Am I the only one old enough to have danced a slow dance with my junior high crush to the Johhny Mathis song today’s “title” is based on? Bonus points if you know the actual name of the song.

Well. The big weekend news is HOLY COW!!! The Sooners were 2-2 going into Saturday’s game against #1 ranked Texas. Their two wins were against so-so teams. But when it comes to the Red River Rivalry, there are absolutely NO guarantees on the outcome. Unranked OU managed to pull it out with a field goal with like 2 minutes left in the game to win 27-24. The ‘Horns were stunned. The Sooners went crazy. To start the day, my OSU Cowboys defeated UCF, 42-28. The first half was touch and go and then they came back and turned on the after-burners in the second half. Good day for football, unless you’re a Tulsa fan. Sadly, the Hurricanes fell to Navy.

In writing news, I actually accomplished quite a bit last week. Thanks to a wonderful author friend and her Zoom room “Writers Cafe”, I got focused and did some fairly serious writing. I’ll go hang out there again this afternoon, and every other weekday that I can. There’s not much visiting, there’s no cross chatter, just a place to “gather,” find your groove and be accountable for your goals. In some ways, it reminds me of the old days on Twitter when we used to do #1K1HR. Someone would set a start time, with the hash tag–which stands for a thousand words in one hour. The goal was to focus and write a word spring for an hour. You’d “sign on” and at the end of the hour, you’d report your word count. It was quite effective for me. The Writers Cafe is much the same, except we can actually see each other if we want to be seen. No promises, but I’m hoping to have ARIEL’S D*MN BOOK released by the end of the year. It’s a goal. I’m at about 56.5K words. That’s a big jump. I’m feeling optimistic.

I finished off my marathon relisten of Darynda Jones’s Charley Davidson series. It was fun and was a terrific place to hide for awhile. Now I’m relistening to her Sunshince Vicram trilogy. It’s fun too, but with no supernatural stuff. That’s okay. There’s humor, suspense, and a hot hero. The first book is A BAD DAY FOR SUNSHINE. Sunshine has returned to her hometown, a resort/vacation spot in the mountains of New Mexico. A former detective in Santa Fe, she’s now the newly elected sheriff of Del Sol. Thing is, she didn’t actually file and run for the office. 😏Fun times.

I’m trying to learn more about AI and graphics and how to use new tools for things like advertising. I spent a very long and frustrating Saturday monring with Copilot (Microsofts AI chatbot) trying to create images for a video with voice over and captions. It wasn’t an actual video, but a slide show. I posted it on my FB and X feeds. It was far from perfect but hey! I did it. I know people are all bent out of shape about AI but it’s just another tool as far as I’m concerned. Would I use it to write a book? Oh hell no! But for creating images and character profiles? I don’t see how it is much different from me doing something in Paint or another graphics program. Yes, I’d love to be rich and famous and able to hire first class artists to do all my advertising graphics, design and maintain my website, and all that jazz. I’m not. I live on a fixed income from SSA. I’ve sold 4 books on the ‘Zon this month. That’s a whole $8.86 cents. Y’all do the math. Okay. Now I’m depressed. Moving on.

Actually, that pretty much sums up my week and weekend and last week. We didn’t do anything exciting. It’s still hot during the day though it does cool off at night. I haven’t cooked much because…hot. I’m tired of Summer food. I want Fall good that’s warm and gooey and comforting. Maybe this time next week. The weather gurus keep making promises. What about y’all? How’s your weather? Anybody do anything fun and/or exciting? How’d your teams do? Who’s reading a good book? Who’s writing one?