Hokkaido Hunger

Lydia likes to have Ernie help her cook which is fun and cute. It does freak me out a little bit when he's close to hot things on the stove, though.

I have fond memories of feeding the ducks stale bread but I feel like the current story is that you aren't supposed to do that anymore. Sad.

We're so spoiled out here. "At Indigo Cow, we are proud to introduce the tasty and time-honored tradition of Hokkaido dairy to Seattle with the first ice cream shop in America to make soft-serve ice cream with milk from Hokkaido."

We're also spoiled for Ramen joints. I think St. Louis had like two and they were bad.

This time we tried out Hokkaido Ramen Santouka Bellevue. It was good but it's going to be hard for anyone to tear me away from my beloved Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya.

Ramen then Some Horsin Around

We packed this Sunday full of all kinds of diversions.

Today for lunch we popped over to the Bellevue branch of Hokkaido Ramen Santouka.

Ernie was having a time just playing with the menu.

The food at this restaurant is good and they have very bitable tables.

Bellevue Downtown Park

Nana’s Green Tea

I've been wanting Ernie to try this horse and potatoes baby food we picked up in Italy. I tried it with him. It was not great.

Pairing that with some Dom Pérignon really added the giddyup that the meal needed.

Din Tai Fung with Cool Hair

I've clicked on so many Star Wars products working on our Starcruiser costumes that now my social media ads have caught on. I am majorly tempted to buy some cool Star Wars themed sunglasses.

I don't have hair of my own to style so playing with Ernie's hair has been a real treat. I gave him sort of Jersey Shore comb job this time.

Nailed it.

I've been a bit obsessed with this story. It hits all the buttons: it's a Seattle area company, there's a madman CEO who complains about safety regulations and built his own submarine, they were going down to visit the Titanic, they were piloting the thing with a crappy looking controller that I wouldn't use on my N64, there were interesting rich people on board who likely got crunched. And then I read a lot about the effect of imploding at that depth, pretty much like a hot toothpaste tube full of people soup.

We went to Din Tai Fung. Going with Zoe was interesting because she ordered a bunch of vegan stuff off the menu that I had never tried before. It was all bad of course but I treasured the new experience.

They installed a fun new sculpture thing at Bellevue Downtown Park.

Ernie was more excited about this fountain that changed colors.

Photo Shoot then Tech City

It was almost time for my parents to leave and go back to Illinois, so we took them to Bellevue Downtown Park for some photos with their favorite grandchild.

Ernie got some beauty sleep before the shoot so he could look his best.

I brought a tripod and used my watch to take the pictures remotely. Tech genius? There's a mode where it takes 10 photo bursts that allowed me to create this gif work of art.

It's difficult to take decent photos with Ern because his neck is so wobbly. It's a bit like holding up a fish you just caught but the fish is sometimes crying.

After my parents got out of Dodge we made our first visit to Bellevue Brewing Company - Spring District Brewpub. The Spring District is kind of an interesting place. It's sort of like if you decided to build a community from scratch centered around the local Meta offices.

In St. Louis farmers' markets are funded by people that enjoy buying vegetables. Here they are funded by billion dollar social media conglomerates.

Lydia has a sneaky plan in place to set Ernie in his crib so that if he wants to look at us he has to turn his head the opposite of the way he prefers. We are really putting effort into strengthening our dude's neck muscles.