Welcome to the Meat Zone

While I was slaving away at work, Lydia and Zoe took Ernie to play in our apartment complex's pool. Must be nice.

Everyone but me seems to really have had a great and memorable time.

Later we met up with Michael and Miriam for some WNBA Seattle Storm action. We got some more free tickets from the library. If there's one thing everyone should know about me, it's that I like free tickets from the library.

There were lots of big screens, lights, and people for Ernie to stare at so he was happy.

This is a crime against the old gods and the new.

There was a half-court shot contest. It did not go great.

Don't worry buddy. We'll be back just as soon as we get more free tickets.

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.

Strollers Were Made For Strollin'

We took the big man on a little walk around Redmond.

Ernie's First Soccer Match

We were still entertaining Zoe and her boyfriend who was in town visiting.

I recently booked a cheap business class flight to Japan. Like most of the rare good airline miles redemptions still in existence, this one took some work. For one thing, I was monitoring availability on and off for a friggin' year. Finally I did some more research and learned that the airline only releases the good seats like a year in advance and 2 weeks in advance. Well thanks to my favorite baby Ernie we had a ton of wiggle room to book flights at the last minute. Even better we actually already had an Alaska trip booked, which was supposed to serve as a stepping stone for Ern so he could learn with longer and longer trips. Well we said the hell with that, canceled Alaska, and booked a flight to the land of the rising sun. "Ernie the rising son" has a ring to it actually. Anyway one of the other tricky parts of this was that to get the best deal I needed to transfer Chase points to Virgin Atlantic and then book the ANA flight through them. When I called in to Virgin and told the nice British lady what I was up to her I could hear her eyes audibly rolling back in her head so hard she might hurt herself. I'm sure losers who don't know what they are doing call in all the time and get butthurt when there's no availability. Well I have a separate online tool that I subscribe to now and again that shows the actual availability, not the phantom crap you can get when you try to use the airlines. Anyway once she saw the flights were actually there we were right as rain. I'm super excited to show my boy my favorite places in Japan.

Aunt Jennifer bought Ernie Dog this outfit so we popped it on him and sent her a few pictures. Not a moment too soon either, he won't fit into this much longer.

The olive with the yellow epaulets are giving me a African military dictator vibe. Son, you can be anything when you grow up.

We took the crew to what must be one of the few professional Seattle sport teams that I have yet to see: the OL Reign women's soccer team.

They soccered and soccered.

I was hoping to see Megan Rapinoe but I think she was gone playing in the women's World Cup.

The airshow was in town so there were a lot of fun flyovers during the game.

We made a stop at Old Stove Brewing Co — Pike Place.

Ernie checked out the gum wall.

I was getting close to the end of Hollow Knight. It's a fun one.