Yesterday was not a PSL day. The first Starbucks I went to was closed for renovation (note: this is the same location as day 2, so they closed pretty recently!). Then my bank wasn’t open yet because i have become a morning person for some reason. Then I waited at the wrong bus stop for a while and was grumpy by the time I got to my bus stop. THEN, to top it all off, the Starbucks near work had a line nearly out the door. I was unwilling to suffer such slings and arrows and decided to punt on PSLs for a day. My apologies.

Today, I have obtained a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino. My impressions are mixed. But before we begin, let me set the stage:

Yesterday, my coworker Zack asked me about the PSL challenge, and expressed interest in joining me. Our schedules did not match up for the afternoon, and I ended up shirking my duties, but promised a rain check for today. So this morning at work, I realized I had not eaten breakfast and was out of trail mix to munch on at my desk, and when Zack arrived we (along with Tim, who claims not to have a web presence) ventured out to get a muffin and a disgusting coffee-like liquid.

The muffin arrived much in advance of my drink. It was delicious! It was called a “blueberry yogurt mumble mumble muffin” and it was really a fantastic muffin. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It perked me up so much that my impressions of the Frapp are going to sound downright cheerful.

And now we come to the meat of our story. The Frappuccino version is actually significantly easier to stomach than my previous entrées into the world of pumpkin spice. For one thing, it’s much colder, even than the iced PSL, which blunts the impact. For another, it tastes a lot like a milkshake. Sugary confections are fine, it seems, when they taste (and feel, texture-wise) like a milkshake. This has to be a merely emotional, nostalgic response. The flavour simply can’t be much different than it was when iced, but something about the blendedness, I guess, makes it feel okay? It evokes childhood, or some shit.

The only problem is that damn sticky artificial flavour on the roof of my mouth. I finally figured out what it’s like, what to compare it to. After you snort a line of something (hi, Mom!), it will, after a while, drip down the back of your throat, with a sort of tangy, nasty bite as it goes. Of course, reminders that you’re high as a kite are of a whole different kind than reminders that you just drank hundreds of calories of overpriced, foul-tasting coffee, so the effect is rather different.