A Quest to PAX West

We scored a couple of free tickets to PAX West at the Seattle Convention Center, which is a video game convention. Lydia was a good sport and accompanied me.

I was surprised to see McDonald's with a such a cool booth. They had a claw game where we won some fun merch.

This event paled in comparison but it brought me fond memories of attending Tokyo Game Show back in the day.

This is a character from Elden Ring, which I recently finished after spending an inordinate amount of time playing.

As a youth I used to love playing LucasArts' adventure computer games. Monkey Island was one of the most popular.

LeChuck is the bad guy in the game series.

Speaking of adventure gaming, I also used to love Sierra brand computers games made by Roberta Williams, such as the King's Quest series. I was super mad when I heard that she had been here today but I missed her. What a blast from the past that would have been. Little kid me would have been very proud.

Garlic Garlic Everywhere

In my never ending quest to entertain my parents, today we drove pretty far out of town to Chehalis, Washington to see the Garlic Fest & Craft Show. 

The fact that we moved so far away from home is kind of fun because there are a lot of new agricultural products out here. Who doesn't like garlic?

Even the local vampires are on board.

They were sold out of garlic ice cream which was very sad, but they did have garlic fries and garlic ears, which were like a savory version of the elephant ear.

Tom even bought some garlic to take home and plant in his yard.

On our way back north we passed through Olympia so I figured we should give the capitol building a gander.

I learned a lot of fun Washington State trivia.

We found a fun little place to take a walk in Brewery Park at Tumwater Falls. First of all let's address the elephant in the room: Tumwater does sound like a child's explanation of diarrhea. No, I don't know why they named it that.

In addition to being a fun walk, the park is also the site of the now derelict Olympic Brewery. Every time I see an abandoned brewery I think how lucky St. Louis is to have such a vibrant and historic Anheuser-Busch.

We hit McMenamins Spar Cafe for dinner.

I can't get enough of the artwork in these places. It's all so quirky.

Like what the hell is this thing?

Back in Kirkland, Mom and Tom entered the Matrix via the Meta Quest 2 we recently acquired.

I finally finished Elden Ring on Xbox Series X. I checked my total play time on this thing two weeks ago and it said 7 days 5 hours. I didn't check it again. Killing god has a certain sense of accomplishment that comes with it, I must say.

Sneaky Little Joule

Lydia is out of town which affords me the rare opportunity to be my true self. Mostly this involves eating pizza in my underwear and playing a medically ill advised amount of video games.

Central air is apparently not common in the Seattle area because it didn't ever used to get hot enough to be necessary. Well, now it does, so we bought a portable air conditioner. Another fun and weird aspect of many dwellings around here is for whatever reason the windows open horizontally. Usually I'm accustomed to most windows opening vertically. Anyway, this precludes us from buying the classic AC window unit that just hangs out the side of the window. So we bought this monstrosity that has a big pipe thing that snakes out the window.

The people that make deliveries to our apartment hate me, and so whenever something is very heavy they leave it at the bottom of three flights of stairs. I hate them so much.

I really found myself today. Instead of "making a reservation" or "planning my day" I just sort of picked a neighborhood, looked up what restaurants around there were cool, then walked up and asked if they had seating for one. I got turned down once or twice but Joule said: "you look like you might be tired from lugging an appliance up a bunch of stairs why don't you sit down and have the beers." So I did.

Joule is super fun. Google describes it as "Korean-fusion steakhouse offering Asian-Northwest eats amid handmade wallpaper & communal seating." I saw so many delicious sounding foods that I ordered way too much. Whatever.

This beauty is just a bone sliced down the middle. I am a wolf man.

"Bone Marrow

spicy anchovy butter, leek"

Spicy rice cake

chorizo, pickled mustard green

"that" Short rib steak

kalbi, grilled kimchi

This gross little surcharge thing seems to be gaining steam at local restaurants. I'm fine with the social cause, in fact, I don't care. What you do with the money I give you for half a bone is your own business. You need to be an adult and raise your bone price 4% and quit being a sneaky dirtbag. 

My new Xbox Series X arrived and I've been playing the maddeningly difficult Elden Ring. One of the reasons that it is the current hotness is that George R. R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame was a writer. I put this hilarious pumpkin helmet on my character because I'm gangster like that.

I had a sip at Central Club & Tavern and watched some very important sports matches.