Chateau Laroche

While in Ohio visiting family, I got a chance to see some of the sights. (Assuming all went well with my flight, I'm at home today.) This is not a travel blog, but I'm going to post about my trip anyway. 

I was not the only visitor. My sister-in-law's friend and her 16-year-old daughter were also in town. 

On the 4th of July, Priscilla (blog alias) asked the various local friends about what things she should see while she was in town. The Ohio natives gave her a list, and on that list they all concurred that Loveland Castle was something she should see. 

Priscilla researched via internet what this castle was all about. (Here are some links: Loveland Castle, Wikipedia Page, Chateau Laroche.) She read out loud stories of this Harry Andrews who was declared dead in World War I, and when he finally returned home (and declared alive), his fiancée had married someone else, and he dedicated his life to teaching his Sunday School boys to camp and fish. 

Harry taught the boys the lessons of the knights. The boys said they couldn't be knights without a castle. Harry decided to build them a castle. 

Okay, so Priscilla (and the rest of us) drew some Conclusions about Harry based on the stories of his life. (I will not repeat said conclusions, but we highly doubt the assertions that he turned down fifty marriage proposals.) And we gave the castle some inappropriate nicknames. But Priscilla decided she had to see it. 

Somehow I got invited along on this excursion. My niece Liv decided to join us. Priscilla's daughter was at her skate camp (the reason they were in town), and my sister-in-law ended up with doctors' appointments, so neither were able to join us. 

The castle is outside of Cincinnati. My brother lives outside of Columbus. Those two cities are about 100 miles apart, so the journey took us under two hours. 

We found a guy sitting at a table, and we paid our fee to get in. He directed us to a small room with a video on loop that showed the guy, at that point in his 90s, continuing to build the castle. 

(Not the video, but this shows some of what was in that video. Someone recorded the video, and you can find that here.)

Then we made our exploration. We headed upstairs, a very narrow, very steep staircase. (There was a handrail, which I totally needed.) The whole castle is stunning, but it was a hot, humid day. We were a bit punchy. And our Conclusions were at the forefront. 

In the entry, there was a woman running the giftshop and answering questions. Her father had been a Knight of the Golden Trail (KOGT), and she had been visiting the castle since she was a small child. Priscilla expected that she should also be a knight. Apparently, the knights would not allow female members (except for one exception, now deceased). 

Priscilla had lots of questions. It sounded like the current knights use the place as a sort of clubhouse. Our guide kept trying to go back to the script (she repeated things we had read online before arriving) and told us about the "security" door (with three different ways to open it and a sword at the ready). I got a picture of a different door upstairs. 

The castle is gorgeous. It's amazing how one random guy built this thing mostly from rocks picked up near the river (and from bricks made using milk cartons), even if he was probably a kook and maybe worse? 

We wandered around a bit more, taking in the gardens out back. 

And finally we were ready to leave. Priscilla had questions for the ticket seller outside. Namely, why the woman inside couldn't be a knight? He hemmed and hawed about how women couldn't be knights, and ultimately, neither saw the other's point. (Priscilla was sure he was cursing her out under his breath.) 

The umbrella covers the ticket seller and his table.

The trip was definitely worth the price of admission ($5). It is an amazing structure. But Harry was definitely an odd duck. 

(We met up with my sister-in-law for dinner. We laughed so much about the whole trip. It was a crazy day.)

One more video, this one is a great description of the place: 

Bari Weiss and CBS News

Today I'm getting on an airplane (or I'm on one or I'm arriving home--and not getting stuck overnight in Denver like I did last year), so you might not see me today. (I'll be around tomorrow, or Thursday if... Well, I'm planning on being around Wednesday.) 

So, like last Tuesday, here's another Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. This one is about Bari Weiss being put in charge of CBS News. This happened months ago, but this episode is from when it was new. How well has this aged? Hmmm....

Have you noticed a difference in CBS News? 

Modifications

I'm still in Ohio, visiting family. (I leave tomorrow.) 

We've done a few road trips. We've spent some time just hanging out. And I've done a little crochet...

I'm not quite where I was when I ripped it all out, but I'm getting closer. And it's not nearly as ripply. (For comparison, before...)

So, progress. 

(I should probably mention that sister-in-law doesn't entirely recall the conversation we had a year ago when she described what she wanted me to make her, so I've kind of been released from making this whole thing an oval. Before I leave, we're going to measure this against her, and then I might just square things off to make the whole thing simpler. Or not. We'll see how I proceed from here.)

The Reluctant Sweater: 

• Questionable Quality
• Planning and Research
• And It Begins
• Watching the Increases
• Second Sock Syndrome
• The Wavy Second Side
• Which Way Now?
• Vacation Crochet

The Color Quizzes: What's Red?

When Quizly started showing me the color quizzes, I wondered if they were going to hit all of the colors. It took a while (as they'd show me one and then it'd be a couple weeks before I saw the next one), but it got to the point where yeah, they have a quiz for each color. (I haven't seen all of them as of this writing, but I've seen enough to know that they all exist.) 

We should get through most of them this summer. 

Today: red. 

What's Red?

I got 17 out of 18. Again, some of these I knew via process of elimination, and some of these were lucky guesses. (There were a couple I did actually know.) 

How did you do? Let me know in the comments.

Fourth Annual Meme Collection 13

So, yeah, it's now become a thing.

In 2023 during the summer, I was bored and looking for topics for Thursday 13, and I thought to mine my phone for the various memes I had saved. When summer 2024 came around I realized I had 13 more memes to share. I did it again last year. So, now it's an annual event. 

(Now that I know it's an annual event, I'll be more careful to collect some more. I came up a little short, so the last couple are posters I found in classrooms that I snapped pictures of. Kinda meme-y. I hope you don't mind.) 

1. I think I saw this on Bluesky, and now I can't find the creator to credit. I showed this to the art students in August as I thought it was something they should see. 

2. Same creator as #1. Very good education-type explanation. 

3. Also found on Bluesky. You can find the whole comic here. 

4. Vintage cartoon.

5.

6.

7. I looked at this. And I looked at this. And then I remembered that that white thing is called a buoy. And then I couldn't stop laughing for five minutes. 

8. I love to watch the tracking of everything I order online. I feel this meme so hard. 

9.

10.

11.

12. Found in a 12th grade government class. 

13. Found in a forensic science class. 

Spicing Up Your Posts with GIFs

Sometimes I like to insert a GIF into my blog posts. 

And it's super simple to do. If you've been putting images in your blog posts, you already know how to do this. 

(This is what you get when I have no good ideas on what to write about. If you have any blogging questions, feel free to ask in the comments. If I know how to do it, I'll write a blog post about it.) 

Step one: find a GIF you like. I usually go to Giphy, but there are oodles of sites you can use. You can even make your own (which I don't know how to do, but I'm sure there are instructions somewhere on the internet). 

Step two: get the URL of the GIF. On Giphy you can just click on the one you want to use and click on "Copy Link". (You can also "Download", but that's a way more labor intensive way to do this.) 

Step three: paste that URL into "Insert Image". 

The "Insert Image" is the little picture icon. Click on the arrow to get the drop down menu.

And choose "By URL". You'll get a dialog box where you can paste the URL you copied from the GIF site.

And then you click on "Insert Image". (If there's an error, the GIF won't show up on the screen. Check that you have the URL copied correctly. If everything is correct, then Blogger is being difficult and you'll need to pick a different GIF.) 

Once the image is inserted, you can fix the size: 

That box should pop up with the image, but if it doesn't, click on the image and it should. The circled icon is for sizing. It'll say "Original", but you can make it small, medium, or large. 

Just be careful that it isn't bigger than the size allotted for your blog post. (You can check that by hitting "Preview" in the upper right hand corner. If it's too big, you can go back and use a smaller size.) 

And that is all there is to it. Generally it takes me longer to find the GIF I want to use than it takes to insert it in the post. 

Do you use GIFs in your posts? Do you have a good idea for a topic I can do on blogging this summer? 

AI Chatbots

I am currently out of town visiting my brother and his family. I wrote all my blog posts for the time I'd be away ahead of time. That's been easy for everything except my "current events" day, or the day I scream into the void about how angry I am about the latest outrage. 

So, for today I'm just posting an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. This episode is from May, and it's about AI Chatbots. 

Scary stuff, isn't it? (I'm still around visiting blogs. I'm not out in the wilderness or anything.)