Courtesy of an extremely late night after an outstanding dinner with remarkably good company at the Herbfarm restaurant in Woodinville. Check it out.
Honestly, no lie. If you ever have the opportunity to get out there for one of their gala dinners, do it in a heartbeat. It’s somewhat pricey, but oh my god is it worth it. Nine courses with the main focus of the meal being Wagyu beef. Wagyu are the breed of cattle that produce Kobe beef, but the beef is not technically Kobe beef unless the Wagyu cattle are raised and slaughtered in Kobe (for those of you of a culinary trivia bent). The beef was stunning, the herbs and vegetables were all fresh and locally produced, I ate, enjoyed, and was hoping for more fish. The wines were all Pacific Northwest varietals (Andrew got a variety of non-alcoholic herbally infused teas and juices that were absolutely delightful) except for the 95 year old Madiera that we all got a tiny taste of just before dessert which I didn’t like that much. I suppose I should have been more impressed by it, but Madiera seems to be like Scotch. You either have a taste for it or you don’t. The service was superb, the decor is, there is no other word for it, eclectic….. All around an entirely desirable and satisfactory way to spend a Saturday evening. And I think the part that I enjoyed the most was that regardless of the nine courses, the portion control and the timing were so perfect that while we were full at the end of the evening, it was more the full of “I’ve just had a satisfying dinner” not the full of “Oh god, I’m stuffed”.

Anyway, back to the random aspect of this post……
Many of you are already subscribers to The Funny Times so many of you will already have seen this, but I thought it worth mentioning anyway.
You go into a store to make a purchase and they ask for your zip code for “demographic purposes”. There’s a store in Burien that not only asks for your zip code but your phone number as well. I’ve always thought that as more than a little invasive of my privacy honestly. I figure if I’m paying for a purchase, so long as my money is good it really should be none of their damn business where I live. Now I also realize that they are trying to define their customer base and provide goods and services that best meet the needs of those customers, but I am, in general, very jealous of my privacy and I resent these tactics.

I have been giving out the zip code and telephone number of the mobile home where we lived in Pullman. 15 years ago. That doesn’t, in any real sense, exist anymore.
Until I saw this article in March’s Funny Times. The author was also railing about this particular trend in consumer tracking and came up with what I think is a beautiful solution. He gives out the zip code 99692. Which is the zip code of a, by definition, remote fishing villiage on the westernmost tip of the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. Now if that doesn’t put a glitch in their demographic tracking, I don’t know what will. I love it.