The Blog Monster Meets Nessie

 

I worked from home today, and on my morning break Travalon and I went down to the dock. Look what we saw!

You don't usually see one pelican by itself, but it was swimming around just off our dock. When we came out onto the dock, it flew away. Then we saw some blue-winged teals.

In the distance there were some northern shovelers.

Tonight Travalon and I went to the crystal shop on State Street for their customer appreciation party. They had free vegan food (perfect for a Friday night in Lent) and little gift bags that contained a crystal sticker, a couple of small crystals, matches, and a tea light candle. We did buy some more crystals, and Travalon bought a very cool journal, since (like me) he goes through journals pretty quickly.

Last night I tried Dall-E3 to create more artificial intelligence blog monsters. It's now part of Chat-GPT (in French, "Cat, I farted"), and the blog monster it came up with is similar to the ones Canva came up with, blue and cuddly-looking, but even cuter. I have some ethical issues with this, because surely AI stole a real artist's vision for a monster, but I have to say that AI was incredibly consistent. Here is the result of the cue: "Draw me a blog monster."

Then I tried, "Draw me a blog monster saying 'Blog!'"

The monster seems to have lost a tooth, but otherwise it is the same as the first one. I had heard Dall-E3 has more trouble if you give it a more complicated prompt, so we came up with, "Draw me a blog monster playing the bagpipes while sailing on Loch Ness." And this is what we got.

This is actually quite amazing. Still the same monster, although for some reason it has now acquired a nose. It's not actually sailing but rowing; still, that is a small quibble. I like the Loch Ness monster in the background - it looks like the monster is summoning the monster! That is the power of music. Having taken a boat ride on Loch Ness myself, I can confirm that it is this beautiful, with mountains around it. The only thing that's missing (and it would make the picture too busy to add it) is the ruins of Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness, and fair enough, we could be facing the other shore. So all my readers who are too shy to draw their own rendition of the Blog Monster can feel free to send me a prompt to get AI to draw this blog monster in some ridiculous situation. Let's see if we can confuse Dall-E3.

Famous Hat

First World Problems

 

Today was a little better weather than yesterday, so I asked Hardingfele if she wanted to walk at lunch, and she said yes. I went to her office, and she has this plastic mushroom light:

I like my brightly colored mushroom lights, but since they don't glow under blacklight, I'm a bit sad that I didn't choose this beautiful, metallic sheen purple one. Then we saw this mysterious sign in the hallway:

You will be stunned to learn that we did, in fact, look, and - spoiler alert - all we saw was an empty closet. During our walk, I told her that lately I stink, but she was unconcerned. "Cancer makes you stink," I said, and she said, "So does menopause, because you sweat so much." I specifically smell like sauerkraut, and according to Dr. Google that can be caused by eating cabbage. "When was the last time I had cabbage?" I wondered, and then I remembered it was last night. (Or maybe it was bok choy - same dif.) And I only really noticed the smell today. Mystery probably solved.

In the afternoon I stopped by a wood-carving event that our department was doing, since it was right during my break time. I thought maybe ten people would show up, but there were at least three times that many, so they didn't have nearly enough knives. The faculty member said he'd been expecting ten people himself, so the event was almost too successful. I decided not to stay, but the faculty member said at least take a treat. The students had eaten all the cookies, but for whatever reason they barely touched the lemon bars, so I had one... and that was way too much sugar. It gave me a bit of a headache, so maybe that's divine retribution for breaking my Lenten penance... again. After this, I may give up sugar entirely.

A couple of days ago I reached a 3333 day streak on DuoLingo, but it didn't give me an option to download the sticker, and I didn't think to take a screenshot until I'd passed that screen, and then I couldn't get back to it. So I took this lame and heavily edited screenshot.

I saw two days ago that there was going to be a DuoLingo around the world cruise, which didn't surprise me since there is a cruise for everything these days, but on Night Prayer Anna Banana II clued me in that it was an April Fool's joke. I went back on DuoLingo, but the cruise notification was gone, even though the day was not over. Bummer! But now I see they are selling DuoLingo cruise merch. I'm tempted to get a Captain Duo Hawaiian shirt...

I forgot to post this photo from when Jilly Moose and I went to the concert at Grace Episcopal Church a few Saturdays ago.

Isn't it cute? It's a Little Free Library that looks just like Grace Episcopal, right in front of the real church. I know there was a Catholic church in town that had one like this too - maybe St. Bernard's on Atwood, but they may have moved it because of the construction. If I see it, I'll take a photo of it.

Here's a very First World problem: I had about $68 left on that gift card from work, and I was going to donate half to one Bach group and half to another. However, they both only allow you to donate via PayPal, which is linked to my regular credit card, so it got charged. I tried donating to a different local Baroque group, and they too only take PayPal. So then I had to move some money over from my play money to cover these charitable donations. I thought I could buy a stuffed animal I'd been pondering... and then because I've ordered others from that site, it automatically charged my play money credit card. Argh! So I have spent more play money than I meant to just trying to use up the gift card. I did find a cool T-shirt on the site where I got my Third Eye Beanie, and again it was going to charge the last credit card I used, but at least this time I figured out how to get it to charge my gift card. I may donate what's left to yet another local Bach group (we are blessed with three), if they don't use PayPal. So annoying.

Famous Hat

Crazy Weather Day and Shamrock Club at the Fast Irish Session

 

Today was the craziest weather day yet. This morning it felt like 16 F outside according to my phone, but it was going to get up to 65 F, so I wore my "sleeping bag" coat because I hate to be cold. It was also raining pretty hard, and at lunchtime it was still raining a bit, so Seabird and I were going to walk inside the Union when suddenly the rain stopped, the sun came out... and I had forgotten to bring my sunglasses. It also seemed to warm up about 25 F. We went down to the Terrace and saw a loon. By the time I left work, it was so warm that I didn't even have to wear a coat. At home I was trying to watch episodes of Colbert that we had recorded, but they kept getting interrupted by urgent weather bulletins. However, the weather was sunny here - I think the bad thunderstorms and tornadoes were all north of us.

This evening Travalon and I went to Awildan Distillery to listen to the fast Irish session with some people from the Shamrock Club. My buddy was sick, but we had fun conversations with other people from the club. We were all very happy about the results of yesterday's election. (Doesn't it seem odd that a guy who said empathy was the great weakness of Western civilization is now crying about how nobody has any empathy for him? Guess we don't want to be weak. I personally am enjoying the schadenfreude, you loser.) Daithi the Fiddler wasn't there tonight, but the flute player with the Irish name and the curly red hair was there, and she said that she, my Irish teacher, and I should form our own band. I'm down with it! We probably wouldn't play in public, just jam, and that's fine with me. I love jamming.

Famous Hat

Moving to Alaska

 

I just wanted to let everyone know that I am moving to Seward, Alaska this month.

April Fool's! I did put this message in my invitation to Night Prayer tonight, and a couple of people said they fell for it. But what really killed me was the AI summary of my email:

"Famous Hat invites you to a Zoom meeting on April 1st, with the invitation sent out during the night prayer session in Seward, Alaska." No, AI, the night prayer session is not being held in Seward, Alaska - it's being held on Zoom. This thing just isn't ready for prime time.

Today Travalon sent me a photo of the thing the big peace bear was holding under its paw.

It appears to be a little green girl. She has some friends: Red Rabbit and Blue Cat. (Is that you, Frankie?)

This evening Travalon and I saw the election results start to come in, and even though I know there's a "red mirage" because the small precincts report first, and they tend to be more conservative, and even though only 1% of precincts were reporting, I was feeling very disillusioned. Russia is spreading her errors throughout the world, just like Our Lady of Fatima warned us, and these dead-inside billionaire co-presidents are doing Russia's work by dividing us and making us hate each other. Someone I know was recently released from prison, and one can argue whether he was imprisoned unjustly, but at least he knew he might go to prison for what he did, unlike that poor Turkish girl who just wrote an opinion piece in her school paper. (And couldn't they have just sent her back to Turkey instead of sending her to a prison in Louisiana?) Now this guy has been released and was bragging all over social media about how he was invited to the Den of Iniquity where Dear Leader seems to spend most of his time, hobnobbing with priests and defrocked bishops who reject the leadership of Pope Francis. If he wants to do Russia's work for her, that is his decision, and I have to remember to pray for him instead of hating him. Or hating all these people who say, "If you don't like America, then get out!" and go where? Canada that Dear Leader wants to turn into more of our country? Panama that he plans to attack? I did have an idea for somewhere on the far side of the world that I assume Dear Leader has not even heard of, but with my luck, it's on his radar too. I'm one generation too far removed to just walk into Ireland. France is welcoming scientists, but I'm just a low-level number cruncher - would they welcome me? I was in kind of a bad headspace, not helped by the fact that I have misplaced a generous gift card from my neighbor to thank me for taking care of her plants all winter... and then during Night Prayer someone mentioned that the Russian-approved candidate had lost. My faith in humanity is restored! The voters cannot be bought, no matter how much our non-native Co-President tried to buy them. I hope the whole country wakes up before it's too late and we find that we're Russia West.

Famous Hat

Meet Frankie

 

I worked on campus today, and when I got home, Frankie was waiting for me.

When Travalon got home, he put Roy Jr. on Frankie's lap.

Frankie came with that name, but look at the eyes - she's a girl! So I am saying her name is Francesca and we just call her Frankie. She is a weighted stuffy, so she is supposed to help a person relax. I debated between her (she's a cat) and Quinn the Koala, but Travalon said Frankie was more original. A blue cat? She's almost the color of my old rabbit Cashmere.

I forgot to tell this crazy story: I ordered some books from Germany for a professor in December, and in early February it said they were finally going to arrive... and then it said they were lost. I requested replacements but they said we had to request a refund and reorder the books. We got the refund very quickly, I'll say that, but due to the exchange rate it was a lot less than we had originally paid. Then in mid-March the books arrived - was it the old order? the new one? Who can say? The books were all there... and so were three bags of tomato paste.

Good thing these didn't burst and get all over the books! The plot thickens, because this brand is made in Nigeria. What the heck? Did our box of books travel via Nigeria? One of our grad students said that her parents will send her packages from Germany, and sometimes stuff is missing, but weirder, sometimes stuff is added. She got one box with a really ugly necklace in it, and she sent a photo to her mom and said, "Thanks, but this isn't really my style," and her mom was like, "The heck? I didn't put that in there!" So apparently receiving packages from Germany is always an adventure.

Tonight Travalon and I went to Lola's because it was the last day they would have the pelmeni that he got on Mardi Gras that was so tasty. We each got an order of it, and then I did get a drink with gin and pear and lime that tasted like drinking a flower, and I even had a few bites of Travalon's blondie a la mode, so there went my Lenten resolution today. (The only one I hadn't broken yet - not eating sugar.) But oh my goodness, the food there is so good, and today was Motown Monday, so the DJ was playing excellent R&B and soul music. Tomorrow I will get back on the wagon. I wish I'd realized there was a bluegrass jam at the music club - that would have saved us some money and calories. It wasn't mentioned in the club newsletter, but they posted a video of it on social media. Hopefully they have another one sometime soon.

Famous Hat

Lousy with Loons

 

This morning Travalon did not feel at all well, but we did go to Mass, and he made it all the way through. After relaxing at home for a bit, he felt he could go look for birds at Patrick Marsh. Guess what the first thing was we saw when we got there? A loon! And then we saw like five more!

We also saw some ring-necked ducks.

I love their mating dance of stretching their necks waaaaay up.

Then a loon came up right by them, and they flew away. We walked further along and saw two common mergansers who flew away as Travalon was trying to take their photo.

I suggested that we go to the Union Terrace, since on cold, rainy days like today there would be no people out there but possibly lots of loons. We found a free space right in front of the Union, and our good luck just continued from there, because we saw loons, and a cute little horned grebe, as well as tons of mallards.

This loon was close to the shore, so I was talking to it: "Welcome back up north. We're glad you're here! You're a very pretty bird." It appeared to be listening to me. It didn't dive under the water until I stopped talking to it.

It did come back up again.

Finally we went into the Union and warmed up at Peet's with hot drinks and little chicken sandwiches on herb biscuits. We drove through campus to Picnic Point, but we didn't see anything going on there, so we drove around the lake and stopped at Mendota County Park. All we saw there were a handful of mallards, but we did take a short walk along the canal.

On the way to Cherokee Marsh we saw a blond squirrel.

We had one just like this in our neighborhood for years, but it's been a few years since I've seen him (I say that because he appeared to be chasing females) so I assume he either reached his natural lifespan or got picked off by something. Then we drove to the part of Cherokee Marsh where you can see the small, nameless island, and we found a path that goes to a really good spot to see it.

The pelicans were hanging out around the island.

Here's a better view of the pelicans hanging out on the north side of the island.

So it was an excellent birdwatching day, especially if you're loony for loons like we are.

Famous Hat