Delicious Urinal Cake Popsicles

I wanted to try one of those Japanese shaved ice bars and got a colorful looking strawberry flavor.

Imagine biting into something that tastes like a port-a-john. Not a used one, no, but one freshly refilled with the smell of that blue liquid underneath the rim where all the terrible things go away.

Imagine summoning that image with every bite as you stick this treat in your mouth, unleashing more of its trademark smell each time you bite into it hoping it goes away the same way you use one hoping the shame ejecting your intestines never gets discovered by the next person.

It came in a box of seven. Like a soldier on a second tour of duty I mentally prepped myself to power through three of them. Can you tell that I hate food waste? Can you also tell I hate myself?

Easy to Spoil

So apparently it's very easy to spoil my nephew. I say "apparently" because I found stuff for the in-laws to enjoy and it turns out the nephew loves every single one of these things. I feel very guilty given how hard I am trying not to spoil the kid (he's already spoiled terribly).

This brings up a new thing: did you notice how certain food things are now incredibly common? Like I get that trends change, but so much of this shit was things I was going crazy trying to find. For example, chili crisp: two years ago NO ONE outside of fans of local Chinese cuisine had an idea what that was and finding it meant really working through the aisles to find it. Now it's like everyone has their own version of it. Not like that's a bad thing imo, it's a great umami bomb and a fantastic cheat for easy fried rice, just... WHERE WERE YOU PEOPLE?!

Anyway, glad genuine Chinese tastes are prevailing. I doubt I'll start seeing more hardcore traditional stuff popping around like duck tongues or chicken feet on a regular basis, but it makes supply runs a little easier.

So food aside, it was my birthday and Michelle got me an upgrade on my mic boom: much more stable now and I have a pop filter as well. My parents took us for a weekend dim sum afternoon and it was awesome. For my brother's birthday who mentioned wanting something more practical, I got him hiking socks and whatnot.

I dunno if I mentioned this here, but he really enjoyed hiking. Given how a few months before he was giving me the "last call" while I was camping this summer, I want to encourage him to enjoy more camping, so I got him a lot of smartwools and other quality hiking socks. I told him that it's at worst to keep his feet warm when the weather gets really cold which I dunno if it'll really happen because we live in NJ and the weather has been shifting like crazy everywhere.

He's been looking more like Art Carney these days and I'm not sure how to feel about it, but I just hope he's feeling better in general.

Anyway, work is still keeping me busy. The gaming group shrinks a little more thanks to Christmas rush (one of them works at UPS) and a bad breakup between two of the players. It means I can turn down the difficulty for some of these challenges which will make things better in general imo.

The Long Dark released a new episode and I'm goofing on Fallout 4 again, this time with every quest mod in existence that I can find. It's been interesting. The good ones are fun to play, the bad ones are fun in an MST3K episode way. Both involve me using console commands when I end up hitting a bug, so I learn things as well. Overall a learning experience all over.

The outside decor picked up some local fans: a squirrel has been finding a way into the pumpkin and finally burst it open like a pinata. I kept getting movement warnings from the camera as three squirrels dug through the pumpkin's insides as a free-for-all.

The funniest part of that is that they only ate the back half of the pumpkin and the seeds, so anyone passing by will still see a whole pumpkin sans stem. It's like they tried to get away with the heist of the century and tried to make sure no one was the wiser.

All the same, just hoping they finish it up before mischief night. Not sure how New Brunswick is with those but I know we're the only ones with an outdoor displace for the fall so dunno what's going to happen. Hell, I don't even know what Halloween's going to be like so bought a lot of candy unsure what to expect.