In the two weeks I was on vacation in France, my nephew Casey got married and my nephew Ryan graduated from college. That was the good news. Here's some of the other news.

Amazon closed the Whole Foods in our neighborhood because it could, and because it wasn't quite profitable enough, and maybe because a mental health facility is being built across the street and down a block. So there went that. We lost Bartell's in 2023, Whole Foods now. Our neighborhood feels like it's shrinking. Oh, and while I was gone, the U.S. entered another Middle East war, because it could, and because, you know, Trump got all trumpy about being trumped by glowing Fox News coverage of Israel's attacks on Iran and wanted in on that sweet, sweet action. Lookatme lookatme lookatme lookatme. Somebody needs to tell him he's going to be dead soon and most of the world will want to piss on his grave, but the only people with his ear are opportunists, sycophants, and those using his popularity for their own greedy ends. Not that he'd hear anyone else anyway.

Those things made me sad, but what made me mad my first full day back? Like furious beyond all reason? Apparently the two weeks I was gone was when tech bros decided to foist AI upon anyone who needed to write anything.

So yesterday morning I opened my work laptop and began to sort through the 200+ emails there, one of which, from the very day I left, needed a prompt answer. I began to do that. And in the space where I would write, there was a little grayed-out message: “Help me write,” it said. Which distracted me from writing. And it wouldn't go away. I googled it and found out it was part of something called the Gemini program, which, yes, sounds like a doomsday project out of James Bond movie like “Moonraker”: “You will never stop the Gemini Program, Mr. Bond.”

It wasn't just Google, either. When I opened Microsoft Word on my home computer, I was greeted with this:

Worse, it costs. On top of the money you're already paying annually for Microsoft Office. It's an ad. And I couldn't dismiss it. It took opening up an older Word document to create an option to dismiss. So far that's worked for all Word docs but maybe tomorrow it won't. Meanwhile a colleague figured out how to turn off the Gemini thingee so that's gone, too. But both dismissals took several frustrating hours, by which time my morning, not to mention my nerves, were shot.

But the vacation was nice. More on it later.