I was sick again, but now I am feeling better. I think it was defnitely a flu this time as I had all the symptoms. Perhaps even the swine flu, since one of Amanda’s patients had it.
I have to report for jury duty tomorrow for at least the rest of the week. It should be interesting. I am only concerned that I might not get out in time to pick up Lonan Kai (things can run over time). Five dollars (or more?) a minute will add up quick.

It’s almost time to harvest/thin some baby spinach (“space hybrid”). I was going to do so today but the weather was nasty. We also have some other type of spinach that we planted last year and then transferred to our new plot. I don’t recall what kind it was, but they are pretty large now.
The snow peas have come up, and I have installed some trellis netting. I think less than 50% of the seeds germinated. I have not had good luck with peas the last couple of years. I dunno if I will plant more or cheat and get some starts.
There are also onions, lettuces, carrots, beets, and swiss chard. The onions seriously need to be thinned. I have been thinning the others all the time as Amanda was very generous when she planted.
It might be time to plant more spinach and lettuce, too. Although we definitely will have a lot of lettuce.
The Early Girls and Golden Jubilee tomatoes have already flowered. The vinyl heat sink things have already proven their worth.

02 MAY 2009 : SATURDAY
It was raining so we did the obvious thing and went to the aquarium. I expected it to be very crowded, but it wasn’t too bad. I later learned it was the opening weekend of the new penguin habitat at the zoo (how did they get that url?) which siphoned off the usual visitors.
Lonan Kai was able to walk around for the most part. There was a new coral exhibit which was cool; they grow the coral on site. Unfortunately, one of the trigger fish in the reef tank looked very unhappy, but I guess the staff saw no reason to remove him from the tank yet.
Karl was celebrating his birthday (which was actually earlier in the week), and I left it up to Amanda to decided who should go and who should stay with the progeny. She said I should go, so I went up to Karl’s traditional dinner place, Taste of India. Amanda is still not eating Indian food after her unpleasant gastric experience in the Himalayas, which is perhaps why she did not wish to go.
Karl and Eve were there of course, as was Stacey, his brother and spouse, and Eric(k?) a grad school friend whom I had never met.
After dinner we went to CopperGate for drinks. I had a few martini type things which were pretty weak, but it was fun.
Amanda was still awake watching Manufacturing Dissent when I got home. I then had to make an emergeny run to Safeway to get contact solution for her.
03 MAY 2009 : SUNDAY
It was a gorgeous sunny day. After Amanda’s grocery run and Lonan Kai’s morning nap, we went to Seward Park for a picnic with Ann and Mike and Connor. There were many people about, but we were able to score a picnic table by the water near the swimming area (which was unstaffed because it was still a little cold for swimming). Later Jackie and Jeff and Calvin joined us. Jeff had just gotten laid off, but fortunately is getting severance for the rest of the year. Seward Park’s playground area is lacking, but they are in the process of renovating it. A fun time was had by all though.
04 MAY 2009 : MONDAY
Monday is Amanda’s new clinic day off; she now works Tuesday though Friday (with some half days off on Wednesday). This change is good because she can now go to her weekly work meetings on Tuesday morning. And since she is going to said meeting she is not seeing patients and generating more admin work and charting. She also is precepting residents Friday afternoons which also reduces her patient workload and gives her time to catch up on admin stuff. Which means she is not usually now working all weekend charting and whatnot, although she still works a lot at home.
As for actual unusual events, we went to REI because Amanda had gotten me a gift card to get new hiking boots. It was also a member sale period so I got them 25% off. They are nice, but now I need to hike more. We did look at child carriers, but getting one will require more research. It seems like we won’t be able to find one that both of us could wear comfortably which is unfortunate. I also got a new bicycle floor pump because my rather ancient one can no longer pump a tire up past 30psi or so.

Last week I planted tomatoes. I did the expedient thing and just went to Lowe’s and picked up some starts: the reliable Early Girl, the yellow Golden Jubilee, and another hybrid whose name I an forgetting but it gets really big in around 70 days. Around here one should not plant outside until around mid-May, but I had acquired some heat sink-type things to surround the cold-adverse plants.

The picture shows the tomato surrounded by a plastic thing which is basically filled with water. Theoretically, one can plant even at 32F if it is sunny enough I imagine. Last year a couple fellow gardeners used them, and I was amazed at the difference they made.

Otherwise, Amanda got sick Monday night (fever, chills, etc.). It did not seem like it would last that long, but she had to skip work on Wednesday morning. Thursday, she did go in, and then someone was able to cover Friday afternoon for her. As it turned out, she lost her voice Thursday evening, and primary care is not really going to happen without her being able to talk. I ended up picking her up a little bit after dropping her off at work on Friday.

I got sick on Wednesday, but did not feel really bad until Thursday. I had more of the sore throat and coughing, but later morphed into the fever and chills. Amanda got the coughing later. The illness was old in that it seemed to get better in both of us, but then it would come back. And now, over a week later, both of us are still sick, although again it seems we are getting better. Maybe I should be taking my echinacea.

Lonan Kai seemed to avoid the bug, but today he was very grumpy when picked up from school, and he had a very noticeable temperature. He got better quickly over the evening after a dose of medicinals.

The illnesses sapped our energy for the weekend. We did venture off to a bigger playground in the Central District on Saturday, and Lonan Kai demonstrated his walking abilities to us. I noted that new modern playground equipment is quite different than what existed when I grew up. That is, a lot nicer. The new stuff also seemed quite more dangerous than I would have expected from our sue-happy society; the bigger pieces seemed to invite kids to do foolish things when they are very high up off the ground.

Sunday we had our P-Patch year kickoff meeting. Amanda and I did not do much gardening work. Lonan Kai ran around and ate dirt. We cleaned up the Food Bank Plot, but we did not plant anything there.

We have been trying to watch a nature documentary on the ecosystems around ocean tides (which is really very interesting), but Amanda and I have had trouble staying awake during the whole thing (I have had less trouble). Tonight, on perhaps our fifth try, Amanda finally made it to the end. I made it to the end yesterday.

I am making dinner right now… a leek and jack pie. The leeks are from our garden. I am still sick, which is unfortunate because it is a gorgeous day and I am not enjoying it because I am alternating sweating profusely and shivering. I had thought I was over the hump yesterday, but I guess not. It’s more frustrating being ill like this in some ways because I would almost prefer being totally laid out, but instead I can kinda function at 20% normal or whatever. I think Amanda is over the worse of things, but she is still sick as well. Lonan Kai seems to have avoided the illness, but then he always seems vaguely ill.
I am also making some beans with sage and garlic. I need to go downstairs and get the sage from our yard and do some worm bin maintenance. I might skip the worm bin stuff, though.