Scattered Thoughts . . .

The weather and my health cooperated for a change so Sheila and I managed to have a relatively productive weekend. We cleaned up the yard and then I seeded the necessary areas of the lawn (lots of them for some reason) while Sheila cleaned up the flowerbed all around the house.  I pulled out the lawn mower and cut the lawn.  I worked on the putting green and added seed again.  Sheila cleaned the playhouse for the grandchildren.  I did some pruning and clearing some new growth of Sumac saplings (we hate this invasive, nasty, ugly, weedy tree).  I turned on the outdoor plumbing and found that we have a couple of very leaky ball valves.  I'll need to pickup a couple of those so I can replace them.  I had hoped to get to some woodworking but I never got to that.  The yard is looking good for this time of year though. We had two solid weeks of rain but, oddly, everything was still very dry.  The lawn mower was kicking up a dust cloud everywhere I mowed.   My bone pain and joint pain is

Kenzie and Lukey spent some time with us this past weekend and, as always, we had a great time with them! For dinner, I prepared Kenzie's favorite meal which is a recipe I obtained from my grandmother almost 40 years ago. When I was in high school and college, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house. My sailboat was kept in their backyard because they lived on the water on the south shore of Long Island so I would go there to go sailing but I also visited frequently to help them out and just say hello. Gramps was still working at the time and every now and then I would go to work with him. My grandmother regularly needed help around the house since having serious heart problems a few years earlier so I would spend some time with Gramps on the weekends when he was home from work and I would spend time with my grandmother during the weekdays as I helped out around the house, mowed the lawn, and ran some errands for her. My cousin, William, and I would make sure one

The grandkids stayed with us over the past weekend and it was a nice break from all this fun cancer stuff. We haven't had much of an opportunity to spend time with them since the lake house early in the summer so it was nice to spend a whole weekend with them.  Shortly after our time at the lake house, the doctors found Sheila's cancer and our life instantly and drastically changed. We've been at the hospital every weekday getting worn down and then trying to catch up on sleep on the weekends. We both feel as though it has been months and months of grueling nothingness.  There has been absolutely no socializing since the cancer was found except for when Sheila would get an occasional visitor although we haven't had any visitors in the past few weeks. Actually, we've been a bit socially deprived so it was nice to have the weekend with the grandkids. I think we watched about eight Christmas movies over the course of the weekend. And, we played about a bajillion

As I wrote in a previous blog entry, the grandkids spent the weekend at our house. Lukey was content with running trains and watching some Florida Gator and Dayton Flyer basketball. Kenzie enjoyed some Florida Gator gymnastics, baking with Gee, playing with her doll collection and even running one of Uncle Adam's diesel locomotives.   First, some photos of Kenzie making some rice crispy treats with Gee... As always, there was quite a bit of time playing a server at a pizza place...  this particular day, she was making and serving pizzas for Jimmz Pizza... "Niiiice locomotive..."

The first time we ventured down to the Amherst Railway Society's train show eight years ago, we simply drove the three hours down there, visited the show, and drove back home that night... completely exhausted.  Once we arrived at this show that year, we immediately realized that there was no possible way to see all of the show in just one eight hour day so we decided it would be wiser to stay overnight the following year so we could attend the show both days. This would also allow us to avoid six hours of driving in one day. The following year (our third year), we decided to start heading down to Springfield on Friday and stay an extra night. This allowed us to settle in and relax a bit before heading to the hectic, crowded show on Saturday. We would use the pool, hot tub, have a few drinks and have food delivered to the hotel on that first night. This plan seemed to work out much better for a train show that is spread out over eight acres! Over the years, more and more

Gee showing Kenzie how it's done! Two weeks ago, we spent a long weekend with the grandkids. We traveled to a lot of places in a short period of time... a Lake Champlain Cruise (Nan and Pop joined us), Church Street, Burlington Mall, White River Junction train station, Montshire Museum of Science, Powerhouse Mall (in New Hampster), and all sorts of restaurants... and Lukey and Kenzie came away from the hectic weekend with a few little souvenirs. Even Gee came away from the weekend with over a pound of Lindt truffles which she shared with all of us.  (Hmmm... I don't think I bought myself anything though.) As we were heading to the Montshire Museum of Science on Saturday morning, the kids still didn't have a clue where we were headed. As one would expect in a situation such as this, during our long hour and a half drive, the kids kept asking, "Where are we going?" After a half hour of unsuccessfully trying to distract them from this repetitive and focused

Downtown Manhattan, One World Trade Center This past weekend was the long Columbus Day weekend so we decided to head toward Long Island to see some family.  It had been a year and a half since we had seen any of my family. That last trip was for the funeral of one of my cousins which happened to be the same day the grandchildren were born.  This particular cousin was also a neighbor and school classmate so I knew I needed to make the trip down to Long Island for his funeral. While I headed toward Long Island for that funeral a year and a half ago, Sheila headed to the hospital to meet Liza for the birth of the grandchildren. Afterward, Sheila and Adam hopped on a train and headed down to New York to meet me. Anyway, we hadn't seen any of the family since that very hectic week a year and a half ago.   The Empire State Building We headed south on Saturday for the long Columbus Day weekend while it seemed the rest of the northeast was heading north to check out the aut