Dumplings and Tell-Tale Hearts

Brother Sam was in town so we took him to one of our favorites: Din Tai Fung!

They expanded into a new spot and it looks pretty baller.

I've always hated nigori sake but I think this was the moment I finally decided to memorize the name so that I would never accidentally order it or have to drink it ever again. It's milky, sweet, has rice solids in it... it feels like someone gave up midway through the process of making a non-crap sake and just bottled it to trick me.

We took a break on the way to the car to check out the arcade.

Later we handed off Ern and headed to the Edgar Allan Poe Speakeasy event at the Egyptian Theatre in Seattle.

The deal was they handed you a cocktail then did a live rendition of a Poe story. It was fun.

My favorite was "The Masque of the Red Death." Spooky.

 

Vampire Weekend on a Work Day

Ern did some important feather exploration at school. It's good to know the possible weaknesses of birds. You never know when one might strike.

Lydia and I visited the historic Climate Pledge Arena for the Seattle installment of the Vampire Weekend "Only God Was Above Us" Tour.  

Vampire Weekend is now officially the only musical act that I've seen live twice. What an honor.

Apparently now I'm an old person because the last time I saw them was in 2010! My friend Seago introduced me to them. What a guy.

At the end of the show instead of doing a normal encore they took audience requests for just random songs. Not random Vampire Weekend songs. Literally any random ass song someone could come up with. I've never seen anything like it. Understandably they didn't really know a lot of these songs and did a not great job. I understand that they are probably trying to mix things up but I was a little disappointed they skipped some of their own stuff that I was hoping for. I'm a big fan of "Giving Up the Gun" for example. I'll get over it somehow. It was a great show otherwise. Dare I go for three times?

New Boot Goofin

One of Ernie's favorite toys are our shoes.

Lydia helped Ernie practice how to get up and down his new kitchen ladder thing.

Ernie was being so smart that we were getting weirded out. Right after school he crawled to his room and wanted to read a bunch of books. One of the books has babies doing sign language in it. He was doing several of the signs from the book unprompted, and ones that I've never seen him do before like "thank you" and "eat".

Later he was tricking us, like raising his cup to cheers then pulling it back at the last moment and laughing. That seemed really advanced as well. He's a smarty boy!

Jollibee and Jolly Me

Ern got a nice haircut today. 

Lookin real good!

We all took a stroll around Seward Park in Seattle to show off our new look.

A new Jollibee location opened up very recently and I was super excited to give it a try. I don't think I've had it before and the Filipino fried chicken chain has a cult following. Other people were apparently excited to because they had giant temporary line infrastructure set up to control the crowds.

It's pretty solid for fast food fried chicken I would say. I was especially impressed by the mango fried pie things.

Ern is a restless sleeper and is always rolling around at night. His bed is right up against the wall and occasionally I can hear the unmistakable sound of a child's skull thudding against the drywall.