We looked at a house on Thursday; it is on South Beacon Hill on the west side of MLK and pretty close to the Columbia City light rail station. It is notable in that its asking price seems reasonable. It is a three bedroom place with all the bedrooms on the top floor (unusual here), a rather nice living room/dining room area, an ugly kitchen (but with a gas stove and vent), and a large basement (very low headroom, though). It has a nice view from the backyard of the Rainier Valley and Mount Rainier on clear days. It has various pros and cons that I will not enumerate, but it is one of the best places that we have seen really at its price level.

It did not strike me though as “the place” to buy. However, we are probably going to look at it again tomorrow during its open house to consider. I doubt it will be on the market for long.

I made pancakes for bfast. I bought some cheap blueberries yesterday, and the Kai has been eating them continuously. Amanda took the Kai to the lake while I did a lot of gardening. I find gardening with the Kai around too stressful. They eventually came by the garden and Amanda decided to harvest out potatoes. She loved the treasure hunt aspect of digging the potatoes up. We will have to grow more next year. I like that they take no effort to grow really except for mounding dirt a few times while they are growing. I suppose pests and whatnot could be a problem though.

Kai ate more blueberries (“I like fresh!”) for lunch. Amanda had a 12-12 shift with her housecall job, and she had an appointment queued up, so she had to go. I entertained the Kai for a while and then put him down for a nap. I did some cleaning and idle stuff until he woke up.

He was in a weird mood when he woke up. I aborted a planned long walk and instead relaxed in the front yard while he diddled with some educational apps on my phone. Once he started playing games, I retrieved the phone and went off to get dinner… fish and chips ! which we took back home and ate in the front yard. The Kai kept feeding Ate Piglet pieces of his dinner. Kuya Armando was not around unfortunately for him.

I let the Kai water the plants in the front yard which he did for a suitably long time. Then it was time for more fresh blueberries and a bit of Rock Band before the normal evening bedtime rituals.

Hopefully Amanda will be home early.

We had dinner at Blue C Sushi up in University Village because the Kai demanded sushi and Mama acquiesced (note: I used the spell check for the previous word… I was considered smart at one time). I saw AC, a guy I did consulting for a few years ago, but I did not get a chance to talk to him as I saw him right when we were leaving.

We stopped by Mount Baker Beach on the way back as the Kai wanted to see the lake and dip his feet in the water.

Amanda is doing a house call shift tonight, but due to a chance in company policy, she will only see patients until 1am at the latest; afterwards, she will be on phone call until 6am.

The heat wave seemed to have ended, but Amanda was still on call. She had a laboring patient the night before and eventually went in to deliver the baby. She got back home before bfast, though, which we had at Geraldine’s Counter. After bfast, I dropped her off at Swedish for rounds and took the Kai to the Japanese Garden.

We spent a lot of time at the garden. We were there early so there were not a lot of people around. We fed the koi for a long time… I was able to prolong the feeding by searching for spilt food from other people once our baggie of kibble ran out. The Kai enjoyed looking for stray kibble as well.

After feeding the fish and turtles, the Kai basically ran around in circles. He ran over a little bridge and then hopped over rocks in a stream with my help. Over and over and over and over. I did not find it as exciting as he did, but it did tire him out.

Amanda’s rounding went a bit late, so I took the Kai home for lunch and then went back to Swedish to pick her up. Unfortunately, right as I got there, she got paged again for another laboring patient. I went home for the Kai’s nap. I also napped a bit myself.

I planned to go back to Swedish with the Kai to hang out and have dinner as she might have to stay for a long long time. I would then drop off the car and take the train or bus back with the progeny. However, her patient went in for a C-Section (good for us, less ideal for the patient), so I just picked her up.

On the way home we stopped for ice cream cones and then stopped by MC-AC’s place to check out their new inflatable kiddie pool.

Now everyone is sleeping but me, but I will be shortly.

Edit: this entry was actually written late yesterday, but there was a hardware failure at my hosting company, so it was not fully published at the time.

I drove Amanda to Swedish in the morning so that she could round. Then the Kai and I went to the aquarium.
The aquarium visit was not successful, so I had to abort. We then wandered about until Amanda called, and we picked her up.

After lunch I napped with the Kai while Amanda finished charting. It had been a rough night with Kai.

After nap we went the garden. At some point Amanda and the Kai went to get ice cream cones.

We later went down to Lake Washington and met up with MC and progenies (AC was home sleeping). Everyone got wet except for Amanda. We had takeout pizza from Flying Squirrel for dinner.

LK is now asleep and hopefully will remain that way until tomorrow morning. Amanda is sleeping, too. Unfortunately, there definitely is a laboring patient, so she will be going in tonight/very early tomorrow.

It’s hot even though it is almost midnight. Amanda is on call this weekend, so she is sleeping while she can. Hopefully she will not get called in for a delivery.

Today was the Kai’s last day in the “waddler” room at school (approximately 12-24 months). There had not been an opening in the next room until now. He selected a bunch of presents for his teachers yesterday, but ended up trying to give them to his soon-to-be-former classmates. It was a sweaty walk to school and back to retrieve him, especially since he did not want to walk himself.

The kitties do not like the hot weather and just lay about trying to keep cool. On the positive side of things, it is also too hot for them to fight.

The tomatoes are doing great with the heat wave and all. We are getting overrun by lettuce even though we are eating lots. We have also been eating a lot of peas, but I think I will pull them in another week. Our fennel is crowding out the brussel spouts; I have to do something about that. might have to harvest the potatoes very soon.
I bicycled to Mekong Rainier (a Vietnamese/SE Asian grocery) to get cheap groceries. OK, I could have walked but bicycling was more fun. Lots of people were buying huge quantities of fish… is there some fishy holiday this weekend that I don’t know about? Maybe it was just on sale.

I do not know what tomorrow holds. Amanda will have to go in to round at Swedish which will probably take all morning. I think I will go in with her and just walk about downtown with the Kai.