Day: April 6, 2024

SoCS — Choices

Fandango9 Comments

For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill has asked us to use the word “express” in our posts.

As most of you who read my blog know, I suffer from a condition known as male pattern baldness. By around 2010, my rapidly thinning hair reached the point where I decided to throw in the towel and shave my head. At first, I tried using my Gillette Mach 3 razor that I used to shave my neck beneath my beard. But that was a bloody mess, literally.

Then, used my beard trimmer and have been using that now for years to shave my head. But lately, I’ve seen a lot of ads popping up on Google for the Freebird Electric Head Hair Shaver, as shown in the photo below.

Hmm. How did Google know that I was wondering about an electric head hair shaver? I was not researching head shavers for bald men. Did one of you rat me out to Google? Go on, tell me? Did ya?

But I digress. I went to the Freebird website and it said that they were having a 60% off sale and they’d throw in some extra doodads if I signed up with them. But, while shipping would be free, it would take 3 to 7 business days to receive my shaver.

Then I went to Amazon, which also sells the same device, and, because I’m a Prime member, shipping would also be free and it would be shipped overnight, so I’d have it the next day. But the price on Amazon was $20 more than what the price on the Freebird site, including the discount, would be.

I decided to buy the shaver from Freebird directly, rather than through Amazon for two reasons. (1) It was $20 cheaper, and (2) Amazon has become such a behemoth that I am trying to minimize what I buy through Amazon if I can get the product directly from the manufacturer.

What I sacrificed by not buying from Amazon was overnight, express delivery.

Anyway, on April 3rd I placed my order with Freebird. On April 4th I received confirmation from Freebird that it was ready to be shipped. On April 5th I got a confirmation from DHL Express that they had received the package in their warehouse. Today, I received confirmation that the item was in transit, having been loaded onto the truck in Avenel, NJ.

Wait? Loaded onto the truck in New Jersey? Not on to a plane? So it’s being trucked from New Jersey to California and not flown? And now the estimated date of delivery is April 13th, ten days after I placed the order.

Say what you will about Amazon, but had I purchased the shaver from them on the 3rd, it would have had it expressed to me the next day. Now I’m having to wait almost another week before my shaver will be delivered.

I’ve been spoiled by Amazon!

Weekend Writing Prompt — AI Answers Unequivocally

Fandango3 Comments

When I was working, I often had to write position papers, requests for proposals, and RFP responses. They required footnotes or endnotes designated by superscripts within the body of the documents. Thinking about the word “superscripts” today, I wondered if asterisks, apostrophes, and quotation marks might also be considered to be superscript.

I decided to ask ChatGPT, an AI engine, if those items are superscripts. ChapGPT answered unequivocally, “No. Asterisks, apostrophes, and quotation marks are all regular characters used in writing and are not typically written in superscript form.”

(Exactly 89 words)

Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where the challenge is “superscript” in exactly 89 words.

A2Z Challenge — The Letter F

Fandango39 Comments

I am unofficially participating in this year’s A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is girlfriends.

F is for (Mrs.) Fandango

No compendium of my girlfriends would be complete without the story of the best of the lot.

It was a fix-up. A blind date. My brother-in-law played tennis with her father and one day his daughter showed up to watch them play. I got a call from my brother-in-law telling me all about her and he gave me her phone number.

I was reluctant to call her as I was not keen on blind dates, but I had recently broken up with a girl I’d been dating for about six months and I figured I was ready to dip my toe in the water again. So I decided to give it a go.

I spoke with the fix-up girl on the phone a couple of times and thought she sounded nice and seemed to have a good head on her shoulders. And, most important, she laughed at my jokes. So I arranged to pick her up at her apartment. It was one of those buildings where you’d go to the front desk and they’d call and let the person know that there was someone in the lobby to see them.

I was told to take a seat and that she would be coming to the lobby shortly. A few minutes later, the elevator doors opened, I looked up, and I saw a vision. She looked like an Indian princess — or, as we’d say in the politically correct 21st century, a Native American princess — and I was smitten.

It took her a while to warm up to me, but I persisted and eventually convinced her to move in with me a year after our blind date and marry a year after that.

It was truly love at first sight, at least on my part. That was in 1976 and we’ve been together ever since.

Previous 2024 A2Z posts: A B C D E

FOWC with Fandango — Security

Fandango19 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “security.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.