06 JUL 2007 : FRIDAY
I started doing leg stuff at the gym today. I usually do not do specific leg stuff at gym for time reasons mainly and usually hope running / cycling are good enough. I am more concerned about the back/shoulder as resistance training has been very good for keeping any thoracic outlet syndrome weirdness from flaring up. I was more good about doing squats and whatnot when I had our home gym available. Alas, I have been having left knee pain again recently, and after examination Dr. Amanda says I “probably” have a meniscus tear, although I am not sure what percentage “probably” means. Anyway, before spending health care dollars, I will see if some self-directed amateur physical therapy helps matters.
In the evening, we went out to Seattle’s Best Karaoke as it was a going away party for Mike. I always think karaoke will be kinda silly, but it is always much more fun that I think. We did not stay very long because Amanda was on call all the next day. Hopefully we will be able to see Mike again before he really leaves town for good.
07 JUL 2008 : SATURDAY
Amanda was on call all day and night at UW Medical Center. I drove her to work in the morning and then cleaned up the house. During lunchtime, I went up to Chipotle and got her a burrito bowl. She got me a “free” veggie burger from the cafeteria, and we ate outside the medical center. It was nice day, but unfortunately Amanda could not really enjoy it. There was another resident/student passed out at a nearby table.
We walked about outside the hospital for a while and sat in the grass. Amanda answered a few pages. I eventually even entered the hospital later; I had picked up and dropped off Amanda many times, but I had never actually been inside (although I have been in Harborview a few times).
Amanda decided she needed to take a nap, so I departed and went to pick up more kale seeds at City Peoples. I looked at the bird feeders, but I am unprepared at this time to spend $80-$100 dollars on one that could stand up to the squirrels and crows.
Back home, there was much gardening to catch up on. I thinned out the swiss chard and latest round of lettuce. I may have waited too long to thin them out, but what can you do. I ended up eating a lot of of the lettuce as I thinned them. As I told Heather who dropped by the P-Patch: “I have confidence in my immune system”.
I spent a lot of time (hours) weeding the Kid’s Plot and the common areas on the 35th Avenue South side and doing random stuff. We probably have completely gone over our community service requirement already. I still have to plant the kale, pull the peas up, and plant more spinach and lettuce.
Amanda was able to leave later, so I picked her up around 11pm. She got paged a few times, but nothing that required her physical presence.
08 JUL 2007 : SUNDAY
Amanda got up to go back to the hospital to “check out” to the next team, but that did not take very long. We ended up not doing much in the morning.
At around 1pm we went to Greenlake with a bunch of people (Sharon, Umang, Reiko, Belinda, Rachel, Matt). Most of them were going to swim: Amanda wanted to practice some open water swimming for her triathlon. I had no idea one could swim all around Greenlake because it seems to be pretty scummy. I just relaxed out of the water with Reiko and her kid and Belinda’s puppy.
Reiko had been teaching Naomi (her child) some sign language which was interesting as she was not really able to talk yet but she could make and understand signs.
After the swim, Amanda proved that she was readily influenced by advertising as she made me get her a root beer float from the nearby park snack place. The float was advertised in Very Large Letters on the side of the building.
I saw a flotilla of juvenile mallards exit the water near us. It looked like they sent up a scout to check out the area. One of them was much further ahead of the rest and continually craned his neck about. Looking for sun? Shade? People with tasty Snacks? Whatever they were looking for, it was not there, and they returned to the water quickly.
We had dinner immediately when we got home at around 4pm as I had just then hit me that I had not really eaten anything all day. Amanda dozed while I whipped up some pasta, sauce, and bread. She took a nap afterwards while I did more gardening.

After I picked up Amanda from work and a stop at Group Health, we tried to go to Lark for our anniversary dinner, but it was closed. Amanda decried my lack of foresight in calling the place first. We then went to Osteria La Spiga at its new (to us) location.
The new location is much bigger, and has quite a different atmosphere than the original which was smaller and more homey. I think the new space is very nice, but for some reason it didn’t really match the food for me. The food overall was good. We had a selections of olives, a beet salad, and a fava bean, pea, lettuce, fried artichoke salad to start. The artichoke salad sounded and looked good in theory, but in practice was bland and uninteresting. I would have added salt if they had it at the table. We then got two small pasta dishes: an asparagus ravioli and pasta (I forget which kind) with white truffle butter sauce. The ravioli was good; the truffle sauce was awesome. We skipped the second meaty course (of course) and had dessert: a chocolate torte thing for Amanda and cookies and dessert wine for me.
Overall, the everything was fine. Unfortunately, I really really liked the old place and the new incarnation is fine, but I would not go out of my way to return to the new one.
On July Fourth Amanda slept in. I think she is still quite sleep deprived from the past few weeks, but she was unsure. Afterwards, we went downtown to check out the newly remodeled Seattle Aquarium. I did not really see a lot of examples of remodeling, except for the new entry and quite nice cafe area. Otherwise it was alright… not in the same league as the aquariums in Long Beach or Monterey or Vancouver really. We also had lunch in the Westlake Center as Amanda did not want to deal with wandering about the hordes of people in the Market.
Back at home, Amanda relaxed while I did some gardening.
We went over the Eve and Karl’s for dinner. James and Karl’s newly-arrived-in-Seattle friend Randy were also there. We had thai curry, asparagus, potato chips, potato salad (made by Amanda), rice, and noodles. It was good.
Later we walked to the Hamilton Viewpoint Park to watch the the fireworks over Elliot Bay. We could also see the fireworks display at Gasworks Park over Lake Union, and it looked more impressive than the one over the Bay. I guess Wamu sank more money into their sponsorship than did Ivar’s. I suppose that is not surprising since they are like a large financial institution.
On our walk back to Eve’s house, I kept thinking we would get nailed by one of the mortars and rockets people and kids were setting off in the streets and their yards and whatnot. I am surprised there aren’t more deaths than there already are.
Traffic was nuts on the way back home, but we eventually made it. Amanda passed out immediately even though people were still setting off all kinds of fireworks nearby. In our neighborhood they did not seem to be doing so in the streets, though, and choose more open areas, like the big field in front of our townhouse.

Four years ago* we were probably already past the teahouse on Lake Agnes and hiking up the Big Beehive. We had a very nutritious bfast of donuts from the Safeway in Banff. The weather was not particularly great, and it did snow a bit on top of the Beehive. A momentous day, to be sure.
Although in my mind our anniversary is when we actually decided to get married… approximately another two years and a month previous.
Amanda has renal clinic this morning, and then she will take one of Zubin’s afternoon shifts as a favor because he had to be out of town. We will probably have a celebratory meal tonight; I think tapas somewhere because Amanda’s appetite is a bit weird right now.
On our zero-th anniversary at the castle, we had a wine that cost more than all of our food combined. It’s not often that one gets into the triple digits on wine purchasing. Um, like never before or again. It was a Brunello, although I don’t remember exactly. It was very good. The staff made us special desserts, too.
Actually, now that I think about it, that was our zero-th anniversary plus one day. On our actual wedding day, we had dinner at the castle at a wine bar because it was late and we hadn’t bothered to get reservations anywhere. Amanda was pleased that she got a whole pot of coffee to herself… “Just like at IHOP!” said one of the servers.
* I never did finish recapping that trip. Looking through my archives, I only got to day six out of probably fourteen.

29 JUN 2007 – 01 JUL 2007
Last Thursday and Friday Amanda got me all wrapped up in the Helmet Wars again (bicycle helmets, that is) as she decided to do a morning report on bicycle helmets, what primary care physicians should know about them, blah blah blah. I allow that helmets could (possibly) help an individual avoid or lessen some theoretical injury, but I do not believe that their use should be mandated, and I do not think studies have been convincing otherwise. That their use should be mandated, that is, as there are many more confounding factors involved. We got in to a spirited argument again about all this again as I have read way too much about this subject, although nothing in a while: a point that Amanda drove home that new studies have appeared, and I had to concede that I have not kept up on the issue.
One of my earliest talks with Amanda when I first met her was about bicycle helmet use. She did not believe me about the limitations of a perfectly fitted and intact bicycle helmet and insisted I calculate by hand the forces involved (which I did). Most people equate bicycle helmets with full closed faced motorcycle helmets, and they are really not in the same league.
Anyways, I read a lot more recent stuff, and I still don’t think the case has been made.
Of course, Amanda went ahead with her presentation entitled something like “the Efficacy of Bicycle Helmets or How My Husband is Very Very Wrong”.
Helmets are mandatory here in Seattle, which is unfortunate. The police should spent more time ticketing all the bicyclists who ignore traffic rules instead. IMHO of course.
Amanda had ordered a steam cleaner earlier in the week as her anniversary present, and that arrived, so I tried it out on the carpet in the office and the lower staircase. It was shocking how much stuff came up that the Dyson Animal could not get. The carpet definitely looks a lot better. I did determine that all the dark spots on the carpet were not due to my foot traffic, but rather dirt and oils from the piglet! All the spots are where she typically sleeps. Crazy really, since she always seems so clean. I guess the carpet does a good job.
We had a very early dinner at El Sombrero in Columbia City to celebrate Amanda’s R3 promotion. El Sombrero’s service is very good, and they always card me. I take that as a compliment. The food itself is alright.
Saturday I went to the gym while Amanda and Mandy went grocery shopping. When they returned, all of us (including Bryan) went strawberry picking at Remlinger Farms in Carnation. The fields were quite picked over when we got there. Since we were only getting stuff for jam, though, our standards were a lot lower, so we were able to get a goodly amount of berries. We thought a lot of people were going to be unhappy in the evening, because they were not picking with good posture (all that bending over will kill them later).
We also took a look at their raspberries, but they were not really ready yet.
Remlinger Farms is one of those destination farm places: they have a playground, a ride area, u-pick areas, crafts, a big market, a restaurant,etc.. We had lunch at the restaurant, and the food was good. They serve a healthy portion of fries which I always appreciate.
The evening was low key as we got back from the farm pretty late. We had the usual salad and bread dinner. I’ve been drinking a lot of boxed wine because Amanda does not partake anymore and boxed wine is really pretty good for the price and more importantly it stays relatively good for weeks. So I can have one glass with dinner easily.
Sunday, we had brunch at Eve and Karl’s house. It was good to see them as we have not since Amanda and Eve’s combined birthday party as they had been traveling and life has been busy. I got to see Satchel for a second, but he More Important Things To Do rather than be friends with me.
After brunch, we went on a short jaunt to Tukwila to again look for some buttons for the sweater Amanda knit for her coworker who recently had her baby.
Amanda has been feeling pretty crappy over the past week, and because of that and other reasons we went to Urgent Care after obtaining the buttons. Among other things, we got to see all 4-5 mm of the progeny who is in the correct place and presumably happy except for the bombardment of ultrasound waves.
We were at Urgent Care for a long time, maybe 5.5-6 hours (mostly waiting as one might imagine), so we walked down 15th Ave to get something to eat since we were both starving and it was pretty late. We ended up eating Thai at Jamjuree.
Amanda eventually went back to the hospital as one of her patients (the sister of her coworker who just had a baby in fact) was also in labor. Fortunately for both she was not there all night but returned around 2:30am.

“The problem is that you refuse to be whipped. That frustrates [me].”
– Amanda
In other news, we went to the gym. Amanda did a personal training session, but got really tired. We went to the farmer’s market. We walked around Columbia City. Amanda bought a Columbia City T-Shirt. We did some gardening. We had salad, bread, smoked gouda, and sautéed peas and mushrooms for dinner. Amanda thought she would be able to stay home, but a pregnant woman appeared out of the woodwork, so she is at the hospital now. Maybe she will return home later.