Scattered Thoughts . . .

Our new weather station. We've had a weather station here in the house ever since I've lived here. Actually, when I moved in with Sheila, I brought my weather station at the time with me to Sheila's house.  Every few years, better weather stations at more affordable prices are manufactured so we've upgrade to newer models every five years or so. The weather station we've had for the past four or five years was okay but it was difficult to read in our hallway. We have a small area in our hallway just outside our kitchen where we have the house controls... our thermostat, our telephone/intercom base unit (yes, we still have a landline-based VOIP telephone system... two line... two remote handsets... because cell service is spotty, almost non-existent in our neck of the woods not to mention obscenely expensive) ... the weather station...  and this area is adjacent to our half bath and laundry room. It is just a nice common area of the house in close proximity

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, my health has been a bit lousy since my medical appointment earlier in the week. As a result, not much has been accomplished around the house other than making meals and cleaning myself up. It is during these quiet times when I have a little time to take notice of things I normally don't have the energy nor time to notice. This afternoon I decided to check my blog statistics to see how many people are viewing my blog, where these people are located, which pages they visit, which blog entries they read and how they found my blog. This is something I try to do at least once a week. The results are often interesting. More often than not, most of the people reading my blog are those researching chronic illness and my illness, Systemic Mastocytosis. Sometimes, however, a different blog entry will capture some attention and the tide of visitors shifts. This time of year usually finds traffic from a different source when compared to the rest of

Replacing a coupler... If you've been following this blog lately, you know that I built a small HO scale model railroad for our grandson for Christmas. When he opened up his wrapped trains, I quickly realized that the flatcar did not come with the couplers installed. The couplers were included in the box but they were not installed. Before Lukey came to the house again to play with his trains, I installed these couplers. It was a quick and easy project. Easy peasy. Unfortunately, at some point during his next train session, a tiny spring popped out of one of the couplers on this flatcar and it no longer held a mating coupler and his train kept coming apart. I ordered some cheap generic replacement couplers... they arrived the other day... and, today, I decided it was a good day to install these new couplers. (I'm having a rather lousy health day so it is a good day for tiny, quick tasks rather than any projects.)   After removing the broken coupler, I quickly realize

This morning was another morning darkened by a medical appointment for ongoing cancer. Sheila and I seem to share everything and, unfortunately, this is one of those things we have in common. Today was my turn.  To be honest, even after all these years of never-ending medical appointments, I still have difficulty seeing anything on my calendar beyond these important medical appointments... I just see darkness. When I pictured my calendar in my head, the months and days only went to January 11th... Monday... 2016... then complete darkness.  No matter how hard I try, I just cannot shed any light on this calendar in my head until I get beyond these dark appointments.  On the positive side, these appointments allow us to spend more time together rather than apart while Sheila is at work. We always eat out on these days as well. And, that is always nice.  Before Sheila was in my life, I seemed to know more medical professionals than others. I would walk into a hospital and the peopl