Good afternoon from chilly Pennsylvania.
I’m under a blanket as I write this while my 11-year-old daughter rips around the room on a hoverboard, my dog stares at me because she thinks I’m going to give her some of the chicken I was eating (I’m not. It’s gone.), and my husband rushes around the house cleaning because he is neater than I am.
Where is my 19-year-old son? Sleeping most likely.
At the end of his school career, I told him to take his time figuring out his next step in life, and he has taken that advice very seriously. *wink*
I’m about to make myself a cup of peppermint tea with local raw honey. (Update: The Husband made it for me.). I had to go back to peppermint after I tried an elderberry mixed tea that had so many other ingredients in it that it simply made me sick. One tea that makes me feel gross — small headache and icky stomach gross — is chamomile and it is in every single tea I get lately.
Elderberry blackberry? Yup..chamomile.
Apple Cinnamon Spice? Yup…chamomile.
Even the cold infusion ones add chamomile. What is the obsession with chamomile with these tea companies? Gah! Give me something without chamomile. Thank you very much!
Small, unimportant rant over.
This past week was uneventful and apparently gave me plenty of time to ponder tea concoctions and their overabundance of chamomile.
I worked on the fourth book in the Gladwynn Grant series, finally buckling down when even my own parents started asking me where the book was. To make sure I am on track my mom asked me yesterday, “You’re working on the book, right?” That isn’t exactly how she phrased it but close.
I told her I was. I even participated in a two-hour writing sprint with an author I follow to make sure I got a few hundred words in. I hope to have it out in February.
On Friday, The Boy, Little Miss and I went on a drive to get some more hours in for The Boy’s permit.
One of the main streets to get out into town involves a very challenging intersection where it is difficult to see around cars parked at a local bar and grill. The Boy pulled out, and a car came around the corner very fast, essentially almost out of nowhere, and we were almost t-boned. Miss New Jersey was non-too happy and let us know with a horn and a middle finger.
She, however, was most likely speeding around the corner, like most cars are.
What’s silly is that we always go out that way when there is another street we could go up and then around on to get to the same street. Instead, we all arrive at that intersection, our stomachs in knots and worrying we are going to get hit by a car or one of the many tractor trailers that come blazing around that corner. I don’t know why we haven’t, in the five years we’ve lived here, learned to go up and around, but we haven’t. I, however, am going to start doing that because I don’t relish the idea of being slammed into on the driver’s side by drivers who refuse to slow down.
The rest of our drive to a small town about ten minutes away was uneventful. There is nothing in the town to visit so we simply went there, turned around, and drove home, trying to figure out the speed limit on the stretch of highway right next to our local state police barracks.
My dad tells me it’s 55 unless otherwise marked but I don’t trust our local state police to hold to that old adage and figure they’d tell us it was marked a mile back and we were breaking the law.
One driver decided the speed limit should be more as they passed us while we were going 55 but at least the driver did it in a legal passing zone. It offered yet another learning opportunity by reminding The Boy to let up on the accelerator when someone passes so they can get by whether they are doing it legally or not. No need to create even more of a potential for an accident.
Before I forget, I’ve been mentioning in various blog posts that we had a cat with an injured back paw and were going to be taking her to the vet. Luckily, she started walking again normally right before we were supposed to take her and seems to be doing fine now. It took two weeks for her foot to heal completely.
As for the kitten who was dropped off at our house, or somehow found us, we are keeping her and will be getting he spayed in December. Please pray with me that she doesn’t find a boyfriend in that timeframe and become “in the family way” shall we say. I would prefer not to have a litter of kittens to find a home for before we get her spayed.
She is a crazy cat who likes to climb the glass door in our living room for some odd reason. She also yowls a lot, hides under chairs and tries to grab our feet when we walk by, and annoys the older cats just by breathing and being in the house.
Jumping subjects again but AI — yeah….I am not a fan. Not in the least. This week I found out the top song in Christian music right now is an AI artist.
I became physically ill at that news and at the people defending it by saying God can use anything to get his message across.
People, listen to me. AI is Artificial Intelligence. There is no soul behind it. There is no human who is expressing their worshipful praise to our Heavenly Father.
There is simply a computer mimicking other songs and, to me, mocking what true worship should be.
This is horrific to me, and I will not be listening to AI worship music at anytime. I am so worried that real artists will start to use it too which, again, makes me sick to my stomach.
On the same wavelength, I am so disgusted with indie authors or traditional publishing houses who are using AI created images to portray humans on the covers of books. Stop it. Just please. Not only do these fake models have nothing behind their eyes — no soul, no feeling, nothing — the photos look cheesy as all get out.
I will not pick a book up with a cover like that because who knows if the person really wrote what is inside.
Now, I am not including illustrated books in this rant. My Gladwynn book covers have illustrated art that I put there piece by piece. Many other designers do the same. This doesn’t bother me, even if I am not a huge fan of all the animated/illustrated romance covers out there.
The AI looking faces with their soulless stares creep me out to no end.
And the advertisers using AI models for ads where someone is speaking? Stop that too. I’m so disturbed.
I am also not a fan, in the least, of AI audiobooks and will not buy them. If I see an indie author has offered one of their books for sale as an audiobook, I always listen to see if the voice sounds like a real person. If it doesn’t, I’m out.
All of this AI creation and AI pushing has led me even further into the desire to go old school in my life. My husband and I have a huge collection of CDs and we have a record player/CD player/cassette player/radio that we can use to play those CDs. It’s nice to have the songs on my phone too but sometimes I just want the phone to be put away so I can pretend I’m in the 90s again without the crazy hair-sprayed bangs.
I find myself reaching for old music, old movies, and old books, knowing they were not created with AI. Sure, some of the old music might include auto tune or changes by a computer but at least it started out with a real human.
Old movie makers might have used practical effects to create scenes but, again, those were real humans figuring out how to set it all up to create the look our outcome they wanted. It wasn’t someone being lazy and punching a bunch of information into a computer and waiting to see what it spit out.
I’m worried about AI and what it means to our future and our humanity, as you can clearly see. I’m doing all I can to stay away from AI and use my brain and hope to make my children do the same, especially after I heard this week that developers are trying to create AI friends for children. Oh heck no. It’s hard for my daughter to find friends while being homeschooled but I will send her to public school before I will ever let her have an “AI friend.” That’s like opening up the portal to hell to me.
I’m done with my rant now. Ha!
Now I am going to go read a physical book (even though I do still enjoy my Kindle), sip some peppermint tea with no chamomile, and later watch a movie made before 1960 to help me feel a little more grounded.
What are you going to do to feel more grounded on this fine Saturday afternoon? Or whatever day/afternoon it is when you read this?
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
I also post a link-up on Sundays for weekly updates about what you are reading, watching, doing, listening to, etc.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
