The Weatherman

The weather in Seattle has been amazing this week…very clear skies and warm temps (for February) – highs around 60.  So I went up flying with a friend from work.  He’s been flying most of his life – military, commerical, and recreationally.  He’s also a flight instructor.  We left Everett’s Paine Field and flew over to Jefferson County Airport (Port Townshend) and had breakfast at the cafe.  We turned around and came back and I was at work by 10am.

Anyway, I had a blast of course.  For those who don’t know – I took flying lessons for about 6 months in 2002 but stopped after we moved back to the Bay Area and took on a bigger mortgage.  The experience this morning brought back several fun memories as well as some joy in knowing that I haven’t lost all of that training I got many years.

As for the plane, it was a Piper Archer II.  Sweet little plane for training…much easier (for me at least) than the Cessna 172 I trainer in before.  I recall always fighting to keep the 172 trim during flight whereas the Archer was much easier to stabilize.

Here is a photo of Mt Baker taken from over Whidbey Island:

Nate has now had his first ER visit.

The Backstory

Starting Tuesday evening Zach was had a mild fever and congestion.  We kept Zach home on Wednesday and Thursday, and only Nate went to school.  Nate seemed to be holding up strong although he did have some congestion.

Tonight at around 8pm I heard Nate coughing and crying in our bed.  I walked in there and he was curled up crying.  I, of course, thought Zach kicked him.  That was not the case.  He was throwing up in our bed and he was pretty red.  I got a towel and thermometer.  Our crappy thermometer gave readings from 102 to 104…when I stick it in my ear it says 96…so I was pretty sure Nate’s temp was at least 104.  Yikes!

Steph and I quickly got our stuff together and drove over to Swedish.  We only had to wait about 5 minutes (good thing as a young woman was violently – and I do mean violently – vomitting in the bathroom around the corner.  Yes we could here it loud and clear).  Once in the room the nurses went to work on him – checking pulse, oxygen level, and temperature.  He came in at 104.0.  They gave him a ton of motrin and tylenol (way more than we would ever do).  1 hour later he was happy Nate with a temp of 100.7.

So what is it?  Just a virus.  There is some congestion but everything looks good.  The doctor did say that he’s in the early stages so we need to watch out for the other common things like ear infection or high fever lasting until Saturday.  The doctor told us they haven’t seen any flu cases in a few weeks and he didn’t appear to have croup (although still too early to tell).

Anyway, he’s back to his chatty self and watching a movie before he falls asleep.