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Showing posts from September 29, 2013

Getting Ready for New York City

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Assuming my health cooperates, we will be visiting family in New York soon.  As always, I plan to shoot a few photos while we are out and about in New York City and on Long Island.   Whenever I am thinking about a photo shoot, even if it is simply sightseeing, I like to review photos I have previously shot as well as photos others have shot.  Basically, I like to research. I like to prepare. I like to figure out the best time to photograph a particular sight...  finding the best light, best shadows, a new interesting angle... Truth be told, I research before doing anything including photography. So, while I am up and awake in the middle of the night tonight, let me share some of my old photos I have shot while in New York on previous trips.... This first shot is from the Museum of Natural History...  elephants stampeding through the Africa Hall...  This is a very dark hall which makes it difficult to focus without getting motion blurring.  In this case, I made the motion bl

Missing All The Signs

Far too often, I completely miss the signs preceding Systemic Mastocytosis episodes.  Today was another one of these times of missed clues. I had a few dizzy spells late in the afternoon...  This should have been a huge indicator of failing health. I strayed from my strict diet today by eating leftovers for lunch followed by processed food and condiments which are highly restricted for dinner...   I know better and after straying from my strict diet for two consecutive meals I should have preempted any decline in health with extra medications. I awoke from my three hour afternoon nap in a very warm bedroom...   the temperature in the bedroom was in the upper 70s which alone is more than enough to cause anaphylaxia and a violent reaction.  I should have known this would lead to crashing health. Any one of these things should have caused me to immediately jump on taking extra medications...  powerful medications...  and to collect my emergency medications.  I think I have fallen

Beautiful Morning

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Our house is on the other side of this stand of trees... to the right... The weather has been awesome this morning here in central Vermont.  The skies are clear, visibility is good and the temperature is in the 60's.  This is definitely my kind of weather! I have great difficulty in temperatures above 74 degrees. When it gets that warm, I must minimize my exposure or risk (and the probability is high) breathing problems, anaphylaxia, gastro-intestinal problems and a whole myriad of neurological problems depending upon which area of my body my mast cells decide to attack.  Fun stuff.  So, I try to minimize my exposure to temperatures above 74 degrees.  Today's temperatures, however, are just awesome for my health which allows me to get outside and be mildly active.  Fortunately, my health is cooperating along with the mild, beautiful weather! The leaves are getting a bit brighter in color now so I figured I need to take advantage of the beautiful morning and get outs

Rutland Train Show

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We're always on the lookout for events providing us with a good reason for short little day trips. My health really hinders all of us far too often so, when my health is relatively stable, we like to have an on-going list of events to choose from to keep life interesting and fun. This past weekend, we traveled down to Rutland, Vermont for a little train show which turned out to be quite nice.  The proceeds from the show went to the Rutland Railroad Museum. We will have add this museum to our on-going list of events. We have been to so many train shows in the past few years that were at 'national level' that this small regional show seemed too small to us.  It wasn't as small as it seemed though and we have definitely been to smaller shows.  It was, however, a bit short on working model railroads for people to view.  They had a few small modular layouts but we were left wanting to see more.  Of course, there may never be enough working model railroads! We're u

Sketching What Does Not Exist... Yet

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I've been busy the last few days working on some sketches again.  This time, however, I've been sketching the new World Trade Center which is not completely built yet.  I'm not even completely sure of the design.  Of course, because the buildings do not exist just yet, trying to get the scale right was a bit difficult.  Being the perfectionist that I am, naturally, I am still not completely happy with some of the angles and proportions but I think it might be close enough. Regardless of whether I am happy with this sketch or not, I wanted to post a small copy here before the skyline is actually completed in real life.  It will be interesting to see just how close I am with this little project.   Funny thing is, the more I worked the sketches and the more I researched what is actually being built, the less I like this design.  I am left feeling as though this was a poor choice for the design of this high profile project.  Artistically speaking, I'm not sure what they w