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As you may or may not remember, back in March I posted a few images of the Peeps that Sarah and I were raising. Unfortunately, we lost that entire group of chicks shortly after that post was made.

With yesterday being Sarah’s birthday, one of her friends got her a Peeps Marshmallow Kit, which gave us all sorts of hopeful ideas about having a new Peep family to call our own. Tonight, we commenced with our Peep generation experiment, but things didn’t go exactly as we had hoped.

We followed the instructions to the letter and took the greatest amount of care possible, but as you can see, we learned the hard way that one who would play God with marshmallow animals does so at great risk. The aftermath of our efforts can hardly be called Peeps. Look at your own peril.

It’s worth noting that the taste of the homemade Peeps isn’t much more pleasing than their appearance; since you have to mix water with the marshmallow powder and only let it set for five minutes, the moisture content is much higher than store-bought Peeps, and the consistency of the marshmallow isn’t nearly as good. It was like someone chewed up a Peep, left it on the counter, and I came by and ate it.

This weekend my buddy Mike and I took a motorcycle safety course down in Bloomington. Mike was registered, but I had to try to get in on standby. Fortunately, one person didn’t show up and I got to stay in the class. We had classroom stuff on Friday night from 6-10 and on Saturday from about 12:30 to 3:30. Saturday and Sunday morning from 8-12 was all skills training on motorcycles provided by the program; they were small bikes (mostly 125cc Suzukis, although there were a couple of 250s, one of which I was able to get ) which helps because they’re light and easy to maneuver, as well as having the obvious benefit of me not having to provide my own bike.

We learned all the basics of how to operate a motorcycle and safety skills like emergency braking and swerving. I passed the written test and the skills test, and as such I only have to take the written test at the license branch to get the motorcycle endorsement on my license. It was only $50 for the class, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to drive a motorcycle. I already knew the vast majority of the stuff we covered, but I hadn’t driven a motorcycle in something like seven years, so it was a nice refresher. Next step: buying my own motorcycle.