Scattered Thoughts . . .

We've had a stench coming from our range and it has not been my cooking! Unfortunately, anytime we turned out the stovetop or the oven, we would get a strong smell of rodent and urine. Something needed to be done! I pulled out the range when this odor first presented itself a few weeks ago figuring that maybe some mice had taken up residence behind the range or under the range since it is a warm place... I found some mouse poop and urine stains but I didn't think this was the source of our problem. I was hoping, but I wasn't sure. While I had the range pulled out away from the cabinets, I vacuumed and then cleaned and then painted... I wanted to seal up any of the urine smell. Our problem was mostly minimized now but there were still some really stinky times especially when we used the broiler. Then we attended a dinner party at the house of some close friends. They have the same model range as we do... a Frigidaire Gallery line... with a full commercial quality coo

As I mentioned in a previous post, I shot approximately 2000 photos on our last trip to Dayton. Most of the places we visited were very unlike anything we can find in Vermont... a nice zoo, a large aquarium, a tremendous model railroad at a place called EnterTrainment, an historical Ohio village, the US Air Force Museum, the Wright brothers' family history including their homes and businesses, and an amazing airshow. It was nice for a younger Adam and a younger Liza to see what we saw on this trip.   I have a lot of beautiful photos from that long journey to Ohio and back but many of my favorites are from the US Air Force Museum. One in particular is pretty cool and worth mentioning... and is probably my favorite of the bunch... The Air Force Museum is broken down by "era" spread throughout four immense hangars... ie, the early years of aviation, WWI, barnstorming, WWII, etc. They even have a separate silo hangar dedicated to housing missiles nestled between two of th

While the grandchildren were with us on Sunday, they spent some time putting together a big puzzle of the United States (never to be erroneously referred to as "America"...  more on this pet peeve of mine in a future blog entry) with Gee.  As they searched for where to place each state, Gee would tell them about the state and what we have done there while visiting that state. When they came to Ohio and were trying to figure out where it belongs, Gee explained to them that this is where we brought Mommy and Uncle Adam... that we saw airplanes, animals in a zoo, an aquarium and a number of other places. They were animated and excited while hearing about the trip to Dayton so I thought it would be the perfect time to show them the photos from that trip, except... I quickly remembered that all those photos were on an old external hard drive and not in an album online. There was no way I could get at these photos quickly. I promised them that I would dig out these photos so t

Last summer, I shot a lot of loon photos. Most of them were shot in very low light... at dusk... with the sun low and usually behind the loons. This meant that I had a lot of photos that were a rather poor quality since my photography gear that I use for wildlife is quite old.  Every now and then, however, I dig back into the folders containing these photos to see if I may have missed a decent shot that is worthy of sharing. There is almost always one more decent photo to find and while I was digging through these old photos the other night was no exception. I found this photo, below, of a lone loon on the lake, at dusk, neck stretched, looking and searching... It was rather dark when I shot this photo... the sun had already dropped behind the mountains... the loon was in the long shadows stretched across the darkened lake... and the loon was a significant distance away... I had to use my longest lens which is definitely less-than-ideal for low light conditions... 600mm at I

One of them was chanting "SAILING!" and then the other screamed "KAYAKING!" alternating back and forth between the two types of boating... My health is feeling a bit more stable this morning so now I'll get to writing about our Sunday with the grandchildren. I have a few photos to add here as well (nothing great... just snapshots only a relative would love) .  When the kids were here the previous weekend, we told them we would dig the life preservers out of the shed so they could try them on before we head to the lake house. They're excited about heading back to the lake and they know that these life preservers are required if they want to kayak, sail, be on the dock or be in the water so they were excited to hear it is this time of year again. If these life preservers are too small, we need to purchase the correct size soon so it was time to dig out them out of storage so the kids could do a quick fitting.  The funny thing is... Last year, Ke

We had the kids over yesterday for playing with dolls, playing trains, watching some movies and a nice pot roast dinner. It was a nice day, as always, but my health didn't cooperate whatsoever. Aside from all my usual medications, I needed to throw a lot of extra emergency medications at my health after having a serious bout of poor health leading to impending anaphylaxis. My breathing has been rather miserable over the past few days anyway... "miserable" compared to the usual "lousy"... but then I started feeling nauseated. At this point... the point when the second symptom appeared... I should have taken some epinephrine and some extra emergency medications. I wasn't thinking clearly so I didn't. (I haven't been thinking too clearly lately either which is another common symptom of this illness... brain fog clouding my cognitive reasoning.) Eventually, my health worsened significantly into difficulty with nausea, narrowing vision, lightheadedn