Elevate Your House

Two years ago, Clearwater Beach was hit by Hurricane Helene and suffered severe damage to many homes.  As we walked around the North Beach residential area, we saw the unusual solution you see below.  We talked to a local, and he said that some people opted to have their homes lifted instead of having a total rebuild.  The entire house, including the slab foundation, is raised and a new foundation is built.  How high it's raised depends on a number of factors to keep it safe and is ruled by FEMA and Pinellas County building codes.  

This house-lifting job was being done by JAS Builder, which you can learn more about at the following link.

https://jasbuilder.com

Using AI On An Excel Spreadsheet

I have a spreadsheet with names in column A, street addresses in column B, and city/state/zip in column C.  I needed to know which one(s) had the most characters so I could be sure that the labels I create from them would fit in the space I had.  I've done this before by using some Excel formulas, but then I thought maybe AI could do this for me.  I uploaded the spreadsheet, which has dozens of sheets, and asked ChatGPT, "Using the 'Summer 2026' tab, find the longest strings in columns A, B, or C."  In a few seconds, I had my answer, as you can see below, which was 34 characters.  Slick!

https://chatgpt.com

Garlic Butter Shrimp Pasta

This recipe takes less than thirty minutes and delivers the buttery and garlicy taste you would expect from its title.  All the messy details are at the link below, but the short story is you cook the pasta, cook the shrimp, make the sauce, add the shrimp, and add the pasta.  "Easy, quick, and delicious: my three favorite dinner adjectives."

https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a51270/garlic-butter-shrimp-pasta-recipe

Elemenopillows

We met Karen Larkin at the Columbus, Ohio, airport while waiting for our flight to Florida.  As we talked, I found out that she is the owner of a pillow cover business called Elemenopillows.  She came up with the name long ago when her son asked her, “What is an Elemeno?"  I'm sure you remember learning your ABC's by singing them, and like everyone, we smash together the l, m, n, o, and p together, and it comes out "elemeno p".  She decided to incorporate that into the shop name, and the rest is history.

Karen said she's sold over a million pillow covers over the years, and you can check out all of her amazing designs at the link below.

https://elemenopillows.com

Point-Of-Sale Advertising

Coco's Crush Bar, located in Clearwater Beach, Florida, is home to its famous Orange Crush cocktail, the drink shown on the right below.  Some smart lawyer figured out they could reach their target audience by supplying the paper coasters you see on the left.  Pure (and pour) genius.

https://cocoscrushbar.com

Doodie Calls

On our recent trip to Clearwater Beach, Florida, we came across another cute name for a porta-potty business, Doodie Calls, as you can see in the picture below.  They are one of Florida’s largest portable sanitation companies and offer standard portable toilets, high-rise units, ADA-accessible units, hand-washing stations, and luxury restroom trailers.  And you have to love their phone number!

https://doodie-calls.com

Using AI To Get A Proper Pronunciation

There are a few street names where it is not obvious how they are pronounced, so I turned to the Google Gemini AI chatbot for help.  I asked, "How is Schuyler pronounced?" and it not only gave me the proper pronunciation "SKY-ler", but also the information you see below on its Dutch origin.

The second street name is Lefevre, which is broken down phonetically as "luh-FEE-ver" in English-speaking countries and "luh-FEHV-(ruh)" in its native French (make sure to roll that "ruh").  

I have a bug about me that wants to know how to properly pronounce words, and AI makes quick work of that.

https://gemini.google.com

Spaghetti

We recently took a cooking class at Dorothy Lane Market from our favorite chef, Mary Cooney.  One recommendation she made was to be selective about the pasta we buy, and she named De Cecco as one of the best available in most supermarkets.  That's all we've been buying since.  The pasta is extruded through bronze plates, creating a rough, chalky, and porous surface, which allows sauces to cling perfectly to the noodle.  They use coarse-grain 100% durum wheat semolina, slow-dry it to preserve the natural sweetness, aroma, and color, and knead it with cold Majella mountain spring water.  We buy the #11 thin spaghetti that ends up expanding to the size of regular spaghetti.

https://www.dececco.com/us_us

Sad Sign

At our golf course, Walnut Grove, the driving range is next to the 18th fairway, and the people practicing have to stop hitting when golfers are coming down that fairway.  The club decided to make signs to remind both the golfers and those practicing, and made sure they were visible by putting them directly in their line of sight.  It didn't take long for an errant tee shot to knock a hole in the sign at the 18th tee.  The ones at the practice tee faired much worse.  The replacement signs are now safely off to the side and (probably) out of harm's way.

https://walnutgrovecc.net

Relative Finder

I have done the genealogy on several family trees, and recently needed to find out how two people were related.  I found Relative Finder (the link below), a free (I love free) website that works with FamilySearch.org, the free (ditto) genealogy website.  I signed on, selected the "Connect" option on the left-hand side, then selected the "See the relationship between two deceased people" option.  I entered my FamilySearch ID in the first input box and Robert Jacob Fleckenstein's FamilySearch ID in the second.  The results are shown below, but I did have to perform some cut-and-paste to make it readable.

The relationship of "1st Cousin 1 time removed" takes some explaining.  The "1 time removed" means Robert and I are separated by one generation, with Robert being older. "1st Cousins" would normally mean we share the same grandparents, but since we are a generation apart, that's not possible.  Our common ancestor, Joseph Eggenschwiller, is Robert's Grandfather, but my Great-grandfather. 

 Relative Finder can be found at the link below.

https://www.relativefinder.org

Flag Pole Holder

Some very heavy winds pulled our previous flag pole holder right out of the brick and mortar.  I replaced it with the super-heavy-duty holder shown below, made of 316 marine-grade stainless steel, a high-corrosion-resistant stainless steel alloy commonly used in marine, coastal, chemical, and outdoor environments.  I drilled the two top holes in the mortar with a regular drill.  To drill through the brick, I borrowed a hammer drill and bought a new masonry drill bit.  After a half-hour of effort, I had one hole drilled and the other one started.  I went back to the hardware store and bought a different brand, the one at the second link below, and finished the second hole in about ten seconds.  If I had to do it again, I would drill all four holes into the brick, as it's much stronger.  One more lesson learned.

Flag Pole Holder > https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DTHCFWS9

Hammer Drill Bit > https://www.amazon.com/Diablo-DMARG1100-SPEEDemon-Granite-Carbide/dp/B089KWGSD5

Using AI To Plan A Cruise

We're fans of the Celebrity cruise line and, in particular, their newest Edge-class ships.  However, digging through their website, trying to find a cruise that might meet our date range and other requirements can be time-consuming and frustrating.  So I turned to ChatGPT and requested, "Find all the Celebrity cruises in January through April 2027 that are on Edge-class ships lasting at least seven days and have a stop in Aruba."

ChatGPT's response was:

---

I found only a small number of Edge-class Celebrity cruises between January 1 and April 30, 2027 that are 7 nights or longer and include a call at Oranjestad, Aruba.

The Edge-class fleet consists of:

Celebrity Edge

Celebrity Apex

Celebrity Beyond

Celebrity Ascent

Celebrity Xcel

Matching Cruises

Sail Date         Ship                     Nights Itinerary                      

Jan 4, 2027 Celebrity Ascent 11 Southern Caribbean

Mar 8, 2027 Celebrity Ascent 11 Panama Canal & Southern Caribbean

---

It likely would have taken me an hour to come up with this short list and ChatGPT took a few seconds. 

https://chatgpt.com

Avocado Toast

During a Memorial Day weekend visit, our daughter-in-law, Deborah, made the tasty avocado toast you see below.  She started with a slice of toasted multi-grain bread and topped it with a blend of smashed avocado, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.  She medium-boiled eggs and mashed them with cottage cheese, which went on top of the avocado.  Next came the unexpected pickled onions, and finally, diced tomatoes.

That's some fancy, nutritious breakfast!

Ohio's Physiographic Regions

We stopped at one of Ohio's newly rebuilt Rest Areas along I-70 and spotted the infographic shown below.  It describes Ohio's five physiographic regions (classification of these landforms based on their geological structures and histories), which include the Till Plains that Dayton, Ohio, is part of.   It is characterized by gently rolling hills carved by glaciers 20,000 years ago during the last Ice Age.  

You can read more about all of Ohio's physiographic regions at the link below.

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=286210

Big Green Tractor

We visited Jason Aldean's Kitchen + Bar in the North Shore district in downtown Pittsburgh (or "dahntahn" in Pittsburghese) during a recent trip.  Their signature feature is the green tractor you see below, which is part of the main bar.  Of course, that's a tribute to his 2009 #1 hit song, "Big Green Tractor." 

https://jasonaldeansbar.com/pittsburgh

The Grumpy Gardener

Southern Living magazine is packed with interesting articles, and Gourmet Chef Elaine and I enjoy The Grumpy Gardener the most, penned by the award-winning author, Steve Bender.  He offers up advice on a range of gardening issues, with a bunch of humor thrown in.  He's also the co-host, with Nellah McGough, of Ask Grumpy, one of the top-rated gardening podcasts, which airs twice a week.

You can read more about Steve at the following link and read some of his articles; however, the humor appears mostly reserved for the printed magazine.

https://www.southernliving.com/author/steve-bender

Using AI For Genealogy Research

I do a fair amount of genealogy research, and sometimes I get stuck finding a person's parents, as was the case with George Holmes and Bridget O'Donnell.  Since AI chatbots are trained using a huge amount of data, I decided to try a few different ones, and Grok came back with the most complete answer.  My question and Grok's response are in the screenshot below.  Be careful using AI for genealogy research, as I've found it can generate answers that sound reasonable but are fictitious.

https://grok.com

Asian Sesame With Ginger & Soy

We had lunch at Sky Asian Cuisine in Kettering, Ohio, a few months ago, and I really liked the salad dressing they used.  I researched a bit and found the closest thing I could buy is Ken's Asian Sesame with Ginger & Soy.  Then I bought a bag of broccoli coleslaw and poured some of the dressing on top.  Now that's how you get me to eat my vegetables (and like it!)

https://www.kensfoods.com/products/asian-sesame

Attractive Advertising

This eye-catching display of flowers and plants is brought to you by Highfield Door Sales on Stroop Road in Kettering, Ohio.  I really like the ramp that snakes up to the top of the sign, giving the display a unique look.  And the whole thing is so stunning, you might overlook the gas regulator/meter, which must always remain accessible to utility workers for readings and maintenance.

https://highfielddoorsales.com

Oversized Folding Camping Chair

Some time ago, we pitched our old, beat-up folding chairs and just recently purchased the new ones you see below.  They have a solid steel frame and are equipped with an Oxford cloth cup holder, 6-can side cooler bag, and a 25"×10" rear mesh pocket.  Best of all, they cost only $35 apiece, down $20 from their regular price, but the limited-time offer might expire by the time you get this blog.

Bring on the tailgate parties!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR9MST5R

Fraze Flicks

The Fraze Pavilion in Kettering, Ohio, has added eight movies to its lineup of concerts and events.  Crazy Rich Asians, Grease, Song Sung Blue, F1, Wicked, Black Panther, Minions: The Rise of Gru, and Hocus Pocus are slated for Friday or Saturday evenings from June through October.   The movie will start at sunset, but the party starts several hours before with a live DJ, food trucks,  snacks, and drinks will be available at Ernie’s Concessions.  The cost is $10 per ticket in advance or $15 on the day of the movie.

https://fraze.com/category/concerts-and-events/fraze-flicks

Using AI To Explain Things

 I noticed the "Dead End" sign you see below as we were driving around Pittsburgh. That was common when I was a kid (i.e., a very long time ago), but I can't recall seeing any around our house, only "No Outlet" signs.  So I asked Google's Gemini, "Why are dead-end signs now no outlet signs?"  Its response was "While it might seem like 'Dead End' signs are disappearing, it is actually less of a total replacement and more about a technical distinction in road engineering—though some cities are moving away from the word 'dead' for aesthetic reasons."  It further went on to explain that the technical difference is that a 'Dead End' is used for a single road that terminates, while 'No Outlet' is used at the entrance of a network of streets that has only one way in and out.  Some municipalities have phased out "Dead End" signs because the word "dead" can feel a bit morbid or lower the "prestige" of a neighborhood. You’ll often see newer developments opt for "No Outlet" or "No Through Street" simply because it sounds more modern and less "bleak."  

And now we know.

https://gemini.google.com