04/25/26 Daily Blog
April 25, 2026
I read some chatter lately about missing and loving the old style sort of daily blogs we used to do on Xanga and LiveJournal. It made me want to go back to doing more of those style blogs. Then I was worried it was contributing to the inane babble of the current social media landscape. THEN I decided the problem there was The Algorithm, and outrage culture, and lack of reading comprehension, and that doing the occasional daily blog was good, actually. And that I would absolutely kill for some of my lost loved ones to have had this sort of space online where I could go back and see how they just existed.
I'm not planning on dying. We're roughly in the time of year that I lost my friend Ruddy (obituary). He was truly one of the best. We'll hear more about him some other time, I'm sure. He would appreciate being mentioned in a post that is largely about food and blabbing on the internet. Please go eat some french fries in his honor after you read this. He'd like that.
Today started with bagels. I made everything bagels based on The Loopy Whisk's recipe last night.
Honestly, they were just ok. I think they taste gluten free and that there's a little too much psyllium fiber in them and want to tweak the recipe a bit OR make a blueberry version next. I think there just needs to be something else in the actual dough. My husband had one for breakfast this morning and he can eat gluten so I'm obviously being picky. They're not going on the recipe page until I think that they're perfect.
Then I took the best girly (Rosie, my dog) on a little walk so she didn't get bored while we were out today. There was a group of kids doing park clean up with their parents at her usual potty spot. She was very brave around the children carrying litter-grabbers. She does not like children or apparatuses. A toddler tried to rush her for pets, but his mom stopped him and had him ask for permission and respected the no. I felt like we were both in the park teaching our kids about existing in society. Then we walked to a less busy park for her to get some good sniffs and potty time in. I always try to extend the walk and do something she enjoys so that she doesn't end the experience being stressed out. She was outside of the typical desensitization window and terrified of absolutely everything (her harness, doors, trash cans, trash blowing, etc) when we got her. I'm really proud of how far she's come. She can weave through trash cans on the sidewalk on trash day like a pro now. There was a point in time where we had to cross the street to avoid them because she would freeze.
What was the main event today? The Japan Festival. My friend has invited us to go the past two years. This year we realized we were awful people and hadn't seen her and her husband since last year's festival. So we had to go. On the one hand, its great that we have an annual thing with her. On the other...oof man, I only have so many years in me. Despite not planning to die.
Last year I spent the days leading up to the festival contacting the organizers to get an allergen list for the food booths only to receive a..not confidence boosting list the morning of the event. This year was pretty similar except the list was marginally better. The organizers are very sweet and all volunteers so I don't fault them, but I do think it's wild that restaurants are comfortable running a booth where they are asked for allergy information and they just..don't provide it. I think posting allergens should be part of your permits! But it's not. So instead I went back and forth with this poor volunteer for three days while she tried to hunt down information and then personally added more for me in my DMs so that I could try to find a little snack.
I'm happy to report that I found TWO little snacks (and messaged photos of them to the volunteer so she could see I actually bought things) and neither of them got me sick. The first was a $22 bag of chocolate covered potato chips which I have no good photo of because I demolished them. Yes, I know that price is insane. They were imported from Japan and the festival had free admission, if that helps. I also had this (more reasonably priced at $10) mochi.
They're matcha and kinako(?? I've googled I have no idea what I was eating) flavored. I don't really like matcha, but I got the mix because I was worried I would like the second flavor even less. Surprise, I did not, the brown one won.
We watched a little of the drum show and my friend and I looked at some more of the booths while our husbands played chess in the park. Please help, I am my husband is playing chess in the park years old. How did this happen to me?
Then I came home and read literally seventy pages on how to barbell squat and took notes in my gym notebook. I'm in the process of switching my gym membership to a closer gym and once I do that I will have zero excuse to not be doing more barbell work. So I'm studying.
When you see how many hours I put into Cyberpunk 2077 please use this blog post as proof that I have left my house, contributed to the economy, and touched grass.