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 change 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,…
-
-
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…
-
A collection of the random shit I’ve downloaded to my phone over the past few weeks.
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
If you’re a subscriber to this blog, I would like to apologize to you for the insane amount of email notifications you received today. I was reactivating a bunch of old posts that I had archived, and I had no idea that WordPress would treat them like new posts and send you notifications for each and every one. Also, I kinda forget that I actually have a small handful of subscribers here? I usually just feel like I’m shouting into the void with this thing. But anyway, I’m back! This blog started as a book blog, then became a general blog, then moved to a travel blog, and now it’s…
-
After a little time back at our hotel to recover from our Appalachian Trail adventures, we took a short drive to the Monocacy National Battlefield. When we had first been creating our itinerary for this trip and I mentioned this battlefield to my history nerd husband, he was perplexed. He had never heard of this battle, and was surprised that there was one this far north so late in the Civil War. While this battle may not get the fame and attention of others such as Gettysburg and Antietam, it is actually known as “The Battle that Saved Washington, DC.” From the NPS website: In the summer of 1864, the American…
-
On Monday we got up and on the road early, because we needed to complete a particular mission before the heat of the day descended upon us. That mission: to cross off the longest-standing item on my personal bucket list – hike the Appalachian Trail. Now let’s not get too excited yet. The hike was a modest one at best. A total of two miles, half of it on the A.T., and the other along the Shenandoah River. But if you know me, then you know. You know I’m old and fat and out of shape. You know that I have bad knees. You know that I have been battling…
-
After leaving Antietam we went back to our hotel to recover from the heat for a little bit, and then decided to head back out and do some exploring around the area that didn’t involve National Park sites. I had been wandering around Google for things to do in the Frederick, MD area and discovered there was a little covered bridges driving tour. I love a covered bridge, so we plugged the first one into Maps and were off. First up on the tour was the Utica Mills Covered Bridge. It was originally constructed in 1843, but was reconstructed and relocated after the Johnstown Flood washed it away in 1889.…
-
After leaving Gettysburg, we hopped over to Antietam National Battlefield. It was our first time visiting, and we found it to be much more our speed; smaller, quieter, less people-y. We started at the newly-renovated Visitor Center. It’s small but has a nice little store and the usual friendly staff. We got there in time to be a part of an interesting talk with Ranger Olivia not about the battle itself, but about perceptions and interpretations of this bloodiest day. We learned that the six upside-down cannons around the battlefield indicate where a general was killed or mortally wounded, and that there is still some debate over the location of…
