This shirt reminds me of the night sky! It’s from Stitch Fix, a very dark blue cluttered with white dots, with tabbed sleeves that look great either way you wear them.
The Night Sky Shirt is one of my in-game favorites… and the real shirt is an IRL favorite. It’s super versatile: I wore it to the opera and to hang out with friends.
Ideally a Night Sky shirt will be dark blue with dots. But if you have any shirt that reminds you of the night sky, for any reason, that counts.
In my push to celebrate more holidays of all kinds, I dyed Easter eggs this year! But since I have limited use for boiled eggs and it’s just Sophie and me, I’m doing only one color a year so as not to waste the dye tablets.
This year was Red Year. Turns out it looks great on brown eggs!
Every few years I get excited to try to get fancy with the wax crayon, but… it just doesn’t work very well. You can see I shifted my attempt at a polka-dot egg to the corner because it turned out so poorly. But it DID occur to me that next time I could melt the wax and paint it onto the eggs?? Sounds like it would work a lot better. You’d have more control, and the wax wouldn’t crumble off the crayon and make a mess. You could even dye the wax, maybe, and make spots of a different color.
Likewise, I tried to make stripes by holding an egg partly under the water, but, as always, I get bored once I realize how long 90 seconds is. I tried for like a minute, checked on my disheartening progress, and gave up. They all turned out pretty anyway.
Including the festive red dye that leaked through the eggshell. My egg salad looks a little odd, but boy is it delicious.
Decorated eggs = Egg Festival
Colorful/artsy food-related stuff = Magic Rock Candy
To Sophie’s utter disgust, I am permanently in love with Peeps. But what’s not to love? They’re marshmallows (yass) in adorable shapes (hell yeah) covered with sparkly sprinkles (w00t!).
I hadn’t had any in a while but then I saw these on sale and grabbed them. I wanted to take a quick picture so I could add it to this post about how much I love Peeps but then mysteriously almost all of them were gone before I had a chance. This guy didn’t last long either.
But it’s a pink bunny with a plush marshmallowy texture, so it should be part of your Egg Festival festivities… and if you don’t want it I’ll eat it.
Recently I started psychedelic therapy, which I prefer to do blindfolded. And the other day I was stressed out and asked Sophie for help, and she suggested putting the blindfold on.
I did, and … !
Since I’ve started psychedelics I’ve been particularly sensitive to light, specifically sunlight, and I’m starting to think it’s much more of a stressor than I’ve previously realized. Blind, distractions are reduced by a thousandfold. Nothing is as distracting as sight, so nothing is as focusing as blocking it out. I’m an excellent typist, so I can write even without being able to see the screen.
Darkness is absolutely a reading of “void,” so here is my first Void Essence object. You might say, in fact, that darkness is The Void Essence.
I’ve been using The Mindfold, which is a hilariously branded proprietary blindfold which nevertheless works excellently well. It’s very comfortable and you can open your eyes behind it without seeing any light. I do recommend it.
You never know when you might realize you hate the sun.
Rock candy is probably the prettiest candy in the world, with a correspondingly horrible eating experience. The crystals kind of hurt your mouth and they dissolve really slowly. But who are we to dictate preferences to Abigail? (And the Dwarf, but they like weird stuff already and don’t really count.)
In fact, as far as I can tell the greatest appeal of rock candy is in making it. So go ahead, make it and then throw it straight out if you like.
But I’m being generous with canon this time. Any kind of hard, sharp candy will count… and if you do it right, any hard candy can become sharp. The champion hard, sharp candy is, of course, candy canes, which in some people’s hands violate the Geneva Conventions. It’ll also work with Jolly Ranchers, peppermints, and Werther’s.
And if you have the time and desire, go ahead and make some purple rock candy. It’s your mouth and you can destroy it with sugar blades if you want to.
This might be easiest to just buy. There are plenty of versions… and when we get right down to it, isn’t buying a snack ready-made more Movie Theater than making it from scratch?
But let’s assume you DO want to make it from scratch. It doesn’t have to be completely covered in chocolate to count. Something like the recipe at left, where it’s just drizzled, is perfectly acceptable and probably a lot easier.
But here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be popcorn! Sure, you can do chocolate drizzle popcorn or moose tracks and call it a day, but other exploded foods work too, like Rice Krispies or even Chex. And you can add only chocolate or you can get fancy with other candies, sauces, or even dried fruit.
Any combination of chocolate with puffed grains will work. Even popcorn fondue—have a bowl of melted chocolate and dip plain popcorn into it. It doesn’t get much more low-maintenance than that. Unless you just buy it.
You can’t tell from the Movie Theater what’s unsuitable about the apparent romance between the characters, but the woman is conflicted about moving forward with it. You can tell that the movie is black and white, takes place on a train, and stars a woman famous enough to take up the entire poster.
My first pick might be Roman Holiday—it checks all the boxes except the train. I don’t remember it very well but I remember thinking it was cute. And who doesn’t love Audrey Hepburn with proto-George Clooney?
My second pick is Murder on the Orient Express, which I saw more recently and remember in black and white, even though apparently it’s actually in color. This one is set on a train and has several famous actresses… but no “unsuitable” romance as far as I can recall.
There are surely many qualifying movies out there. Pick your favorite(s)!
Not much to this one. Black licorice exists, you either like it or you don’t. There are traditional whips, wheels, and jelly beans. There’s also ice cream, at some specialty brands or shops.
I will also make a plug for licorice root tea, which is not quite licorice flavor but is plenty close enough, to my mind. It’s very sweet but in the throat rather than on the tongue, which is really, really weird. I adore it. Once in Europe I found straight licorice tea (no other flavors) and it was delicious but it was a powerful diuretic, and I quickly learned not to drink it before bed. TMI, maybe.
Anyway. The canon version of this is a simple black licorice stick or whip, as shown below. I suspect a lot of us will skip this one…
I mean… fries. Classic. Should be simple. But there are so many bad ones out there, yes?
The good news is, you don’t have to make them from scratch, or even at home. Simplest version: Get a bag of pre-cut frozen fries and bake ’em. It’s not 100% canon but plenty close.
From there you can incrementally increase the difficulty/effort: Deep-fry instead of bake. Cut your own potatoes and bake. Cut your own potatoes, parcook, and deep-fry. Cut your own potatoes, parcook, freeze, and deep-fry. Cut your own potatoes, parcook, freeze, and deep-fry twice. Supposedly the very very best fries are twice-fried. I haven’t worked up the courage to try it yet, but it doesn’t seem hard, just a lot of work. And they probably are great.
But all this is skipping over the very easiest version of all: McDonald’s. Or any restaurant. Sophie and I used to go to a pretentious bistro that made amazing fries with truffle oil and aioli—really really good with a Belgian tripel. After all, the canon version doesn’t say MAKE them. In fact, since you get them at the Movie Theater I think you can argue that true canon is NOT making them.
You could also stretch the point and use deep-fried potato chips instead of fries. Also delicious. You really can’t go wrong here.
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