Mini Golf for the Motherland

My lifetime unlimited mini golf membership at Flatstick Pub may be the best investment I've ever made.

We took Evan and Sam to play at the new location in Redmond, WA. Lydia actually tied me at mini golf which was an unexpected advancement in her skills. 

Usually I spank her at mini golf and she cries, but this this time she did not adhere to our tradition.

They created this game called Duffleboard which is kind of like billiards mixed with golf. For those who feel that mini golf is just too large.

Lately I've been playing Atomic Heart, which is just such an interesting game. The premise is if the Soviet Union made a huge scientific breakthrough in the 1930s, and then by the 1950s they had AI robot soldiers and workers walking around. It has a really wild soundtrack as well.

In the save rooms there are often retro tvs playing episodes of Well, Just You Wait!, a Soviet cartoon with a Wile E. Coyote type wolf character. They used to play these cartoons at Propaganda, a now closed Soviet themed bar that I used to like in St. Louis.

Food From Down South

A big gap in the Seattle culinary scene is the lack of southern food. Luckily Communion, one of the few options in this regard, is great.

The restaurant is located in the Central District, "and was once the center of Seattle's black community and a major hub of African-American businesses."

I was really feeling this place so I even ordered something fancy off of the cocktail menu.

"Cherie Amour

a smokey play on a Hemingway daiquiri this cocktail features mezcal and a house-made grapefruit shrub w/ maraschino liquor, a Mexican pomegranate and a herbsaint rinse "

"Bayou Teche (Limited Quantity)

Deep fried breaded eggplant, a luxurious Dungeness crab gravy, topped with buttered poached prawns, sauteed Swiss chard. Inspiration: Chef Paul Prudhomme! This is a true Cajun dish"

"Classic buttery cornbread served in a mini cast iron."

"Bread Pudding

Warm spiced bread pudding with a house caramel sauce topped with Chantilly"

We had our eye on some banana pudding being carried around in big mason jars but they were sold out by the time we got to dessert. Sad but that just means we'll have to come back!

Nothing helps with digestion like some mini golf.

St. Louis: Old Stuff, Foosball, Mini Golf

We visited the good ol Missouri History Museum.

There was a great exhibit on St. Louis Music.

I’m “my favorite rapper is in the history museum” years old.

The girls were so jelly on the fun times that I had last night at the Armory that they demanded I take them tonight. It's sad when the Jelly School is full and doesn't have any room for new jelly girls.

Seed when they should have sawed.

No one can withstand the whirly fury of my little foosball dude.

They had giant pizza paddle ping pong with a giant ball.

One thing on the very short list of things that St. Louis has that Seattle does not is a local franchise of Puttshack. It's kind of a cool twist between mini golf and Top Golf, where the computer keeps track of your strokes and offers some silly ways to get more points as well.

Sure, I'm great at mini golf in North America. But I'm even better at mini golf in Australia, due to the upside down gravity situation that they have going on down there.

Modern Stone-Age Family

I always say that the closest you can get to the fun of doing something for the first time is to do something with someone and it's their first time. So I was excited to take Julie and Renaud out on a Halloween bar crawl in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood for their first Halloweeny experience.

Checking in was a mess with a lot of lines, so we didn't stay long. Our French friends were surprised at how revealing some of the costumes were.

I don't think Julie ever drinks and Renaud is a baker and had to go to bed pretty early, so we were trying to think of something to amuse them in the area and why the heck not mini golf at Flatstick Pub? The fact that we've already paid for lifetime passes had nothing to do with our decision, I can assure you.

Flintstones fit check. A lot of people gave me "yabba dabbas" on the street which I appreciated. One rando even told me how Fred was his role model because he always stopped working when the bird whistle blew at the quarry. I hadn't considered that he was such a working class hero.

I had the honor of spray painting Lydia's hair orange back at the house.

Wilmaaaaa!

We let our friends borrow some of our costumes from past years.

I beat Lydia's little butt.

Yabba dabba, yabba dabba dabba do now.