Halloween at Grant's Farm

We visited Grant's Farm for a little taste of Halloween Nights 2018. 

Things got real spooky.

This weird birdcage heat lamp setup reminded me of a giant rotisserie.

You get two free beers for visiting Grant's Farm. They put two of the grumpiest old men on beer sample duty, which made getting my two O'Doul's Ambers even less pleasant.

Cinder House Fancy Dinner

I got a new role at Anheuser-Busch and so I took Lydia and the Seagos out to celebrate at Cinder House, the fancy new restaurant in the Four Seasons.

They had Kaliber, which is the non alcoholic version of Guinness. Pretty bad. Non alcoholic beers are all really sweet and pretty bad.

"DIA'S CHEESE BREAD, Country Ham, Lardo, Pickled Vegetables".

There were some hen of the woods mushrooms with chorizo butter and pomme puree in attendance.

The steaks were crazy expensive so I had a porkchop instead.

I don't remember how they crossed us but somehow we managed to finagle a free dessert out of our waiter. "RICE PUDDING, Toasted Almonds, Cinnamon Streusel, Caramel Sauce, Strawberries".

Churro ice cream sammiches.

Seago backed his chair into the wobbly table behind him, upon which a massive potted plant decoration about tipped off and surely would have crushed the people sitting behind us. This party was getting out of hand.

Hot Chicken and Nashville Honky Tonks

We went down to Nashville for the weekend to visit Lydia's family. 

We went to a Nashville hot chicken joint that I hadn't tried yet: Hattie B's. 

It was B-licious. See what I did there?

We made our obligatory trip to downtown Nashville to do some honky-tonkin'.

Luckily there was plenty of AB advertising so I didn't get homesick.

I was initially worried that going to a bunch of bars during Sober October would suck but it ended up being a good time. The fun was within me all along.

Evan's favorite honky tonky artist Sarah Gayle Meech was playing at Evan's favorite honky tonk, Robert's Western World, in a real alignment of the stars.

Stinkin' at the Missouri Botanical Gardens

A rare corpse flower at the Missouri Botanical Gardens began its 24-hour long bloom so we (and a lot of other people) lined up to see it in the middle of the night.

The corpse flower really is a weird one. The corpse name comes from the rotten smell it emits when in bloom in order to attract flies and use them as a pollen vector.

One of the other corpse flowers present was in an earlier life stage, with one massive tree-like leaf.

Once the giant leaf dies after a year or two the plant lies dormant for another year or so before it starts to do its flower thing. It's not surprising that such a weird plant with one leaf is on the endangered list.

It didn't smell as bad as I had expected. I think maybe we caught it too early.

Per Wikipedia "analyses of chemicals released by the spadix show the stench includes dimethyl trisulfide (like limburger cheese), dimethyl disulfide, trimethylamine (rotting fish), isovaleric acid (sweaty socks), benzyl alcohol (sweet floral scent), phenol (like Chloraseptic), and indole (like feces)."

Stinky times indeed.

A Very Sober October

I decided to do Sober October on a whim because I read about it somewhere on the morning of October 1st. Mostly I just like rhymes. While it sucked pretty bad it did give me the opportunity to try every non-alcoholic beer I could get my hands on. I can tell you from experience that the vast majority of them are garbage.