This weekend we joined our friends Ellie and Kelsey and two of their kids at Wild River State Park about an hour from Saint Paul. It was our first time tent camping in years and Piper’s first trip. She was amazingly well-behaved—nervous when we bumped into some horses on the trail, but she never barked.
Chef Griffin has outdone himself once more. The kids have a new cookbook based on a video game that they love: The Official Stardew Valley Cookbook. This isn’t the first recipe that they’ve tried, but it was certainly the most complex. Maggie, sadly, was out this afternoon, so Griffin was the primary cook with Oliver as sous chef. Served in pineapple bowls, this curry looked as spectacular as it tasted!
Griffin participated in a local fencing tournament today which was very exciting to watch. This was a small tournament, so Griffin’s cohort included high school and adult fencers. He was up against some extremely experienced fencers. And he is still a beginner. As always, he entered the fray with a positive attitude and had a lot of fun. His first words at the end were something like “That was fun. I’m glad I did this.” I appreciate that positivity.
Fencing tournaments begin with pools where you have short bouts to five points with each member of the pool. This establishes the seeds for the elimination rounds. Griffin won his first of five bouts in the pool. The other four opponents were far better than he was, though he did manage to score a point against one of the best fencers in the tournament.
To our relief, in the first elimination round, Griffin faced an opponent at his level. In the elimination bouts, you win with 15 points, so they last longer. Griffin took the lead initially, but then his opponent tied it up. They were neck and neck up to 12-12. Then Griffin found a hidden reserve and landed three quick touches to win, 15-12, with barely 5 seconds remaining on the clock.
His next opponent was the #1 seed of the tournament. 😬 Alas, no Hollywood victory. Griffin was soundly defeated, 0-15. To our great surprise, however, his opponent did not manage to win the tournament. Indeed, he was ultimately defeated in the final round by the fencer from Griffin’s pool that he managed to score a point against.
I see at least three things to be proud of here. First, and most importantly, Griffin’s positive attitude and sportsmanship. Second, Griffin’s hard-won victory in an elimination round. Finally, the fact that he managed to score a touch against the tournament champion!
Here are a few pictures of Griffin in action.
As a Father’s Day treat, we attended A Year With Frog and Toad at the Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis. It was a fantastic performance of the Arnold Lobel classic. If I could have only one children’s author with me on my desert island, it would be Lobel.
This week marked Griffin’s first time as an official, paid employee. He worked as a counselor at one of the Lego robotics camps that he used to attend. After a full week, he says he’s “ready to retire.”
Maggie’s graduated today from Cornerstone Montessori Elementary School which she has attended since kindergarten. It was a beautiful ceremony on a perfect day. Next year, she will attend SPA (where Daddy teaches) as a seventh grader. She will be on the same campus with Griffin (entering 10th grade) but most of their classes are in different buildings. We are enormously proud of her!
Our new house came with an ancient “dishwasher.” The quotes are intentional because it was really more of a loud dish rinser that couldn’t handle much. There was a sale. Sarah texted me. I said “DO IT NOW.” Or something like that.
We opted to install it ourselves which turned out to be more of an ordeal than expected. But after discovering that the shutoff valve didn’t actually work (fountains of water!) and replacing a bunch of old hardware, we now have a quiet, modern, dishwasher that seems to hold twice as many dishes as our old one. More importantly, it actually cleans them. I find this more satisfying than I should.
Sarah has been meaning to tackle some of the invasives in our yard, starting with these two sprawling Japanese Barberry bushes. They came out more easily than expected and opened up a bunch of space near the side deck and sun room.
AI art is controversial. Some would say the phrase is an oxymoron. Or it’s more like AI Art Theft. I follow these discussions with interest and think that there is a lot to be concerned about. With that said, I also have a MidJourney account that I’ve been using for the past six months to play with the technology. I mostly use it for role-playing game material, particularly for illustrations of the fictional characters that inhabit the milieu.
While preparing for a birthday game session for Griffin and some of his friends, I needed to whip up a bunch of modern-day characters for the adventure (wherein a mundane plane flight would go horribly awry). Here’s the cast, giving you a sense of what MidJourney can produce these days.
Note that for each image, I gave a very simple prompt. Whiskey Sour’s prompt, for example, was “middle-aged drag queen.” I never specified an art style, so it’s interesting that four of them are photo-realistic while Cindi and Duke are stylized. (Ms. Bankemper’s prompt was “science teacher middle-aged red-head glasses.”)
In a comical turn, on my first attempt at Greg Stamour, I typed in this prompt, “hot surfer dude paramedic.” MidJourney always produces four possibilities for each prompt. You can then choose one, add variations, or modify your prompt. One of the first four pics for Greg was this one:
Note the three pairs of sunglasses! Apparently MidJourney’s algorithm associates copious sunglasses with hot surfer dudes. If you zoom in, you can also see that the logo on his shirt is nonsense squiggles. Text-like artifacts are a common issue with generative AI.
I don’t know how all the ethical considerations will shake out in the coming years, but from a tech-geek standpoint, it is fun technology to play with.
The Faculty Fun Committee organized an afternoon of bowling at Sunray Lanes, not far from our house. Maggie opted out, but the rest of us had a great time. (And Griffin beat Andrew!)
