My friend took me to Zayda Buddy’s in Ballard, which is the newish “Midwestern style” restaurant and it offers pizza and things like gravy fries and fried cheese. I am not saying that I am the Queen of Virtuous Living or anything, but I had a really hard time finding anything on the menu I even wanted to order. I was sad to see my friend pay ten dollars for tot casserole. I pretty much agree with most of the people on yelp who have said MEH. I can’t really slam it, though. If you know you are getting nostalgic bland bar food at the prices of say, midprice Thai food which would be thrice as delicious, then you can’t complain. I am not the audience for this place, because unlike my Iowan friend, I am not nostalgic for dump casserole. I have Stockholm Syndrome and now all I care about is shit like nam pla. I decided to get really drunk, which made me forget that I was eating cheese curds, tots, and hotdogs.

In conclusion, the best part was the drunkenness and the bathroom:

SOOOO I think I told you that I dropped a cup size some time in the past few months. I have heard the way cup sizes work is expressed in two ways. One is to measure the boobs in weight, as if they are well, melons, and the other, simpler way is to say that for every cup size, your boobs will stick out more or less one inch, once you cram your junk into the appropriate globulareque shape, instead of what they would be doing on their own after two children, which is trying to get away from you like sea cucumbers.

This means that since I dropped from a D to a C-cup, I have lost, in theory, six ounces, or they have gone in one inch closer to my torso. This means that my boobs weigh somewhere around twenty-one ounces, or roughly a pound and a half. HOWEVER. Dropping from a D-cup to a C-cup has made a major difference somewhere else. My bra straps have gone from a practical and comfortable 3/4″-1″ to a flimsy half an inch or less. Once you hit C-cup, they decide you’re all smexy and don’t need to be practical or have the twenty-one ounces supported properly or something.

In FURTHER conclusion, bra scientists can turn in their badges.

Many of the other Web pages devoted to urban chicken farming say nothing at all about butchering. At sites like thecitychicken.com, you can learn about coop construction, hatching eggs, feeding, protecting, and diagnosing chickens. Everything, in short, except what is for me the most satisfying part: the bloodying.

From There Will Be Chicken Blood.

Seriously? Because I think the best part is you know, eggs. And raising them up, and letting them sit in your lap and stuff. I have killed chickens, and it’s not that bad, but c’mon. Maybe you should stop backyard birding and work in the Tyson factory?

Speaking of chicken melodrama, batch number two is now three weeks old. The two Silkies have not yet acquired names, but Strudel stepped in and named the Polish hen.

Figure 1: Meet “Mr. Klassy.” I was going to quash it, but the “Mr.” won me over, really.

Veronica and Calliope happily putter around the yard like the big ladies they are now, and Marty has gone to a new home, where no one will mind if he crows. Too bad. He was a beaut.

Figure 2: Nomnomnoming Thai curry that Strudel did not eat.

Oh! And you have to know the house is done. It is jolly blue. Ye Olde “Chooks’ Respite I” was green. I am going to be extra creative and name this new house “Chooks’ Respite II.” I should say, too, that there are now chicken ladders attached under the doors, so they don’t have to just fly/jump.

Figure 3: The run is in a dead zone under a laurel and hawthorne, but they have grassy sunny backyard access most of the time, too. So there is a “front” door to the yard, and a “back” door to the run only, for when we are gone all day.

Figure 4: And then there is the big door for cleaning and food/water access.

Figure 5: The inside not yet showing the two perches and hilarz wood-patterned linoleum. It’s like some kind of Norwegian Disco in there are something, or a roller rink.