Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Publishers Weekly has an article on AI audiobooks — books read by computers rather than human actors.

I get that it’s expensive and difficult to create audiobooks, but I can’t imagine books without inflection and careful pauses to draw meaning. The ChickieNob and I are listening to the audiobook of Good Omens right now, and the actor transports you into the story with a unique voice for each character. I can’t imagine AI will ever be able to capture that warmth. At least, not today’s AI.

Do you think you’d enjoy a book read by AI?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Every so often, I think to myself that the Wolvog should speak to a friend of mine who has an interesting job that marries the Wolvog’s two passions of computer science and sound engineering. So I go on Facebook to send a message, and I suddenly remember that my friend is gone. He died in 2015, so not even recently. I should be able to hold this fact in my mind, but I’ve done this several times now.

It’s hard sometimes with people you don’t see every day. Who are only marginally in your present day life, even if they took up a chunk of your memory in a past life. Social media makes everyone feel like they’re still present; just a click away.

And then with Facebook open, mourning the fact that I can’t connect these two wonderful brains together to talk about sound, a friend comments on a blog post and I remember that he too works in the same field. And so a different connection is made; bringing the past into the present.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone marking the day — I hope that you are currently surrounded by good food.

And what goes better with good food than a good book?

A distraction in case you need one today.

Electric Lit has provided your fall reading horoscope, presenting two books that will appeal to each zodiac sign. Mine were pretty spot-on. One I immediately added to my TBR. The other sounded interesting but I need to read a page or two to decide.

I am positive these recommendations are based on nothing, but how close did the author get to finding two books that would appeal to your sign?

Heads up — no Roundup tomorrow. I’m taking the day to sleep in and read.

[Melissa stands up, taps her fork against her glass, and clears her throat. The conversation around the table dies down. She looks at everyone at the table.]

We do this every year: Come together as a community and have a virtual meal before we scatter to our actual meals. Unless, that is, you do not celebrate Thanksgiving. But I hope that you’ll join the table for virtual food and company even if you don’t follow this tradition offline.

We’ve virtually eaten together since 2009. That’s when this tradition began. There are some people hurting at this table. For some people, this pre-meal is what gets them through their real meal later in the week. People have written that they’ve printed out this yearly post and comments and left the paper in their purse because it helped to have a tangible reminder that there were people out there who got it. Who weren’t going to ask them when they were going to hurry up and have children. Who weren’t going to cringe when someone spoke the name of a child they lost.

We are all so different. All of us. Around this table. But we have this one facet of our lives — and yes, even though it may be a big, overpowering one for you right now, it is only one facet of who you are — where we overlap: infertility or adoption or loss. And I am so thankful, so grateful, that I found all of you. Everyone needs a You-shaped space where they can be themselves. And that’s what I have here.

So every year, I ask people to bring a virtual dish to our meal. Place it in the comment section, explaining what you brought and why. And say anything else you need to say before sitting back down to enjoy the company. Update about where you are; your emotional state.

We’re an international group, hailing from countries all around the world. So while Thanksgiving is an American tradition, I hope that everyone around the world feels as if they can participate. (Especially our Canadian neighbours who celebrated Thanksgiving weeks ago.) I’d love for your dish to come from your culture or country. Don’t worry about the contents on the table clashing.

As always, I am bringing stuffing. It’s comfort food; mushy and soggy and warm.

So what did you bring and what do you want to say to the community?

And please, start eating as everyone is introducing their dish. We don’t want the food to get cold and there are so many of us at this table. Thank you so much for coming, and I’m going to carry the warmth of this meal with me for the rest of this week.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Josh and I recently celebrated our twentieth anniversary. Everyone kept saying, “I can’t believe it has been that long since the wedding!” Well, it has. It has been twenty years.

We had an awesome wedding. We got married in a library, surrounded by books. Our friend married us. My mother sewed our chuppah, quilting together quotes about love our friends contributed on cloth squares. We had so many people we loved together in one room.

I’m not sure what the next twenty years will bring, but I’ll spend them with Josh, still dancing to Hedwig and the Angry Inch songs and taking pauses to take it all in.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.