Progressive Korean

My roommate is a big boy who weighs almost 20 pounds.

There's a new Chainline Brewing location over by the Google building.

We left the big man at home at went for dinner at Paju, which describes itself as "Progressive Korean Cuisine". I liked how simple the menu was.

This was the 

"Paju Fried Rice

Kimchi, bacon, squid ink, smoke quail egg"

"Paju Crispy Pancake

seafood mix, perilla leaves, bonito flakes"

"Truffle Rib-eye Steak Bulgogi

Crispy quinoa, enoki mushroom"

We took advantage of our time unsupervised by Big Ern and strolled around Seattle Center. We even popped into the base of the Space Needle to see what was up.

One thing that the Seattle area has an abundance of is Asian dessert places. Today we tried Timeless Tea Dessert Cafe and got a giant shaved ice with mango on top.

We may have gotten two flavors. I recall it taking a lot of effort to finish them if we were able to at all.

Mixing the Flavors of Japan and Italy in my Mouth

It's kind of odd but the Seattle Center has somehow become the location for nearly every cultural festival in the whole city. It's kind of boring to return to the same venue over and over but what can you do? 

I was duty bound to make an appearance at the Seattle Cherry Blossom & Japanese Cultural Festival.

One fun interaction was checking out the JET Program table.

The Mariners had a booth and were giving away these amazing Ichiro bobbleheads. It hilariously looks nothing like the man, but that is an impressive stack of Gold Glove Awards.

Awesomely our Seattle Art Museum membership that we bought also covers admission to the Seattle Asian Art Museum. So we checked that out today.

Call me crazy but I think this looks like Joe Biden.

"Some/One, 2001

Stainless steel military dog tags, nickel-plated copper sheets, steel structure, glass fiber reinforced resin, rubber sheets

Do Ho Suh

Korean, born 1962

An assignment at the Rhode Island School of Design-to express identity through clothing-made the artist think about "my identity as a Korean in the United States." Recalling his two-year mandatory service in the Korean military, Suh built a garment out of thousands of dog tags, soldiers' IDs that reduce individual lives to a handful of letters and numbers. The sculpture, taking the shape of an Asian armor, embodies a recurring theme for Suh: the relationship of the individual to the larger society."

It's funny I've heard this "ID number dehumanizes you" thing numerous times and haven't really pondered it previously. Now that I'm a data guy, though, I think that I disagree with this line of thinking. Those letters and numbers may look like nothing to the average eye but I know that they are a key. It's a long string of characters because it's meant to be unique. It achieves a level of uniqueness that your name cannot. And because it is unique it can be the key that ties all the information about your life together. Sort of like how your DNA sequence shouldn't make you feel dehumanized. It is you and describes you in a very specific way.

We strolled through Volunteer Park and entered the Lake View Cemetery next door.

I don't want to be dead but this is a pretty nice place to be dead, I have to admit.

Bruce Lee and his son Brandon Lee are both buried here. We're really doing the Bruce Lee pilgrimage lately, having been to his favorite restaurant a few days ago.

We stopped for a dessert break at Nana’s Green Tea.

Lydia had undergone quite a transformation since I met her. I distinctly remember her telling me she didn't like rice at one point and now she's begging for green tea ice cream, red bean paste, and warabimochi parfaits.

We had dinner at Ristorante Paradiso, partially for the food and partially assuage my guilt for not eating at the local Kirland restaurants I've walked past one thousand times.

I went with the:

"Linguine tutto mare

prawns, scallops, clams, mussels over linguine pasta with white wine sauce"

I Got in Kevin Hart's Pants

We were in the Seattle Center area for a show and we stopped in at the Armory beforehand to see if there was any action.

They had a pretty substantial model train set up happening that was fun to take a peek at.

Kevin Hart's show was another one of those Gestapo situations where they force you to put all of your electronics into a magnetically sealed bag. So I have zero pictures of any of it. How can I laugh at jokes when I am so very sad. I have a... history of taking my phone to Climate Pledge when I'm not supposed to so I really felt personally attacked by this signage.

Kevin has a sponsorship deal with Fabletics and there were a few fun promotions to do in the arena's lobby. One of them was amazing, you just gave them your email address and they gave you a coupon for a free beer at the concession stand. Beers here cost legit $20 so we hopped on that one. Maybe Kevin isn't so bad after all.

The next day Lydia started to get sick. I think those dirty St. Louis people gave her something. Getting sick when you're pregnant is especially unfortunate because you aren't allowed to take any medicine.

Goodbye Bank, Hello Trevor

So I accepted a job at a small local software company called Microsoft, and today is my last day at U.S. Bank. One of my usual moves is to book a trip in between jobs, and I've pulled that off yet again. I'm actually leaving for Guyana while Lydia's parents are still visiting which is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Because I'm going on a trip, a new horrible covid variant has appeared and is ravaging the world, making travel uncertain, and generally just making my life a little more sucky. Friggin' covid just will not go away, tell you what.

I need a covid test in order to enter the country still, so I drove out near the airport to get one from the county health department.

A few towns over in Woodinville they have decided that they are going to be home to every winery in the universe. This is a bit odd because all of the grapes are grown out on the east side of the state, so why this became the spot for fancy drunkards I'm not so sure. Doug and Linda were pretty much in heaven.

Dusted Valley Winery

One place had a fig tree out front which I thought was super cool. I don't think I've ever seen such a thing before, nor would I have thought this was the correct climate. 

So it's my last day of work, it's the day after Thanksgiving, I'm entertaining Lydia's crew, and the bank's IT people screwed up my offboarding and never sent me any boxes to mail my computer stuff back. Plan B though was actually pretty fun for me. They told me to dump all my stuff at my local bank branch. It was kind of amusing because one of my responsibilities was to measure the points bankers get when they open new accounts and the like. So it was a lot of fun to tell the bankers at this branch that's what I did and scare the crap out of them about being watched.

Anyway, goodbye U.S. Bank. I learned a lot and I had some great relationships with my team at the headquarters in Minneapolis but this Microsoft opportunity was just too good to pass up. The cost of living is quite a bit higher here so I was sort of anxious to get a local job for that reason as well. I was also working on central time which could be a bit of pain while living on the west coast.

Back to my underground lair. I've begun to contemplate the similarities in the words hospital and hospitality. So many of these events are quite boring and both mentally and physically taxing, and one of the only things keeping me going is a fun event on the horizon that I actually want to see. Tonight was just such an event: Trevor Noah!

The tunnel clubs usually have pretty good food spreads.

It's difficult to take pictures of people in this scenario but you get the idea. I appreciated how international his act was. I remember it had some really good bits about different languages which is right up my alley. I actually stopped watching the Daily Show after he took over... maybe he should quit that and just do stand up?