Amanda’s mom left today. I dropped her off downtown after taking Amanda to work; unfortunately, since her flight was at 1pm, it would have taken a lot of driving about for me to take her to the airport as both Amanda and I were working. She got to take the 194 in the bus tunnel, though; neither Amanda nor I have ever been in it as it closed down for renovations a bit after be moved here and just recently opened back up.
Today was just a lot of work. I also got chains for the car. I eventually made it home at around 7:30pm, but after barely greeting the piglet I took off to pick up Amanda downtown. She and Carrie had headed off after work to look for interview clothes for Amanda. Carrie got a pair of earmuffs that I found pleasing. Amanda thought I would, but she had forgotten that I had seen said earmuffs before and commented on their coolness. We took Carrie back to her home in Ballard. I had never been. She lives right beside the chef at Brasa.
I was going to recap New Year’s Eve and whatnot, but I am now tired. Amanda and piglet have already passed out. The title of this entry refers to the amount of calories I consumed after Amanda and I arrived home. I had nothing really to eat all day, so after coming back home from Ballard I wolfed down two BK Veggie Burgers and three King sized fries. Oops.

Amanda’s mom took me out to dinner tonight for a birthday present (a few months after my actual birthday, but of course she lives on the other side of the country). Since she wanted to take me out for sushi, I had idly suggested we go to Nishino as I did on my actual birthday last year, but I had thought we should go somewhere else because I hardly wanted to stick my mother-in-law with some outrageous sushi bill. However, Amanda went ahead and made reservations for this evening anyway as she had tormented me last month with many trips to El Sombrero and we won’t be eating out much shortly after the progeny arrives.
Amanda and her mom were of average hunger, but I ended up rattling off twice as many things as they they ordered (or more!). I only had five cups of tea to drink all day and no actual food… unwise before eating sushi.
a subset of my dinner:
green tea
a “saketini”
miso soup with tofu
seaweed salad
hamachi shashimi with ginger and jalapeño peppers (yowsa! slurp!)
a large variety of nigiri pieces and rolls
banana tempura
I also ate various bits of everyone else’s food because I can be a bottomless pit sometimes and they were not all that hungry.
It was very tasty. Unlike last time when everything I ate was raw, I had a bit of rice, tempura veggies, and cooked bok choy this time around. I saw someone’s order of raw oysters and almost got them again, but I resisted.
Amanda and I decided to allocate some of my mother’s holiday gift to the cause, so we split the bill; our dinner was courtesy of both mothers/mothers-in-law. Thanks mom! We considered how we should be saving $$$ for the progeny’s education, but then decided that our kid will be brilliant and will be able to go college for free. “Sorry, Progeny, we didn’t save any money for college because we thought you’d be, like, smart and all.”
I noted that we had the same waitperson as before, and she evidently surmised that I did not want to get sloshed in front of the MIL, so she did not ask if I wanted more martinis. As opposed to my actual birthday when I had no restraints and kept ordering them.
I am still a bit hungry, but clearly I should not eat any more. I did not get much sleep last night, maybe three hours, as I was working and quite inspired. I wanted to actually recap the last week, but I am running out of weblogging steam. Might be time for a nap. Piglet is way ahead of me and is already snoozing in front of the fire.

It is the day after xmas. I am working. Amanda is at home with her parents and sister. Or perhaps they are painting the town red.
Over the previous weekend, we didn’t do all that much. Cleaned the house and whatnot before all the visitors came. Amanda went grocery shopping with Mandy. We had dinner with Eve at Mioposto. She is on call for five or so days while Karl is back in Pennsylvania. She and Amanda also made many cookies. We saw Blade Runner‘s final edition. Amanda does not appreciate it as much as I do.
I have been to the airport quite a bit. We picked up Dave from the airport the other day (23rd?) when his planned trip to Michigan was denied due to snowy weather. Amanda’s parents came in within minutes of each other on the 24th (from Cleveland and Cincinnati). Susan came in around 2pm on the 25th.
Since it was convenient, we ate at a salad/soup buffet on the way back from the airport on the 24th after picking up Amanda’s parents. We just relaxed at home, had lasagna for dinner, finally cooked and processed the pumpkins we had grown (and the one given to us by our realtor) that were sitting on our porch, and started to watch the Mummy Returns. I was the only one to stay up and finish it, though.
On the 25th, we did a lot of cooking before Susan arrived. Amanda and her mom did most of the cooking, though. It was snowing when I picked up Susan; she said people at the airport said that it had not snowed on xmas in Seattle in 65 years. We ate pretty much right after Susan arrived… yams, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, cranberries, mushroom gravy, chicken for the chicken eaters, and a bit of fish for me. We also had Italian Cream Cake and pumpkin pie. Amanda got me a $16 pinot noir from Erath… a decadent bottle compared to the $3 bottles I normally consume nowadays.
We weren’t going to get gifts this year, but Amanda decided at the last moment that we would do a white elephant gift thing amongst ourselves. As it turned out the gifts were a chocolate salmon, smoked salmon, an appointment book, Clueless, and Elf and Finding Neverland. Amanda and I bought the salmon items, and we received all the movies.
I konked out after we opened the gifts for a few hours while everyone else watched Clueless.
I do not know what the rest of the day holds. Amanda will be going to an OB appointment later. She apparently wants to go to El Sombrero again for dinner; we have been going a lot recently, but she cannot resist.

Woodinville (during the day at least) is quite the land of huge SUVs and stay-at-home-parents (all moms from what I see) with kids running around. Mysterious, really, as it was not what I expected of the area. Amanda was very angry the other day that another woman decided to take up two parking places with her ginormous SUV in the Trader Joe’s parking garage. I guess she needed her ambulance sized vehicle to carry her toddler around because there was nothing else in it. I was more puzzled on how she actually got it in the garage; wouldn’t it actually have been easier to park somewhere on the street and walk to the store? She had one of those ginormous stroller things that could protect against nuclear fallout, too… I am sure the other store patrons loved dodging that in the store. Hm, maybe she needed the SUV to carry the stroller.
So there really is no point to this entry, but I did want to write something. I apologize for my lapse of niceness, though. I am getting much more cranky in my old age.
On the positive side, I did get 6+ hours of sleep last night, and Amanda got 12. Woot.

Someone went hog wild over the past few days and bought gobs of things using my Discover card. I got a letter from them about it; they had been trying to call but mysteriously I did not get any of their messages on my cell phone, although they did have the right number. Anyways, since I had not used it for quite a while, they were a bit suspicious, but I guess they let a few go through because it was the holidays after all.
Fortunately, I am not responsible for any of the charges, although they said around $600 did get through. All the charges were via online purchases. I dunno how they got my number. Perhaps they swiped some of my mail.
Arrrr.