Sunday, July 31, 2022

The Boysenberries Taste Like Boysenberries

We went on quite a journey in order to pick some berries at Graysmarsh Berry Farm near Sequim, Washington.







There are a lot of exotic berries out in the west and I was excited to meet them in their natural habitat.







It turns out all of these exotic sounding berries I've been hearing about are more like blackberry/raspberry variants. Still different but not mind blowing.







Sequim has decided to make its whole personality revolve around lavender.




Lavender doesn't do much for me. I think that I partially lost my sense of smell during a bout of covid and since then light flowery smells such as this no longer register in my nose. Oh well.



We went to town and witnessed quite a breadth of lavender related products.



lavender lemonade







Sequim has apparently claimed the coveted crown of "Lavendar Capital of North America". What an honor.





We had fish and chips at a place called Sea J's Cafe in Port Townsend. It was a pretty terrible experience. We ordered and sat outside patiently waiting for our order. When I finally got tired of waiting I went in and it was clear that they had forgotten about us. When we finally got the food it wasn't fried quite right, maybe just undercooked. So bad.













I might need to hit this place next time I'm in the vicinity. Cornish stuff always reminds me of the good times I had in British Mike's homeland.







We counted all the berries as soon as we got home.



Saturday, July 30, 2022

Seafair Torchlight Parade

We met up with fancy baker man Renaud for a picnic at Idylwood Park in Redmond.



Eating with these guys is so casually fancy that it's funny. To them the best bread you've had in your life is just some trash left over that they couldn't sell that day.



We headed to downtown Seattle for the Alaska Airlines Seafair Torchlight Parade. I remember cackling at the thought of having a downtown St. Louis parade after dark. There would be casualties.



Bruce Harrell is Seattle's first Asian-American mayor.



There were kids around wearing inflatable Alaska Airlines planes on their heads. I was extremely jealous.



Seahawks Dancers, formerly known as the Sea Gals





When I saw the Coast Guard was here I knew we weren't in Kansas anymore.





There were some very creative ways to watch the parade.





Seattle Cinerama Theatre closed during the pandemic and hasn't revived. Cinerama is a wide screen video format introduced in the 1950s that involved three different overlapping projectors to produce an panoramic image. It was like a precursor to IMAX. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen bought the place and renovated it, but since his death it has fallen back onto some hard times.








Friday, July 29, 2022

We Are the Champions, My Friends

I signed up for a local kickball league to make some local kickball friends.


This was the spring team.


Surprisingly for a team of mostly randoms that didn't know each other beforehand, the majority of us stuck together and signed up for the summer season. It's supposed to be the easy fun league, but the killjoys of Seattle have decided that there is no alcohol allowed at Seattle parks. This place has a weird relationship with booze. Anyway with the lack of beers, the only thing left to entertain myself was to crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women. So I went hard in the paint, and a few of us were hardcore enough to meet up for practices that weren't even on game days. I used to have an issue where I could kick it hard enough but I couldn't angle it correctly and the ball would go straight up and be easily caught. Anyway with practice and the help of a new pair of soccer cleats I turned it around. On the day of our season ending tournament we did really well and beat all the bad guys and were crowned champions! I was probably happier than is socially acceptable but I've been playing kickball for a long time so this was a redemption character arc type situation. I think my team voted me MVP of one of the games even!



We had a big group dinner at Via Tribunali Neapolitan pizza & Italian restaurant.


Kickball bro Christian was sadly moving to Texas or some nonsense, but he let us hang out at his apartment building's clubhouse.




It turns out the youngins have come up with a few new drinking games since I was cool, and they had played kickball with me enough times to know how much I absolutely loathe losing. So they took some pleasure in beating me at games that I didn't fully understand. Bullies!










Cha Cha Lounge





The Rhino Room





I don't recall how or why I ended up laying on the grass at the Bobby Morris Playfield, but I recall one of my teammates was taking an Uber back to the east side and asked if I wanted to join. I was too ill a this point to accept so I stayed on the grass. Legend has it I still live there to this day. The end.