🎂 Birthday, Cooking 🍳

Hey! Thanks for reading! Just a reminder that I wrote this some years ago, and may have much more complicated feelings about this topic than I did when I wrote it. Happy to elaborate, feel free to reach out to me! 😄

🎵 The song for this post is Fight The Power (2020 Remix), by Public Enemy feat. Nas, Rapsody, Black Thought, Jahi, YG & QuestLove. 🎵

I turned 34! Wow, the time flies. It feels like, not yesterday, but like, two months ago that I left home to start college. Like many people, "I don't want to go back, but I don't want to get much older either." I'm healthier than I've been before, mentally and physically, and wouldn't trade that grounded feeling for youth again (this might change if my back starts hurting). My dad always used to say "youth is wasted on the young," and I get more and more clear on what that means every year.

Karen surprised me with a gift somewhat reminiscent of Amado, which was conceived as a gift for her 😛. She coordinated with friends from all aspects of my life (my HS friends, college friends, coworkers, tabletop game friends, family) to send me photos of them having a milkshake, which was always my birthday ritual. It was a complete blast, and I was super touched. If you can, please celebrate my birthday by treating yourself with something you like.

(I'd love to post some photos, but idk who would be okay with that, and some of the descriptions of ClearView show striking ability to see who's behind a mask or a simple black bar over the eyes, so better safe than sorry. Great relevant 30 Rock joke.)

The little broseph got to lick out the inside of the cup when I was done. Also, light "when you see it" vibes.

I also did a "virtual escape room" with a few friends; it was super fun, if you're looking for a team "offsite" or event in COVID times, I've done both virtual games of Puzzle Break and liked them ton.

Cooking

A friend who's been vegan for many years of her life took me on as something of a protégé when she heard this was something I'm moving towards. She found me a vegan milkshake in Brooklyn (from NextLevel Burger), taught me about JustEgg for morning scrambles, and other delicious things. So more of my diet is vegan that it was when I last blogged. There's still more to go, but I'm going gradually.

Cooked a few things that I liked: I accidentally got way too many yams, so I'm looking to put them in everything. I made a yam stew with an Instant Pot we hadn't used much, it came out pretty delicious:

And the other day I made vegan protein pancakes, with banana and blueberry.

I'm not cooking quite as actively as I did in April, but now that I've been back for almost a month, I'm starting to settle into some rhythms again.

Functioning

It's hard! And not always happening! Shit sucks, guys, and I'm not always okay!!!

cool, just felt necessary to say that somewhere.

Celeste

I haven't really gotten to play Celeste this year: I moved all my good hardware to a new setup (the KVM thing I mentioned here, some more detail here) which nuked the framerate. And, frankly, stress levels have been high enough that taking on the last berry (Golden of Farewell) felt like something I couldn't commit to.

But seeing Matt Thorston tweet about it, I installed the Community Collab and friends, it's delightful. People have done some wild things! I've only played through all the "Beginner" stages, but it feels fun and fresh in a way I missed dearly.

I'll follow-up with a post on all the media I've been consuming to avoid confronting my failures and the creeping fascism/climate wars, there's been a lot. But wanted to call this one out sooner rather than later 😄