I am still working while the working is good. Although it is always hard to get people to, like, finally pay you. Otherwise, I go to the gym and entertain LK. Amanda is working hard as well. LK is hopefully learning stuff. Such is life.

We did go to a couple of stops during the annual farm/harvest festival in the area. Last year we went down south, but this year we went to the Eastside. Mostly because the places were closer and LK has a limited attention span.
We stopped at one place and acquired a bunch of pumpkins:


Later there were alpacas:


The white one is Sabino; I forget the name of the other.

And there were pygmy goats:


Her name is Tilley. She enthusiastically ate a lot of things (Not LK’s hand, though, which one can see at the bottom of the picture Actually, that must be Amanda’s hand).

Yesterday we went to the farmer’s market again as usual. The one in Columbia City will be closing for the year at the end of the month. I got a lot of peppers for an experimental hot relish thing. And basil, although it looks like the season is practically over. And green beans for LK and apples for all of us. And a “pistachio snail” snack for me and a pretzel for Amanda. LK didn’t really have a snack.

Right before leaving I decided to get a big lobster mushroom. I dunno what I will do with it yet.


A pound of mushroomy goodness!

Today has been (and will be) more consulting work. I paid my quarterly state business taxes. I should send in federal as well. I have to invoice someone so I can get paid. It will be a wet ride to the gym today, and I am feeling uninspired about it. Piglet is sleeping upstairs in our bedroom. Armando is huddled by the open sliding door of the office and is considering the rain. Amanda will not be back until 7pm or so tonight.

I have just been working a lot as I have to work when the working is good. Yawn. So has Amanda, but she is salaried with a “real” job. She has switched to her 10 hour days now.
We had a PEPS+ meeting on Wednesday at a park. It was good to see everyone again; I had not since our last official meeting over a month ago (although Ann yelled out at me from her car as I was walking down Rainier). The first office PEPS+ meeting was a couple of weeks ago at the zoo, but Amanda and I were at Heather and Andrew’s wedding. Actually, maybe half of the people were there, which is normal for the meetings.
Next month we are taking a baby sign language class with a lot of members from the group. That will be interesting.
Our garden has gotten repeatedly hit by vegetable thieves. Here is an excerpt of the email I send out on the P-Patch mailing list:
“They just won’t stop! Someone ran off with five or six really ripe tomatoes today; I knew I was pressing my luck by leaving them on. I bet they tasted great. They (the all purpose paranoid pronoun) also rooted through our cucumber vines again… maybe they forgot they already took everything left last time.”
Arrrr.
I do not know what the weekend holds. Though I think we will try to meet up with Eve and Karl before they leave on their hunnymoon. LK also has a serious lack of clothes, so we might break down and buy him some new ones.

On my walk today to pick up LK from daycare, I passed innumerable dead birds. They were seriously all over the place. There was even one hanging in a tree right by our house. Freaky.
Otherwise, life has been on the static side. We did go to Heather and Andrew’s wedding a couple of weekends ago at Pritchard Beach Park. I had never been, and it is very close to us; it’s very close to our gym. Amanda made their cake, and everyone raved about it. It was a tiered combination red devil / carrot cake by request of the wedding couple.
We went to the Olympic Sculpture Park last Saturday. There were all sorts of salmon presentations and exhibits and such around for a special event. We noted that it looks like they are actually done with construction, and a lot of the landscaping/native plants have grown much bigger since our last visit. It will probably look pretty cool next season.
There was(were) a new sculpture(s): a few very large orange traffic cones were scattered about. Large as in maybe 20 feet large. We considered the first one we saw and said: “Is this art?”. A passing museum worker said: “It’s supposed to be.”
Later as he walked out of a maintenance room he asked if we actually saw any art. That’s the spirit!
Sunday I canned a lot of relish in the morning. Later we went to a woman’s home in West Seattle to check out her plant sale. She had a couple of small greenhouses and a lot of grow lights in her basement (hiding something else perhaps?). We got a few strange spinach starts and some onions. They were cheap. It was the second day of her sale, so she did not have a large variety of things left.
We thought about hanging out at the beach at Alki, but LK started freaking out, so we axed that idea. He calmed down a bit on the West Seattle Bridge, so we decided to go to the Japanese Garden. It was cool, as always. There were little koi! Unlike the large koi, they always swim about in a big school. Perhaps wise, because the heron was there and was being very predatory. He was far more active than I had every seen him. A harsh life lesson for Mr. Lonan Kai! but he was more interested in pulling my hair than observing any carnage.
As for the typical life stuff: Amanda is working (0.8 FTE); LK goes to daycare; I now have quite a bit of consulting work I can do, so I am working on that while doing the usual search for the Next Thing.

Amanda: So you have outsmarted a six-month old. I hope you feel good about yourself.