My First Seattle Birthday

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.

They had a ridiculous hat for birthday boys to wear. I also dusted off my sparkly jacket from New Year's Eve right before the end of the world.

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.

I'm Macklemore's New Best Friend

The Seattle Golf Show at Washington State Convention Center was probably about how you would imagine: full of booths advertising golf courses, resorts, golf clubs, etc.

I didn't super care about any of that though. I was primarily here to see Macklemore. We found the line and I was so worried about not making the cut that I started waiting immediately, even though he wouldn't arrive for another hour or so. I think Lydia was annoyed that I was so intent on waiting, despite the fact that I freed her to look around if she wished. I just didn't want to have bought my Bogey Boys gear last night, driven all the way over here, bought tickets, and then somehow miss my chance to meet the man.

Things were not very well organized, but everything ended up working out. The line got very long behind us so I was happy with my decision to start queuing when I did. Some of the people in line ahead of us were there to get autographs, which I hadn't even considered. They did point me to a autograph hunters Facebook group which I've found useful. I don't care about autographs but it's a good way to keep an eye on fun upcoming events.

Macklemore was super nice. I was one of the few people in line wearing his Bogey Boys gear and he noticed and said that it looked good on me which was awesome. I think he mentioned something that I wasn't doing my peace sign at the right angle as him in this photo which was funny. It was a really fun interaction despite the fact that we didn't talk about anything profound. I never know what to say to famous people when I meet them. Oh well. I was a little bit annoyed that we had to wear these damn masks for the photo, but you can still tell it's him so whatever. I bought the shirt he's wearing last night as well. It would have been really funny if we both showed up in the same shirt.

Back in Kirkland at the Kirkland Urban shopping area near our place, Google has moved in and put up big signs everywhere. I'm thirty to work here and super jealous of other people that do, so seeing their offices all the time is kind of damaging. Like seeing an ex girlfriend out partying or something.

We had some friends over for games and Lydia made an awesome charcuterie board.

I bought a king cake to celebrate our Frenchy St. Louis Mardi Gras heritage.

Our friends like to play Mexican train dominoes. This was a slight bit tamer than past Mardi Gras celebrations we've had...