Mojo and Moxie have their annual vet appointment. Mojo weighs over 15 pounds now, and Moxie’s just shy of 13, so Jan has to lug 28 pounds of cat down the street to the vet. They meow the whole way. The staff at the local vet’s thinks the boys are adorable.
The young woman vet who gives the cats their examination laughs when she tries to listen to Mojo’s heart and lungs with a stethoscope — “He’s purring so much, I can’t hear anything!”
Jan, Angela, and Lyn attend a matinee performance of “Clue”, the school play for which Bree’s helped create the costumes. We’d originally been scheduled to attend last night, but a windstorm knocked out the school’s power.
The performance is entertaining, and the costumes look great. At a gathering of the cast and crew earlier, the senior leading the costuming team announced, “Bree, when I come back here in three years, I think you’re going to be leading the costuming team!”
This week the weather is supposed to get and stay well below freezing, which means it’s time for us to get in our backyard kiwi harvest. This is the earliest we’ve ever had to do it.
As usual, we end up with far too much kiwi for us to consume ourselves.
Bree’s not feeling well. She eventually tests positive for COVID.
Chris flies up to Seattle to help Lyn celebrate her 79th birthday. He and Jan take their mom to The Whale Wins for lunch.
Afterwards, Jan gives her his birthday gift: an electronic ink display dubbed the “MomBoard”, which shows messages posted over the internet by her kids. The device is intended to always be on (hence the use of a low-power, always-on e-ink display) and just be looked at (there’s nothing to touch). We’re hoping it will help jog her memory as to where everyone is and what they’re up to.
Jan, Chris, Skye, and Jared post some birthday messages for her using the web app Jan wrote for it. Lyn likes the MomBoard, and asks Jan to set it up in the bathroom, then later tries it out in her bedroom.
In the evening, Angela joins in for dinner at Ben Paris, where everyone shares a tasting menu.
Jan and Chris take Lyn to lunch at Palisade in Magnolia. It’s a gorgeous day — cold but clear — so after lunch they walk along the edge of Puget Sound for a while to a small, rocky beach.
Tonight, when Jan and Angela sit down in the family room to do the New York Times crossword, they both mention that they’re a little cold. They check the thermostat — it is cold in the room. Upon investigation, it appears that the furnace isn’t working.
At the moment, it’s not too bad inside. But the weather has been unseasonably cold this week, with temperatures in the high 30s or low 40s, so it’s unclear how long the warmth in the house will remain. We have some space heaters, but we’re hoping we can get this fixed quickly. [A repairman is able to fix the problem the next day, but it’s probably time for a new furnace.]
Moxie enjoys the warmth of the late-rising sun.
We’ve had beautiful foliage this fall. The unusually warm autumn resulted in the trees staying green through October, and the leaves only began changing color recently. We’ve had two weeks of unusually clear skies too, so the fall colors really pop. This is the maple tree on the north side of our house.
Angela’s brother, Johnny, arrives, along with his son Brian. This is the first chance we’ve had to see them since the pandemic began. (We were supposed to visit last Christmas, but the Omicron wave caused us to cancel our plans.) Brian’s now a junior in high school, so he looks pretty different. Jenny and Anthony will come later in the week, after Anthony finishes some freshman classes at UCLA.
For dinner, we take Johnny and Brian to a pop-up restaurant. Jan’s business partner at Cozi, Robbie Cape, is starting an ecology-focused fast food chain called Mt. Joy. They source all their ingredients as locally as possible, and work with providers that use sustainable farming practices. One of Robbie’s partners is Ethan Stowell, a well-known local restauranteur.
For the weekend, Mt. Joy takes over a branch of Tavolàta, another of Ethan’s restaurants. We all agree that the fried chicken sandwiches are good! It’s also wonderful to see Robbie again, along with his wife, Bonnie, and their eldest son, Benjamin.
Later in the evening, Liya arrives from Yale.
Our family friend, Evrim, arrives from Brown University. She took a gap year, so she’s now a freshman. We’re all delighted to see Evrim again.
Evrim isn’t feeling well, and tests positive for covid. That’s two covid cases in our house in one month. We decide that she’ll quarantine in Liya’s bedroom, so Liya moves into the master bedroom.
Evrim and Liya take a walk with Jan around the neighborhood.
Johnny also seems to be coming down with something, although it seems to be a regular cold. With his cold and Evrim’s covid, Jenny and Anthony decide to cancel their plans to come up to Seattle for Thanksgiving.
Angela takes Liya, Bree, Brian, and Jan to a Korean barbecue restaurant called Meet. It’s on Capitol Hill, but we’ve never tried it. The food seems to be higher quality than most Korean places, and it’s cooked tableside by a chef. In retrospect, the whole cook-it-yourself thing is probably more fun.
Happy Thanksgiving! Angela spends a good chunk of the day cooking a turkey and orchestrating the production of side dishes.
Jan’s feeling a bit dragged out today, and spends much of the day sleeping. He tests negative for covid, but self-quarantines in one of the basement bedrooms. We’ve had to shuffle people around quite a bit to try to keep sick people and healthy people apart.
Although the dinner plan already includes a dessert, Bree was keen to have our traditional dessert of icebox pudding, and ran out to buy the chocolate wafers the dish needs before the store closed early. She and Evrim have fun putting the dish together.
In the morning, Jan tests positive for covid. That makes 2 cases so far this week, and maybe Johnny as well.
Anthony and Brian head back to California.
After they get home, they both eventually test positive for covid too. Final covid tally over Thanksiving: 4 out of 7.
Liya heads back to Yale for the remainder of the academic term.