One Sadistic Turn Deserves Another

Thank you, Jessa:

If you're reading about genital reconstructive surgery, and you come across a passage about complications arising from using hair-bearing skin grafts on urethra reconstructive surgery in males, no amount of throwing the book across the room and jumping up and down, shrieking "get out get out get out" to the images that immediately flood your brain will ever be successful.

And yes, I am only sharing this because I am a sadist.

Curse you, Quality Food Centers!

Two of my vices are Dragonstooth Stout (truly, a beer that eats like a meal), and Port Townsend Creamery cheeses, especially their local brie, Seastack. For a long time, the beer was available only from the Elysium Brewery, and the cheese just wasn't available.

A few months ago, I discovered that both Dragonstooth and Seastack were available at Whole Paycheck Foods Market. There's one about ten blocks from my office; every once in a while I'd walk there to pick up Raven's Brew coffee, and be tempted. Normally, I made my saving throw against temptation, but I have bought both.

The QFC grocery store a block and a half from my home has recently undergone an upgrade. Kouryou-chan and I walked there last week to get bread and milk, and as I walked in the door the hot half-Asian woman who's been working there since she graduated high school seven years ago waved and said, "Hi, Elf."

Good grief. I greeted her in return by name, and she looked at Kouryou-chan and said, "They get so big!" She's known Kouryou-chan since I used to carry the kid in a sling. I just wonder what she's doing still working behind the register at a grocery store. Isn't that supposed to be a filler job between graduation and middle class?

And then, to my dismay, I saw that QFC has begun to carry both Seastack and Dragonstooth. And the Dragonstooth is reasonably priced, even. Leave aside the whole wisdom of upgrading to Whole Foods levels of upscale retailing in the current economic environment. It's just unfair to my wallet and my waistline.

Ya, kinda figured

Raw evil score: 51.11%

So, far behind: Halloween!

Yamaraashi-chan and Kouryou-chan for Halloween.

Oh, hai. I forgot: what we did for Halloween. Omaha led us in a lovely Samhain ritual, and we had hamburgers before heading out.

Yamaraashi-chan's at that age where she'd rather go hang out with her friends at a party, so she went with another family and did the Haunted House thing down at the big mansion on the south side of Des Moines. She tried to go as Cthulhu and I think she did a pretty good job. We had fun making the tentacle thingy, and even more painting her hair green. Toward the end of the evening she wore it around her neck and looked more like someone from an ancient Tarzan film who'd recently hunted and eaten a Muppet. Even later into the evening, the face paint dried up and started to flake off and she looked like the survivor of the Los Angeles Volcano of 1997.

Kouryou-chan, Omaha and I hit the neighborhood up for sweets. She looked adorable in her kitty outfit, and people gave her a ton. So much, in fact, that she ended up dumping some in the pockets of my jacket so she'd have more room in her pumpkin. We walked all up and down the main drag, meeting lots of people, counting up the election signs. There was one guy with a fabulous layout: a John Deere tractor driven by a demon, zombies rising from the ground, vapor generator. Good fun. A couple of other very earnest displays.

Kouryou-chan had so much candy she went to bed with an aching tummy, and I had to wash Yamaraashi-chan's hair for her to get all of the green out of it. A good Halloween.