A Meaty New Friend and a School of Witchcraft

I don't usually go to Costco seeking vengeance but today I found it in a family size container.

I don't mean to gloat that I'm in a better place now that I'm out of St. Louis, but man there's never a shortage of news that makes me amazed I survived that place.

Meanwhile, at Costco, Seattle has its own hot dogs stuffed with cream cheese and jalepeños. It's like a dream. 

Then I saw her. She was thick and exotic and beautiful. Spanish ham! During my travels in Spain I saw a bunch of reasonably priced hams at the supermarket. I was excited about having one of these fancy pig legs for my very own. The villain of the story who will remain nameless poopooed my dreams and then murdered the rental car. Well now I've gone through a lot of personal growth and I'm no longer scared of achieving self actualization. I bought the ham. 

With the ham incident now behind us, I could focus on the future. Our friend Viry invited us to her brother's wedding in Monterrey, Mexico and we have a handshake agreement to attend. When I noticed that this case of Topo Chico was made there I decided it was fate and brought it home with me.

We had past and future taken care of, so in honor of my nearish to present recent trip to Detroit I bought some of these delicious deep dish Motor City pizzas.

It's amazing how much healing of one's soul can happen at Costco.

Earlier this month we did a hike at Saint Edward State Park and checked out the cool monastery that had been converted into a hotel. Well that holy school had been ambitious and actually had built another cluster of school buildings not far from the ones we visited.

While I think that fancy hotel was a happy ending for the other buildings, this wing took a dark turn. In addition to Bastyr University being some fake Harry Potter type school, they've done a pretty bad job of protecting their image on their own Wikipedia page:

"Bastyr University is a private alternative medicine university with campuses in Kenmore, Washington, and San Diego, California. Programs include naturopathy, acupuncture, Traditional Asian medicine, nutrition, herbal medicine, ayurvedic medicine, psychology, and midwifery.

Bastyr's programs teach and research topics that are considered pseudoscience, quackery, and fake by the scientific and medical communities. Quackwatch, a group against health fraud, put Bastyr University on its list of "questionable organizations" as a school which is "accredited but not recommended"."

The signs on this campus were amusing because I had to look some of them up. "Ethnobotany is the study of how people of a particular culture and region make use of indigenous (native) plants." Fun fact is that one of the sponsors listed of this wild plant area is none other than Missouri Botanical Garden. I wonder if they're aware that the plants are being used for spooky potions.