"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." T. S. Eliot
I managed to make a couple of friends from my kickball team who like to do things other than play kickball.
We had some apps at Life on Mars. This was like a normal food 6 but a vegan food 15 on a ten point scale. I think always referring to vegan food as Martian cuisine would help prepare me for the weird textures and tastes that I'm about to endure.
We did some karaoke at Rock Box. Girls really like singing these violent country songs, I've noticed.
We closed the place down, which I was pretty proud of. It's not that hard to out party Seattle, though. The place is essentially a retirement home for young tech professionals.
Seattle dogs, off the leash. I believe this was the time that Vik's car was in a parking garage that closed for the night, and he was freaking out about it. He called the company which I believe then sends a tow truck or something to key him in... I got very lucky by parking someplace else and this did not end up being my problem.
Zoe is such an amazing animal that she flew all the way from St. Louis just for my birthday party. What a trooper.
We headed to the International District for what I think was an unseasonable Lunar New Year celebration. I think I heard it was postponed from its original date for covid reasons.
You can see a little lion dance parade thing happening back there. The goodest of luck was befalling us today.
I couldn't resist this gigantic bowl of grass jelly with taro balls.
There was a McDonald's food truck on hand passing out free french fries. Yes please!
Messy
We had some boba tea at TP Tea. This turned out to be a mistaken life choice, as I had already eaten about ten pounds of a weird jelly and balls mixture.
We did a fun tour at Theo Chocolate. We learned that the name "Theo" comes from the plant species they use to make the chocolate: Theobroma cacao.
We ate a lot of chocolate in this room overlooking the factory.
Our guide showed us that this chocolate had been made incorrectly. Chocolate is a mixture of a few ingredients, including sugar and fat, that can separate if the humidity or temperature isn't correct during production.
The giant Statue of Lenin in Fremont was all decked out in Ukraine colors today. Very fashionable of him.
We had some Dumpling Tzar nearby to round out our ruskie experience.
I laughed out loud when I saw this sign advertising the wonders of Northwest Arkansas. Fool me once, shame on you!
We had a pretty good turn out at my birthday party. The first stop was Unicorn.
It was definitely a unicorn horn and not shaped like any other thing.
Unicorn was featured in Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" music video.
Seattle's Best Karaoke is questionably named, to start with. The rooms were like office meeting rooms, and the sound system was janky as well: pretty much a computer from someone's dorm room. The one large plus in its favor was that the place was BYOB.
There was show tunes singing
Afterwards most of our guests went home, we hit a couple more bars, then we went home.
Our time in St. Louis is winding down, which is sad but it's also making our time more valuable.
Missouri has really been giving us a lot of "get the hell out of here" signs lately.
This is the second night in a row some dirtbag has parked in front of our garage, trapping everyone inside. Our building's management is super slow to do anything about it, which makes it much more frustrating. This time they were able to tow the car while the owner moaned which made it fun.
Carson's, our favorite karaoke spot in town, was inexplicably playing some televangelist trash on a tv in the corner. I feel like the second we gave up on this city that I was able to sort of let go of my denial vision and really start seeing some hard truths.
