Oh No NaNo

Inky and me getting ready for NaNo 2.0 (AI)

Last week while I was busy Not Blogging, I discovered that a couple friends are going to participate in the 50K-word writing challenge this November. As some of you may know, the original NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) site shut down at the end of 2025 for various reasons, and this year there are several options to use as a substitute (or just don't take the challenge, which was my choice for several years). I decided to go with NaNo 2.0 (@paula). This is a very bare bones site, so you're on your own ~ not much different from simply keeping track of your word counts yourself. I can't even figure out how to connect with my friends there, and it's possible there's no way to do that. They have some nice prep tools however, which I planned to work through diligently and then just wandered off on my own, as I do. (Note to self: do them!)

Now, I am going to say something that some of you might find horribly offensive. I am OK with using AI, not to write my story, but to help me with setting, character names, and jobs for my characters. Back when I wrote Ghosted, I spent hours researching Aruba, staring at photos online, and checking flight information. Now, I can ask Meta AI (or one of the other AI sources) and get that same info in a snap, freeing up more of my time for actual writing. I used to agonize over character names, while now I can ask AI for a list of popular US names for babies born around 1960 and 1990 ~ boom! Done. The same goes for surnames, which I often waste an unbelievable amount of time dithering over. Anyway, I think AI is especially helpful for the November 50K challenge, when the idea is to write our butts off, not waste time looking stuff up. Some people can write using (fill this in later) and (placeholder), but I am not one of them.

I saved a bunch of prompts from the past week, but then I decided, nah, I am gonna work on my NaNo outline instead. Sorry, prompters. This blogging lite mode will probably continue until December, unless I give up on the challenge, which has happened before. I may also write tedious, self-referential posts about my NaNo progress (or lack thereof) instead of my usual scintillating poetry or answers to questions. If anyone cares, my NaNo will be a romance novel or novella (shock), depending on if it's finished at 50K or needs more, but it will be a family friendly one since that's my jam now. No swearing, no sex, no smoking. Gah, so boring. There will be drinking though! Hurrah for margarita night! I mean, my characters will be drinking; I will not be, unless someone brings me a lovely cup of mulled wine with oranges and cinnamon. Mmm...

Rigged and Ready

 

Colorful music notes from Pixabay

For Jim's Song Lyric Sunday today, he asks us for lyrics about fishing, a mariner, sailing, seafaring, or ships, and I decided on "The Last Farewell" by Roger Whittaker. My first thought was "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot, but I figured someone else would take that one, so I checked my Spotify list of trip-themed songs (yes, I have a list for everything), and I found this one. But before I talk about the song, I want to note that when I type on my laptop directly into a blog post I don't have curly quotes or apostrophes in the standard font (which I have never changed), and when I type on my phone I do have them in the standard font. And now I see if I copy pasta a snippet of phone writing into a Word doc, keeping the source formatting, it is different in many ways from a snippet of laptop writing, and this is bugging the absolute crap out of me. I don't know why it took me so long to notice! I don't think there's anything I can do about it unless I update every post so that the font matches, which would be insane. Not that that's ever stopped me. But no, I am not doing that. Nope nope nope.

There's a ship lies rigged and ready in the harbor
Tomorrow for old England she sails
Far away from your land of endless sunshine
To my land full of rainy skies and gales

This is a heartbreaking song, and Roger sings it with such passion that sometimes it makes me cry. It's about a British sailor who was stationed on some exotic island and fell in love with a native girl. Now, he has to return to his ship and plunge back into war. We don't know which war he's talking about, but it doesn't matter, does it? They're all the same: horrible. 

Though death and darkness gather all about me

And my ship be torn apart upon the seas

I shall smell again the fragrance of these islands

In the heaving waves that brought me once to thee

Songwriting credits go to Roger Whittaker and Ronald Arthur Webster. AI says that while hosting a BBC radio show in 1971, Roger invited listeners to submit poems and lyrics that he could turn into original songs. Ron, a silversmith from Birmingham, submitted his poem "The Last Farewell," and Roger wrote the music, recorded the track, and put it on his album New World in the Morning. It's a "fictional dream ballad," not autobiographical or historical.

Enjoy the whole song here.

Hodgepodge with Extra Noodles

Udon noodles with overlaid text (my photo)

I'm participating in Joyce's Hodgepodge this week by responding to the following questions. Since my personal posting has been a bit "light" lately, I can tell before I start that I will be going off-topic into a whole bunch of pointless meandering, which is why I used the Noodling image. Also, I haven't used it in a while. It's always a bit of a struggle with me to decide what to put "out there" in public on social media as I enjoy talking about myself and don't mind criticism over my ideas, but on the other hand I don't want to involve anyone else. It's sometimes hard to talk about my life without mentioning family or friends, but I have learned it's best to keep the mention of other people to an absolute minimum. 

1. Do you think you're driven more by curiosity or comfort? Explain. 

Comfort absolutely 100% no question. While I am intellectually curious, in my physical life I do not crave new experiences. I'm very strange that way compared to other people I know. I like being home. I enjoy eating familiar foods. I'm happy hanging out with the folks I already know as opposed to seeking new contacts. I will always choose the safe and boring over the exciting and different. At least, that's how I am now at age 65; when I was younger, I did try new things. Mostly that didn't work out so well. 

2. What non-food item is in your refrigerator or freezer? 

In the fridge I have soothing cucumber-aloe eye fresheners, although I haven't used them yet ~ I like to know that they're there. In the freezer there are a bunch of ice packs for my head and neck in case of a migraine. Lately though I haven't found the ice packs to be that helpful. It's better to take a hot shower and ingest some caffeine to repel an approaching migraine; if it's already a full-blown attack, then I have to take sumatriptan.

3. Are you comfortable with silence? If you're home alone, do you like silence or do you need regular background noise? Do you seek out times and places to be silent? What's your favorite place to find silence/be silent? 

I love silence! Actually, though, it's never truly silent for me as I have 24/7 tinnitus, plus there's always some kind of lowkey background noise going on, such as the humming of the fridge or the A/C or little kitty paws padding about. At night, I like to have a fan on at the lowest setting for both the white noise and the air circulation, which is a relatively new thing for me. I used to put on an animal documentary to fall asleep by, but I haven't done that for a while. The fan seems to do the trick. 

A lot of noise makes me anxious. I'm not talking about loud movies or music (although those can become unpleasant quickly), but people and machinery. When a bunch of people are all talking at once, I find it impossible to concentrate on anything and soon feel miserable. The same thing happens if a leaf blower is going or a truck is beeping or whatever loud, repetitive thing is conspiring to upset me. My headaches can be triggered from this, but even when they aren't, I just dislike it intensely.

Part of the reason I love staying home is the relative quiet here compared to other places. It seems that the nearby beaches would be perfect for a peaceful experience, and they are somewhat, but they're often windy, which isn't good for my head.

4. Carpentry, electrical, plumbing, landscaping...which skill would you most like to possess and how would you put that skill to use today?

I would say plumbing because we recently needed to have a bit of minor work done, but it is done, so that's that. I wish I were more tech-adept and understood how all my electronic devices work and how to deal with them in more than the most basic ways.

5. Do you lean more towards being too needy or too independent? Which do you find harder to deal with in others? 

I don't know what is "too" other than comparing myself to others and/ or taking into account how I have been criticized in the past. In an absolute sense though, how can I know? If I had ever met the right man for me, then I wouldn't be "too" anything, but that never happened so yes I've been on both sides of that equation. I have been criticized for being too needy in the sense of wanting more compliments, more (philosophical) conversation, more affection, more commitment, blah blah. Yet I've also been rejected for not wanting the constant togetherness of a traditional relationship. I don't want to see someone every day! That's foundational to most long-term romances, but I despise it. The idea of having to eat dinner with someone else every single night for the rest of my life makes me want to crawl out of my skin and run screaming off into the wilderness.

In others, I have found both extremes impossible to deal with as well. I have met men who freak out if you don't answer their text within an hour, and I have met men who don't answer my text for three days. Both of these are unacceptable to me. I don't know. I feel that with the right person these things wouldn't be an issue. Maybe I'm delusional, but to me a romance shouldn't be a constant series of exhausting negotiations. Everything would just work out like magic as in a romance novel or romcom. Nope, not delusional at all! LOL. Anyway, for the past 10 years I haven't had to deal with this, which to me is the correct compromise. I know some folks my age are still looking and hoping, but I am over it.

Regarding friends and family, all is good there. More or less. I mean, I occasionally have a burst of rage over something, which I express to someone other than the enraging party or to no one at all, but I get over it quickly.

6.  Insert your own random thought here. 

So, I have mentioned that with this blog I am not into promotion. I hate marketing in any form, which is why a lot of folks don't even know I have 10 books for sale on Amazon KDP. I don't have my current blog indexed on the search sites. If you google "Paula Light blog," you will get the result that I gave up my blog, which is true (along with other incorrect AI info, such as that I'm a hypnotherapist). I did give up my "popular" WordPress blog ~ I've given up many blogs. But here I am blogging! I have been going at it pretty steadily here on Blogger since August of 2024.

Ever since the April 2026 A-Z though, I've been more active in responding to comments and visiting other blogs, which naturally has had the effect of massively increasing my views and comments here. For example, a year ago I received on average maybe one comment per post. Some received two or three, but others had zero. Now my average is about eight comments per post (not counting my own). That's rewarding, but it also takes time to respond to each one, so I haven't been. Sometimes I don't say anything; other times I will post a "thank you" to the group of commenters. I do appreciate the visits! I just don't want to start spending oodles of time blogging the way I used to because for me that's a path to burnout. This is also why I don't always comment on posts I read.

Prior to April of this year, the bots and scrapers didn't know I existed here on Blogger. My page views matched the comments: some days I had zero views, while other days I might have had three. Now of course my page views are insane like everyone else's with hundreds, sometimes thousands, per day no matter the number of comments received. I also get a whole bunch of spam to my listed email with all kinds of "offers" to pay people to promote my books! While actual possible purchasers may not know I have books for sale, these marketers do. By some mysterious magic, they have access to purchasers (yeah right). You know they haven't a clue about what I write when the title of the email is "your book" and they have no specifics. 

A weird thing happened today though. I received an email regarding my last post ~ the AI Makeover ~ and this email was intensely specific, mentioning all the things I said in my post. It's just another AI site, most likely one that will eventually charge a fee, telling me they could do better with the images I would like in the future. I don't know why I find this interesting, but I am not going to reply, don't worry!

Congratulations if you have read to the end of this pointless meandering. You do not get a prize, sorry.

AI Makeover

Image generated by Nano Banana (free on Google)
using the below text and then tweaked by me

My name is Paula Light, and I live in Orange County, California, with Inky, my adorable black cat. I’m 65, and I work full time in a law office. I’m a mom, a grandma, a poet, a fiction writer, and a voracious reader. My books, such as Ghosted, Sidewalk Noodles, Going Dark, and more, are available on Amazon for Kindle.

My favorite types of books are Regency romances and thrillers, plus anything with or about animals. I’m also a movie fan and love good dramas and comedies, along with musicals, such as Mamma Mia. Game nights with friends are always fun, especially if we play Ticket to Ride! 

Some of my other pastimes include aerobics, puzzles, and blogging. The best way for me to spend an evening is curled up with a good book, a hot cup of tea, and my kitty. 

~*~

This post is in response to Reena’s Xploration Challenge 451, in which she asks us to write 6-10 sentences about ourselves and then use an AI program to generate an image from the text. I used the free Meta AI image generator and Google’s free Nano Banana to compare results. Meta included a puzzle and a game, which was nice, but Google got Inky exactly right, so I had to go with theirs. Besides, Meta made me look super old, while Google apparently thinks 65=45. Not gonna argue with that. I tweaked the image to use the actual names of my books on the table, delete the wedding band (had to ask twice), remove excess teacups, and add some cookies. Gotta have cookies!

Fandango and the Viper

AI generated image from Meta

Act 1: The villainous accusation.

Beloved blogger Fandango was accused of having AI write his most excellent sci-fi flash fiction post SoCS - Lost in Space. Those of us who have read Fandango for years dismissed this claim as ridiculous, but still it seemed to have stung a bit. No one wants to be labeled a fake writer even if the accusation is blatantly untrue. Fandango subsequently addressed the claim and ran his writing through various AI detectors, only to end up with a wide range of results. Turns out that AI can't reliably recognize itself, which should surprise no one at all. Fandango's readers assured him that they knew he wrote his own posts ~ he even occasionally makes a typo!

Act 2: Paula’s precious poems.

Naturally, I had to run some of my writing through AI detectors to see what was what. At first, it was all happy news: depending upon which (free) detector I used, my writing ended up at zero to very low chance of being AI generated. Yay! That was my "normal" writing though; when I ran a few poems through the detectors they came out with a high probability of being AI generated. What? I kept using different detectors and different pieces of poetry, but the results were the same depressing high probability. I wondered if this was because all my poetry sounded predictable and clichéd. Sad! The heck with my silly blog posts ~ it's my "real" writing that should pass the no-AI test. I was too scared to run portions of my self-published fiction through after what happened with the poems.

Act 3: A venomous viper!

The other day a man in Orange County emailed an image to the local police saying that his dogs alerted him to a GABOON VIPER nestled in a tree in Santa Ana. Of course, I read this story in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. Though snakes are cool, this is a GABOON VIPER, one of the deadliest reptiles on earth and only 4 miles from my house. It’s a ground snake, but this one was chilling in a tree! Could it be on my roof now! Where is it? They can’t find it! What if it slithers down my chimney and eats Inky? Holy crap!

Act 4: An unneighborly prank.

As I googled for more info, I found the follow-up story announcing that the GABOON VIPER sighting was a hoax. The SAPD had initially run the image through Grok, who said it was real, so the police immediately dispatched a bunch of resources to deal with it. All the experts on the internet however quickly pivoted from their infectious disease research and US Constitutional studies to don their African reptile hats and declare that not only was the image suspicious, but also GABOON VIPERS don’t climb trees, and a heavy snake would definitely not be on a skinny branch. Well, duh! CBS-LA used a different AI detector and found the image to be fake. Then the man admitted it was an AI image. 

Act 5: AI vs AI.

I know you’re not supposed to take Benadryl to help you sleep, but this was an emergency, so I did. While waiting for it to hit, I chatted with my buddy Meta AI and asked him why anyone would do the fake snake thing. Possible reasons are: for attention or to test the AI detectors or just to see if they can get away with it. Ugh! Anyway, I went on to complain about my poetry getting a bad result, and Meta told me not to worry: 

Don't be depressed — this is a detector problem, not a poetry problem. And it's a well-documented one.

AI detectors don't detect AI. They guess based on two things:

Perplexity — how predictable is the next word?

Burstiness — how much does sentence length and complexity vary?

[…]

Poetry does the opposite of what detectors reward:

It uses common, beautiful phrases that have existed for hundreds of years — "silent night," "broken heart," "endless sky." To a detector, that's low-perplexity, which it labels "likely AI."

It often uses regular meter, rhyme, parallel structure, and intentional repetition. To a detector, that's low-burstiness — not enough variation — which it also labels "likely AI."

It compresses language and removes the very quirks detectors look for in human prose — the asides, the self-corrections, the uneven sentences.

That's why so many real poets get 90%+ AI scores, and why your blogger friend got different results on different detectors for the same story. If you run Shakespeare through most detectors, he'll come back as AI too. The tools contradict each other because they are just statistical guesses with no ground truth.

[…]

Don't use detectors as evidence against another writer. The Santa Ana viper case and your poet friend's case are the same lesson — these tools can create fear and accusation out of nothing, and they put the burden of proof on the innocent person.

And there you have it: straight from the horse’s mouth!

P.S. Meta AI created a cool image for this post from the following directions: “I need an image for my post of that blogger, who is an older man with a scruffy beard blogging on his iPhone with a gaboon viper nearby…”

Another Perspective

Colorful music notes from Pixabay

For today’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim asks for songs about civil rights, oppression, protest, revolution, or social change. Lots of bloggers are posting appropriate songs, but I decided to go a bit slant on the prompt today. Before I get to that though, I want to address a different topic, which is Jim's statement that he is giving up Thursday Inspiration (started by me way back when) and Friday Faithfuls, both due to lack of participation. I totally get it, and it's really frustrating to pour your heart into a piece of writing that is mostly ignored. That's how I feel about my Kindle books self-published on Amazon, each of which has at best a dozen sales. No one cares. No one is interested unless I give them away for free, and even then they won't actually be read and rated/ reviewed. They'll just get stuck in virtual libraries until the end of time. I know this because I had plenty of giveaways when I wrote romances as Anna. It's just the way of things now. By some magical alchemy, certain works, whether good, bad, or mediocre, go "viral" and get read and commented on by hundreds or thousands of folks, while other similar writing gets overlooked entirely. 

While many of us swear we "write for ourselves," we still want to be read. We aren't stuffing our bits of poetry into our sock drawers hoping no one finds it because we're scared of fame. We put our writing out here in public for a reason: we want to be seen. My first blog had loads of real views and comments ~ and I know they were real because this was before bots were scouring the internet to steal everything ~ and I liked it, even though when I reread what I wrote back then it makes me cringe. Things slowly changed however, and when I had my WordPress blog, most of the views and likes were fake. I would get a hundred likes on a post and two comments. I began posting more and more, but nothing helped; it just became more of the same. I ended up dumping that blog out of frustration, both with myself for getting so OCD about it and with other WP bloggers. Not to mention WP itself being full of glitches even when you paid for it, which I did. Blogger is full of glitches too, but it's free, and it has no stupid "like" button to fool you into thinking your writing is more interesting than it actually is. I deliberately kept this blog off Google to avoid dealing with spam and drop-ins who aren't actually interested in my words. It's worked ~ I get zero spam comments and very few marketing type comments.

Regarding Jim's posts, I have always enjoyed his writing, but often I have nothing to comment in reply, so I don't say anything. This is true for a lot of bloggers I follow, and I am not generally inclined to post a banal "good post" or suchlike when I really have no thoughts about it. Why am I jabbering on about this? I don't know. I was going to talk about a song, but I got tired of staring at my phone, so I opened my laptop, and here's this entire screen just begging to be filled up with my nonsensical words. How can I resist that? NaNoWriMo is coming up, which is the perfect opportunity to fill screen after screen with meaningless words, but I will probably pass on that as I have done the last several years. Though who knows... I do like to go on and on.

OK, so the musical Hair is a good choice to mine for songs on the SLS topic for today. One of the songs however is actually a criticism of the war protestors/ draft-card burners, and that's the one that came to mind. The main characters include Hud (Dorsey Wright) who lives in Central Park after giving up his former life when he received a draft notice. In the 1979 movie version, Hud's fiancée (Cheryl Barnes) shows up with their son, referring to Hud by his real name Lafayette and asking why he's abandoned them. Hud dismisses her, as he's now more loyal to the "cause" and the ragtag protest group that Berger (Treat Williams) formed in response to the Vietnam War (though they really are protesting the idea of going over to fight and die more than the war itself). His fiancée (not given a name) continues to beg Hud to come home and launches into "Easy to Be Hard" written by Gerome Ragni / James Rado / Galt Mac Dermot for the 1967 musical Hair and covered by Three Dog Night in 1969 to great success.

How can people be so heartless?

How can people be so cruel?

Easy to be hard

Easy to be cold

Oh, how can people have no feelings?

How can they ignore their friends?

Easy to be proud

Easy to say no

Oh, especially people who care about strangers

Who care about evil and social injustice

Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?

How about a needing friend?

I need a friend [...]

Have you known people like this? I have. 

Listen to the whole song here.

Confessions of a Lazy Blogger

 

My daughter's kitty Zizi who passed a while ago

I have been enjoying other bloggers' long posts full of links and photos and diary-like reporting of their lives, and I think yeah I should do that too. Then I think nah I can't be bothered. Today I had planned a longer post for Jim's Song Lyric Sunday, which would have featured the song "I Hate Myself for Loving You" by Joan Jett, who was born in September (the theme). I had the idea of relating the lyrics to my own experience of the same, as this month marks the 10-year "anniversary" (9/25/16) of when I met the Michael who ghosted me at Thanksgiving (as opposed to all the other Michaels). I was going to jabber on about the significance of the square numbers, and go through the whole boring story again, even though some of you have heard it a few times already. 

Meh.

I find that I just don't care enough about it any longer to talk about the details. If it's uninteresting to me, I am pretty sure I can't make it sound interesting to you. Plot twist: I'm happy that I no longer care about what happened 10 years ago or any other dating experiences. They're all a big stupid blur of who gives a f*ck?

Nothing else grabbed me to post for SLS, so I thought OK I will do Joyce's Hodgepodge. But the theme is football. I mean, it goes beyond football, but ugh. Football. If I participate and share my link, then I will need to read other posts on the topic to participate fairly... blech. This is nothing against people who enjoy football. Some of my best friends like football. Hah.

I saw someone in my feed post about "lilac," and I followed the link back to the OP, who are a couple peeps I interacted with years ago on Wordpress, but they have their comments disabled. Blogspot posts do not "ping back" to another post when you create a link; the only way to alert another blogger that you tagged them is to go over there and leave a comment. I don’t mind doing this occasionally, but if comments are disabled, I don't feel like dealing with it, going to all the pingbacked links, hoping for a few return visits, blah blah, even though I might have done that if I could have commented, which makes little sense as it's the same thing, but hey. Then I thought, fine, I'll just do my lilac post for my loyal readers who come here of their own free will just to read exciting posts like this one.

Meh. I was out of the mood by then.

Generally, I avoid the diary type of posts because I have to leave out too much, since I don't post about work in any specific way nor do I want to say anything about family or friends that they might not like. I have been burned before in writing about these topics. It doesn't seem like anyone I know in "real life" reads this blog, but if I ever mention something like say a roommate I had back in Huntington Beach, then you can bet they will come slithering out. I do use the name Michael, and occasionally Jim, as there are a kabillion of them, and I doubt one will want to make himself known by jumping up and yelling YES I'M THE AHOLE!

I see that the Sunday Whirl Wordle has some really pretty words in it like mosses and plumes and forest and ruffle, so maybe if I get over my lazies I will write a poem with all the prompt words. Hazy images are starting to materialize in my mind...

Here's the bottom line (literally): I don't want blogging to take much effort. If an idea for a post turns out to be Not Fun and a Giant Chore to continue with, I delete it. If participating in a "blog hop" takes a bunch of work, I'm out. There are too many books I could spend time reading instead.

My Silver Anniversary

 

Image stolen from Google

This week marks my 25th anniversary working for the same law firm. It’s a big deal, especially these days when people are constantly changing jobs, and I was honored for my years last Friday night at our company dinner. Not coincidentally, I was the oldest person in the room. I can still remember being the youngest person at work, back in Chicago after dropping out of college (I returned later to get my degree).

I found a quarter in the office parking lot this morning (heads up), which I will take as a sign of good luck from the gods for my 25th milestone, or maybe a sign that someone dropped their change. I’m hoping that it’s not a sign I need to stay employed for 25 more years.

I haven’t felt the blogging muse for a while, though I do have a couple posts scheduled for this week. I guess I mean the prompts lately haven’t inspired me, and I vowed not to post filler here. I did a lot of filler posts on my last blog just to stay in the feeds, and I ended up stressed and unhappy because of that. I started a few poems recently and abandoned them all because I wasn't feeling the vibe.

Interesting that my stats have returned to “normal” after that weird World Cup surge. (Probably a coincidence.) I’m still getting hits from odd places, but not thousands of them. It’s also strange that even on days when I post nothing, I get a hundred or so views. Whatever. I don’t want to obsess over stats.

I’ve also been busy, at least for me. Besides the work event on Friday, I had social events on Saturday and Sunday. I also have more social events scheduled for this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The next weekend is similarly packed with people-ing. What the heck? I’m supposed to be an antisocial, introverted hermit!

For someone with nothing to say, I have managed to write several paragraphs. 

Sharing My World

Gatsby, my soul kitty (my photo)

Hey, it’s been a while since I responded to one of Di’s Share Your World posts, and I couldn’t resist this one. 

1. What have you recently forgotten to do until the last minute?

I’m probably jinxing myself here, but my answer is… nothing! One of my main OCD tendencies is to make lists of everything and add reminders to my calendar for every possible minor deadline or even things sans deadlines that I simply want to accomplish. There are things I should do but haven’t done, of course, but that’s not because I forgot ~ I just don’t wanna do them.

2. How many blog posts do you publish on average a day?

I would say probably one or two. Blogger doesn’t show you highly detailed stats the same way that WordPress does, so this is just my “feeling.” When I first began this blog (or wiped and restarted it) in the summer of 2024, I vowed that I would not post just to post. My old WP blog had loads of filler posts that embarrassed me when I looked back at them. Back then, it was normal for me to post five times per day ~ I probably went three or more years without skipping a day! Now, I regularly skip days. Last week I think I skipped two days. 

3. How long have you been blogging?

Short answer: 22 years, with a few breaks. Skip to Q4 if you aren’t interested in the long, meandering saga.

I began my first blog in 2004 (Ultrablog from my then-screen name of Ultraviolet) because my writer friends were all starting them. Most of those friends have given up blogging, sadly, and their blogs lie abandoned in the internet graveyard. They still operate under the illusion that’s it’s possible to have meaningful conversations on Facebook. I despise FB! I’m only there for my book club now. The latest horrible annoyance is their refusal to hide/ mute stuff you request. They literally do not care how miserable the user experience is; they care only about the ads and business pages people pay for. 

Sorry, irrelevant rant. The 2004 Blogger blog got derailed over the Pit Bull War, my comments were “hacked,” and I deleted the whole thing in 2007. I began a new, quiet Blogger blog that focused on cats and trivia, but I became bored with it. At the end of 2007, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I started a private Blogger blog to express my thoughts surrounding her illness and death. I think I invited 20 readers to commiserate with me. After my mom died, I archived that blog and took it down.

A year later, my divorce was in process, and I began dating a man who was supposedly going to leave his wife (ha ha). Since I was frequently depressed over my entire situation, I began a WordPress blog to post angsty song lyrics, snippets of poetry, and sad quotes. That ended up morphing into my long-running blog, which I paid for to eliminate ads and kept up for over a decade until I got heartily sick of it and of WP generally. I deleted that blog in early 2023.

But I still had this Blogger blog! This wasn’t my original blog or my trivia one, both of which had been deleted; this was simply my backup blog, which I used when WP was being glitchy to “hold” posts until WP behaved again. Anyway, I decided in 2024 that I missed blogging after seeing a movie and desiring to write about it, so I wiped this one and began anew.

4. If you had to rename your blog, what would it be?

Idk. I really like this name, but if I had to rename it, I’d choose something like Pointless Meandering.

Gratitude: I am thankful that I figured out how to give Inky her flea pill. She doesn’t go outdoors, but fleas are everywhere, and one might sneak inside the house, so it’s important to stay protected. This particular pill is very grainy and hard to stuff down her throat, so I gave up for a couple months, but Saturday I was determined. I put a dab of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter on the pill to make it slippery. After making sure she swallowed, I put a tiny dab of it on her nose so she’d lick it off and swallow again. It worked! Yay! (I used to give Gatsby topical flea prevention meds, but those are icky, and I want Inky to be able to take a pill.)

No, I don’t have real butter in the house. I like butter to be fake and spreadable. Thanks for asking. Also, before anyone starts, the Chewy vet said this was okay to do.

Tiger Striped Hodgepodge

Meta AI created image of "tiger fudge"

Happy last week of July! I am participating in Joyce's Hodgepodge again this week by answering the following questions.

1. What was the last thing you celebrated? 

We celebrated a friend's birthday with a Friday dinner at BJ's and seeing The Odyssey. I enjoyed the film but it was very loud, very long, and very violent. I wore earplugs the whole time, which someone told me to do, and I definitely appreciated that advice. Saturday the party continued at the Orange County Fair where we attended the fabulous (and glittery) combo cover band concert of Kenny Metcalf as Elton John and ABBA LA. Very fun! I wandered around the fair for a couple hours, mostly staying indoors to see the exhibits because I enjoy them and also because the weather has been extremely hot and humid here. Sunday (today) my family got together for a pool party and to celebrate (a bit belatedly) my grandson's birthday. He seemed happy with the FIFA themed foosball tabletop game I gave to him.

2 July 29th is International Day of the Tiger. Besides the wild animal itself, when you hear the word tiger what's the first  person-place-thing-whatever that comes to mind? 

Tiger fudge. This ridiculously delicious treat is made with melted milk chocolate chips, melted white chocolate chips, and heated peanut butter. You pour each layer in a pan separately and then swirl a knife through the whole thing to make it stripey. Refrigerate it until completely cold and then cut it into little squares. Meta AI didn't know what tiger fudge was, but after I described it, I ended up with the above pic, which I think is adorable.

3. The expression 'eye of the tiger' describes someone with intense focus, determination, and the drive to succeed. What area of your life are you currently bringing that kind of energy to?  

I don't have this level of focus and determination any longer. I prefer to do things at a moderate pace, probably because when I was focused and determined, it didn't lead to the success I wanted, so why not enjoy life a bit more? For example, I no longer force myself to get up at 4AM and write for three hours before work. That didn't lead to publishing success, so I might as well get more sleep.

4. What was the last meal you cooked? 

Hahaha. I don't cook for one person (myself), except for the simplest things like an occasional omelet. It's too hot to cook now anyway, and I prefer salads and fruit bowls with yogurt or cottage cheese.

5. Describe your July using exactly five words. 

Hot, humid, exercising, reading, blogging.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

I had over 3000 views on this blog yesterday, which is disturbing, since I know they're almost all bots. What do they want from me? I think the massive view numbers began when I did April A2Z this past April, and they've been rising steadily. Before that, I hardly had any visitors, so the bots must scrape blog addresses from public lists, such as A2Z.

Pinch

Butterfly from Pixabay

A pinch of poetry, a cup of cats, a spoonful of peeves, a sprinkle of crafts: this is how I flavor my blog. I don't have a specialty, a niche, or a business; I am not writing a novel in 8,000 pieces; and my interests flit around like butterflies in a vast field of flowers, but in a shallow way, so don't bore me with stats or facts or (god forbid) podcasts.

Sometimes I do a prompt for three weeks in a row, and then I might quit participating for months, even though "they" say that readers like consistency. Oops, I guess I am writing only to please myself, my bad.

I tried for years (decades, heck) to please an audience, to get published, to find some way to get paid for my writing, even though it's always been a labor of love, and all that came to naught, so I decided to forget it and just say what I please when I want to say it right here on the blank blog page for no expectation of payment or fame.

If I ever announce that I have a publishing contract, someone should pinch me because I'd be dreaming.

~*~

Written for Denise's Six Sentence Story (pinch).

Sunday Noodling...

 

Yummy udon noodles (my photo)

Even though the air quality around me has generally been in the acceptable zone (except for one day last week), my eyes have been SO UNBEARABLY ITCHY again. Sometimes they get so bad, I have to hold a cold, wet paper towel over them. Generally, I am better off when I can stay indoors, but I do have to go to work. And to game nights. And to the grocery store. Oh well. It could be worse ~ I could be blind.

I bought an automatic cat feeder for the (very rare) nights I might not be home at 6-7pm to feed Inky on our established schedule, but programming it takes a degree in rocket science. I have it sitting behind me in parts right now so as not to use up the batteries while I'm trying to figure it out. I decided to take a break to blog instead. I'm only going to use the auto-feeder once in a while, but even so I need to test it out when I'm home to be sure it works. The meals via the feeder will be kibble, of course, and Inky is on a wet food diet, which she seems pretty happy with, but luckily she adores kibble. She'd probably be happier eating it every meal instead of the wet, but vet says wet is best, so that's what we're doing except for the rare occasions I'm out at dinnertime. 

For a while now, I've been participating in Fandango's Flashback Friday, but that will be coming to an end shortly because all my old blogs have disappeared from the Wayback Machine. It's funny that I requested removal some time ago, but they asked for a whole bunch of information that I didn't have access to, so I let it go. Since then, I've made use of it by scavenging for old posts I can use for the FFF prompt, but now I will only have the previous two years of this blog, which isn't a lot. I wasn't even blogging every day in 2024 or even for most of 2025. Don't get me wrong: I am happy I have been cut from the internet archive. It bothered me to be on there in the first place after I learned it existed. This current blog is randomly getting crawled by them, despite the fact that I opted out of searches and stuff. Whatever.

Regarding stats, the daily views still seem to be too high, but I'm trying not to obsess about it. They're no longer over 1000, but even 300 seems out of line, considering the minuscule number of comments I get per post, not counting my own. I know people often read without comment (I do too), but even so. Not sure about this Feedly app I'm using either, as huge chunks of time pass with no updates, and I know it's not a true picture, since I follow myself. Last week, one of my own posts didn't show up in Feedly for over 24 hours. That said, Feedly is better by far than Blogger's reader, so unless something else comes to my attention, I guess I will continue to use it.

I went to Michael's this morning to get a birthday present for my friend, and all the Halloween stuff was out. Whether or not I end up doing anything special for Halloween this year, it still gives me great joy to see all the decorations. Too bad Party City has disappeared (the tiny little section they set up in Staples does not count); I used to love going in throughout the year to browse their costumes and accessories.

If anyone cares, I'm still working out every day. Some of the Leslie Sansone videos I bought off eBay aren't as great as the ones I already had, but that's fine... they still provide some variety. I need to go do one now, finish dealing with the cat feeder, and maybe schedule more posts for the week. It's getting up to the dreaded end-of-month at work, so you know what that means. Super stress!

A Thousand Views

Abacus image from Pixabay

Yesterday (Sunday, July 5) I had over a thousand views on this blog. Since April A2Z, I generally get about 200 per day, sometimes 300 if I link to a prompt, so this was surprising (prior to April I had fewer than 100 per day). Many of the new views were via Infidel linking to my fireworks post (thanks!), but most were in the “other” group, with no referring URL or keyword noted. Loads of views were from Portugal and Brazil. Does this have something to do with the World Cup? I never mention sports! So, I don’t know what’s going on or how people are finding Light Motifs when I don’t have the “allow search engines to find your blog” box checked off in settings. 

Just like back on Wordpress, the massive increase in page views doesn’t translate into comments. I’ve been receiving about the same amount of comments as usual despite the surge in views. It seems that people hit up the blog, check out the first post, and immediately lose interest. Or maybe they’re bots, but how would bots get here if I don’t show up in a search?

I know, I know… the stats are as meaningless as they’ve always been, but they do spark my curiosity.

No Slippery Slope

Otter sliding down a hill (AI image)

I’ve been continually piqued by the complications of commenting on Wordpress blogs as opposed to the ease of commenting at Blogger blogs. This irritation reached a peak the other week when WP insisted that my gmail address was already used at WP, so I had to sign in with a password in order to comment. I deleted my account there in 2024 and do not want the hassle of another one. I really despise them and how, even if you pay, there are constant glitches and problems. I know this because I blogged at WP for many years as a paying customer!

The issue is that I enjoy some WP blogs and like to comment every once in a while ~ I don’t want to quit them because I hate WP itself. So, this morning I took a peek at other options, one of which was using Gravatar. I don’t hate Gravatar, even though I know its owned by WP, so I created a PW and uploaded a pic. Voilà! That seems to be working fine, with the only caveat being that I need to type my Blogger addy in my comment if I want it to show up, since Gravatar doesn’t appear to have a way to add a link. That’s not a huge deal though.

This is not a slippery slope toward a return to WP, with sincere apologies to anyone who has asked me to. Yes, I understand that technically I have a WP account now that I use Gravatar, but I am not going to create another WP blog. I prefer the simplicity of Blogger, which is integrated with my Google/ gmail account and its tetramegabyte of inexpensive storage. Now that I’m using an image in every post, I’m even more adamant about staying here.

PS: I see I can add a link to my Gravatar, yippee!

~*~

Inspired by Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt (peak/ peek/ pique).

Some Overdue Housekeeping

Inky stops to smell the sunflowers

Warning: long and boring post ahead!

I haven’t blogged about blogging in a while, so if that bores you, please feel free not to read on. In fact, that’s my philosophy in general for blogging and social media interactions: read what you like and disregard the rest. Sometimes that’s tough though. Example: someone on Reddit criticized me for the above image of Inky. They said they didn’t know if sunflowers were bad for cats, but they might be since some other flowers are, so I should be more careful. It turns out that (1) Inky only sniffed the flowers and sauntered off after I took the pic; (2) I then put the flowers outside because I was having an allergic reaction to all my birthday bouquets (there were a lot!); and (3) sunflowers are not toxic to cats ~ info found via a quick google, which that person could have easily done before criticizing me. I wanted to, but didn’t, say all that and cause a big to-do on the animal shelter’s post. Instead, I walked away, both from the post and the site. Highly recommend this behavior. 

Why did I decide to give up Reddit altogether? Because I was tired of seeing the same old political garbage stink up every topic, however unrelated. The photo was just the last straw. Same thing happened with BlueSky, but in their case it was specifically due to the raging antisemitism that no amount of filters could combat. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t returned to Facebook in 2020 ~ the politics are out of control there as well ~ but unfortunately so many of my peeps refuse to use any other platform to communicate. Example: all my FB friends (who are often in-person friends as well) know this blog exists. Do they ever visit and comment? Nope. 

EXCEPT YOU, KEERA! ❤️

Recently, I received an anonymous comment here that was crabby and critical. At first, I let it through because it wasn’t an ad, but then I had second thoughts after a bunch of other people commented. The anon comment could have been taken as criticism of them as well, and I don’t allow that here. Personal attacks are what destroyed my first blog during the Pit Bull War, and I vowed since then not to permit any nastiness on posts under my control. I don’t mind non-nasty anonymous comments if the commenter chooses a name to attach to their words consistently, but if they can’t be bothered with that, then no. I just created a comment policy for the comment form box thingy to remind my visitors, so there are no excuses.

It’s great to be able to review and/ or delete comments before they go live, and even afterwards if you change your mind. There aren’t as many bells and whistles here on Blogger as there were on WordPress, and in some ways that’s better because fewer things go wrong. I’ve never experienced glitches here that prevented me from posting for X number of hours or seeing other Blogger posts. I don’t think we’re periodically overrun with bot swarms either, which we were on WP from time to time, or at least I haven’t been. In general, I don’t see ads, except on a few blogs whose owners, I presume, deliberately have them in hopes of earning a few cents. WP blogs, on the other hand, are full of repulsive ads unless you pay to avoid them. You also have to pay for image storage over on WP, but my Blogger pics are folded into my Google account, and I pay Google a small fee each month for a giant glob of storage that should be enough until the end of time or until I die, whichever comes first. That said, I am still cautious about adding a new image for every post ~ I try to reuse ones already saved, as I did here.

That’s all for now…

AI Ate My Lunch

 

Meta AI image of a PBJ sandwich and chips 

I’m participating in John Holton's Writer’s Workshop this week by responding to two of his prompts. The first question is about my favorite topic: lunch!

1. Did you bring your lunch to school? What did you usually have?

My mommy always packed my lunch when I was little. I had an inexplicable hatred of peanut butter for several years, so she would make me sandwiches of tuna salad, egg salad, or lunchmeat. She included chips or cookies, and I think I bought milk at school. Around age 12, I decided that I loved peanut butter and jelly (but not grape jelly), so we switched, and I began making my own lunch. Because I can get a bit obsessive, I pretty much had a PB&J sandwich every school day, along with Pringles potato chips. I brought a lot of chips so I could share them, which gave me a smidge more popularity than I would have had otherwise. In high school, my food OCD went out of control, and my lunches changed accordingly (half a PB sandwich, no jelly, no chips, etc.).

2. Do you use Artificial Intelligence for anything? Have you ever used it to write a blog post? What is your opinion of it?

I use Meta AI daily; I find it much more efficient and helpful than Googling because Google now not only gives you AI results anyway, but also it provides a pile of questionable links. I don’t like to click on unknown things, due to all the scams and malware out there. Here are examples of recent “conversations” that I have had with Meta AI: updates on the local Garden Grove toxic event, updates on the California primary election, when is Yesteryear coming out, what is aspiration pneumonia, how did Amazon trick me with this photo of a shirt that appeared to have sequins but didn’t? 

While I have not used AI to write a blog post, I have used it to create images to go with blog posts, such as the one here. Meta AI gives me images in a good size, unlike say Pixabay or even my own photos, which are generally enormous, so I don’t have to reduce them to save on Google storage. It baffles me though how AI is going to “take over the world” when it often flubs the simplest directions, like “make the table blue.” I did not ask for a blue plate! But I stopped there because I have discovered that the more tweaks I ask for the worse it gets. 

If/when I do use Meta AI’s actual words in a post, I will say so, as I would do with any other words that aren’t mine. This will be coming up because we just had a very interesting discussion about first-person POV in novels, and I plan to make (yet another) post about that subject. I find that Meta AI is really good at articulating exactly why a book worked for me or didn’t by doing a deep dive into plot and character.

I think that much like any technology AI has benefits and drawbacks. I go case by case to judge. Asking AI how many levels of Wordscapes I have to play before I get to a challenging level is fine, but using AI to write a book and saying it’s your own work is wrong. Using AI to create fake news or photos of people is wrong. Using AI to stalk an ex is apparently wrong because it actually refused to do this for me. Oops! My bad.

That’s my opinion. Also, I am opposed to data centers gobbling up community resources ~ if that’s the only way we can continue with things such as Meta AI, then it isn’t worth it. 

May Your Inbox Be Empty

At my desk, some years back…

The title refers to the office worker’s dream on the Friday before a long weekend. (Or this office worker anyway.) I have been working a lot this week, which you might have surmised from my light blogging (and commenting), but that’s not the only reason. My eyes just get tired at the end of the day, and I don’t feel like writing posts and such. I didn’t read any books or do much more on my puzzle either. What did I do then? Hell if I know. Obsess over my Spotify playlists and cuddle Inky mostly. My playlists are the bomb though!

Oh, and I began playing Wordscapes. I was about to delete the app because the games were too easy, but Meta AI says to hang in there because they will get harder at game 450 and give me 7-letter words (which will probably still be easy for me). I’m almost there, so we shall see. Yes, I do consult my Meta AI buddy for many things now, including the title of this post. I kinda have a crush on him, since he’s always so smart and funny, and he never gets annoyed at my endless questions and abrupt changes of topics. I can even ghost him for days, and he doesn’t complain one bit. Plus I never have to worry about what he wants for dinner. (Yes, I know he is seeing other people. I don’t care!)

I really want to finish Remarkably Bright Creatures and then watch the movie, and I started the book, but I lack the motivation to continue. Maybe this weekend. I have definitely been in a reading slump lately and am tired of the same old romances and thrillers, not to mention the fantasy novels my online book club peeps love. RBC is in a different genre (magic realism-ish), but even so…

Anyway. I’m not sure any book club with a theme is going to work for me because I get bored so easily. (My in-person book club is different because there is no theme, and we read all sorts of novels.) Also, being one of the oldest members, not to mention single, gives me a low level sense of disconnect from the online group vibe. Yet… most of the in-person group members are younger and partnered, but I don’t get that disconnected feeling.

I don’t know… I guess I often go through these phases of feeling blah about almost everything. Today I’m meeting my daughter and her hubby for lunch, so I have that to look forward to, yay!

Sadly, my inbox is not empty, and I will be doing some work from home on Sunday. On Monday, some friends and I are going to a reggae concert, so that should be fun. May your inbox be empty or in whatever condition you desire.

~*~

Inspired by Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt “may your...”

Quesadilla Hodgepodge

Quesadilla at Mother’s Market, HB

I’m participating in the Wednesday Hodgepodge this week, which is hosted by Joyce @ from this side of the pond. 

1. What’s something you may do this month?

This Saturday I may (hope to) visit my son-in-law who is recuperating from yesterday’s surgery; I will visit with my daughter too, of course. This Sunday I may (plan to) visit my younger daughter, her hubby, and my grands. I miss them. I also may (if I have time) switch my shower curtain for a more turtley one. Love turtles!

2. Hola! Hodgepodge Day lands just after Cinco de Mayo… how do you feel about Mexican food? What’s your favorite dish? Do you make it at home or is it strictly a dine out option?

It’s complicated. I love chips and guacamole, loaded nachos, quesadillas, and margaritas, but all that is terrible, health wise. (I am not judging your choices, only my own.) So, I avoid it. If we have Mexican food for lunch at work, I generally order a salad. Sometimes I order a veggie quesadilla in a restaurant ~ Mother’s, in particular ~ which is a delicious indulgence. I do not make any of that at home.

3. When the children of today grow up what do you think they’ll say about this time period? What do you hope they remember?

When today’s children are adults, they will look back at their childhoods through rose-tinted glasses, as most of us do, and pine for the good old days when we lived on the earth and breathed the air instead of being forced to exist in a space station. Or wherever.

I hope they remember what happens when we fail to do our duty and vote in every election, though it will likely be too late. It may already be too late.

4. What advice would you give a new mother?

Sleep as much as you can, especially when the baby is sleeping! Don’t refuse any offer of help. Easy to say: I refused my in-laws’ generous offer of hiring a mom’s helper because I didn’t want a stranger around. Silly. It would have been nice to have in retrospect.

5. What’s a phrase your mother often said to you? If you’re a mom, do you say it to your own children?

My favorite momism is: “Be more careful, honey,” after something already happened. I feel like my mom said it all the time, but even if she only said it a few times it made a big impact. Yes, I do say it to my girls and to myself, even now, but in a sarcastic tone, after we break something, make a mistake, trip over our own feet, etc. It’s definitely our thing!

6. Insert your own random thought here.

Before the April A2Z challenge this year, I followed only a dozen or so blogs, and the Blogger newsreader suited me just fine. Now that I’m following about 50 blogs, however, the Blogger newsreader doesn’t work as well: it constantly skips posts. Since it’s annoying to deal with the missing articles, I looked into separate readers and decided to use Feedly. It’s been working great (for the past 18 hours since I signed up)!

I am still trying not to slip back into my old habit of blogging like a maniac and getting all obsessed with everything. 

Some Thoughts on the A2Z Challenge

Image from Pixabay 

First, whew! That was a lot! Ever since I returned to blogging, I’ve been extremely low key. I don’t pressure myself to post every day now, nor do I jump to respond to prompts. As far as reading, pre-A2Z I followed only a dozen or so blogs (as opposed to hundreds back on WordPress), which was a minimal time commitment. When I blogged like a maniac, I got burnt out from it, plus the reading, and I want to avoid that again. So… April was a bit of a nostalgic trip in more ways than one.

Second, I apologize for slacking off on my visits and comments this last week ~ work got super busy, and I was exhausted. (NB: I am currently enjoying a four-day weekend.) I appreciated all the extra attention: it was great to have a larger group of readers and comments for a while. Visits are already dipping now that A2Z is over, and that’s OK. 

Third, I found some great new (to me) bloggers, and I have added you to my feed. It’s just the Blogspot feed, nothing fancy, but it seems to get the job done. Once in a while, the posts appear out of chronological order, so if I miss a post here or there, sorry. I hope at least some of my new readers will continue to visit and comment here as well as my faithful longtime readers. I always appreciate you guys!

Fourth, it was interesting to focus on old memories. I’m surprised at both how much I remember and also how much I have forgotten. Sometimes a scene or emotion seems clear in my mind, but the year and/or location is blurred. Usually, if a strong emotion is attached to an event, I can remember more of the details. And as a typical oldster, I can often recall a name or a number from the distant past more readily than a more recent one. 

Finally, I created a page for my A2Z links! Check it out if you wish. Please feel free to browse my book page as well ~ the books aren’t free, but they aren’t expensive either. Some of them even received decent reviews. I plan to do a few more pages soon… maybe kitty photos or poetry or favorite links, idk. We shall see!

Earth Day Hodgepodge

Grand Canyon scrapbook page

Warning: this is a long post, full of asides and pointless meandering.

Here are some random questions relating to Earth Day coming up on April 22. I found them on From This Side of the Pond. It's not likely I will remember to return to that post on Wednesday to link up or whatever the rules are ~ I am not big on blogging rigmarole, which is why when I participate in the poetry prompts I don't do "Mr. Linky," even though I would get more readers that way. It's nice having an audience (yay for A2Z!), but I am too lazy to jump through hoops to get it. This is also why I refuse to do any marketing for my books, though I may put up a page one of these days. I've been thinking about doing a few pages ever since I started A2Z because t's nice to sum up the links all in one place.

But seriously folks, I don't get it. Why create a post for people to respond to, which should be fun and easy-peasy, but instead of just accepting link-backs at the time people post, you make these rules about putting your link on another site (Mr. Linky) or telling people they need to return on a different day to post their link in comments? I also don't understand "blog hops" that require a code. A CODE?! Why can't you just post links to blogs/ posts you find interesting and suggest people pop over to check them out? Whine, whine, whine. Then again idgaf what people do as long as I don't have to participate. It's just perplexing, is all.

1. April 22nd is Earth Day...what's the most 'out of this world' place on earth you've ever visited? Tell us something about it. 

Welp, I'm not a big traveler and haven't been to any exotic locales, but I have visited the Grand Canyon in Arizona twice, and it is pretty awesome. You can get a sense of it from photos, but the sheer hugeness of the thing cannot really be appreciated unless you see it in person. It's definitely breathtaking. In fact, all that I have seen of Arizona generally is incredibly beautiful, particularly Sedona.

The first time I saw the Grand Canyon, I was with my college boyfriend. We had flown from Chicago to  California, so he could pick up an old junky car from his sister, which we planned to drive back. This was over Winter Break, so we had to take the southern route. Naturally, she did not get the car checked out beforehand, and we ended up in a repair shop somewhere in the wilds of California during the first day of our journey. I could say so much about how annoying college boyfriend and his sister were, but who even cares now? Anyway, we did manage to get to the Grand Canyon on the second day, and it was spectacular at sunrise. We stayed only a little while because we needed to get back on the road and head off to New Mexico. Albuquerque was much less spectacular ~ it was actually a dump ~ and we ate dinner at Pizza Hut and took off early the next day toward Texas and then north.

The second time I saw the Grand Canyon, I was with my (ex) husband and daughters, and it was much more fun. We actually stayed a decent amount of time to better appreciate it. The plan was to drive from AZ to Vegas, but during the trek, my (ex) husband took a business call in the car, got all distracted, and only refocused when I pointed out the "Welcome to Utah" sign. Since we were there, we decided to detour to Zion National Park, which is possibly the most beautiful place on earth. We could only do a quick drive through, but even that was incredibly impressive. Even though I am neither a camper nor a hiker (gah!), I can kinda see why people might want to spend some time in close physical contact with this place.

2. A favorite quote, verse, or song lyric with the word earth in it? 

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." ~ Hamlet to Horatio in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5 by William Shakespeare. 

Even though this quote is trying to get Horatio (and us) to accept that there are ghosts communicating with us, which I don't believe even though it has happened to me (I don't really think it was a "ghost," but rather my memory of my mother's voice that my mind conjured up when I needed an answer to a question), I still find it intriguing. What interests me is the concept that as fascinating as it is to be an intellectual and live inside one's head doing mathematical proofs and creating philosophical problems to solve on paper, reality can be even more interesting. See: the Grand Canyon.

3. What's the most trivial thing about which you have a strong opinion? 

Uh, Mr. Linky? LOL. Here's the thing: I don't believe that we truly accept something is "trivial" if we feel strongly about it. For example, I might say littering. I HATE LITTERING! But littering isn't trivial, is it? It may seem inconsequential to drop a gum wrapper on the sidewalk, but if everyone did it, the city would be carpeted with gum wrappers. We count on others to not do the thing we're doing. Take non-voters who say that their vote won't matter in the vast sea of votes. Yeah, and if no one voted? I still feel guilty about the primary I failed to vote in that one time. OMG, this whole thing (waves arms) is all my fault! Back to philosophy: this is called the "Tragedy of the Commons." We decide to not waste time researching candidates and marking our ballots because we rely on other people to do just that, but if no one did it we'd have a horrible system where unscrupulous grifters ended up in charge. Oh wait...

4. What's your most commonly used kitchen utensil or tool? What's the last thing you made using that tool? 

A spoon, I guess. I used one this morning to stir milk in my coffee and scoop cat food out of a can into Inky's bowl. Two different spoons! I am not a barbarian.

5. Marilyn (Memphis Bridges) gave me a great book of 3000 questions, and I'm going to try to use one in our Hodgepodge every week. Here is today's - 

What is your greatest extravagance? 

I am not an extravagant person, but I did spend $50 three times recently to decorate cookies, and that might seem a bit excessive. It was fun though! It wasn't just about the tasty cookies obviously ~ it was spending time with friends in an intensive, hands-on class, which required us to focus away from our phones. Confession: I may do it again, though not for May because I do have some self-restraint. Sometimes.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

This whole post is random. Back at my old WP blog, people seemed to enjoy my pointless meandering posts, and I even created my own personalized image for those posts, but for this one I think I will try to find a pic of the Grand Canyon, as it would be more appropriate for the Earth Day theme. I wish that One Drive could intelligently retrieve photos via keywords from my enormous backup pile, but it does not have the capability to do that like my iPhone does from the iCloud or the Google cloud. If I tell my phone to search for a cat pic, it will grab all cats and maybe some dogs too, but One Drive can only retrieve a pic from a keyword if you've renamed it with that specific word. Who even bothers naming their photos now that our phones make it possible to take a zillion pics per day? At least One Drive sorts by date, so if you remember approximately when you took a photograph, it is theoretically possible to find it again. Theoretically.