I know that not everyone has been involved with someone who was good with romantic gestures—gifting flowers outside an obligatory holiday or special events (birthday/anniversary/Valentine’s Day), strolls along a beach, whatever. Plus, not everyone would define a romantic gesture in the same way. A man making dinner before a woman arrives home from work or cleaning house when he’s not asked to would rate pretty high with me! My daughter would likely say building a chicken coop to support her dream of raising chickens definitely counts. LOL
For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me about what you would consider a romantic gesture and/or share one you’ve experienced in your life.
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As usual, I had no idea what sort of theme I’d use for today’s puzzle when I opened my favorite stock art site to find a photo for the puzzle. What did I see when I opened the site that wasn’t there the last time I opened their webpage? An invitation to try their AI-picture generating program!
I’m super late to the AI game. Right now, do I really want to learn something new? When I type that, I realize I sound really, really old. I’m not old and cranky and resistant to change, I think. I’m more in the style of my own mother (rest her soul), who embraced Facebook, email, and online games in her seventies. She was the most “down-with-it” woman in her art guild and wrote and distributed their on-line newsletter. When she passed, it died because no one wanted to fiddle with the website.
I can’t be tech-averse. I started writing on old manual typewriters, but very quickly fell in love with electric, and was the first on my block to own a personal computer (a Radio Shack TRS-80, “trash-80”) because I could then deep six the white out! And I could save a file—an entire document that I could come back to any time I wanted? I was in heaven. Let’s not talk about printers—okay, I have to share one story.
I remember writing/assembling/editing a large document that contained the details of our team’s inspection of a unit’s battle readiness. We did this at the post’s data center and printed out a large box of punched cards to carry to the computer and load to get the printed report (it was as thick as a manual). You did not want to load the cards out of order or, heaven forbid, scatter them on the floor, or you had to print the cards all over again. Want revisions of the document? Trash the cards you have, make the changes to the document on the computer, then print the whole box of punch cards again. But that was still so much better than what we’d had before.
Now, we’ve got this AI thing that kids are using to generate their essays for school, writers are using to generate ideas for stories, and some are even using to write their dang books!!! I feel like a luddite—someone opposed to new technologies. That all just feels like cheating. Or laziness. Or… Um, now I’m thinking I should be playing with some online AI program to catch up. Am I missing out on something wonderful? Or are we setting ourselves up to be taken over by an AI monster like the Terminator’s Skynet?
Anyway, I tried the website’s AI photo generator, typing in the first thing that popped into my mind: Spaceship in Candy Land. Today’s puzzle is that photo! Have fun!
For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me whether you’ve tried one of the online AI programs. Tell me the program you used, what you used it for, and how did you like the results?
I’ve been up since about 4:30 AM. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I created a watercolor of a cup of coffee with steam rising from the cup. Looks like a tree trunk. LOL
Anyway, I’m posting this quickly because I have to shower. We’re going Flea Market shopping this morning! One of my favorite things to do! I hope I find some treasures!
For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle to see what I painted, then comment on any plans, big or small, that you have for today! Happy Saturday!
I’m going through a nostalgic phase with my TV viewing habits. I recently rewatched Warehouse 13. I’m currently watching three series that I hop between based on my mood, The Residence (a a fun murder mystery on Netflix), Psych (who doesn’t love Gus and Shawn’s antics?!), and Lost in Space. The latter is a show I watched when it began in the 1960s. It started the year before Star Trek and hooked me on Sci-Fi. I hadn’t rewatched it in all these years but started about a month ago. I’ll be truthful. It doesn’t hold up like the OG Star Trek. It’s hokey, the special effects aren’t very special but bundle it with a hot-as-hell daddy and that theme song/intro, and I’m hooked again. I mean, play this video and tell me it’s not special.
My daughter thinks I’ve lost my mind but had fun working with an AI program to come up with a Lost in Space-style image of me…
Yeah, I would’ve fit right in! Anyway, it’s a sunny Saturday. I have some edits to finish today, and then I’m hitting the pool whether the water is warm enough or not! I hope you all have a wonderful day!
For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle and tell me whether you were ever hooked on a hokey TV show that still gives you the nostalgia-induced warm fuzzies!
Early in the week, my pee suddenly became a bright orange-pink. Bet you haven’t read something like that as an opener on another writer’s blog, right? Anyways, I sent a urine sample via my dd to my general practitioner, and they put me on antibiotics for another UTI. So far, so good. I’m peeing yellow again. For someone who hadn’t had a UTI in years, having two in as many months is a PITA. I’ve read that’s not uncommon after a radical hysterectomy, though, so I’m not overly concerned.
School ended for the kids this past Wednesday! Woot. We celebrated with takeout and a movie. We watched A Minecraft Movie, and I guess we were in the mood for a silly one, because we all laughed ourselves silly. The 16-year-old provided a critique of how well the movie matched the actual game (she’s a gamer, and Minecraft is one she loves). If you like a childish, zany adventure movie, this one’s for you. It’s a one-timer for me, but we bought it because the 11-year-old will be watching it over and over this summer, no doubt. She already knows the songs Jack Black sang.
I’ve been busy trying to get back my stamina to complete the work I have in front of me. Editing has been going well. My personal space needs some work—straightening, cleaning. While my family pitches in, I like things to be kept in a certain order, so I’ve been trying to give myself little tasks every day to set things right.
In early April, I had my Christmas cacti placed outside on my back porch. It gets morning sunshine only, so not too much for indoor plants. Both plants surprised me with another blooming. Not as many as in late fall, but lovely just the same. The red plant buds are very sparse, but the white is giving more blooms. The picture I’m using for today’s puzzle is one of the white cactus. Have fun!
Solve the puzzle, then tell me some random things that are happening to you in your neck of the woods for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!
It’s Saturday! The kids got through their last full week of school before the long break that starts on Thursday. The pool is beginning to clear up. We can see to the bottom of the shallow end! Woot. Not that we’ll be swimming anytime soon, even if we get the pool water clear. We haven’t had hot enough temperatures, sustained over a couple of weeks, to heat the pool. I remember some years when I was already in the pool by April 15th! Not so this year. It’s frustrating. My incision has healed enough. Why won’t Mother Nature cooperate?
We’re supposed to have some thunderstorms starting this evening. Which got me thinking about the goats. They have a small hut that they huddle inside during storms. We have three goats. They are our pasture and fencing mowers. They keep the brush down. Plus, they’re great entertainment. They’ll climb on anything, and they love to smack their horns together. It makes a horrible racket, and we’re sure they’re murdering each other, but it’s just them maintaining their pecking order. Our three geese keep them company in the pasture, too.
And now, I sound like a boring farm lady, in a farm family, but we’re really not. Yes, we keep goats, chickens, and geese. The only food we raise is eggs. We have too many dogs and cats. I can’t imagine living in a town or city again and not being surrounded by forest and animals.
Anyway, I pulled older photos of our goat babies to share. We no longer have that horse, Brandy, but I do love the “goat porn.” So, today’s puzzle image is one of our goats. I hope you enjoy the puzzle.
For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle then tell me about your plans for the weekend—if you have any.Our plans will be lowkey, and we hope we won’t lose power. Maybe I’ll find an old movie to watch. I’m thinking it’s been too long since I watched that old Johnny Depp movie, The Ninth Gate. Maybe I’ll guilt a kid to watch it with me. I’m not too proud to pull the grandma-card. 🙂
Back when egg prices started to rise, we decided to raise our own chickens again. It’s been a couple of years at least now. We have mature hens that are producing eggs, and we decided to raise some more chicks this year to make sure we keep the population going. We have a pen with a shed we outfitted as a chicken coop, so they’re safe when we put them up at night, but they’re free to roam the very roomy pen area during the day. We feed them chicken food and table scraps. We’re lucky we’ve had few predator intrusions. This past week, we lost Barbara, who was sitting on a nest of eggs, to a predator, our first loss in quite a while—and yes, all the birds have names. We were sad about that because we were really looking forward to the chicks she was going to have. She produced smallish blue eggs.
The new chicks are being cared for in the basement of the house, so yes, I can hear them chirping in the distance. We have a box on stilts we built (er, the SIL built) and a warming lamp suspended over it. They are attended to several times a day.
We have a very diverse population of chickens because we love how they look and love the variety of colored eggs we get. We have Easter eggers, barred rocks, white leghorns crossed with black Sussex, Rhode Island reds, black and blue copper marans, sexlinks (weird name, I know), and red leghorns.
When the chickens are laying steadily, we produce more than we can eat, so we gift them to folks at my SIL’s police department, neighbors, my brother across the street. The eggs themselves are so much more flavorful than what you get in the grocery store, and the yolks are a brilliant yellow-orange. And yes, the outlay to set up a coup, purchase the chickens, and feed them is expensive, but my daughter and SIL, along with help from the children, all pitch in to share the workload. Most of the chickens remain in their enclosure, but we have three chickens, The Sandersons (yes, named for the witches in Hocus Pocus) and Raven (she’s all black), who jump the fence and like to hang with us outside on the patio.
To be clear, I have nothing to do with raising the chickens, but I do enjoy the results!
Anyway, the photo for the puzzle isn’t of our chickens—ours are like I said before, more diverse. However, I was thinking about the chickens as I was trying to come up with a topic for today’s puzzle, and the chicks were chirping loudly, so…
For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle and tell me whether you have ever raised chickens or would if you could. I know some folks in the suburbs are getting those mini-coups for their backyards. Let me know if you like the idea of fresh eggs and critters in the yard!
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My daughter was a little irked I hadn’t included pictures of our friendly trio, The Sandersons and Raven. So, here they are hanging out.
