I can't find my penguin stickers!

I bought a hundred-sticker penguin roll cheap off of Temu or some other Chinese counterpart last year - with cute penguins in alternating positions all the way through said roll - and had planned to use said penguins for the traditional Christmas Card send-out's this years. But I can't find them.

I've gone through my desk drawers - where I expected they'd be - thoroughly.

Found a two year old pack of liquorice gum there. Four pieces left. I chewed one piece after lunch, and am chewing another two right now, and the final one I'll probably chew up tomorrow, cause it feels a bit dangerous to have an opened pack of chewing gum lying around quite that long, so I'd best consume these quick. But not too quick incase they're no longer OK.

One year past expiration may be fine, but two's pushing it...

Had barbeque for lunch. I fired up the little grill I attained earlier this year, doused some mushrooms, zucchini, paprika and salmon in three different types of marinade, of which two batches expired about a year ago.

They were all delicious.

Stomach's acting up a bit since, though I'm uncertain if it's due to the old gum, or the marinade, or the mushrooms - which are always risky regardless of freshness, or the slightly charred foodstuff overall...

Next time we do this I won't have the gum, so we can find out at least if it was the gum.

I also found a small bag of probiotics lemonade in the desk drawer, and one with a powder on kale and other mineral-rich greens.

Not sure when the probiotic expired - it was part of a bigger package. I'm pretty sure the other powder's expired too, but these are powders - which means they're dry, so it should be less of an issue. Worse when oils are involved. Or dairy, god forbid!

I found some other fun non-foodstuff-related things in the desk too, but no penguins, so I'll have to make do for hares and carrots for Christmas cards this year instead. Not very seasonal, but what can you do?

Some of the other stickers we've stocked up on are probably getting a bit old too. They don't stick...

It just dawned on me that maybe it's not so strange I have those ongoing mysterious gut/back/something issue that I have after all.

Finna barbeque a lot more this Spring I hope.

~20 old batches of marinade to go.

...missed it by a couple! I'd planned to post this as the 10,000th post.

Oh well. We're there. We're journeying onwards. We're still keeping a remarkably consistent pace of ca 500 posts per year too - though the majority of those may come late this year.

We're up at 427,000 words on pages now, and 319,000 words in comments too! And 1,988,000 in blogs - 'bout to be two million before this year is over.

Do with those statistics what you will. Maybe some day down the line I will better analyze and differentiate between the particular lapses of time with which said numbers shift and increase, and come to some sort of conclusion over the grand scheme of all things...

Until that day let us just say Hey! The post count's friggin' 10,000.

And that is cool. Hopefully they shall yet accrue and accumulate.

Here's the last milestone.

Don't let anyone else ruin your day. It's your day. Ruin it yourself.

I’m thankful a thought isn’t a life sentence.

...and they all sound good! I'm impressed.

By abundance and sonics.

Barcelona was nice.

Read on...