Mead and Dumplings

Today we took Ernie the party animal out on the town.

He did some pregaming at home first.

We were strolling around Fremont, Seattle and I decided that this was going to be the last time I walked passed the cool signs for Mr. B's Meadery without venturing inside.

These people do not play. They had about 400 flavors to try.

Ernie was mesmerized by the some trellis stuff overhead.

I stay up with you all night every night, feeding you every two hours and rocking you to sleep, catering to your every whim, but I have yet to get the reception you give to a ceiling fan. No, that's cool.

This flavor had some wild ingredients. I had to look up "lapsang souchong" and it turns out it "is a black tea consisting of Camellia sinensis leaves that may be smoke-dried over a pinewood fire."

We stopped for some food of the people at Dumpling Tzar.

Cool kids gonna cool.

Texan Cow Soccer

Jim, Aunt Paula's husband, took care of the cows on the ranch. I've heard of people buying portions of cows from ranches and now that I had a connection in the biz, I asked Paula if that was something that they did. She gave me a look like I had uttered a blasphemy. "Those cows are his pets!" 

Around this time Lydia and I got the idea that we would move to a country that was less plagued by covid in order to reclaim some semblance of a normal life, and to see some of the world while we were at it. Covid really cut us off from other people and most ways of interacting with our environment, so that really cut us loose. We enjoyed our brief time traveling through Estonia and we noticed that they had a digital nomad visa for people like me who had remote jobs based elsewhere. Lydia did an interview or two at local schools in Tallinn and pretty quickly got a job offer. I served as the speed bump on this one, unfortunately. The situation in the US was so bad that Estonia was not offering the nomad visa to any American, even if they weren't coming from America. I had considered briefly staying in a third country like Turkey or something in order to quarantine outside of the country but no dice. We were stuck in this covid wasteland for the foreseeable future.

I was amused that I could see a cow from bed.

Lydia gettin weird with the last of the Texas sheet cake.

So the routine here is that Jim raises the new calves for some period of time then sells them "to cover the cost of the feed". Seemed reasonable enough.

He gave the pregnant or new mothers a special better food while the others were busy eating their hay.

I wanted to give Paula and Jim a small gift for being such great hosts, so I bought a toy for the cows. It was meant for horses I think but "cow toy" wasn't bringing up a whole lot of hits on Amazon. There was a large inflatable like beach ball type thing that I saw videos of cows loving, but they would for sure pop the ball and be sad. So I got them a smaller, much sturdier ball instead. The calves in particular liked to play with it, and some even pushed it around the grass with their head.

The ball was peppermint scented so everybody had a good time giving it a good sniff.

We celebrated a cow playtime well done later on with the last of the mead.

Luckily we had some other wine on hand when the mead ran out. We were like wine bottle serial killers on this trip.

We liked to go on night walks but you had to be careful: there were some massive spider webs lurking in the darkness.

Katie, Mead, and Frito Pies

Not much changed in our day to day routine at Aunt Paula's, which was pretty relaxing.

I was pretty proud of the progress we were making in Texas wine country.

There was even a local honey wine joint located "between the towns of Round Top (pop. 90) and La Grange (pop. a bit more than 90)": Rohan Meadery.

"Many believe the origin of the word Honeymoon comes from an ages old tradition. In the Czech Republic, as in many parts of Europe, it was traditional to supply a newly married couple with enough mead for a month, ensuring happiness and fertility. Whether newlywed or not, you will enjoy the deep, rich honey & bourbon flavors of this old world mead. Na zdraví!"

I have some sort of sick velvet ant obsession all of the sudden.

This weird looking thing was like a jet black honeybee.

Lydia's college friend Katie lives in Austin now so we met her and her boyfriend Elliott at a park. It was nice to see them in person, as we had done several virtual game nights early on in the depths of covid armageddon.

There was another reference on this roadside historical marker to that bean murder that I wrote about yesterday.

We had Frito pies for dinner. The secret family recipe is: dump a damn can of chili on some Fritos. Boom.