We (Amanda, LK, and I) are at Suncadia, which is a hotel, conference, resort, condo, real estate, etc. place. She is here for a family medicine meeting of some sort, while I am here to look after LK. Unfortunately, I do not have these days off and there is much work to do before I finish my contract, so I cannot enjoy the facilities; it will be hard enough to work while looking after LK.
The room we are in is freaky nice. It bigger and nicer than our old apartment in Seattle. I think it may have been originally designed as a condo, but I dunno. We have an outdoor hottub/jacuzzi, too, which might be worth the $75 to use at some point.
Amanda is at some delegate meeting now, and since I am trapped here (I don’t think we are near anything), I ordered a $70 room service meal. Yikes! I admit the food as good, though, maybe $35-$40 of nice, but the room service fees and automatic large gratuity tacked on a lot of money. Since we are going to be here a couple of days, I guess we should figure out what I should be eating… I think Amanda gets here food for free. Maybe I will drive out to a grocery store and get some sandwich stuff.
Everyone is calling me “Mr. Kost”, too. Funny.
LK blew a gasket earlier, but thankfully is sleeping now. I will try to work now since I dunno what tomorrow holds.

I’m sick. I managed to get Amanda and LK sick as well, although LK does not seem that bad. He emits all kinds of bodily fluids anyway.
Starlings have moved into our stove exhaust, just like some did in Bill and Kelly’s place last year. Unfortunately, such things are no longer under warranty. The clever birds ripped off the flaps to enter, and now there are little ones. In some ways that would not be so bad, but they are very very loud in the house, and the nest materials are probably a fire hazard. Hopefully it won’t be too expensive to evict them, but Amanda wants to wait 21 days until the chicks have left the nest. I would try to evict them myself, but that would require a very large ladder that we neither need nor have the space to store.
I filled up the scooter tank yesterday on the way back from UW Med. I put in a gallon… dunno what the capacity is… and it looks like we got 100km on it… 60mpg. I imagine the mileage will get better as everything breaks in.
Not much happened over the weekend. Amanda worked Saturday morning and was on call 24 hours on Sunday.
I am making friends with the feral cats outside. I almost got one to hang out with me in the front yard. I have been leaving food outside for them at night, but only then because the crows will eat it during the day. Amanda was angry that I was using piglet’s expensive prescription food, so I got some normal stuff yesterday.
I don’t think piglet is pleased. Friday she hid in the bushes and ambushed invaders coming to see if food was around or stopping for a drink out of oUr water feature. But perhaps she will make friends/subjects since she is clearly the queen of the yard and building.

02 MAY 2008 : FRIDAY
I worked at home. Nothing too exciting. Amanda was at clinic. My mom watched LK. Later she went out to dinner with a friend who was visiting from D.C..
I went to Karl’s birthday celebration at Taste of India. Amanda thought about going as well, but she decided to stay home with LK since she was tired and she had been away from LK since she had started working again and it was way past LK’s bedtime. I did offer to watch him instead, but she decided to stay home.

I had not been to the restaurant since Karl’s last birthday… it is north of the ship canal (of which my knowledge of the city is relatively minimal). Other than Eve and Karl, the other people there were his brother and sister-in-law, James and his friend (whose name I have again forgotten), Stacey, and Randy.
Dinner was fun. The proprietors gave Karl a bunch of sweets and a bottle of wine since it was his birthday. I believe they went out to a bar afterwards, but I left to return home since it was pretty late once we had finished dinner.

The above picture of Karl is pretty grainy since I took it with my cell phone. We lost our camera during our not-yet-recapped Tennessee trip.

03 MAY 2008 : SATURDAY
It was a rainy day, so we thought we would be denied in our scooter shopping. And, in fact, the place we wanted to go only had two 50cc scooters left, but it was raining too hard to test drive them. They suggested calling back in a few hours to see what the weather was doing.
We did call them back, and in the interim someone had bought one of the scooters! Without actually riding it I presume. However, they said to come on down as the rain had kinda let up.

The scooter people were great. Amanda did test drive the scooter, and it was fine, so we bought it and the required accouterments (i.e. helmets) on the spot. Well, it did take a bit to fill out all the paperwork. Apparently, a lot of people do the same as they are burning through their scooters, especially the 50cc models, as fast as they can get them.

Amanda was amused that she wears an extra-small helmet while I have a xx-large size. I also choose a black helmet in spite of the fact lighter helmets are more visible because their white helmet styles looked way too stormtrooper-like. I presume Amanda agreed because she picked a silver model.

Amanda did not feel confident riding the scooter home in the rain… it had started coming down again… so I rode it back while Amanda followed in the car. It went a lot faster than I thought it would, and the traffic was no problem at all since I was basically going as fast as the cars were. It was fun riding through downtown, although it would have been funner had it not been raining.

We must have done something in the evening, but I have forgotten. Hmm, maybe I played a little GTA4. I think I did actually while rocking LK to sleep in a chair. Amanda caught up on work.

04 MAY 2008 : SUNDAY
We did a lot of P-Patch work in the morning. Basically, that meant doing some final bed preparations and actually planting. We planted the usual beets, carrots, onions, lettuces, arugula, spinach, and peas. And we still have onions, swiss chard, and garlicks growing. LK was with us for a while, but Amanda and my mom took him home before he melted down.

It was a very nice day, so I went for a short ride on Lake Washington Blvd to test the scooter out more. It definitely needs warming up. Amanda did some scooter rides, too, but only near the house.

She later went grocery shopping with Mandy while I went to our start-of-the-season P-Patch meeting. There was more turnover than I thought there would be, and we have two new leaders/chieftains. Alas, there are many people on the waiting list, so they are retiring the kids garden and giving it to someone. Amanda was sad all the work she had done with the strawberries may go to waste. But who can say what the new people will do.

05 MAY 2008 : MONDAY
Work. Amanda did not have to work today and attempted to go to the library with my mom, but it does not open until 1pm or somesuch on Mondays.

LK apparently exhibited some weird screaming in the afternoon, so Amanda made an emergency appointment to take him in (she does not want to be his doctor as it is harder for her to be objective). She called me, so I came back home to take them to Group Health. As we kinda expected since his weird screaming had abruptly stopped, there was nothing obvious wrong with him once we got there, but obviously one never knows, eh?

I went back to work. Then came home. We had chili for dinner. LK wigged out again, but it was not so bad. I worked more then stopped to write this entry. Everyone else is sleeping upstairs except for piglet, who is keeping me company.

We are back from Tennessee where we attended Erika’s wedding. It was fun, and travelling with the progeny went much better than I thought it would. It was still stressful, though. Hopefully I will get my act together and recap the trip.
My Auntie Mely was in town last weekend, and we got to see her for a couple of hours right after we got back into town and before she left. I do not think I have seen her (though I have talked to her) in 10+ years.
LK visited Dr. Stanley today and received many shots. As one might expect, he was not pleased with the situation, and not only did he scream louder than I had ever heard him, he also shot me deadly accusatory glares. I guess he didn’t like me holding his arms down during the procedures. Fortunately, I am immune to both his cries and his glares.
My mom will be arriving tomorrow for a couple of months as Amanda starts working again (full time, that is) in a couple of days. I think LK is much more genial now than when she first visited, so hopefully that bodes well for the future.

The weekend was on the non-exciting side. Saturday, Amanda wanted to go scooter shopping, but no one has 50cc models in stock for some mysterious reason. Except, I suppose the Vespa place, but they are expensive… although you might get the hipster cred along with it. What’s up with these people? All they have to do is have a couple in stock and we would immediately plunk many $$$ for scooter and accessories. Ah, well.

Amanda later went to visit with Carrie. I worked, because we will be off to Tennessee for a wedding next week and there is much to do. And Amanda had to work on Sunday so it would be unlikely I could work then.
Sunday Amanda was on call. I believe it was because originally she would have been back to work that week, but I dunno what really happened. Regardless, no one else took/traded the shift, so she had to go in.

I took her in at around 7:45am. LK was very cooperative during the trip and for a while back home… all coos and smiles… but then he realized that I could not produce the Tit and he screamed. A lot. In spite of the fact that I did feed him breast milk via bottle, really, so I knew he wasn’t hungry; he was just full of bad attitude.
So, most of the day was dealing with his screaming, which curiously was on the “all the way up to 11” level of his earlier days. Presumably he missed his breast friends. I did venture out to the garden, but I had a bit of trouble with Amanda’s new sling-thing she had procured, so I cut the walk short.

We did have to dig up our gratis can of formula because we weren’t sure we had enough milk on hand for 24+ hours. I ended up visiting Amanda for lunch (which LK was very happy about) to pick up milk Amanda had pumped. And later we visited for an extended time (7pm-0100am?) to pick up more milk and relax as a family. OK, maybe not since Amanda was very busy and we were in a hospital. I did get a lot of work done, too, as LK was drunk with milk and passed out most of the time.
Back home, I did not really sleep as LK was discombobulated with the change in routine. He was not into sleeping and more into smiles and coos (Amanda’s normal response: “Now is NOT the time for smiles and coos… it is time for SLEEPING.”) and demanding food. There was less wailing as he realized I could produce food, if not as immediately as Amanda could.

I picked up Amanda this morning at 730. LK was all smiles again as I had his bfast ready before he actually woke up. Amanda did not really sleep either, but hopefully both of them are now.