Scattered Thoughts . . .

I am on a roll... or tumble... and the hill I am tumbling down seems to be much bigger than I had originally thought. My health began its roll down this hill a few weeks ago and it just continues to tumble downhill. I slept for about four hours this afternoon and felt pretty good when I awoke. I honestly thought it would be a night of good health and feeling well. Within a half hour things started to deteriorate and things deteriorated rather quickly. First was the nausea... In hindsight, I should have taken this as a sign of impending doom. To make a long story short, I didn't realize that my health had crashed into brief anaphylaxis until my body responded naturally. I had missed all the signs. My body responding naturally to anaphylaxis is a good thing though! It isn't something I like to or should test but it is a good thing! Sometimes, either I am not thinking clearly enough to catch these signs... or, I am feeling so well that impending doom with my health seems so

We had the grandkids at the house for dinner again last night... no, the grandkids weren't for dinner... they joined us for dinner last night.  As always, it was a funny, amusing night! The kids also picked up a cold around the time of the train show so the three of us are still trying to shake this cold. It was obvious that they are feeling just like I am... a bit worn out and stuffy. Anyway, it was nice spending some time with Lukey and Kenzie! Here are a few photos... Some train time... Some stinky feet... I don't remember what this face was about...  I think it was about wanting to watch trains on the television... but mostly about being exhausted... The kids were introduced to a new movie while eating dinner...  "The Croods"... it captivated Lukey! This last photo reminds me... mark my words... I believe Kenzie is entering a stage of life that finds her avoiding cameras at all cost... I'll be shooting a l

I don't really get much accomplished when my health is lousy and, for the past few weeks, my health has been pretty lousy. I don't even remember when I last immersed myself into an art project. I've been fighting off a cold for at least two weeks now. A cold isn't a big deal for most people but, for me, a cold only compounds my problems with my mast cell disease. The cold ends up knocking me for a loop and it seems to take forever to shake it. My body already has too many mast cells and too many overactive mast cells. When we add a cold to this environment, my mast cells are even more overactive wreaking havoc on all fronts. To make matters worse, I really wore myself down over the past few months. I knew this would be a recovery period for me but my mast cells are a bit angry right now as well. Angry mast cells make for prolonged cold symptoms, bone pain, joint pain, fatigue, intermittent anaphylaxis, and a bit of nausea. This makes for some very long but very bori

Leading up to Christmas, I had finished the new half bathroom (I finished it on Christmas Eve just before Sheila arrived home from work) but I just realized that I never did shoot any photos of the finish room. I had already shown some photos of this project but those previous photos did not show the ceiling trim being finished. Actually, my previous photos purposely avoided showing the ceiling because none of the trim was installed yet. Now that the trim is installed, I should shoot and post some photos of this project before it is looking a bit rundown. I had some exposed plumbing running across the ceiling over the pedestal sink that needed to be hidden somehow. I decided to hide it by building and installing a faux beam around the plumbing. This plumbing was the hot and cold supply pipes running to the kitchen.  I also hung a few photos... added a wastebasket... and some accessories. We 'settled' for this particular wastebasket because we could not find one even c

It doesn't matter what I attempt to fix... the house, the car, my bicycle... I always end up with complications requiring more time, more effort and more parts. Working on my small collection of model railroad trains is no different.   I acquired a broken Lionel GP-7 diesel from a friend. This engine just would not kick into gear. It turns out that there were no gears attached to either of the motors to engage those gears!   I did a little research and found that Lionel had come up with a really poor design for some of these engines which used a plastic gear affixed to a smooth metal shaft... the gear inevitably would quickly work itself free from the smooth shaft leaving no way for the motor(s) to engage the gears. The motors would just spin and spin while the locomotive remained motionless.  So, I figured, "I'll just replace those motors with new motors that have metal gears on their shafts." As is the case with most projects, I thought it would be a relati