Off today

I took the day off today because last night and this morning I had some severe chills. The chills wouldn't go away despite being under 2 layers of covers and warm clothes, plus a heater in the room.

I thought it was just from working on code in the unheated living room (the heater cuts off at 8:30PM, and I was up working till around 1:30AM), but after consulting my memories, I'm pretty sure that's not the real reason.

First a diversion, for context.




Now that doesn't really have much to do about anything, except I had to put them somewhere :-).

Back to context, on Saturday (June 28), we went to the early morning market at Porirua's Cobham Court. This was an exploratory trip, so Timmy and my mother-in-law stayed home while sol and I left at 7:15 (15-20 minute walk to the bus stop) to take the 7:45 bus to Porirua.

We had lots of fun, and, with fruit and vegetables at around half to three-quarters the price at the grocery, an opportunity to save quite a bit of money.




Given that we took the bus though, and in future my mother-in-law and timmy will be along, going there won't be so much about savings (although there'll be some of that) as about enjoying the weekend, buying fresh fruit, vegetables and fish, and then maybe taking a tour of the mall stores too.

Which brings me to the fish:


We bought quite a lot of fish there too, and squid, and crabs and shells that were like mussels.

When we got home we feasted on the crabs and shells (except timmy, of course, who isn't allowed for shellfish yet, but he didn't know what he was missing :-). We had crabs and shells left over, so for Monday dinner my mother-in-law reused them in a gata (coconut milk, with vegetables). That was so good I had two (female, both with roe). Apparently, that's what did it for me. I've had a similar (chills) allergic reaction before, but I get it only around every three years or so, so I forget the triggering factor and fall victim again a few years later.

So it was an allergic reaction to the crabs. It almost feels like minor food poisoning (I've had that too, once in a while, from street food I couldn't resist), except the crabs weren't bad since my mother-in-law also had some and she didn't get sick at all.

Sol enjoyed the crabs on the weekend, but she didn't have any last night (Monday) since we had been to the Wellington Hospital for her 21st week ante-natal checkup and she'd been advised (due to Listeria) to stay away crustaceans, shellfish, raw fish. She'll also be staying away from medium-rare steak.

There are more pictures of sol and timmy from the weekend,



And there's my mother-in-law, with the guilty crabs (well, not really, this was the good first batch, it was the Monday batch that got me down :-)