Scattered Thoughts . . .

I am back into recovery mode.  It is funny...  well... maybe "funny" isn't really the most accurate adjective... but, even after having Systemic Mastocytosis for more than 10 years, I still forget how much down time my body and health requires. It isn't until I have tasks and projects stacked up like aircraft in a holding pattern waiting to land at a crippled airfield that I clearly hear that voice... "Hey... hey you, there... you are sick! What makes you think you could make plans to get things accomplished like a healthy person? Do you need another reminder of just how sick you are?"  Then I suddenly get whacked with crappy health. Last night we trekked up to Lowes to pick up a few more patio blocks (I learned long ago that I need to break all projects down into small tasks... we need more than a "few" patio blocks but I can only handle a few at a time) for our kitchen grilling area project in the backyard. We had no problems with that other

I decided to write this little tip guide as a way for me to fully understand everything I've learned about bird photography thus far.  Hopefully this little self-imposed homework assignment will help me with my own bird photography as well as help others.  As I thought about all of these tips and how each of these tips manages to play upon and affect other aspects of bird photography while, at the same time, are transferable to wildlife photography in general, I knew that putting all this knowledge in writing would help to sort and organize everything in my head.  Hopefully, others whom have been struggling to capture some nice bird photos (like I had been for years) may find at least some of this information useful enough to help improve their bird and wildlife photography. First and foremost, let me point out that I am not a professional wildlife photographer.  Photography is definitely a hobby for me.  Photography is also a form of art therapy for me as a struggle with ser

Panasonic G3 camera, Olympus Zuiko 70-300mm lens As I was writing my previous blog post this morning, I could hear all sorts of birds and squirrels outside  for the first time in quite a long time . It was as though they all moved into the area at the same moment! It has been unusually quiet here for months... no small wildlife at all... no birds, no squirrels... just an odd silence outdoors. All of a sudden, this morning, this all changed. I grabbed my newest camera purchase... my Panasonic G3 with my old Olympus 70-300mm lens mounted on it. This combo gives me a very long telephoto reach equivalent to a 600mm field of view on a full frame camera. This is a loonnnggg telephoto reach in a rather small package! When I stepped outdoors, I headed toward the deeper part of the backyard with old, tall trees where I figured most wildlife would be located. As I walked back that way, I listened to hear where the birds were located... "hmmm..." all the noise seemed to be c

I had some good health through the weekend which was very refreshing after struggling with a nasty cold and mast cell related side effects for months . During this brief period of good health, I was thinking clearly and had a good amount of energy, relatively speaking. As a result, I managed to get a lot of little things accomplished around the house. One project I started to tackle was building a little covered kitchen grilling area in the yard. I had all these ideas vividly in my head. Yesterday... I awoke and all those ideas and plans were a muddled mess and I couldn't figure out how or where to connect any two pieces of lumber. Hell... I couldn't even figure out what size the lumber should be!  Compared to some people's abilities with projects such as this one, not knowing what to do for a project such as this would not be a sign of anything other than another normal day. For me, with an engineering background and someone who is constantly designing and building thi

Helping Gee with the dishes after dinner... I haven't posted much about the grandchildren lately so I thought I would write a bit about the kids tonight. Lukey is still infatuated with trains and is always hoping I have set up my big Lionel trains in the living room so he can play the Engineer again. Unfortunately, for both myself and Lukey, we don't have much room in the house for these trains to be set up all that often so we only do that on rare occasions. Lukey does, however, have his Thomas the Train trains and train table to play with whenever he visits as well as many other toys. Lukey is getting better at expressing himself so it is only a matter of time before he starts voicing his desire to set up the tracks for the Lionel trains. On the positive side, the seasons are changing to outdoor weather so we will be spending more time outdoors which means less time with access to trains. Perhaps I can avoid disappointing him with "sorry, we can't set up t