Skip to main content

Happy (American) Thanksgiving!!!

Strangely (for a guy), I really like old-fashioned Victorian and Edwardian greeting cards.  Long-time visitors to the GDofS blog might recall that rather odd bit of personal information.  Look what I found online this morning!

A day early, yes, but I've got a few moments to myself for another mug of coffee before pie preparation (pumpkin and raspberry) begins in earnest along with a few other dishes for tomorrow and running the vacuum cleaner around the first floor to assist the Grand Duchess.  Wait!  I'm the one who usually swiffers and vacuums anyway.  You know.  One of those emasculated modern males.  No matter.  It gets the job done when it needs doing, so who cares which one of us wears the pants when it comes to domestic duties?  Not me.

In any case, please allow me to wish all American visitors to The Grand Duchy of Stollen blog, wherever in the world you might find yourselves, a very. . .  Happy Thanksgiving!  May your day tomorrow be filled with family, friends, fun, and delicious food.  We do indeed have a great deal to be thankful for in whatever form our respective lives take, something that is all too easy to forget in the hustle and bustle of the 21st century.

Comments

Anonymous said…
It's all brownie points as we say in England. All those little things you do around the house add up to days out to wargames conventions etc.
Have a happy thanks giving. At least it was started when you were still English. : )
11:47 AM
WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…
Thank you for the good wishes! Ah, but still English in my heart, you know. My maternal grandmother's family left Cornwall for the copper mines of Northern Michigan just over a hundred years ago, and the awareness of that heritage and an affinity for things English was always stressed, to the point that much of English, and indeed, British ways are very comfortable and familiar to me now. Funny how that works.

Best Regards,

Stokes
12:49 PM
Brigadier Dundas said…
I also do the vacuuming here. The amount of "good will" generated makes it worth the effort.
Also English on my father's side. His grand left Liverpool train yards to emigrate to Massachussetts, some 120 years ago; to work on the Boston-Albany line.
Have a great
Thanksgiving!
Don
5:01 PM
Prufrock said…
Another vacuumer and dishwasher here. Certainly helps to make life domestic life easier :) I'm not an American, but that's no excuse not to be thankful occasionally. Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving Stokes and that this time next year you can look back on a new mountain of beautifully painted figures!

Best wishes,
Aaron
7:52 PM
Fitz-Badger said…
A Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Mine won't be filled with family or friends, but there will be plenty of food and fun (and relaxation).
8:14 PM
Pierre le Poilu said…
When I took early retirement, I quickly found out that beaucoup de kudos was to be earned by cooking dinner for when my partner arrived home from work. Fortunately, I also found that I enjoyed cooking.

PS, what is swiffering?
9:24 AM
Old School ACW said…
Happy holiday Stokes.

Greg
3:36 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And We're Off!!!

  Arrrgh!  Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus.  Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown.  More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart.   I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands.  In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands.   As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff.  Depending on ...
5 comments
Read more

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

    A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century.  And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed.   The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area.  Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are.  Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors.  Grrrr.  As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered.  For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...
3 comments
Read more

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text .  I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well.  Now, we're getting somewhere.  I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas,  Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave.  I can't do that." -- Stokes
1 comment
Read more