22-24 JUN 2007 : FRIDAY – SUNDAY
For some reason Jackass 2 was in our Netflix Queue. Maybe because we saw it advertised when we saw Snakes on a Plane. Regardless, we watched it. It was pretty silly, but not nearly as disgusting or stupid as I had expected. OK, it was pretty stupid. I did not see the first nor the actual MTV show. When was the last time I watched MTV anyway? I suppose after watching the movie I am more culturally literate. Hopefully.
Amanda had Saturday Children’s Clinic.
Amanda wanted to bicycle up to Husky Stadium and canoe and whatnot, but I was leery of the weather. The days started sunny, but looked to be windy and rainy later. Amanda’s bicycle also needs some work (which I am waiting for some parts and tools to arrive). We walked around Seward Park instead which was nice. I had no idea there was so much poison oak there. We stopped by a pottery sale in the park; I also had no idea there was a pottery studio in the park, either. We did not find anything enticing. I noted that while handmade ceramics certainly to not have to be perfectly round or symmetrical (and certainly the stuff I made at university was far from perfect), I found a lot of stuff displayed to be pretty Not Pleasing To Me due to what appeared to be a complete disregard of symmetry and proportion and craftsmanship. And not in a artistic way… more like “eh, whatever, it looks good enough”. On the other hand, some stuff was nice. Just expensive.
We went to Heather/Andrew/Zubin/Megan’s new house in Montlake near the bridge for a party. It was billed as starting at 1pm and going on till… who knows? We arrived around 6pm at the start of their “second wave”. It was a nice place, and rather well set up for four people / two couples. The weather did turn windy and cold, so I was vindicated. Anyways, the party was fun.
The weather on Sunday was pretty lousy and Amanda was dragging a bit in the morning. She perked up after I suggested we go to Chipotle.
We stopped at the Japanese Garden before heading up to the University District. We fed the koi! There was a very Not Nice juvenile mallard there who wanted all the food and pecked at the poor koi. There were also a couple of very misbehaving kids who were pulling up vegetation and whatnot to throw in the water. Their parents didn’t !@#!@ care! They were not inducing me to have a peaceful and contemplative experience.
On our way there, I saw that the IHOP that she and I went to a few years ago before going to Mt. Rainier had closed… after 40 years! I imagine a mixed-used building will go up in its place. Or perhaps an office tower.
We stopped by Weaving Works after lunch. Amanda wanted to look for knitting baby patterns for an imminently expecting coworker and herself. I personally found a lot of the patterns either, um, ugly, or the kind of thing that people made to show how cool they are as to being, say, functional clothing. We did find a book we both liked. Amanda said perhaps that is not surprising as her Fashion Consultant Friend Carrie had it. I was intrigued by a book that promised knitting stuff for dogs and cats, but it all turned out to a Big Fat Lie as everything was really for dogs.
Amanda also picked up some yarn for socks.
We looked for buttons for a sweater that Amanda had knit for her coworker. Amanda and I clearly had differing ideas on what buttons looked good. I was all about some simple and tasteful wooden ones or some really cool silver gecko or lizard ones. Amanda preferred various polymers of either plain colors or with pictures of flowers or animals or whatnot. Actually, I was also thinking that buttons in general would be bad (don’t babies swallow stuff like that?) but Amanda did not seem too concerned. Amanda ended up deciding to wait until she knew the sex of the future infant, although I said that one should not be basing button choices on gender (or any baby clothing for that matter). Alas, she ignored me.
We went to University Village so that Amanda could get a notebook for work. She was also going to get a study guide at Barnes and Noble for Step 3 of her medical boards, but she verified she could borrow Heather’s instead.
We watched Lady in the Water. I had heard it wasn’t all that great, but then I actually really liked the Village in spite of tepid reviews, so I was hopeful I would really like it. As it turned out, I thought the story would have worked better if it was simply written; it did not really translate very well to me on the screen. Regardless, I still found it entertaining.

It was the longest day of the year. Amanda is on night float… translation: she is the night family medicine person at UW Medical Center who handles all their inpatient stuff and childbirths. I don’t think they usually have a lot of medicine patients, but there are always laboring women coming out of the woodwork.
I am baking biscotti and granola right now as requested by Amanda. Actually, the biscotti is getting done first and then I will make granola. I was going to paint all the repaired drywall (the drywall guys came on Monday, the tile guy came back on Tuesday), but I will wait until tomorrow morning since I will be baking all night.

Here is a solstice picture of part of our pond’s lily plant , which shot up a new flower today.

15 JUN 2007 : FRIDAY
The carpet fixer guy showed up (after getting delayed by an accident) to fix our bunched up carpet upstairs. It was impressive how he was able to fix/restretch the carpet without moving any furniture, but it still took him a long long time. It seemed to be one of those very straightforward things that is very easy if you have the right tools and equipment. Which of course, no one except carpet installers have.
The tile and bathroom person (who is actually teamed up with Carpet Man) showed up a bit later to check out the bathroom. He seemed confused about what he installed a year ago, but decided that he did not have the right stuff, so we made another appointment. He had a very nice phone and PDA to update his schedule. He also will recaulk the kitchen counters which will save me another trip to the hardware store.
Amanda and I had dinner at the Vegetarian Bistro in the International District because she was insta-hungry. She felt ill during dinner, so we went home and she dozed off.
16 JUN 2007 : SATURDAY
Amanda had Saturday Morning Clinic. Went she returned, we went back to the pond store and acquired a water lily and two little comet goldfish. We also went to Lowe’s for plants, mulch, and more rocks to line the pond, so the day was filled with more house projects.
Hopefully the goldfish will prosper. Piglet is already very interested in them. I may have to rig up some sort of bio filter for them later.
We replaced all of our recessed lighting in the house with compact fluorescents or varying spectrum; we had mail-ordered them earlier in the week. The 5100K and 5900K ones are quite impressive, although Amanda found them a bit weird to have in most of the house, so we put the “warmer” ones in the living areas (2900K? 3100K? I don’t recall). Maybe we will change them around later to see if the 5XXX ones are better at combating the winter darkness blues. I have the 5900K ones in my office and it is almost daylight inside when they are on.
17 JUN 2008 : SUNDAY
We met up with Rachel and Sabino for brunch downtown. We were going to have brunch at Six Seven at the Edgewater Hotel downtown at Sabino’s suggestion, but while we tried to get reservations earlier (it was unclear if they were needed), they turned out to be very full. Kind of a bummer really, since we had to pay $4 to park for 15 minutes.
Amanda and I had gotten there first, so we eventually met up with them in Pike Place Market. We wandered around a bit and found a place (Bacco) with no wait right outside the market. After a pleasant brunch, we walked around a while before parting ways.
Mandy was not available, so again I was permitted to accompany Amanda on the Trader Joe’s run. Nothing untoward happened and many groceries were obtained.
Back home we finally hung up all the picture we had gotten framed last week.
I uploaded a lot of pictures to the gallery (not just on Saturday, though). I decided to just start with the current ones and work backwards. They are not organized yet, but some of the dynamic albums will automatically update. I will still have to reorganize all the old albums.
We had a typical dinner for us recently: salad from the garden, cheese, bread, olives, asparagus, 0.5 beer for me, 0 beers for Amanda.
We watched Once A Thief after dinner. Once it started, we realized that we had seen it before, but it was still entertaining.
….
We went to La Medusa last Wednesday to celebrate the progeny; it was a spur of the moment decision while we were at the Farmer’s Market. They have a special Farmer’s Market prix fixe meal. La Medusa usually requires reservations, but we were lucky to get a table. There was a guy sitting next to us who apparently is a big commercial property owner, and one of his tenants came in and was arguing with him about locks and restraining orders and all sorts of weird stuff, but eventually the tenant left. Weird.

I went and got my hair cut today. My Ahn (the local sylist person) took off close to 24 inches. Two feet! Amanda misses the hair and now denies that she ever wanted my hair shorter. It has never been this short since she has known me, says she, and it is still past my shoulders.
My Ahn and her sister Sandy said that people paid a lot of money to get “highlights” like I have. I guess there are some advantages to having all that white hair.
They will donate the massive lock of hair they sheared off. I hope whoever gets it does not commit some horrific crime and leave my DNA everywhere.

Piglet does not like the carpet-stretcher man. He makes a lot of noise and causes the house to shake and makes the carpet move, so she is hiding under the bed. He isn’t really evil, though, and repeatedly tries to coax her out in between manhandling the carpet.
Now it looks like she has retreated to the office and is hiding in the shelves.
Edit: No, now she has made friends with carpet-stretcher man!