Sequestered in Seattle, Day 374

A mishap in the early morning compelled me to discard my backup slippers Saturday. I pulled the insoles out of my old shoes to put in my newer slippers as a temporary solution. Then I went slipper shopping after breakfast. Nicole encouraged me to look for indoor shoes, instead. My latest slippers were new last May, so they didn't last very long with the nearly constant wear. She got some, too.

Late morning we had a Zoom meeting with our friends the Horners from Pittsburgh. We hadn't seen them since moving to Seattle. They live in Ohio, now, and are expecting their fourth child in July. Rachel's friend Grace was still an only child when we left them. We had a nice conversation and invited them to join us on Boardgame Arena sometime. We used to do game nights in person with them.

Rachel wanted macaroni and cheese again for lunch, so I showed her how to make the same recipe as yesterday. Then in the afternoon, Eric and I went outside so he could ride his bike and I could browse around the yard. He stayed out there for hours. I eventually grabbed a tool and resituated one of the new bleeding hearts, which didn't seem happy enough.

Our neighbor Cris came to try to jump start the car, but we didn't get it to work. He offered to go exchange the battery for us, but Nicole managed to borrow a battery charger from neighbor Kyle, instead, and after a couple of hours of charging, the car started up again. We decided to drive to get the new battery right away, though it was getting late. We went to a place in Ballard, they loaned me a wrench to take the old battery out, and it started raining just as I came out to do that.

I had to go back in several times. First, I needed a shorter socket for the wrench to remove the positive lead. Then, I exchanged the batteries. When trying to put the new one in, I somehow lost one of the bolts, so I had to go back in to get a replacement. Finally, I returned the wrench when it was complete. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've replaced a car battery myself. Actually, I had help. Some guy came over a couple times when I apparently looked like I didn't know what I was doing. I don't think he was an employee, just helpful, I guess.

We stopped to get burgers at Red Mill for dinner on the way home. My hands were damp and my pants were wet so I just sat uncomfortably while we waited for our order to be ready. After dinner, we had a make-up game night with Paola and Abhinav. I won at Stone Age again, but only by a few points this time, and then we played a couple rounds of Tokaido, which was new to everyone else. I had played one game of it with my team.

We finished the night with family reading, but had to read chapter four because Nicole and Colin didn't remember any of it. The first half came back to Nicole when she heard it again, but it turns out she had fallen asleep last night, along with the boys. Thus, we have no new leads regarding the disappearance of Dr. Field.