Scattered Thoughts . . .

I've been sick with the flu all week and Sheila is one day behind me in her symptoms.  It has been a brutal week and I'm still feeling miserable. I can't sleep because the cold medications don't stop the itching, burning, runny nose.  The persistent cough is brutal too.  My eyes are watery and burning.  I have waves of violent shivering, fever and nausea.  I haven't eaten much this week and yet I've spent a lot of time in the bathroom sick as a dog.  Every part of my body is in pain but especially my sinuses.  Sneezing and coughing hurts in the center of my chest.  The itching, burning and runny nose is relentless and brutal though.  Worse yet, the cold medications can't seem to knock any of this down enough to get some much-needed rest and sleep. I'm exhausted...  I'm weak...  I'm in significant pain...  this week has been bordering on unbearable.  

W e finally had our family Christmas celebration at our house over this past weekend.  We had to reschedule it because Sheila and I had COVID from before Christmas and well into January.  Unfortunately, almost every one of us who attended this last Christmas party at our house is now sick with a terrible case of the flu.  My guess is that every single one of us will be sick within another couple of days.   I feel miserable.  I felt rather lousy yesterday too but, by last night, I was feeling pretty miserable.  Now I'd say I'm feeling overwhelmingly miserable.  Sheila is about a half day or a full day behind me.   I'm not sure which is worse...  the flu or COVID...  COVID lasts forever and it's still quite painful but this flu is brutal at this point.  Everything hurts.  I have chest congestion.  I have a massive headache.  I have a painful sore throat.  My sinuses are burning.  I'm dizzy, nauseate...

I have a long list of things that need to be done around the house but I'm still recovering from our latest bout with COVID so I don't really have the energy for much. I've been sick for over a month at this point so this is now very much beyond old.  I feel like I've been sick with COVID every summer and every winter since the pandemic started!  And, with each bout, I'm down and feeling lousy for at least a month.  Breathing problems are the biggest complaint but losing two+ months each year is frustrating. Our Christmas celebration with the grandchildren is this coming weekend after cancelling Christmas due to being sick last month so there really is a lot that needs to be accomplished around the house.  Actually, now that I'm thinking about what needs to be done, I have some cooking to do too.  Uggg...  I'll have to get started on that tomorrow.   In the meantime, I took a little time this morning to do some sketching.  I haven't sketched...

W hen I shot these photos below capturing the view through the viewfinders of cameras of two different formats, my purpose was to see if I could capture better images through the viewfinders than I had shown in my previous blog entry.  So, in short, this was initially an exercise in trying to capture better photos shot through a small viewfinder.  After capturing these photos, I noticed something else that I wanted to point out. I should first explain that I had used my cellphone for these photos and it is difficult to hold the cellphone perfectly lined up with a clear view through the rather small viewfinders.  Then, when you touch the screen to capture the photo, the whole cellphone moves ever so slightly causing some motion blur.  It was tough keeping the cellphone lined up perfectly to capture the entire view through each viewfinder. I really can't understand why anyone would want to shoot photos with crappy cellphones and I am reminded of this every single time ...

M y 40 year old medium format film camera had a simple matte focusing screen on it which made focusing a bit difficult.  This matte screen simply showed the scene and you would have to sort of guess what was the best focus.  There was nothing to help you actually see if the image is in perfect focus.  Using only your eyes makes it easy to slightly miss focus especially with older eyes like mine.  I knew I wanted to replace this focusing screen with a better one. The main problem with wanting to replace anything on this camera is that this is a 40 year old film camera that has been out of production for decades.  Finding parts can be difficult.  Regardless, I went on a search for the type of focusing screen I wanted.   I wanted a screen with a split prism in the very center, a micro-prism collar surrounding the split prism, and a matte ground glass field.  These can be difficult to find now but I happened to find one in Japan so I purchased i...

I 've been wanting to go back to medium format film since the very beginning of the pandemic.  In fact, I restored a 75 year old folding 6x6 medium format camera in January of 2020 when the pandemic first began (pictured below, at left).  Now it is six years later and I still have not shot any film through that camera but I'm still itching to go back to film alongside my digital photography. I do occasionally shoot some instant medium format film through a twin lens reflex camera (shown in photo below, top center) and I have a medium format film printer that prints any of my digital images on medium format instant film.  My Sony a7 images look great on this film. I suppose the main reason I have delayed shooting any film stock in my older film camera is because I have had COVID twice a year, every year, since January of 2020.  Each time I get this virus, it knocks me down for a few months.  By the time I'm feeling well enough to tackle anything, my list of prior...

W e've had an old, beat-up, dented, filthy range hood residing in our kitchen longer than I myself have lived here.  Shortly after I moved in, I noticed it was an eyesore so I cleaned it up and sprayed a nice new coat of paint on it.  Now it looked a bit better but it didn't work all that well and, as a result, it always seemed to be perpetually covered in slimy grease.  When I moved into this house, the light wasn't working on it anymore either so I replaced the electrical bulb socket too.  This was a "temporary fix" until we were able to renovate the kitchen.  Now it is almost 20 years later and I still have not gotten to renovating the kitchen.  Life and poor health have gotten in the way multiple times. Although we still have not yet gotten to renovating the kitchen, quite a few temporary fixes were done to various parts of the kitchen.  We've been slowly reconfiguring the kitchen to our planned new kitchen.  We never did anything with that ol...

I nside the house throughout the winter, we've always had extremely dry air that dries out our sinuses.  It gets so unbelievably dry that we even have difficulty swallowing while sleeping because our throats and mouths get so dry!  Not only is that annoying but it also makes it a bit difficult to sleep through the night.   To counter this, we've always left a big stock pot of water simmering on the stove.  Unfortunately, this simmering stock pot remedy never seemed to resolve the dry throats and mouths.  It did help increase the humidity in the house but it wasn't effective enough.  This 24 hour a day simmer stock pot idea also caused a pot to rot out on us due to constant use with hard water!  The mineral deposits ate right through that first stock pot.   The humidity in the house drops down below 10% in winter.  For comfort, it really should be in the 40-60% range but the stock pot solution wasn't getting us any higher than around...

W e awoke this morning while it was still dark outside to another blackout due to downed tree limbs covered in heavy ice falling on power lines nearby.  The ice adds too much weight for the branches to bear and it has been a bit windy too which doesn't help.  I think we had power again in about two hours.  That was just long enough for us to collect all of our battery operated lamps, lanterns, flashlights and power stations.  This time of year we worry about freezing pipes but short blackouts aren't a major problem unless they fry electronic components throughout the house and we had that potential today! When we lost power, the power was flickering for about ten or fifteen minutes which caused all sorts of problems with our electronic devices, appliances and entertainment center.  Once we had power back on I quickly realized that all the flickering had pushed everything into "pairing mode".  This meant that I needed to set up each device again.  We al...