I’d crossed paths with the above graphic in early December and saved it for this occasion. For them interested in it, it came from THIS website (the above is a link to the image).

I’ve written of my feelings about the Holidays, and Christmas in particular, both in 2019 and 2020.

In general, I have nothing against the celebrations; the lights look nice, and, yes, after a month, the music begins to grate, but it’s also (mostly) nice.

Of course, as an atheist, the underlying reason(s) are of no concern unless forced on me, and since we don’t socialize much, not much is forced on me.

But, I respect that others get something from celebrating. It may be vacuous in its commercialization, but for many, the intent is there, however superficial it may be.

And, did I mention I don’t mind the decorations? Here’s a photo I’ve ‘played’ with and made into a greeting for my annual holiday’s email and for this post:

Yes, that’s a photo of the same tree I used last year for my XMas post. Not the same photo as last year, but rather this year’s version of the tree.

The photo was taken a few weeks ago at the same place as last year; the parking lot of a bank in Herrin. I used the Samsung Note 20 to capture the photo and the Paper Artist app for the treatments. I then used Photoshop to animate the transition from one to the other and add the final text. Hopefully, it won’t cause any seizures in susceptible people.

I considered doing an animation of this photo (a quilt Melisa did for the season) . . .

But since I only did one variation (this time using Topaz Studio), I figure I would just show the two photos.

By the way, I just noticed the quilt is slightly skewed. That’s my fault; I snapped a photo and then used DxO’s ViewPoint to ‘square it’, but I didn’t notice it slanted the bottoms of the branches. The bottoms of the branches on the actual quilt are perfectly horizontal.

She also made another quilt, and I should note the writing is supposed to look like that (apparently snowmen aren’t known for their penmanship) since that’s how it was in the photo she had seen.

I might as well show the other quilt she made for friends of ours . . .

What have I done? Well, I’ve eaten snacks, done a few posts, and … and … eh … I guess that’s it.

Ain’t retirement wonderful?

No, wait! I’ve also captured a few cartoons I can share. Cartoons highlighting my peculiar sense of humor which, thankfully, isn’t all that unique or I wouldn’t have any cartoons to share.

Speaking of podcasts, I’ve converted one of my stories to audio (podcast). I’m not sure about the result, but I’ll put it up in the next few days along with a few others. I’m picking short, medium, and long stories to convert to podcasts no one will listen to. The first one ended up at 45 minutes in length, and I’m reasonably certain that one, maybe two, people will listen to it.

It also turns out that, for fiction, the automatic translation from text to speech isn’t quite as spot-on as it was for general writing. Meaning, if anyone listens to it, it’ll be another reason they won’t want to listen to it.

Yes, I’m attempting humor. Anyway …

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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