My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 325

Speaking of which, I thought it was the book I read yesterday that made the atmosphere a little depressing. Yesterday I read about the volcano plot in Lord of the Rings. After reading, there was some discussion about whether we should feel sad about Gollum's death, but no one seemed to be in the mood to speak. The collective attitude was finally summed up by Berry's words, "Well, I didn't expect that." It seemed that the same was true for several others. Especially Tingting didn't say a word. The situation at that time can be said to be very strange.

OK, now I know why. The reason why they were so quiet was because they secretly planned a surprise for me. Here’s the result (photo attached) – a birthday cake! Yes, they looked it up on their computer and discovered that today is actually my forty-second birthday. Starlight and Tingting must have told several others about this after I chatted with Tingting's mother yesterday.

Let’s talk about something else for now – no, Tingting is not a princess. If she were a princess, there would be thousands of princesses. Apparently the changelings don't have to mate with the queen, but the queen is the mother of most of the workers under her control, or at least that's what Dragonfly said. And whatever the actual situation, cocooning does little to support the existence of family emotional bonds. No one dared to call her "Mom" in front of her. These are the situations Tingting told me. They sound like just the tip of the iceberg. There are many hidden troubled family relationships under the surface. These are sensitive topics that I would never want to touch upon - especially after seeing me jokingly calling After the way she scared the shit out of her when she was "Dragonfly Princess", I will never try it a second time.

Let’s get back to the cake. You should have seen the photo - it looks so cute, right? The delicate yellow, red and blue icing spells out the words "Happy 42nd Mark" in three languages. (Yes, there are three languages. Did you see a circle of stars, rainbows, horseshoes and other patterns on the edge? Those are not random decorations. Those are ancient pony hieroglyphics and the like. . I’m really curious, how should I write it in ancient pony language if I want it to be so sweet?)

Anyway, it's good - the cake is pretty. But I know very well that there are no materials here that can be used to make cakes. So after congratulating the children on the fruits of their labor (it was cake!), recording the feat for posterity (it was cake!), and singing the pony version of Happy Birthday (it was cake!), I still asked them to admit it. The bad truth (not the cake).

My forty-second birthday was celebrated with a birthday cake carved from mashed potatoes.

To be more specific, the ponies first reheated about ten potatoes in the microwave, roasted them thoroughly into a mash, peeled off the skins, and added a lot of salt to try to make them not taste as bad. Disgusting, I molded the mashed potatoes into a cake shape (two layers in total), put it back in the microwave and heated it again, then used magic seal to fill the cracks and also changed the color of the surface to make it look like frosting. look. And, since they had to be thrifty, they recycled the peeled potatoes, added some sliced ​​potatoes, and baked some chips like the ones we had at the party a few weeks ago.

But there is still a bright spot. Between the two layers of cake, they spread a layer of mustard sauce - they found some mustard packets hidden in some corners, the last batch of earth-produced condiments in the habitation module, which they used It has to be clean, just to add a flavor other than disgusting to this so-called cake. Although mustard sauce is not my favorite condiment, at least it tastes much better than ordinary mashed potatoes without anything, so all in all it is a success.

So we ate "cake" and potato chips, played games (but not the antenna tie this time, because Spitfire's last result had to be a perfect record), and discussed our different birthday traditions. As you may have read, ponies have birthday parties just like our children, but they can play what we humans would call child's play, and no one is shy about it. If it's interesting enough (and doesn't create a negative impact in public), they're willing to do it. After all, what's the point in adult life?

(Note: Berry mentioned a big birthday party where everyone got to take turns riding what they described as a baby hippopotamus. My brain refuses to picture that.)

Dragonfly told me that the Hive had never kept track of birthdays, even before the start of the space race, but with the recent prosperity of the Hive, the custom had begun to catch on with her. However, the changelings don't hold any parties; they just simply exchange gifts privately without any publicity, and maybe take a few friends out for a walk and do something interesting together. (Silently note: I must ask if I have the chance in the future, what exactly is this "happy machine" mentioned by Ting Ting. The first time she tried to explain it to me, she was almost like a Marvel fan. People who haven’t seen the first Avengers movie will find the plot in the film equally baffling.)

Fireball says dragons never celebrate their birthdays because they have a condition called "greedy growth." If they get too much stuff at once, their hoarding instincts get out of control, affecting their magic and turning them into, if I understand correctly, Godzilla-like monsters. He did know a dragon who received birthday gifts, but they were usually things he didn't care about.

Who could have guessed that being a winged, fire-breathing lizard would be so awful?

Anyway, Starlight is about to finish baking her second batch of potato chips. Today we plan to eat all the potato cake (because, despite the huge success, we don't want to eat it again tomorrow), munch on potato chips and enjoy a TV rerun marathon. After a few moments of discussion, we decided that Justice Striker was our favorite. (To be honest, even if they can understand the conversation now, Pony and the others like the Patquji family more; but because today is my birthday, they decided to spare me temporarily. I also decided to spare them temporarily, no Put them through the torture of Kauchak or Barney Miller.)

Work will resume tomorrow. We won't be able to finalize the design of the new saddlebags until we have the details of what will and won't be hauled, and the engine may not end up on the road. So without guidance from NASA, the only remaining task we can do is to move the two hydrogen fuel cells in the residential area to the No. 2 rover. We'll start dealing with this matter tomorrow. This means taking up the passenger seat, but I think the remaining space is enough to store our food. But when driving, Fireball had to climb on the roof of the car, Starlight stayed in the car, and the others had to follow the car.

What happens after that? I don't know either. Probably do some habitat maintenance work. Might help Starlight do some more experiments with those weird lava lamp crystals.

When Cao Cao Cao Cao arrived, Xingguang came over with potato chips. You can start watching car crashes, tight jeans, and a redneck cultural feast that explores the edge of racism and is extremely embarrassing.