St. Louis Christmas

Today was our big Christmas party at the Airbnb above Southwest Diner.

We didn't have the time or patience to cook any large animals, and we've been craving Raising Cane's as they don't seem to have it in Seattle. So they catered.

Hammy the leg was in attendance and got a lot of attention.

Everyone took the instant covid tests before they showed up at our party. I don't want to wipe out everyone I know in one swoop, even if there are chicken fingers invovled.

We did some gift exchanging.

Lydia's Nana Pam is a really good gift giver. A passport Christmas ornament is awesome and something I may have even bought for myself.

I had some beers and played games with Seago at his place later that evening.

Back to St. Louis for Christmas

We were all packed and ready to fly back to St. Louis for some Christmas festivities.

I decided that I couldn't part with my ham leg so soon after our first kiss. I put some tape on the box and just like that it was luggage. Magic.

Covid is still wreaking havoc on the NHL's schedule, with lots of cancellations.

I was reminded that Missouri is full of dingdongs when I arrived at Lambert Airport and saw how many people weren't wearing their masks.

Speaking of unthinking slabs of meat, hammy the leg made the journey across the continent safely. Gods be good!

We stopped for an awesome and unhealthy dinner at Chuck-A-Burger.

They had all the food groups.

We rented an Airbnb above Southwest Diner that looked fun. They have really cool decor in there, and it was big enough to host our Thanksgiving gathering.

This bedroom looked badass with that lightup star map thing on the wall.

I made an appearance at one of my favorite breweries in town: 4 Hands.

Piggy Christmas

Our big social event for the day was Gabby and Derek inviting us over to their place for a Christmas party.

We pre-partied a bit beforehand with some mulled wine at the apartment.

I'm not sure that I've addressed this kind of boring but ongoing bit of my life. While I was working on my master's degree at Regis University the federal government paused student loan payments on account of the covid emergency. I decided I wouldn't mind an interest free loan so I loaded up on as much as they would give me. There's been some political pressure on President Biden to forgive student loans as well, so I'm looking at taking on this debt as sort of a lottery ticket.

I brought the beautiful Spanish Serrano ham that I bought at Costco as revenge against Lydia trying to ruin my fun in Spain.

The thing was supposed to come with a wooden rack to cut it on but we couldn't get it assembled correctly. Oh well.

It was delicious but it turns out that normal groups of party participants don't eat entire cured pig legs in one sitting.

Wrapping this thing back up was a bit of work.

We tried Derek's Valve Index VR headset thing and had a lot of fun with it.

A Meaty New Friend and a School of Witchcraft

I don't usually go to Costco seeking vengeance but today I found it in a family size container.

I don't mean to gloat that I'm in a better place now that I'm out of St. Louis, but man there's never a shortage of news that makes me amazed I survived that place.

Meanwhile, at Costco, Seattle has its own hot dogs stuffed with cream cheese and jalepeños. It's like a dream. 

Then I saw her. She was thick and exotic and beautiful. Spanish ham! During my travels in Spain I saw a bunch of reasonably priced hams at the supermarket. I was excited about having one of these fancy pig legs for my very own. The villain of the story who will remain nameless poopooed my dreams and then murdered the rental car. Well now I've gone through a lot of personal growth and I'm no longer scared of achieving self actualization. I bought the ham. 

With the ham incident now behind us, I could focus on the future. Our friend Viry invited us to her brother's wedding in Monterrey, Mexico and we have a handshake agreement to attend. When I noticed that this case of Topo Chico was made there I decided it was fate and brought it home with me.

We had past and future taken care of, so in honor of my nearish to present recent trip to Detroit I bought some of these delicious deep dish Motor City pizzas.

It's amazing how much healing of one's soul can happen at Costco.

Earlier this month we did a hike at Saint Edward State Park and checked out the cool monastery that had been converted into a hotel. Well that holy school had been ambitious and actually had built another cluster of school buildings not far from the ones we visited.

While I think that fancy hotel was a happy ending for the other buildings, this wing took a dark turn. In addition to Bastyr University being some fake Harry Potter type school, they've done a pretty bad job of protecting their image on their own Wikipedia page:

"Bastyr University is a private alternative medicine university with campuses in Kenmore, Washington, and San Diego, California. Programs include naturopathy, acupuncture, Traditional Asian medicine, nutrition, herbal medicine, ayurvedic medicine, psychology, and midwifery.

Bastyr's programs teach and research topics that are considered pseudoscience, quackery, and fake by the scientific and medical communities. Quackwatch, a group against health fraud, put Bastyr University on its list of "questionable organizations" as a school which is "accredited but not recommended"."

The signs on this campus were amusing because I had to look some of them up. "Ethnobotany is the study of how people of a particular culture and region make use of indigenous (native) plants." Fun fact is that one of the sponsors listed of this wild plant area is none other than Missouri Botanical Garden. I wonder if they're aware that the plants are being used for spooky potions.