She Loves Me, She Loves Me Knot

Nope, not abandoning G for a woman.

I’m talking about Mother Nature here. She loves me. She loves me not. Ugh.

Like most of the nation right now, we’re dealing with excessive heat. (Though to be fair, it’s pretty normal for us this time of year.) The only quesion is whether MN (Mother Nature, not Minnesota) will decide to play nice with us in the near future.

See, the 4th of July used to be the first day of the monsoon rains. It was consistent for severl years straight, virtually guaranteed. The rain usually started immediately after the holiday fireworks, occasionally just before they wrapped. From then. for at least several more weeks, we’d get rain every afternoon, with a few days of sporadic showers throughout the day. A dust storm would roll through, followed immediately by a downpour that both cleared the dust from the air and reduced the thermometer’s rage by 20 degrees or more.

Unfortunately it’s been a long time since we’ve had those “rain every day” kinds of summers.

Granted, there are advantages. Rain usually means power outages, which wreaks havoc with working from home. (Though between laptop battery power and a hotspot on my phone, I can keep going for a short outage.)

Lower temperatures, though, not to mention the actual rain, would be a Godsend.

While there are no real clouds today, it’s hazy, I assume from dust – except there’s not a lot of wind, which is usually the reason dust is aloft. The weather service says there’s a modest chance of rain this afternoon. Here’s hoping they’re correct.

---

Our youngest son and his wife were over Saturday for lunch. They brought me flowers, which was sweet (not to mention, highly appreciated!)

The kids moved back from Denver due to a change in work status for our son. He’d been with T-Mobile over 20 years, working his way from a grunt on the floor at one of the local stores, to manager, to district manager, to software development after acquiring his degree. A little after Christmas, T-Mobile decided to close their Denver operations, giving him the option of moving to Texas for what could end up being another temporary move, or walking away with a respectable financial parachute. Rather than move to Texas, he took the parachute, especially since they already owned a house not far from where G and I live, one bought before housing prices spiraled out of control. They had things to wrap up there before moving back, reaching Arizona in mid May.

The house had been rented to some of his wife’s family members while son & fam were in Denver. Unfortunately when they got home, they discovered their kitchen tiles were bubbling when stepped on. Water seeped up from the tiles with every step. The leak had been going on for a long time.

Shockingly, insurance is covering everything except repair to the pinhole leak that started it all. However, it means they can’t use the kitchen and have been eating out for the past month and a half. Saturday, I made chicken & dumplings (at my son’s request) with pizza take-out for their littlest one (I had a free coupon, fully expected it) and everybody was happy. I even made a cherry cake, which turned out better than expected. Cherry chip is my son’s favorite, and you can’t get the boxed kind any more. The mom/grandma dupe was decreed better than the original. The kids took home leftovers. (They have a working fridge. Their flooring, stove, and all lower cabinets were destroyed and removed.)

---

AI is getting better all the time. We’ve gone from questionable artwork to mostly-recognizable stuff to now where it does short videos really well. (There are other AI generators that will do significantly longer ones, but I haven’t used them.)

I can, however, upload to YouTube

Fun, huh?

I wouldn’t try to make money from AI, but since we’re actually thinking of launching a travel channel on YouTube, it’s worth it to play with it a bit. G’s been working with a video editor for a while. We have a GoPro knockoff on Stormtrooper, and our cameras will do respectable video recording, so… sure. Why not?