQ at the P-Patch
• had dinner at Ann and Mike’s
• spent a lot of time deal with new house issues
• the Kai picked the first ready tomato of the season and ate it
• Amanda was in SF for a conference
• I got into Seattle University’s evening master’s program and accepted it.
• I declined admission to the University of Washington as I did not want to go all the way up to Bothell where most of the classes would be
• it has been really hot
• Armando has FIV and not FeLV.
• I finally recovered as much data as I could from Mike’s old HD that he gave me over a year ago
• my new computer is finally stable
• my allergies have been bad recently, but perhaps it’s not my allergies; I need to go see a doctor
• I have currently been up most of the night to try to get some work done while it is cool as it will be hard to work during the day if it is as hot as it has been.
• Armando likes the fact that I have been keeping him company tonight
• Ate Piglet does not as she has been scratching at the door all night
• my grandmother turned 95
• it was my cousin Andrea’s birthday on the 15th.
• it is my dad’s birthday today

2010 JUL 23 : FRIDAY
We had put an offer on a house in Beacon Hill (but closer to Columbia City) earlier in the week, and had been going back-and-forth on price, but Jim our realtor called and said that they had accepted out last counter-offer. Crazy.

Amanda had been diagnosed with pneumonia last Tuesday, but she still had a fever today. Not good for her weeklong cruise to Alaska coming up.

We did some cleaning in preparation for Amanda’s mom, SDK, and SJ’s arrival. And we packed. I left to pick everyone up at the airport at 11pm.

I believe the airport is finally finished with all of its renovations with regards to the light rail. I still managed to get confused in the parking garage. They have finally moved all the rental cars offsite somewhere, so the entire garage is available for parking. It does cost more to park on level 4 which is where the bridges to the terminal are. I did not really know what airlines everyone was coming in on, so I just parked the car.

I did not have to wait long. SDK was already there, and the others arrived shortly. I had a mental short-circuit and had problems getting back to the car (to SJ’s amusement), but we eventually made it back home.

2010 JUL 24 : SATURDAY
We had bfast at Geraldine’s Counter. I bicycled there because our car was not big enough for everyone. Afterwards, I went home while everyone else took a look at our possible new house.

I had to take everyone down to the waterfront in two trips. Amanda and her mom and the Kai were in the first trip.

It was a little hard to find a place to drop them off, but I ended up just double parking right in the very small loading area. There wasn’t enough time for goodbyes as I was getting pressured by all the people behind me.

I returned for SDK and SJ. We stopped by Safeway for some medicinals and I believe SJ needed some stuff as well. I dropped them off and decided to stick around downtown for a while and perhaps see the cruise ship leave. I would have to kill many hours, though.

As usual, I parked in Pacific Place and wandered down to Pike Place Market. I got a soda (expensive!). The woman totally gave me the wrong amount of change… she thought I gave her a five and not a ten… but fortunately realized her error after opening the register.

I meandered around the Market and eventually made it down to the waterfront and sat around looking at the bay and people-watching. Eventually I decided to get something to eat at Anthony’s Fish Bar which was on Pier 66 right in front of the cruise ship. I picked up some food at the counter and not in the restaurant and sat outside in the sun. Amanda eventually called me; it had taken them forever to get on the ship because the cruise line’s computers were down. She was getting something to eat and could see me down below on the pier. I could not see her, though because of the frosted glass of the ship’s restaurant area.

I walked down to the aquarium, mainly just to use their restrooms, but I did look around a bit.

After leaving the aquarium, I decided not to stick around to watch the cruise ship depart (I was paying for parking after all), and made my way back up to the Market. I walked about the market more, then popped into random places while I made my way back to the car. I stopped at Nordstrom Rack, but nothing was really on sale. Of course, compared to normal Norstrom prices, perhaps everything was on sale, but not cheap anough for me. Daiso was more my style, but I didn’t get anything there either.

Eventually, I made it back to the car. I don’t know what I did for the rest of the weekend. I did do some research on home inspectors and set up one for Tuesday.

So i got into grad school at UW at one of their evening master’s programs. I was waitlisted at a different program there last year, and it was unlikely I would get in even if I did reapply later unless something drastically changed in my academic life. It’s funny in that I did not actually apply to the specific program, but they invited me in anyway. Cynically, I think they did not have enough candidates for various reasons (cost, the program location, the program is new etc.), but why look a gift horse in the mouth.