Ernie's First Soccer Match

We were still entertaining Zoe and her boyfriend who was in town visiting.

I recently booked a cheap business class flight to Japan. Like most of the rare good airline miles redemptions still in existence, this one took some work. For one thing, I was monitoring availability on and off for a friggin' year. Finally I did some more research and learned that the airline only releases the good seats like a year in advance and 2 weeks in advance. Well thanks to my favorite baby Ernie we had a ton of wiggle room to book flights at the last minute. Even better we actually already had an Alaska trip booked, which was supposed to serve as a stepping stone for Ern so he could learn with longer and longer trips. Well we said the hell with that, canceled Alaska, and booked a flight to the land of the rising sun. "Ernie the rising son" has a ring to it actually. Anyway one of the other tricky parts of this was that to get the best deal I needed to transfer Chase points to Virgin Atlantic and then book the ANA flight through them. When I called in to Virgin and told the nice British lady what I was up to her I could hear her eyes audibly rolling back in her head so hard she might hurt herself. I'm sure losers who don't know what they are doing call in all the time and get butthurt when there's no availability. Well I have a separate online tool that I subscribe to now and again that shows the actual availability, not the phantom crap you can get when you try to use the airlines. Anyway once she saw the flights were actually there we were right as rain. I'm super excited to show my boy my favorite places in Japan.

Aunt Jennifer bought Ernie Dog this outfit so we popped it on him and sent her a few pictures. Not a moment too soon either, he won't fit into this much longer.

The olive with the yellow epaulets are giving me a African military dictator vibe. Son, you can be anything when you grow up.

We took the crew to what must be one of the few professional Seattle sport teams that I have yet to see: the OL Reign women's soccer team.

They soccered and soccered.

I was hoping to see Megan Rapinoe but I think she was gone playing in the women's World Cup.

The airshow was in town so there were a lot of fun flyovers during the game.

We made a stop at Old Stove Brewing Co — Pike Place.

Ernie checked out the gum wall.

I was getting close to the end of Hollow Knight. It's a fun one.

MLB Draft Day

Ernie was pretty stoked about his All-Star baseball experience yesterday and he wanted more of the limelight.

He suited up in his authentic Cardinals gear so that the locals would know that he's better than them.

I figured out how to get us free tickets to Capital One PLAY BALL PARK at Lumen Field. I wasn't really sure what that meant but we were about to find out.

It turned out to be like full blown baseball fan convention. There was so much going on that it was a bit overwhelming at first.

We had arrived just before the draft began so we hustled past all of the distractions.

It was a good thing Ernie had his ear protection on because when the draft began and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred took the stage he was loudly and savagely booed at length. He would leave the stage then return to do another draft announcement, and the boos would reignite. Towards the end of this clip you can hear someone reference a big source of the Manfred hate. He referred to the World Series trophy as "a piece of metal" when asked about the possibility of stripping the Houston Astros of their 2017 championship after a cheating scandal. Another thing people were really pissed about was the Oakland A's moving to Las Vegas.

When we finally go situated we realized that the Cardinals wouldn't get to pick for quite a while. It turns out that there are a lot of baseball teams.

The commissioner got a break from the unending hatred from the crowd when Ken Griffey Jr. came out to announce the first pick of the draft for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Lydia is still getting the hang of breastfeeding outside of our house, and was unable to do it in the stands. That's fine with me. We saw the start of the show and calculated the time it took between each pick, so we knew when to return to see the Cardinals.

We asked the question booth and sure enough they had a lactation room.

It was nice of them to include their littlest baseball fans in the party.

I'm a hungry man!

I didn't really get the point of buying All-Star game clothing that would be dated in like 4 days. People seemed interested though so what do I know?

There was a booth where you could pretend you were drafted.

There was a VR experience area but you had to have a friggin reservation. I feel like a lot of the parts of this event were not very well explained and I was unable to participate. Oh well.

T-Mobile was on hand to answer the question "what would it be like if you were trapped in pink cotton candy and had to hit a home run to get out?"

Lydia is the glizzy MVP.

Fredbird was in the crowd when it was Cardinals time. I would have liked to get a picture of him and Ernie but he was only in the roped off fancy people area at the moment. Sad.

A kindly group of people that had a good spot right next to the fence noticed we were all decked out in St. Louis and were kind enough to let us squeeze in. I paid a heavy price for this kindness though. They proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions about the Cardinals and I had to admit I had no idea what they were talking about.

Now if this old man would get out of the way we'd have a perfect view. Oh, wait. Oh no.

One thing this place had a ton of was good photo ops. I did a whole deep dive on the Commissioner's Trophy because I have a sickness where I love learning useless things and hate learning anything that may help me in the future.

Anyway... 

"It is the only championship trophy of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada in North America that is not named after a particular person."

"The trophy was first awarded in 1967, when the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Boston Red Sox."

"The current trophy design was made by Tiffany & Co. and unveiled in 2000. The original 1967 trophy was designed by Balfour Jewelers of Attleboro, Massachusetts, was modeled after Wrigley Field, and cost $2,500 (equivalent to $21,941 in 2022)."

A lot of very sexy and valuable things are made in Attleboro, I hear.

There were some fun light-up displays for Ernie to gaze at.

The first time we ate at FlintCreek Cattle Co. was before Ernie was born. There was another couple eating a couple tables over who had a newborn in a carseat covered up. The baby didn't make a peep the whole time the couple ate. I remember being reassured that maybe having a baby wouldn't take away everything I enjoy doing, like eating at restaurants. So we tested that theory with our own little bundle of joy. It went pretty well.

This was a:

"Prosciutto di Parma, fresh burrata, basil, pistachio oil, stone fruit, saba"

I got an email that I won a prize which was exciting but "tier 4" didn't sound like it was worth the effort to collect.

For my main course I grabbed a:

"Meyer Ranch MT hanger steak, roasted walnuts, spring onion salad, bleu d'auvergne, caramelized onion marmalade"

After a lovely dinner we met up with Derek and Gabby to watch the All-Star Drone Show at the Space Needle. I have never seen a drone show before and it was a pretty cool way to end a weekend of All-Star proportions.