an invasion??

 I knew they were prolific in north eastern Indiana but I didn't realize that they had spread to the west coast.  I'm talking about the white and orange striped barrels that proliferate along Indiana highways.

My west coast brother and his wife have just completed a driving trip through Oregon, and knowing my spouse's and my feelings about orange and white barrels (or their little brother cones), they sent us a series of pictures and a video of many, many barrels along their way. Except for the mountains in the distance it looked just like home.

There's not a lot of road work going on here during the weather we're currently having -snow, ice, freezing rain, all that fun stuff - but, on a couple of drives lately my spouse and I have seen the barrels lined up on the shoulders on both sides of the interstates and scattered sporadically along smaller streets around town.  They are poised, ready to spring into position in all of the places that will make my drives more difficult, just as soon as things warm up a little.  Or even sooner if a water main breaks.

One day last summer, when leaving downtown to head home, I discovered that all three of my possible routes home were closed for road construction.  I did eventually find a roundabout way home but I could sense those barrels snickering at me the whole time. 

I know I'm not alone in these feelings.  I had proof one day last fall when I passed a beautiful very professional looking sign posted on the side of a busy street.  It said END ROAD CONSTRUCTION.  I'm pretty sure it was a protest sign. Thank you to the brave soul who put it up,

a great invention....

 Through the centuries there have been many great inventions and many of them have improved home comforts.  Central heating and air conditioning come to mind.  Running water, hot and cold, is a biggie. Not to mention, electric irons (not that I iron much but it's nice to know it's available), washers and dryers, dishwashers, coffee makers and so on.  

But one of the best, as far as I'm concerned, is the electric blanket.  This wonderful device, if turned on a half hour before you crawl, slide or flop into bed, depending on your nature, will assure you a toasty warm welcome.  Our electric blanket has dual controls so my spouse and I can adjust our sides to suit ourselves.  This is the same basic design that all of the electric blankest I have ever owned have shared.  

But now I'm beginning to wonder.  Is anyone working on an AI controlled electric blanket that senses your body's warmth needs and adjusts accordingly, up and down, all through the night?  What a nice thought.

Now, of course, as so often happens when I write these blogs, I feel compelled to do a little research.  Guess what.  AI controlled electric blankets do exist, almost.  You can buy such a blanket made by Sunbeam for $99. That's just one brand that I found.  These blankets, more accurately called Smart blankets or Wi-Fi blankets respond to voice commands.  This isn't really AI in my opinion.  I want a blanket that senses my warmth needs minute by minute, all night long without any verbal or other input from me.  That would be a real AI blanket.  

Someone out there is probably working on this right now.  Let me know when you discover who it is. 

Awesome...

 I experienced an awesome musical performance this morning, and I don't use the word awesome lightly.  This took place at First Presbyterian Church.  Not too surprising that it would happen on a Sunday morning since it was in church.  The entire worship service was a performance of "La Nativite du Seigneur" (The Birth of the Savior) by Olivier Messiaen, a French composer who lived from 1908 to 1992. He was an accomplished organist by the age of 11.   

Our grand Aeolian-Skinner organ has never sounded better and our newly hired Director of Music Ministries Colin Andrews has certainly assured everyone that he was an excellent choice for the position. 

This was a multi-media presentation with slides of appropriate art work, passages of scripture and descriptions of the nine movements.  It was all beautiful but I particularly enjoyed the fourth movement "The Word" and the sixth movement "The Angels."

A word that caught my attention in one of the explanations was 'fingurations.'  It may have been a typo but I wrote it down to follow up on later.  I have just finished Googling the word and have found an admittedly AI answer.  It was labeled as such. It said it is not a recognized English word but is probably a blend of finger and configuration describing complex musical finger patterns.  I'm pretty sure our organist was using some complex finger patterns, as well as fancy foot work, so in this context the word makes sense.

 Interestingly, we were discussing AI in our Sunday school lesson this morning and one of the things mentioned was the fact that AI (artificial intelligence) never wants to admit it doesn't know so will frequently make up reasonable sounding answers.  These are referred to as 'hallucinations.'  

So now I do not know and may never know if fingurations is a real word, but it is fun to say.  Try it.  

Too much!!!

 Too much of a good thing, that is.  My spouse and I, in a beginning of the new year urge to organize, spent some time today putting away but also sorting through Christmas decorations.  As you might imagine, since we married each other rather late in life, we each have a magnificent collection of rare and wonderful holiday decorations. However we boldly decided to let go of some of our treasures.  

As a consequence of the time spent sorting today we have one very small bag of trash and five very large containers of things to be donated.  I really hope that the Dove's Nest is ready to accept a generous donation of Christmas decor.  They can store it away and bring it out to sell next fall.  

If between now and then we realize that something we donated was too important to let go we can go to their shop and buy it back from them.  Don't worry wonder spouse, I'm just kidding.  We can always buy new stuff.

One more thing

 Yesterday I blogged about the new century and the fears we faced when the year 2000 came around.

But I realized that right now in 2026 we are facing a whole new, possibly life-changing situation - the rapidly increasing use of AI. 

As far as I know I am not a big user of Artificial Intelligence. I drive a ten year old car which, while very reliable, is not 'smart.' However AI has snuck into my life here and there.  

Most obvious is the AI bird feeder which my son gave us for Christmas.  It takes pictures of birds as they sit eating at the feeder and sends them to my phone.  That much is because it has been programmed to do so. The app had to be installed on our phones. Not AI.  But when I click on the bird picture and am immediately told it's a house finch or a blue jay or a sparrow that's AI.  

There is one problem about AI.  If you're using an AI search engine like ChatGPT it doesn't like to admit it doesn't know an answer so it will make one up.  There's a term for this.  It's called "hallucinations" and means just what you would expect it to mean if someone said a friend of yours was hallucinating.  

As an example of AI hallucination, when our AI bird feeder 'saw' a bird it wasn't sure of it identified it as a Hawaiian sea gull.  We had experienced a very windy night two nights before but I really don't think it blew any birds here from Hawaii.  I did a little further research and learned that Hawaii doesn't have sea gulls - lots of other sea birds but not gulls.

So the moral of this blog is take the information that you get from AI with a grain of salt, sea salt if you have it. 

Happy New Year

Well here we are in 2026.  My west coast brother pointed out to me that we are a quarter of the way through the 21st century.  

Do you remember the year 2000?  My first husband and I had a big New Year's Eve party, lots of family and friends.  While we had great fun there were some underlying uncertainties.  One of my cousins was convinced that the 'second coming' would happen at the stroke of midnight so she and her husband left early.  

The other concern was that our computer systems wouldn't make the leap from the 1900s to 2000.  

Well the world didn't end, the computers functioned correctly and before we knew it we were in the 21st century.  Although that technically didn't happen until 2021.

Now here I am, 25 years later, 25 years older, having lived through many more good days than bad, and just about to celebrate our second anniversary with my wonder spouse.  Life really is full of surprises.

happy who? what?

 My west coast brother texted me today to wish me a Happy Hogmanay aka Happy New Year's Eve.  I guess, since we are a little bit Scots-Irish (or so my mother always told me) we are allowed to celebrate Hogmanay.  

In Scotland, especially in Edinburgh, Hogmanay is celebrated with fireworks and street parties. Sound familiar? Maybe some scenes from Edinburgh will show up on TV later tonight. 

Evidently Hogmanay (which may mean "gala day") began being celebrated in Scotland after John Knox, in an excess of Presbyterian zeal, forbade the celebration of Christmas as being superstitious, linked to Catholicism, ungodly, and leading to excessive feasting.    (I must admit I've done some excessive feasting over the past week.)  

This ban lasted for 400 years.  In 1640 an Act of Parliament actually made celebrations illegal.  You'll be glad to know that Christmas was reinstated as a public holiday in Scotland in 1958.  

As it happens I am Presbyterian and for Christmas this year our church was beautifully decorated with flowers, Christmas trees, lights, red bows, a Nativity set that was brought over from Germany 100 years ago, candles and more.  Our musicians, augmented with members of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, filled the sanctuary with beautiful music.  John Knox is probably spinning in his grave. 

In case you're wondering my wonder spouse and I did celebrate Hogmanay earlier today.  We went out to lunch with another couple and indulged in a bit of excessive feasting.  We went to a Chinese restaurant (covering all the bases). Later this evening my spouse and I will watch the ball drop, probably with fire works and street parties, from the comfort of our bed.

Happy Hogmanay everyone.