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.

Fremont Fun

So we worked Fremont Oktoberfest Friday, drank delicious beers at the festival on Saturday, and we were back for more Fremont action on Sunday. One reason was that one of the perks we got for working there was a parking pass that was good all weekend. Being unable to turn down a free thing may catch up with me eventually but today is not that day.

Fremont has a Sunday Market that we hit first. Kind of a farmer's market with a lot of other stuff going on as well.

There was a large amount of thrift shop stuff being sold in a parking garage that I thought was fun. 

There's a giant 16 foot tall, 7 ton statue of Lenin that a guy bought in Czechoslovakia. He had to chop it into three pieces in order to ship it over here. I think it's pretty awesome and fun to see such a thing in the US. Some high level genius has dipped his fingers in bloody red paint to remind us that he was a bad guy. Thank you so much. Now we know. Now get a job.

Yesterday we visited the giant rocket attached to a building. This one has a giant planet to match.

We were very boba thirsty after all that statue watching.

Boba thirst can sometimes metastasize into beer thirst. Unfortunately at this late stage of the ailment there is only one cure.

Gas Works Park is notable because it preserves the remnants of a plant that converted coal into gas that closed in 1956.

Not a bad looking city at all. I might just make myself at home.

We took a long uphill walk to get to Caribbean sandwich shop Paseo. After ordering the cashier told us that today was customer appreciation day and that everything was free, marking it as one of the best days of my life.