Scattered Thoughts . . .

One of the many exceptional models at the show... Christmas is now behind us... tomorrow is New Year's Eve when we say goodbye to 2014 (or good riddance, whichever the case may be) and welcome in a bright new year. In the first month of the new year each year is the biggest and best train show in the United States.  This enormous train show is something we look forward to every year. Actually, we look forward to the following year's show the moment we leave the show the previous year! We now have only another few weeks to wait before we find ourselves in Springfield, MA again with tens of thousands of other model railroading fanatics. This year Adam will not be attending the show with us since he will be beginning his new career in the Air Force. The weekend of the show will be his first weekend at basic training. We will, however, be accompanied by some new train fanatics to take Adam's place... the grandchildren and they will be bringing along their mom. It is g

Church Street in Burlington, Vermont Back in early December, our good friend, Frank, asked us if we were available on the Sunday before Christmas to visit Burlington. Fortunately, this day was still open for us and we jumped at the chance for another Christmas in Burlington so we put the day on our calendar. We missed an opportunity to get up to Burlington during Christmas last year so we were pretty excited at the thought of getting back up to Burlington during Christmas this year. Our plan was to do a little barhopping and to get some photos on Church Street while it was decorated for Christmas. We set out at lunchtime for our short trip north to Lake Champlain and Burlington. There were plenty of shoppers which made for a lot of traffic and parking scarce. Fortunately for us, all these people were actually shopping and not venturing into the restaurants and pubs that line Church Street. It was nice to be able to choose a place to go and then find available space at the b

This past weekend we trekked out to the woods to choose and cut five Christmas trees.  The day we chose was a relatively beautiful day, thankfully, because the snow was deep! If it had been cold outside on this day, we would have had a rough time out there in all that snow. In the preceding days, we had a pretty nasty storm here in Vermont...  a lot of snow, followed by a lot of freezing rain...  more snow...  more sleet and freezing rain...  more snow...  more freezing rain...  Many areas were left with downed power lines which included the area where we went searching for five perfect Christmas trees. On our drive up the mountain, we passed a line crew working on a number of downed lines. They had about a hundred yards of line left to hang on the utility poles. The downed trees and limbs were already cut and removed by the time we ventured into this winter wonderland but the tree farm was still left without power.   When we reached the tree farm and parked our cars in the sno

Yesterday was an event we have made one of our annual Christmas traditions over the past seven years... Wreaths Across America. The Civil Air Patrol cadets of the Green Mountain Composite Squadron in South Burlington, Vermont lay wreaths at the graves of each of our fallen Veterans before participating in a dignified wreath-laying ceremony under old glory at the center of this garden of stone. Today, however, this garden of stone was decorated for Christmas. For me, this is an event filled with fond memories, visions, shadows and ghosts. Yesterday's event was no exception.  As I was shooting photos... kneeling in the snow... sitting in the snow... standing in snow up to my knees... soaking all my clothing in freezing water... I kept seeing shadows and visions of my own past as Team Chief of a special team of the Air Force Honor Guard.  I had participated in countless ceremonies and funerals in countless cemeteries just like this one all across the country. I've stood in

It is snowy outside this morning so the conditions are not ideal for pulling shop tools out of the shed and into the yard so I figured I would give a quick update on how the bathroom project is coming along... For the most part, the bathroom is finished and we have been using it for a week or so now. (Finally!) I need to stain, polyurethane and install a little bit of crown molding... I need to build a small hollow beam for up at the ceiling to cover some rough plumbing...  we could use a nicer wastebasket...  and that is about all we still need to accomplish so we are almost completely finished. I do need to repaint the hallway outside the bathroom though. Parts of that wall took a bit of a beating while I was installing the electrical wiring, boxes and switches. I needed to spackle parts of the hallway walls so they now need some new paint. In the meantime... here are some photos of what we have as of today...   (By the way, it is really, really nice having a second bathroo

My plan for today was to rip lumber to use as crown molding and baseboard molding as well as build two hollow 'L' shaped beams to cover exposed rough plumbing... I started with measuring for the 'L' shaped beam in the new half bath.  I measured again to make sure I had the correct measurements and then I went outside to the tablesaw to start cutting. I even made a little diagram to go with all my measurements. I reviewed the measurements again before cutting. Before fastening the pieces together to form the 'L' shaped cedar beam, I thought that maybe I should test my measurements by doing a dry fit of each piece... The moment I tried placing these two pieces up on the ceiling where the plumbing is located, I immediately noticed that I somehow screwed up. It turns out that my measurements were fine but I screwed up on what those measurements were truly measuring. What I thought I wrote down were outside, total measurements but, in reality, the measurement

When I saw this photo that I shot of Sheila and Kenzie, it immediately reminded me of a line which was said to me more than thirty years ago... "A little culture never hurt anyone". Although it was said to me decades ago, it is a line which has always stuck in my mind and is a line which I believe in deeply. Also, it is memorable line from a time of my life I will never forget.  I certainly agree with this sentiment. Culture is a good thing. Learning about as much culture as possible is a good thing. Understanding culture is important simply to become an understanding, educated person. Being exposed to a varied culture at a young age is a very good thing. Seeing Kenzie excitedly looking at the jacket of Les Miserables left me feeling good about exposing the kids to culture in art, music, and life.  A little over thirty years ago, my squadron commander said these very words to me... "A little culture never hurt anyone" and these words made a very deep imp

Sheila and I had a visit from the grandchildren this past Saturday. As always, we had fun with the kids... some train videos, playing with the trains, watched Planes , had some lunch, watched Finding Nemo (I slept through most of this movie... we had hoped the kids would sleep too but, no such luck), and we watched a bunch of short Choo Choo Soul videos. They really enjoy the Choo Choo Soul videos, especially Lukey, and they get a bit animated so I thought I would do a quick post here to share a short video of the kids dancing around the living room while watching Choo Choo Soul...  

As I wrote in my previous blog entry, I am in need of a few days of recovery after yesterday's bout with poor health. It is Day 1 of recovery and I am already bored. My boredom and need to accomplish something overruled my need to rest and recover (I may pay for this tomorrow). I pulled the new large scale steam locomotive and its tender down to the floor... grabbed some tools... plugged in a DC transformer from my O scale narrow gauge trains... and started to unscrew hidden screws... No task is simple, especially when trying to recover from anaphylaxis the day before, but I quickly realized that the first four screws I needed to remove were a bit stripped and none of my screwdrivers could hold well enough to be effective. Quickest solution... grind down one of my screwdrivers to make it fit well enough... After some grinding, one of my screwdrivers fit well and I managed to disassemble the tender which houses the sound card. The battery contacts powering the sound card wer

Yesterday... it was brutal for a couple of hours. I was in and out of the bathroom, terribly sick and nauseated, and teetering on complete anaphylaxis. It was not a pleasant few hours. Systemic Mastocytosis is a rare illness in which the body's mast cells will indiscriminately 'attack' the body rather than their usual enemies such as wounds, pathogens and allergy. During this process, the mast cells will release a bunch of mediators which causes countless symptoms including anaphylaxis.  Typically, I do well at handling most of the resulting symptoms but anaphylaxis is a tough one to handle. When all these mediators are dumped into the body by my mast cells, my body responds by going into anaphylactic shock or at least bordering on anaphylactic shock or anaphylaxis. Yesterday, after breakfast, I started feeling rather poorly. My stomach was bothering me. I was a bit nauseated. Before long, I knew I would be sick and in the bathroom. I checked for my pulse... I had a

As many of you know, a group of us attend the annual Amherst Railway Society's Railroad Hobby Show every January. It is now the time of year when we must start counting heads and reserving rooms. The number of hotels offering special rates for this event has diminished significantly this year. Actually, most of the hotels offering price breaks are hotels we would not stay at even if they were free! This has severely limited our options this year. We have decided to try to reserve a block of rooms at the La Quinta Hotel in Springfield. La Quinta is not offering any kind of event pricing nor group pricing so we are stuck with regular rates minus a AAA discount. Fortunately, La Quinta is only slightly more expensive than the event rate we were offered last year. Unfortunately, although only slightly more expensive, this means the price has increased nevertheless. We stayed at La Quinta last year and we had a nice time. The location was very convenient... the hotel was clean... a

Today was a good day!   I actually accomplished quite a bit on the half bathroom today in the way of finish carpentry. I had hung the new custom door I built yesterday. Today I cut and installed the door stop... trimmed out both sides of the door... cut and installed a top rail for the wainscoting... added some architectural details... cut the wood needed for crown molding... and even masked off the new tile floor in preparation of painting.  There were a few plumbing fittings to assemble and I managed to assemble those today as well. I had two supply valve assemblies for the sink and one supply valve assembly for the toilet which needed to be put together. Since it was nice outdoors today, I managed to get those done as well.   I hope to get some staining and painting accomplished tomorrow. If that goes well, I will cut off the water supply so I can install the three valve assemblies that I assembled today. Things are moving along and I'm happy report that I made some

I'm still working on this custom door. The door is residing in our kitchen on top of the jig which is on top of two sawhorses. The weather has been lousy so I am stuck working indoors this week. Throw in Adam's wisdom teeth problems and my off-and-on lousy health, and things are moving a bit slowly... Since my last blog entry about making some progress in assembling the door for our new half bathroom, I've managed to drill out the holes for the pegs which are intended to hold each joint together. Unfortunately, like so many other things on this half bathroom project, this didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked. Worse yet, I need to make three more of these doors so I need to figure out how to avoid repeating these mistakes. I figured that writing about the problems might help in avoiding these same mistakes on the next three doors.  Pegs are inserted through this joint to hold the pieces together. First let me explain how I intended to fasten each of th

The door... finally cut, sanded and assembled! I finally had a productive day today! It has been a rough week or so of lousy health which caused the installation of the new half bathroom to stall for almost two weeks. Today I managed to get some significant work accomplished! I was having some cognitive issues first thing this morning so I decided to weigh my options... take another day off to recover or try to accomplish something. In the end, the weather forecast was the determining factor. The moment I saw that the rest of this week is supposed to be rainy, I knew I had to try to accomplish something outdoors in the decent weather. The thing to accomplish today was cutting up all the pieces for the custom door since this particular project needed to be done outdoors. I cut up all the lumber... shaped all the joints... and then sanded everything. By the time I finished this, it was definitely lunchtime. My stomach had been telling me the same for at least an hour at this poin

My health has been pretty lousy this past week with various issues overlapping each day. Overall, I've been feeling worn out, weak, and just generally lousy. I've had problems intermittently with breathing, dizziness, stomach/gastro-intestinal, nausea, vision, bone pain, joint pain, spleen pain, cognitive function, bordering on anaphylaxis, and probably a few other things I have forgotten about right now. It has just been a rather lousy week. I laid down this afternoon for my daily two to four hour nap. Adam had his wisdom teeth pulled yesterday so we were all already camped out on the couch all day so I just napped on the couch while Sheila and Adam continued to watch television. Our neighbor's two cats spend much of their time every day at our place and today was no different. Before I fell asleep, I saw one of the cats pass back and forth outside. Since seeing the cats coming and going is something I see everyday, I didn't think much of it.  When I awoke from m