Gem among the dross

I didn't want to make it sound like I was slagging off on everything in Aberdeen, even though I couldn't help noticing that probably something between six and eight out of ten people I saw walking the streets today was obese.

And not just cute-n-cuddly, round-n-roly-poly big but freaking huge; big-ass butts and ginormous legs and big honkin' peniculae lapping down over their hips (what in the service we used to call "Dunlaps' Disease" because your gut done lapped over onto your legs...). I mean...the fuck? Is the county seat of Grays Harbor County some sort of secret repository in the National Strategic Morbidly Obese Caucasian Reserve or something?

So not only were these people walking around looking all poor and beat down, but they were...well, huge.

I know the connection between poverty and bad diet and obesity, but...damn. Like heart attacks walking around in bad clothes.

That was pretty depressing.

Anyway, I wanted to say that I did find something of value here; the 8th Street Alehouse.

The pub fries were crisp and savory and hot and with the spicy remoulade were a perfect match to the malty house ale, and the steamed clams were resonant with brine and sweet with butter and were a boon companion to the grapefruit IPA (and I don't say that lightly - I am typically not a fruit-beer fan!)

What turned out to be amusing was the couple at the next table turned out to be in the consulting business as well; she a hydrologist and fisheries specialist, he an air and water contaminant analyst. He couldn't remember the name of the old Chicago Cub's broadcaster (Jack Brickhouse was the man's name, by the way, a memory from my mother's summers listening to the Cub on the radio...)and that led us to talking about this and that and eventually found out what we did for livings. So we spent a bunch of time talking about funny consulting things.

(BTW - In case you don't know GFT conventions, if I show pictures of people who either haven't explicitly given me permission to show their faces or I haven't been in a position to ask, I only show their legs and/or feet. It seems like a compromise that lets me preserve their privacy but show something of them on a medium that is as visual as literary...)

Anyway, the 8th Street Alehouse was a good place to be after a long day in the hot sun wrangling samplers full of goo.

(Aberdeen, as you can imagine, is built on tens of feet of sloppy Chehalis River alluvium. For a day's drilling that's fine. For a week? Christ, it's like punching the clock. How many samplers full of gray duck shit can you stare at, pocket-pen, torvane, and worm-roll before shoving the goop in a baggie and moving on to the next sampler full of gray duck shit? Before getting bored out of your fucking skull, I mean..?)

And it's probably worth a look back in after tomorrow's day-full-of-duck-shit; I haven't tried the fish and chips yet.

There's only one teesny little problem...

The 8th Street Ale House is in Hoquiam.

So I guess Aberdeen still pretty much just sucks pipe.