You know.  Just us pumpkins:

I grew up in the city.  New York City to be exact.  Keeping cool in the city is different than in the country.  In the country, there are plenty of places to cool off and do things.  In the city, those options are limited.  As soon as I was old enough, my parents signed me up for swimming class at a place called the John Jay Pool in Manhattan.  I also went to camp for the summer and swam for half the day there.  For a 10 year old athletics nut like myself at the time, half the day doing gymnastics and half the day in the pool was just about as close to ideal as you could get.

I always take these kinds of photos because they remind me of my time as a kid, keeping cool in the city:

A couple of years ago I discovered this wonderful thing called bubble tea.  Somehow drinks have long fascinated me.  I mean it is an odd fascination, but when I hear of a new one, I really need to try it.  I don’t really go in necessarily for anything really exotic food wise.  My friends have eaten all kinds of weird things.  I’ve eaten sushi, goat, alligator and escargot.  Not exactly a list of the craziest things in the world.

Ah yes, the bubble tea.  I’ve long thought that bubble tea was sort of a perfect mix.  I think the tapioca pearls would fit perfectly into a frappacino or something.  A little umami surprise at the bottom of the cup.  I heard that in Japan the coffee drinks have tapioca pearls in them.  That is a fantastic idea.

It is Friday today, which means I don’t eat my regular meal.  Four days a week, I eat high protein, bells and whistles, but Fridays I change it up.  Nothing too crazy, but I got a banh mi, some spring rolls and a bubble tea.  The place I get it at is the class hole in the wall.  There are misspellings on the wall.  The place only takes cash and there is simply a sign outside with a drawing of a sandwich on it.  That’s it.  I said “bubble tea” and he said “what kind?” and I said “strawberry,” assuming some strawberry flavored tea was coming my way.  Instead he took out a blender, put in some strawberries, pressed blend and presto:

Heaven, thy name be bubble tea.

When the world ends, isn’t it going to look like this?:

But I happen to love this:

It looks good now.  I hate the expression “lipstick on a pig” because no one deserves to be called a pig.  I prefer to say I gave the green prison a little makeover: