Happy thanksgiving everyone. I’m so thankful for the love and wonder we have in our lives. .. and we’re so happy to be here with Max, becky and Violet.
It had snowed a bit last night .. and it was cold and clear
DIane and I got there around 10 to help wiht cooking and cleaning. It was fun to be useful / Mx was in charge oif the turkey
Before dinner most of us (max, becky. Chad, Chris, Autum and Violet ) went for a walk outside.. On the way we foudn this hawk on a tree enjoying her/his thanksgiving dinner
Violet loved getting outsiude
THen it was back to prepping dinner
It was a great meal. Autumn opened it by reading a piece on gratitude by Tigre. a local artist that nearly everyone at the table had worked with. (including me.. I helped them a bit witht eh fear beast out at teh playa in 2022) TIgre died tragically in 2023. .. His connection with this group was very powerful
I’m very thankful for this day. .dfor my family.. and for all of you out there I love. nite all, nite sam
It was a super chill day. .> We began wiht an emergency shopping run for cranberries, etc. (the shops were absolutely crazy busy) . and a search for a turkey roasting pan with a rack. 2 places we tried were sold out.. At last we found one
THen back to teh airbnb. DIane headed over to work with Becky on gettign ready for thanksgiving. I got some work done .. I;m enjoying using ChatGPT to help me write programs ot wrangle large data sets. It’s given me suer powers to create new tpyes of data abnalysuis that would have taken me forever to code by hand
LAter on. I started thining more about ChatGPT and other large-language modells (LLMs). I decided to apply it to a project I;d long wanted to do. . I’ve been keepign this blog for 18 years.. and despite sometimes gettign behind, i’ve always kept it current.. I can account for all but 3 days (!) of blogging in 18 years.. thats kinda cool.. no ?
anyway.. i’ve always wanted to explore wahat it would take to print my blog just for a family keepsake.. I’ve tried several wordpress plugins.. and book services.. but 18 years of blogging made the thign to large..
So this afternoon. I sat down tieh ChatGPT and together we wrote a powerful program for converting my blog and all of its dyslexic ramblings and pictures into printable PDFs’ .. It soudns easy.. but trust me it wanst.. By the end of the day my AI pal and I had written a python program that crawled my entie blog using the wordpress API.. and formatted into a series 205 monthly PDFs. THe program then compiles those into 18 yearly PDFS. and finally a complete version of my blog.. pictures iand all (though some of the linked pictures have disappeared over the years 🙁 ). I ran tthe proigram over night..
Want to guess how big that is ? .. its over 41,000 pages (!!!) mostly pictures.. and about 1.6 GB of data.
I/we also wrote a mode that only kept the text of the blog. My goal is to feed that into an LLM like chatgpt.. to hopefully give me soem insight into my own blog stay tuned on that !
Back to the day.. Later in the afternoon. I broke from work and Becky. diane Viloet and I went on a great walk in the Frank Otriz dog park. Violet loves runnignthrough the catus and palyeing wit the bazillion other dogs doign the same thing. I’m always touched here how mcuh people love their dogs. I we loved ours !).. there place has truibutes liek this all over.
Diane came hoime with a really amazing macrmae stand he’d made for becky. Shes sellign soem of her beutiful macreame plant holders ant a holday fair coming up .. The artistry on both the macrame and the stand were incredible. THese pics dont do them justice
TOnight we all cooked together and hung out. >> Shrimp scampi on garbanzo noodles.. and great conversation abotu life, love and making stuff
Its great seeing our kids living and enjoying their lives ! I lvove this family so much !
Max and Becky are workign today (and so am I actuakly).. But diane and I hgot out for a freeat hike on the Boreego trail loop op in the mountains about 20 minutes away. It was a good thing qwe had our spikes.. it was aa beutiful 4.5 miile loop and abotu a third of that was covered with ice ! The snow as really beutiful
on the way hime we stopped off at a grocery store to pick up provisions for the week. One of our buys was a beutiful persimmon.. We took it hoem to try it.. Evidently it wasnt ripe.. it gave us botht he worst coottonmouth I’ve ever had.. It was disgusting.. We need to try again with a ripe one !
TOnight we walked to one of our favorite local eateries. Tune up Cafe.. the site of an old gas station. The family that runs the place is Salvadoran (I think. SO I had the veggie salvadoran plate.. pupusas! so delicious !
Right after dinner we all went shoppinfg for thanksgiving.. FIrst stop was trader joes.. no turkeys.. Then whol foods. We got the last one !!!!!
Back at Max and Beckys plans for thursday dinner got cooked up a little more.
Max showed us how to make mayonaise from their own eggs. I’d never seen it .. it was mostly vegie oil. one egg yolk to several cups of oil and a little lemmon.. then max used an immersion blender.. .. Voila ! it was a miracle to watch (miracle whip ?)
We’ve had a great tiem here in portland. Gabe is such a great host … Noow its time for us to go do the 3rd part of of our stick season tour out of vermont. Around 6:30 we said goodbye to granddig Nova then Gabe drove us to the airport.
The flight to santa fe was uneventful.. long layover in denver which was fun. . The flight took us over soem great scenery
We got in to Santa Fe a little late. Its the cutuest tiny airport.. you basically have to wrangle your own suitcases down the mechanical baggae ramp.
FInding our rental car was fun and quirky too.. The cars were scattered all over a dusty feild .. I think they were displaced because of roadwork. As we drive theorugh the jumble of crazy parked cars, ll of us in the van were asked to use out keys to honk our rental cars horns. It was fun and goofy.. we finaly found our car and heaeded ot Atrisco to meet Max and Becky for our first SOuthwestern meal. >>
Super great to be here with them ! After dinner we got to our airbnb.. and then headed over to tho Max and Beckys house>> Greta to see granddog nova.
I found these cool tintypes that max and becky had.. the one of them is actually an xmas gift from us a coulle of years ago.. a sittign at high dessert alchemy.. THe 2nd one was done by a local guy.. I’m fascinated with the technology
