New project for the empty nesters. Vance and I are endeavoring to try out twenty-six new events, restaurants, trails, towns, etc. One for each letter of the alphabet. The only rule is that it has to be something we’ve never done or seen before. We originally planned to do it in alphabetical order, but it’s been surprisingly difficult to figure out A. So we started yesterday with Greek Fest! See yesterday’s post for more.
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What an incredibly beautiful day it has been! Temps in the low 80s, a perfectly blue sky with white fluffy clouds, the quintessential early summer day. And it was a day full of activities for me. I started at the Fulton farmer’s market. It’s been ages since I’ve been to the market, and this seemed like a perfect day to go. Vance had requested strawberries, so strawberries I did obtain, from Ingersoll Farms, who always have delicious produce. I also obtained some Italian, breakfast, and chorizo sausage, and some farm-fresh eggs from Whippoorwill Farm. They always have really good meats and I make sure to grab something whenever I see…
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Vance and I made a trip to Fair Haven Beach State Park on this fine Friday evening. It’s one of our favorite places to go walking and just enjoy the beauty of Lake Ontario. We ventured all the way out to the end of the pier, feeling the warm breeze and listening to the waves crashing. If you’ve been there, you know. Looking out at the end of the pier, it was fascinating to watch the contrast between the lake side and the channel side. This next series of photos I like to call, “Get the Hell Away From My Nest You Vile Humans!” Judging from this osprey’s rapid return…
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When I was a kid, I had many collections. I collected stamps (I actually just recently found my stamp collecting book amid a bunch of old stuff). I collected shells. I collected pretty rocks. I collected foreign currency. As I moved into my teen years I collected posters of Duran Duran for my bedroom walls, poor study habits, and bad attitudes. As an adult I collected postcards through Postcrossing, which I’d like to go back to if it weren’t for the outrageous cost of stamps these days. I also got into quilting so I collected massive amounts of beautiful fabric, which was followed by a yarn addiction disguised as a…
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We’re almost halfway through the year and I’ve plowed through sixty-two books so far. As was the case last year, they’ve mostly been in audio format. I like audiobooks because they leave my hands free for working on crochet projects, and they give me something to listen to in the car. My work commute is less that five minutes, but every minute counts I guess. I started the year finishing up Michael Connelly‘s entire back catalog. I then shifted into a few light-hearted reads, promptly followed by some EL James (don’t judge – Zachary Webber‘s voice makes the Grey series an annual re-listen for me). Then I dove into contemporary…
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Apparently June is the month I decide to dust off this platform, give it a new look, and post some random shit. And then abandon it for another twelve months. But there’s always an outside chance I’ll stick with it. We’ll see. I was inspired to jump in here again because I just despise all social media and I really don’t post anything but memes anymore and I need a place to vent and whine and share news, even though only like one person out there will actually see it (hi Ward). There have been a lot of life changes recently, the biggest being that Griffin has flown the nest,…
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Let me just preface this post by saying that I’m not a fan of AI. Mostly because I spent too much of my formative years watching Terminator movies, but also because I don’t like that the AI is trained with the hard work of others, be it art or books or whatever. Also, I just read an article about how people who use ChatGPT a lot are reducing their brain power, so thanks but no thanks. But with that said, I had an overwhelming urge to do one of those make-yourself-look-like-a-cartoon-character things yesterday, and it quickly spiraled out of control. My image generator of choice? Flexclip.com. And the source image…
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A collection of the random shit I’ve downloaded to my phone over the past few weeks.
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Meet Bailey, or as I call him, Mr. Bailey-boo. We adopted him yesterday. He’s an Australian Cattle Dog mix and he has those deep, soulful eyes that instantly drew me to him. I first met Bailey back in April. I was attending the Romance in CNY con in Utica with an author friend of mine (she’s great, check out her books here) and a local rescue, Rover’s Do Over, had some cute puppers there who were up for adoption. I saw Bailey there and it was love at first sight. I sat my fat butt right down on the floor and gave him some love and wanted to bring him…
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A couple of weekends ago I made a quick trip to the mountains of North Carolina to see my baby brother get married. It was a very small ceremony on the literal top of a mountain. Like, five miles of switchbacks to get to the top, and the last mile was gravel road. My rental car was displeased, but she made it. And here’s a quick dump of some of my other favorite pics from the day…
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It’s National Spelling Bee week, which has me strolling back down memory lane to the five years that Griffin spent demonstrating his orthographic excellence. The Spelling Bee was a big deal in our house during Griffin’s fourth through eighth grade years. He had proven himself to be an excellent speller in third grade, with his teacher providing him with special weekly spelling lists of words taken from the Bee itself. It was rare for him to miss any of these words on his spelling test; we suspected that he had something akin to an eidetic memory at that point. After proving his spelling prowess in third grade, it was time…
