Scattered Thoughts . . .

The past week has been quite lousy as far as my health goes... and, as a result, I've accomplished almost nothing this week. This morning, however, was finally a productive morning! I can't begin to explain how good that feels! First, I did some weed-whacking... then mowed the lawn. The weather is considerably cooler this morning so I managed to mow the lawn and be able to breath. Usually, I am struggling to breath when I cut the lawn... weak... close to losing consciousness... my health crashing... I finished with the lawn by 9:30 am and still felt pretty good, relatively speaking. The sign of a good, clean caulking job... a nice wide bead yet it is invisible! Since it was only 9:30 am and I was still feeling fairly well, I decided to get some work accomplished in Adam's old bedroom. It still needs another coat of paint... two colors... but I decided to tackle something I've been putting off doing. The windows needed to be re-caulked.  Before I could re-caul

Well... summer is over (although, you'd never know it by how warm it has been lately) and our time at the lake for this year is behind us. I know I'd like to get back to the lake again during foliage season but, considering how far behind schedule I am with projects around the house due to my health, that is unlikely to happen. So, I have put together a photo album of photos from the lake this summer... Lake Groton Photo Album - 2015

The kids were here for dinner again tonight and that is always a welcomed change of pace so that part of our night was really nice.  The problem was that it was a bit hot this afternoon (the low 90s) and I think this negatively impacted my health. Something caused my health to nosedive and I know warm environments are terrible for my health so... I'm blaming the heat. Ironically, earlier this morning was a better morning than I have experienced in quite a few weeks. As a result, I managed to do some much needed laundry... cut my hair... and shower. This may not sound like much, but it was more than I had accomplished in one day in quite some time and enough to completely exhaust me of energy... even taking my breath away. I ate some lunch and then slept for almost three hours. When I awoke, the kids were arriving at the house for dinner. At this point, the temperature in the house was in the low 80s and my health was beginning to slide down the slippery slope it finds far too o

I just came across another photo that was hiding in one of the folders on my desktop computer... shot almost a year ago on a day when the grandchildren were visiting for dinner. Little Miss Mackenzie was deep in thought at the table and I happened to capture a quick photo of her... Young Thinking Woman...

I ended up getting sidetracked away from painting a bedroom this morning (Lukey would tell me I got "derailed"... his new word of the day) and, by the time I had a chance to get back on schedule, it was really too late to get anything significant accomplished before lunch. And, after lunch, I must nap or my health will crash. So, to kill some time, I grabbed a different camera than I grabbed a few days ago and, again, headed out to our wildflower gardens. It is the end of the season now so there isn't much to shoot out there. This was more of an exercise in using a different type of camera... This camera I chose today is my old digital SLR camera which sports a beautiful and unique Kodak sensor. I'm not a fan of Kodak in the digital age, in general (they really shot themselves in the foot and wasted away an historic and tremendous corporation) , but this imaging sensor is stunning. It is my oldest camera but it has one of my favorite imaging sensors. The clarit

Even way back in the 1990's, I was constantly trying to get family and friends to get online with a webcam so we could keep in touch as easily as possible. Due to my career, friends and family were spread out all over the globe so webcams and the internet seemed to be the obvious solution to effective communication. I always felt there was a need for a program or website that allows people around the globe to keep in touch.  MySpace tried to fill this need but failed miserably. Before long, MySpace was filled with annoyingly cluttered profile pages which assaulted both your eyes and ears whenever you jumped to a new profile page. It was difficult to use, it had no flow, it was archaic in design and features (even for those early days), and the application simply went the wrong direction until it inevitably collapsed. Then came Facebook. Now, this, was much closer to what I envisioned for people to keep in touch making the distance of thousands of miles to seem like only a few.

This is just a quick follow up on my latest biopsy. I had a rather fast-growing scabby growth on my neck so the doc cut out the growth and sent it off to the pathologist.  The doc called today to tell me this growth was non- cancerous...  so that is a big relief.  Our primary concern was whether or not this particular growth is cancerous or not. To be honest, I can't think of any other diagnosis which would be of concern and this is the only reason I headed to the doctor in the first place. Ruling out cancer is a relief. She asked how the growth is doing because some inflammation was found by the pathologist. She wasn't really sure what was inflamed but offered the idea of perhaps a hair follicle had become inflamed.  I've had time to think about this... First off... I've looked at hundreds of photos of inflamed hair follicles... this growth looked nothing like those photos. My growth was more spread out... and looked less like an inflamed pimple which is what a

As I've written in a few other blog entries, I occasionally miss a good photo and it just sits in a folder on one of my hard drives.  Months later, I stumble across the photo while looking for a different photo and I say to myself, "Wow... how did I miss this one?" This photo of Kenzie is one such photo.  While at the lake house recently, Kenzie and I were about thirty or forty feet apart... on different levels... and I had my long telephoto kit in my hands hoping to get some photos of the sailboat, ducks and loons out on the lake. I noticed that Kenzie was a bit more animated than usual so I pointed the camera in her direction. This camera and lens combo is not one I would use for portraits nor in this particular situation but it was all I had at the time. I quickly changed a couple of settings and then fired off one shot before she was no longer facing me. The result, however, is a pretty decent photo... not great... but a keeper for our purposes.  I can'

Face Detection enabled and Eye AF selected. In photography, there are some very basic rules to follow. Yes, rules can be broken at times but there are simply some which should never be broken. The rule about where to set your focus is one such rule.  For photos of people, the rule is to focus on the eyes. In particular, you need to focus on the nearest eye. Whenever I miss this focus, the photo is culled and goes into the trash can. Quite simply, if that nearest eye is not in focus, you misfocused and ruined your shot. When your subject is up fairly close to you, focusing on the eyes can be a fairly easy task. On the other hand, when your subject is a little farther away and especially if your subject is moving, this tasking can quickly become a very tall order! You have these little, tiny focus points overlaid onto your camera's screen... you need to ensure the one point that focuses is the one over the eye when the shutter release button is pressed. This can be tough