A box of EZICLEN colonoscopy prep liquid. The font is a rounded one reminiscent of the 70s or 80s, and there's a big downward-facing arrow taking up most of the front of the box, with some stylized lines through it. Hopefully, it will be an EZI time CLEN-ing out my colon, and everything will go in the proper arrow-pointing direction.

This year my Crohn's Disease turns 30! On Monday I'll have my 8th colonoscopy, and the prep they use here in Portugal looks like an '80s VHS tape box.

And then they built the second overpass across the turnpike, which had them running the pile driver most overnights for about 4 months straight. It was an absolute nightmare.

A screencap from Google Earth showing an apartment complex next to a large highway, with a star marking a building very close to an offramp.

I give you our old apartment in Orlando, Florida (yellow star). It wasn't bad at first, but during the 2 years we lived there, they expanded that offramp (which necessitated cutting down a big greenbelt of mature trees) so it got a lot louder...

A proud and majestic seagull standing on a mossy stone wall, in front of a statue of a guy on a horse, a surprisingly lush green tree (for April 1), and the Porto Cathedral in Porto, Portugal.

Look at this dapper fellow, with such a picturesque backdrop!

[Me in 2022, watching Everything Everywhere All at Once]: I can't believe a freakin' rock made me cry. But I'm sure that will never happen again.

[Me in 2026, watching Project Hail Mary]: GODDAMMIT

A 5-pack box of Cadbury Creme Eggs purchased in Portugal, with the slogan "unleash the goo" on the side. Also, a 5-pack feels like a strange number, but they were packed in there with three kind of upright, and two across, like a little eggy Stonehenge, so they fit shockingly well.

English: Happy Easter!

Portuguese: Feliz Páscoa!

Cadbury: UNLEASH THE GOO

Project Hail Mary was a goddamn delight.

All that, and also, why did the illustration need boobs?!

A pair of Disney Parks pins, one with Winnie-the-Pooh with his stitches coming undone that says "OH BOTHER," the other with Pooh resting on his back with a pot of honey on his belly, which says "HUNNY ON MY MIND."

Spotted in the wild: ALLSPICE on some new Pooh pins at Disney, found by eagle-eyed Laura! Someone at parks merch really likes to use Allspice, which cracks me up because a lifetime ago, before I was a font designer, I used to work in the same building as the merch design team!

O meu deus, those tuktuks! In Porto, we also have little fake Model Ts, which are just as irritating. 😆

A gorgeous little loaf of sourdough bread with excellent oven spring and a big crispy ear.

A gorgeous little loaf of sourdough bread with a tight crumb, because it's lower hydration.

My own starter isn't quite strong enough to make bread with yet, and I really wanted bread, so I bought some dried starter on Etsy from a kid in Spain. 😄 Four days from rehydration to this gorgeous little loaf!

A pop-up message when attempting to cancel a service. The top says "cancel your subscription." Then the text says: "If you cancel your subscription, you will have limited access to Memrise language courses once your subscription has ended. Are you sure you want to cancel?" The two options are YES and CANCEL.

I think they could have squeezed the word "cancel" in there a couple more times.

I'm working on my passport renewal, and one of the forms has two name fields: "surname" and "given name". And FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, why not just put "first name" and "last name"?

Anyhoo, at the age of 50+, I had to look up which of those meant first and last name.

Sourdough starter in a tall plastic deli container. There's a yellow rubber band around the container, showing its original height. The starter is full of bubbles, and has more than doubled in height overnight.

Day 16: LOOK AT MY BEAUTIFUL BUBBLY LARGE SON!

A plastic deli container about a third full of sourdough starter, which is an off-white goo with a few small bubbles in it. A yellow rubber band is around the container, showing two thirds of the goo below the rubber band, and about a third of the goo above.

Sourdough starter, day 6. Smells less cheesy and a little more yeasty. Some activity, but not a ton yet. (The rubber band shows where it was when I fed it this morning.)

It's fed flour/water every morning, and gets a clean container every couple of days. Now I just need to figure out its name! 😆

How lovely to wake up and find that both the Seattle Seahawks and center-left socialist presidential candidate António José Seguro had such massive wins!

A tall plastic deli container (clean and sterilized, of course) with a paste of flour and water in the bottom of it.

Sourdough starter, day 1. T55 (all-purpose) flour. Let's do this.

I just got notified that my old LiveJournal turned 23 years old today. Feels like a dozen lifetimes ago that I used to hang out there!

It's been an unusually cold and wet winter so far in Porto, but thank goodness, NO ICE. ⛔️🧊

A Bordalo II sculpture named "Half Rabbit". It's made entirely of pieces of trash, formed into a two-story tall bunny, stuck to the side of a building in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal.

Love his work! We have "Half Rabbit" over in Vila Nova de Gaia.

An orange and white cat is lying on top of a graphics tablet (which can be used in place of a mouse) next to a computer keyboard. A wide swath of empty desk space is next to the cat, but she cannot lie there; it wouldn't be intrusive enough.

All that desk space, and she needs to lie down on my tablet. 😸

I hate it when the last two numbers I need to complete in sudoku are 6 and 7.

Three answers in a forum for a Portuguese class, where the students were asked to explain how their favorite dish is prepared. The first two answers are identical, and the third is a copy of the first two, but it's been run through a translator into English.

Gently dying at these guys in my Portuguese class. Yes, the last one took the same copied answer, but he used a translator to turn it into English.

(All of his answers have been in English so far, which is baffling enough, but this copying is a new thing as of the unit we started last week.)

Hot take: traditional Thanksgiving foods are awful, that's why most people can only bring themselves to cook and eat them once a year.

Bottles of chili powder, taco seasoning mix, and ranch dressing mix on a hotel room counter.

Will these powdery friends make it through 3 different TSA checkpoints? Only time will tell.

WTF, USA? I am 100% going to lose this lid.

Happy Daylight Saving Time (USA) to those who celebrate!

Happy Daylight Saving Time (PT) to those who celebrate!

I don't know if the NYC mayoral candidate is Sliwa or Silwa, feels like on here it's 50/50 how it's spelled. But 100% of the time, at first I think they're talking about Jojo Siwa.

Wordle 1,558 2/6*
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A very unexpected result this morning!