Posts

Showing posts from May 15, 2016

A New Hangar at the National Museum of the US Air Force

Image
The grand opening celebration for a new hangar at the National Museum of the US Air Force is fast approaching. We've been personally invited to a dedication ceremony at the museum this week but we won't be attending. We do plan to visit the museum and Dayton in the coming months though. We're definitely looking forward to visiting the Dayton area again!  Completing this new hangar of the museum was a major undertaking and one which was funded privately ... yes, privately... all $41 million of it!  The Air Force Museum Foundation, of which I am a member, was instrumental in providing funding for this expansion. You can read more about this expansion  on the museum website. I suspect the museum will be packed to capacity for the first few weeks. The Grand Opening weekend promises to be a memorable success! Now, I should get back to my Air Force Museum Foundation magazine...

What The... Is it July 4th Already??

Although it completely disgusts me, last night was a night filled with fireworks all around our home... up on that hill...  then over the other direction... fireworks all around me made for an absolutely terrible night's sleep.  My visions and 'dreams' placed me in other places I preferred not to be... the sounds put me there and kept me there all night. I couldn't relax... I couldn't sleep... I felt I shouldn't be in bed under these circumstances.   I know my internal clock is all screwed up anyway after having a nonexistent winter but is it already July 4th??? Since when are fireworks a weekend-before-Memorial Day-weekend event?  Even if it were Memorial Day weekend, I'm still thinking fireworks are not appropriate.  Personally, I despise fireworks... my heart is pounding now just thinking of hearing them... and, if I smell them too, I get lost in a far away place in a far away time... in these times, I am not in the present with the people around

An Education in Video Production

Image
Photography has been an active hobby of mine for most of the time I've been disabled. I continue to learn more about the ever-changing photography world each day and, more importantly, I look forward to learning more each day. Now I am beginning an education in video production as well.  I upgraded my computer in the past few days with a beefier power supply and a new graphics processor... I downloaded the appropriate software that I'll be using for video editing... and, about a week ago, I enrolled in a somewhat basic videography course geared toward specific software applications for video editing and color grading. Just like with photography, this education began with learning to use the camera effectively. If you record video improperly, there isn't much you can do about it in editing. The same holds true for photography and I learned many years ago that capturing exactly what you envision is the key to beautiful photography. Just like in photography, the first step

Spinal Injuries

Whenever friends and family see me, they invariably ask the standard question, "How are you?" More often than not, I respond with an "Okay..." and a bob of the head.  The real answer, however, is that I am never okay by a healthy person's standards. The truth is, "okay" to me simply means that I am well enough to be out and about with only a moderate amount of pain. It means I am well enough to be standing upright and talking. It means my health is currently stable enough that I am not needing to stay within ten feet of an available bathroom because I'm going to be sick at any moment. It means I prepared to be out and about by taking extra medications and foregoing all other activities so I would have the energy to be out and about at this moment in time. This is "okay" to me. "Okay" for me means I can attempt to accomplish some household chores which will always result in me being "less than okay".  "Okay&q

A Little Productivity on a Down Day

Image
Unfortunately, the consequences of the work I accomplished on our wildflower gardens and landscaping over the weekend has caught up with me.  Saturday was a productive few hours for some much needed yardwork. I felt pretty good on Sunday... only relatively minor spinal pain... but, apparently, the inflammation in my spine was slowly building over the course of a few days because by Monday I could hardly walk and the pain was stingingly brutal. I spent Monday and Tuesday doing whatever I could to alleviate the pain and inflammation. This mean occasional stretching but mostly staying off my feet. It meant extra anti-inflammatory medications. It meant extra water intake. It meant occasional icing of my spine... and I truly hate using ice at this point! After almost two decades of struggling with spinal injuries, there are some things which really get to me and ice is one of them. It just bothers me to even think about applying ice to my spine. That being said, when the pain gets to

A Couple of Favorites

Image
I shoot a lot of photographs... I mean, a lot of photographs. If I were to guess, I'd say I shoot about 10,000 photographs each year.  Many of the photos are photos of every trip we take... hundreds of photos each day while out and about on vacation or around town. I could easily shoot a couple of hundred photos at a single family event. This adds up quickly and it also means that I have a lot of photos that I've never shared with anyone. Some of these photos are not the greatest because of poor timing... poor light... missed focus... or uncooperative subjects. Some are okay but are a bit boring. Many are exceptional though. Here are two photos that I've never shared before that fall into the "I love them!" category... both from the lake...  I like the warmth of this scene... the calm waters... reflected warm colors... the sun flare... the deep shadows of early morning... the overall softness... On another day nearing sunset, while we were out kayakin

Another Snowy Morning

Image
Snow lightly falling and covering my sailboat. It looks like I'll be indoors again today since it is snowing out there again. One of these days I'll be able to pull my tools outside to get some carpentry done! I also need to get the sailboat and kayaks ready for our journey to the lake house in a few weeks. Today, since it is cold and snowy, I'll be looking for things to keep me occupied indoors... which should be easy...  My desktop computer started whistling again late last night and fixing this is a project I've been putting off for about six months. The whistling comes and goes and gets annoyingly loud. In fact, it gets so loud that it is even tough to hide the whistling by playing music.  I'm fairly sure I've isolated the problem to my power supply. My plan is to order a power supply this morning... and, while I'm ordering parts needed for my computer, I'll also order a graphics processing unit.  I'm taking a course in videography

A Day of Landscaping

Image
After turning over the ground in the front flowerbed... I had a good day of health yesterday and it was beautiful outside so we spent the day out in the yard doing our first day of landscaping for this year.  As I've written many times before, it is a rarity when my health cooperates with the weather... good health coinciding with good weather... so, after two weeks of pretty lousy health, it felt awesome to be doing something physical and being productive for a change! We cleaned up the flowerbeds... I turned the ground over... weeded out clumps of weeds... raked... weeded again... leveled... added wildflower seeds... lightly raked again to cover most of the seeds... while Sheila pulled weeds and rearranged plantings in another flowerbed.  One of the flowerbeds, weeded and seeded... I got the weedwhacker running and knocked down some of the longer grass where the mower can't access... I also got the lawnmower running and cut the lawn.  The yard is looking much