Scattered Thoughts . . .

When we arrived at the house on Lake Groton a couple of weeks ago, there was a little sign in our parking area greeting us...  "Welcome Maher Family".  That was a nice gesture and a pleasant surprise! I've always wanted to get some photographs of the inside of the house but that has always been one of those things that you never remember until you are back at home...  and missing the lake house...   and wishing you could scroll through some photos.  This year I was determined to get some decent photos.  (Which means shooting these photos was a task on a 'to-do' list I had for myself...  if it is not on a list, I never get to it.) I shot a group of photos shortly after arriving at the house.  I had two reasons for jumping on this little project right after we first arrived...  First, the house was still organized and clean because we had just arrived...  and second, I knew I had to jump on this project while it was still fresh in my...

As many of you have seen in my photographs, Lake Groton is a beautiful place...  serene and peaceful at times... yet, like a big playground sounding more like a crowded beach at other times.  What I cannot convey in my photographs, however, is how Lake Groton sounds. I was sitting at my desk which is in a corner of the living room facing out two walls of windows overlooking the lake.  The sun was beginning to set...   the temperature was dropping...  the lake was calm and reflecting the colorful sky...  the fish, as far as the eye could see, were beginning to jump in their attempts to gobble up insects on the surface of the water...  if you looked high in the sky, it was almost nighttime and dark...  as the eye approached the horizon, the colors changed from deep blue to bright orange to bright yellow...   and you could hear the distinctive haunting echoes of loon calls all around the lake. My desk was home to my netbook which is wher...

For the most part, healthwise, I had a good week while we were at the lake house last week.  And, the previous week was pretty good too.  I am definitely paying the price for all that good health now though! " All that good health"...  That seems to imply that I had years of good health...  or even months...  No, this was just a matter of 12 days or so. A body burdened with a myeloproliferative neoplasm such as Systemic Mastocytosis rarely goes longer than a few days without some debilitating symptomatology.  Having 12 relatively good days was a blessing. Unfortunately, when I have a few "good" days, I tend to overdo it.  I don't nap...  I stray from my specialized diet which minimizes mast cell degranulation...  I become active which causes a rise in body temperature which causes idiopathic anaphylaxia...  activity also causes inflammation and pain in my spine due to all my spinal injuries (for those unfamiliar with my spinal inj...

I decided that one of the first things I should work on this week is putting together a short 'teaser' video of some of our sailing at Lake Groton.  I have a lot of video footage to sort through but here are a few short clips of some of the excitement we had while sailing last week at Lake Groton... I have video clips shot from the rudder, low on the mast, on top of the mast looking down, from the end of the boom, and from shore.  Certainly, the most exciting video is shot from the boat during periods of relatively high winds!  The view from the top of the mast proved to be a bit boring because the view was not wide enough to get a real feel for what was really happening.  I did manage to get some decent footage from this view, however.  I will include some of these clips in the full-length video. The camera mount on the rudder broke after the first half hour of video!  Adam was sailing the boat at the time...   he was tacking and, a...

We brought two high-powered, waterproof walkie talkies and a base station with us to the lake.  This turned out to be a great idea and the whole plan of using radios for communication at the lake worked out great!  We had some initial bugs to work out at first (operator errors related to feature setup), but overall, this form of communication made life so much easier for us. Mostly, these radios were used whenever we were kayaking or sailing.  We also used them in the cars which turned out to be a great idea as well.  The Groton State Forest has no cellphone coverage at all so our cellphones were useless.  Not only did the radios work where the cellphone would not, but they were much easier to use than a cellphone.  No dialing required...  just push to talk (or voice activated, if you wish...  we prefer push to talk). The radios were invaluable while sailing... this is a frame capture from video of me sailing. Adam even took a walkie ta...

I have always wanted a photograph of the view from the house at Lake Groton...   to choose a beautiful time of day and shoot a panoramic of the same view we get from the house each day...   I think I may have succeeded this year!  This one below is the best one I have captured to date. The view from the house on Lake Groton has always amazed and captivated us.  This view is not only seen from the deck and dock, but it can be seen from inside the house as well.  The lake-end of the house is actually out over the water like a houseboat and the windows wrap around three sides of the house allowing us this beautiful view everyday... 180 degree panoramic view from the house... This panoramic image consists of eight photographs...  I started on the right, which is what is seen from the kitchen and dining room of the house...   then kept shooting shots as I turned left...  until I was facing the view from my desk overlooking the lake. I stitche...

We are back home from the lake house now.  Although it was a great week on Lake Groton and I prepared for this week for months by being vigilant with my daily physical therapy (a daily ritual since my second line-of-duty spinal injury in 1998), it has really taken a lot out of me. My spine is inflamed from dragging around kayaks and the sailboat.  Packing bags into the car didn't help either!  As bad as the spinal pain is, problems associated with my Systemic Mastocytosis are far worse and much more debilitating. Wearing myself down is one of the worst things I can do to my health today and has the same effect on all Systemic Mastocytosis patients.  The absolute worst thing we can do is to miss a dose of medications.  Wearing oneself down takes a close second though and requires the longest amount of time to recover. It just so happens that I did miss a dose of medications on our first night at the lake.  Our daily lifestyle changed so much at the lak...