Crops

Our house in Seattle has a good-sized backyard that is sunny and open, so I am pretty excited to make a good garden this summer. I took the first steps towards that objective last week, by planting some seeds inside so they will be ready for planting outside by the time it warms up. Come to think of it, it already is warm enough for outdoor gardening and has been all winter long, which is why we have no stinkin' snow in the mountains. Darn! Shown at the left is my modest grow operation, the plants sprouting in the foreground are cabbage. Most of the other things haven't come up yet, but I planted tomatoes, pepper, basil, thyme, oregano, zucchini, cucumbers, and some other things that I can't remember. I'll post periodic updates of my plants as they thrive indoors for the next six weeks until they are ready to move into the great outdoors.

As for what I have been up to this week, Monday I did nothing (other than work), Tuesday I was brought to my knees by some disgusting pizza that I ate at work and made me feel like a sack of poop for the rest of the day (I am never eating pizza again, at least not the fast food variety) but I somehow managed to revive myself for a rollers workout in the evening, last night I hit the climbing gym which was good as my elbow felt pretty good (even though I didn't do anything harder than V3), and tonight I tried to go for an outdoor bike ride which was cut short by a succession of demoralizing flat tires. As for weekend plans, in a week and a half from now I am flying to Salt Lake City to do a backcountry ski race called the Wasatch Powder Keg so I really wanted to get out for a backcountry ski this weekend. I don't know that many people in Seattle that ski, so I was pondering who I could head out with when all of a sudden I had a brain wave: why not participate in Vertfest, a backcountry ski race being held this Saturday at Alpental?! This will be perfect preparation for the Powder Keg (except for not being at altitude), and I will automatically have tons of ski partners who I will be racing against! I was delighted to have this flash of inspiration, what a great idea! So hopefully I can bring you another exciting race report after Saturday.

In other news, time for an update on the rare spotted newt (Roanne's baldness has earned her the title of "the newt", and she has a pair of spotted PJ's that Hayley gave her which turns her into the rare spotted newt). We met with the surgeon last week as I reported previously, and we have now scheduled the surgery for March 31, just over 3 weeks from the last chemo treatment on March 8 (this Monday!). One bummer is that Roanne has been sick with a cold this week, I think our Olympic weekend might have been a bit much for her in her chemo-afflicted state. This was the first time she has been sick since starting chemo so we were a little concerned, but she has taken a couple of days off from work and seems to be on the mend now.