Poupon

  Oops. It's Monday lol? What happened to Friday? Idk. It just... woosh. And then it wasn't Friday anymore. Life comes at you fast. Well um. here's a story that's completely stupid. Enjoy.

Once upon a time, a little girl happily complied with her mothers beckon to dinner, (or was it lunch?). The dish; arroz chaufa, and HO BOY did she love arroz chaufa! She sat down, the plate before her a flat base to a mountain of gold. She took her spoon and ravaged the once proud mountain of fried rice, inhaling each mouthful like some reverse wind.

Like how wise dude in Mulan was like, "no matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it." but like... inverted.

She was almost done, when in that one confident, joyful, chomp guided by serotonin... to her horror and dismay, produced the most rancid flavor. A flavor of pain. Earthy pain. Bitter. Angry. Tree bark-like pain she'd never experienced before.
The tears welled in her eyes and she desperately tongued at the hairy piece of anguish that had so violated her precious fried rice. The tears fell. She cried out. Her mother, concerned, quickly rushed to investigate.

"Que paso cuchita? A ver, que es?"

A wailing mess, she spit the offending chunk onto her plate and prodded the thing away, exposing it so that her brave mom could rid of it and make it all better.

"Es kion!"

"QUE FEO" she whined, sobbing through the awful aftertaste that lingered seemingly forever. The mom embraced her, wiping away tears that fell, gently shushing her while handing her some juice.

This is how I came to hate ginger.
But it's unavoidable. And so I find myself under this most annoying, redundant predicament. And so, I must adapt. Despite how loathsome the root is, the only way to get over that is to learn to develop a palate for it.
Chicken is training me on how to ginger.

There's an overlap. He likes ginger. I don't. We enjoy the same foods, but some rely on ginger's spicy, earthy notes to enhance flavors.
I can appreciate subtle ginger notes if it goes well with EVERYTHING in the dish. If it overpowers, I won't eat it.

So he made a special teriyaki ginger beef dinner. It was good. I bit a piece of minced ginger, hated it but didn't cry. So that's a start.

AND THAT'S HOW WE'RE STARTING THIS POST.


HAPPY SPOOKTOBER

We're already almost halfway into the month. I don't like it. We have half of Halloween to go through still, but it's all moving too fast. This past weekend was especially quick. But fun!
And Animal Crossing? Oh man. It's finally fun again lol. My island has been bare since... ever. I've zero creativity for design or foresight. Builder games? Forget it. No fun. I think that's why Fallout 4 and 76's building stuff just didn't... like, I didn't care. Still don't.
BUT WITH HALLOWEEN HERE, I FEEL INSPIRED. My island is coming together now, due to sudden bouts of spook vibes. I hate myself.
Apparently Fallout 76 has some halloween stuff going on right now, I've yet to explore that but SOON™.


Life is gooooooood.

We all went in on that game.
It's cool. Feels like a lot of mmos I've played before, so idk how long I'll stick to it, but it's polished. Didn't know it was a mobile title as well. Neat little weeb adventure game. Paimon best snack.


So instead of eating 84579387542lbs of food during our bbqs, we've brought it back and started doing kabobs instead. More veggies!

 

 While Lifa was outside manning the grill, Chicken was inside slicing up some steak leftovers we had.

 For our anniversary, I got him a set of Japanese chef's knives, and now he just... "How do you want them cut?" when we cook together. The options are endless; Matchstick, cubed, long slices, minced, parallel cutting, shredding, you name it. Why did he need Japanese steel? Clearly, the vermin.

I believe it was this night that we also decided to go out for late night donuts.

Was the first time I'd tried a mochi donut! THEY'RE SO YUMMY. I was under the impression that they were sold exclusively at certain shops, but I'm just dumb and didn't realize how popular they've become.

And the next morning, it was hike time. We went to the same place we'd gone to previously, only chose a different trail to explore.

This trail became my favorite. Its scenery prompted me to play that Hayes, Duke, and Bower magic that we grew up with and love so much. Specifically Ashenvale's forest theme. It set a different mood, and we felt like we were grouped up and wandering around in-game rofl

Rip Teldrassil
If you care or wanna see what happened to her, watch Warcraft 3 story videos on YT.
Has anyone seen Terminator: Dark Fate?
I just saw it.
Yeah.

Anyway, we walked by a Sims neighborhood

And then more kebobs T_T

But also watching Michael Keaton's best role ever

My plaaaaaaaaaaaaaants. They're growing so well. They're so prettttyyyyyyy

Watching Meemurs get bigger is so rewarding! This picture was taken last week, but now her traps have been growing bigger, and new ones are growing in. She's expanding and growing more and more each day. I can't wait for Meemurs to get big enough to eat insects all by herself uwu. In the meantime, once her traps are big enough, I'll have to feed her bits of bloodworm porridge so she can get yummy nutrients. My cute widdle carnivore baby soCYOO.

My purple heart and afterglow both exploded. I recently repotted the purple heart (left) and am getting ready to repot the afterglow. They both get gigantic. We're gonna have to gradually acclimate them to sunlight again as they grow out of the indoor nursery.

They make me so happi. Sometimes throughout the day, I'll just sit next to them and watch them, admiring their growth and colors. And smell the veggie leaves and petunias. I've come to notice that the petunias kill a massive amount of bugs lol. The bugs land on their stems and leaves, essentially get covered in this sticky substance, and die there. I'm cool with that, but had no clue petunias roll like that. Having all of these plants with us has really lifted quality of living. Everything is fine, but just having the plants around is soothing. Sometimes 30 minutes go by without my realizing, while I would sit and admire them. So nice ^_^

Our evenings look like this.

And sometimes I'll give Chicken piggie tails, and compare leg hair growth patterns

And then we'll go to Lifa's because we though we were gonna have a sleepover, so Chicken set up a mini dual monitor station. God he's such a tech brat

It was my first time having that chicken sandwich that went viral for a while from popeye's chicken. It was pretty good. Lots of pickles.

On Friday, I got together with old colleagues for coffee. This was the first time since March that I'd be venturing out into the world to meet anyone for anything.

It was cathartic, to say the least
A lot has happened for us since the shutdown began.

But all is well, and Suna's drawings are just as cute as I remember them. She busted these three sketches out while idly chatting- like, how the fu

We also went to get lunch, where we met up with another colleague. I'm glad we could meet like this again.

Blizz SBux crew coming at you with masked smiles.
It was a good day ^_^

 Suna said I look 18. ty sweet bb.
I felt cute and was gonna take selfies, but realized I didn't care that much.

Later that evening...

We got happy dronk and danced to a playlist that had all the songs for World of Warcraft racial dances.

And salsa, and samba, and new romantic, and creole Peruvian tunes.
At one point, Lifa talked about his journey to Bar Sin. He had a blast there, and I told him if he had fun there, one day I'd drag them to a sad clown club. It's a completely different experience with less piss smell and more arrogance, if that was even possible. But in the mean time, I half assedly slapped my clown face on and danced on a bench pretending to be a self-proclaimed go-go weeping willow tree. To world of warcraft music. In my pjs.

My hair got in the way of my life so I put it away on my head attic.

Orc female

Troll female
funny story; if you were at Blizzcon 2010, you can see me do this dance there.
I miss the dance contests lol they were fun to watch

Dying

We ate too much food and were dying, but the Male Draenei dance never fails to bring people back to life. It's like a real life rez.
It turned into the world of warcraft dances work out. Every. single. dance song. was on that playlist. And we strived to get through it all. We did all of them except for the male dwarf one- fuck that.

The burrito fairy showed up again with wares for the weak and wary

HO MAN. Good times. They didn't stop there tho.
Because then...

Lifa shows up with a 15lb brisket for the smoker he impulse bought the night before

Fires of industry
smoked that bad boy for almost 12 hours.

In the last hour before reveal, we played a round of Villainous. Closest game yet! But the time had come.

Yoooooo. Super smoke

The house smelled amazing

Lifa's first smoked brisket, and we ate like kings that night.
I've never had it before!
INCROYABLE *chef's kiss*

That was a lot of meat. So much meat. Dang. Shoulda Poupon'd it.
You can Poupon anything. Poupon on food. Poupon a drink. Poupon your friends. But beware; if you Poupon your shirt, it'll stain.

Speaking on that... I learned A LOT recently... about sourced meat. Halal meat in particular. And I was an ignorant fuck going in. Meat eaters, if you're curious, here's the break down.

What I knew about Halal sourced meat:

• Animal is conscience during slaughter
  
• Cut through jugular vein
  
• The animals are "clean", as in they have to not have any hormones or additives to alter their bodies
  
  

This whole image put me off so much. It seemed so cruel compared to knocking an animal unconscious beforehand. So, idk why but I decided to read into it more. A while back, I even despised the fact that we had instant noodles with the halal label on it. It was dumb.

So, it turns out, I was an ignorant dumbass, and Halal is probably the most respectful practice I've read about in regards to sourcing meat. The ethics and values behind it are admirable- and something that is definitely not practiced by Western standards. To start:

• The animal must not be in distress before slaughter. To achieve this, they are always in groups. It is cruel to separate them long beforehand.
• The animal must be comfortable and given water.
• The animal must never see another of its group being slaughtered.
• The animal must never see the instrument.
• A prayer is said, both for showing gratitude for the act that will be done, and for the animal to calm.
• The slaughter must be lightning speed, severing not just the jugular, but the carotid artery as well as the wind pipe.
• The blood is drained from the body, reinforcing the "clean" rule- so that no toxins or potential diseases or bacteria are consumed
  

This makes for the animal to die quickly within a few seconds.

They're considered gifts from god in that religion. So to treat them wastefully or with cruelty would be a slap in the face to the god that created them.

The values behind it surprised me. I'm accustomed to hearing about slaughters being senseless and automated. It's awful, really. But I could never bring myself to hunt, for fear of not being able to swiftly kill an animal in one motion. Otherwise, I totally would. However, it was eyeopening. I was skeptical still, so I watched some videos on the YT.
Learned a lot. A lot.

Now, I think I'll go out of my way to find halal sourced meat. It's embarrassing how ignorant I was regarding that. Like, I was so disgusted with what briefly googled and didn't look into, that I completely dismissed the entire practice of Halal sourced meat because of... my own ignorance. And turns out, it's the most merciful fucking practice- leagues better than anything we can dish out.
Even with the argument that animals get stunned or knocked out before slaughter, they're still malnourished, mistreated, stressed, terrified, submitted to seeing and hearing the slaughter around them.

So. Yeah. I'm never gonna give up meat, it's just never gonna happen. But. I'm glad that I did some research with this. Religion aside, respecting a sacrifice and treating it like the special gift that it is... that's dope. I wish that we had that mentality as a general principal with everything. Just be grateful for what you have. We often forget to look around us and stop to smell the flowers.


Anyway, I've been replaying Diablo II. I love the art in it so much. Sigh. Even as sprites, they're good. I wanna play revisit a bunch of older games, but Halloween events are too irresistible T_T


ANYWAY, GO POUPON SOMETHING.
Happy .... Mondayyyyyyy :D
Wear a mask
Be grateful
Life can be good 💖

小

  Learning is HARD. Specifically a language. I'm gonna whine about it for a bit. Here we go.

LEARNING MANDARIN IS HARD. Like, I'm getting used to the grammatical order of stuff. I'm understanding small things. But there are like a billion additional nuances to learn.
On top of just the tones, there's getting used to recognizing them, actually SAYING them well, there's learning to read the characters, and of course... learning to write them. That, for me, is the hardest. I think I'm having an easier time with reading and understanding certain things. Speaking it is alright, but remembering the tones is... getting easier-ish. But man. Writing those characters... So currently I'm using duo lingo, hello chinese, and a workbook for kindergardeners on how to write the characters lol. I'm not even gonna pretend that it's easy. It's not. What is helpful tho was everything I picked up in that Chinese language class. I still have the workbook for that class, I just don't know where I left it T_T waaahh.
It's hard tho. Really hard. 

Why am I learning Mandarin? 2 reasons.... 3 reasons. Firstly was because of Chicken. Actually more because of his fam. They actually speak Taiwanese, but... it's not taught here so the next best thing was Mandarin. 

Secondly, I really want to learn another language. Preferably one that'll be extremely useful- on par with Spanish. I wanna speak 3 languages, bruh.
3rd, in some futuristic sci-fi works, Mandarin is the spoken language. It's currently the most spoken language in the world, so I wanna jump on that.

So I'm still chiseling away at learning it. But every day is progress, and it's rewarding when Chicken says little phrases to me and I can understand him. In turn, I speak phrases in Spanish to him too. Language is dope. A bitch to learn tho lol

Oh my god we can't stop playing Villainous. We just can't. It's. so good.

The breakfast burrito fairy has seemed to uh, quit and become the sushi/cheesesteaks at night fairy that we can't say no to and will get fat from. Ahem*, the gentlemen got pretty turnt, so the following evening, we had a tea party whilst indulging in a pleasant game of Villainous over sushi.

Come midnight, on the even of September 26th, we had a cheers. It marked a special day!

The 26th marks the 3rd anniversary of Chicken and I's courtship! lol
So I ran upstairs to grab his gift, rushed downstairs and chewed on his face

I couldn't have asked for a more pleasant evening. 3 years have gone so quickly, and here we are in the future! Here we are in the future and it's briiiight (I don't watch Steven Universe, but heard the song and it's cute). 

My parents adore him, I'm still working on charming his family 100%~ a concept not foreign to me as a general way of life~ they're so great to me, but I can do better, and I will.

We are very fortunate for all that we have, have gained, achieved together, and have to look forward to.
I love how he understands the way my mind processes the world, peoples' behaviors, and my own reactions to those things. I'll admit, I have trouble understanding things sometimes, and he has to kind of... break things down to their most basic connotations. Meaning is so easily thwarted by context, which I often can't piece together unless the syntax is deliberate. So he sometimes speaks to me like a program. And it sounds kinda dumb and funny, but it helps me understand a lot of things. Especially in this social climate.
I'm extremely grateful for him, for the countless ways his presence has enriched my life, but mostly for opening his mind to get to want to get to know me beyond just the novelty, and to associate with me for... me.

The trust issues were real. I can't tell you how shitty it can be to have dudes pretend to be your friend just to see how far they can get with you, then suddenly have a conscience once you call them on it. Or they'd think they're in, but they never were and get REALLY passive aggressive when the door shuts.

Chicken wasn't even attracted to me when we first met. I love that so much.

Thank you for loving me

CHEERS TO MORE YEARS TOGETHER AND CHANDELIERS :D

我爱我的鸡

Man, medicine is yeugh, but getting adjustments and massages has been ... mpf. Best decision I've made medically in a long time. It's holistic, regardless of how painful some of the massages are, that just is so... ahhh I love it. I recommend people check it out at least once. Groupons have dope deals- which is how I found my place.

I actually really need a lot of work done tho. So for me, it's an investment for my body to feel better and detoxified. Ah, I can't wait to go back next week!

sigh ^_^
I'm still waiting for restock on some spooky inventory, but it's a sight I missed dearly

SO MANY CARD GAMES.
This was on clearance at Target, so.

Impulse buys at target are awful

But it set the mood for another night of Villainous and cheesesteaks.

Pete is becoming my favorite Villain. Yes, a lot of it is because of his art, stfu. But I also really like his kit. He has 5 objectives, 4 of which get chosen at random to be completed. And it's a gamble on how they're unlocked depending on where they land. Super fun!

It was such a fun night that the next morning before work, I made us all breakfast and we got to sit down over coffee and chatted before work started. Like before. MMMUUUUUHHHHH T_T

Then, September 30th came along. Do you know what happened on Sept 30th? ANIMAL CROSSING UPDATE.

The damned stand ready.
I gladly obey.
My fate is sealed.
WHERE SHALL MY BLOOD BE SPILLED

And later that night, we had a Classic WoW LAN sesh. ... but it was more like... WiFi...

am smol gremlin :3

Two cave trolls embracing Work From Home vibes
IS MY BLANKIE ^-^

I got these sunglasses at Daiso and they're like, my almost favorite.
They fit little kids, which is perfect because adult sizes are too big for me T_T

SPEAKING OF LITTLE KID SIZES, I had to find different desk chair because the ones I've been using have all destroyed my back. It's the whole reason why I have to get chiropractic treatment lol. But... turns out, ergonomic chairs for petite people are like, insanely overpriced.
And! And, and and, even if I were to invest in that, I'd have to redo my entire station. Because my desks 28 inches tall. And if I were to adjust my chair to sit at the correct height, my feet don't touch the ground, which eventually has me slouching down in my chair because there's no support I can rest my feet on. Unless I got a foot rest. But like. Ugh. HNNNNG.
Lol. So a chair in coming in the mail. Chicken grabbed it for me. I had to take certain measurements to make sure it's sized for me. Searched it under kids sized desk chairs -___-. But anything is better than what I'm using now.

AAANNNND LASTLY. I got my first huge eyeshadow palette, ever.
Note: I don't care

I heard about it a few months back and the entire concept of it drew me in. Apparently, it pissed people off because this was released amid the pandemic, when fatality numbers were all over the media.
People getting pissed at everything is boring. Anyway.
Spending that much money on make up was like, lol no. Like, I wear it every day, but the only eyeshadows I bother with are subtle bruise colors- taupe purple, red, and taupe. lol. I don't have any other colors than that, simply because eyeliner is my main, and always has been. But this palette is cute. So, once I saw that it was on sale, I treated myself :D

The most charming thing about it is the theme. I don't like bright colors unless they're subtle accents, so this whole thing is right up my alley. And the names. I love the names!
It's a little goofy to make death so marketable in this way, romanticized even. Then again, I'm going to school to work in the death industry. So. I mean. IT'S CUTE. It's goofy and even kinda tacky, but I really like it lol

Now I just have to channel my 17 year old self and embrace eyeshadow again

Is eyeshadow one word? Or two?

This is also a nice reminder to myself that all my transcript bullshit is finally over. And now it's just a waiting game.

This past week has been so chill. All I wanna do is get through school, game, and chill with loved ones. We're growing tomatoes now ^_^ they've sprouted and are growing so happy! Baby Sarlacc is still emaciated, but he sprouted an offset baby of his own! It's so cute! It's growing in right next to him T_T

All is well. I'm glad it's friday :D
Maybe now with this new update in Animal Crossing, I can finally start designing my island lol.

Anywhooooo, HAPPY FRIDAY.
DON'T LET YOUR DREAMS BE RAISINS (Thank you, Lifa)
Wear a mask :)

And hope everyone has a great weekend!
Chicken got Star Wars: Squadrons oh BOY