Scattered Thoughts . . .

My big O scale Hudson steam locomotive is headed to the shop for some nice upgrades. This old locomotive, by MTH, currently has only very rudimentary control and some generic sounds which, to be honest, aren't that great. This upgrade will be a significant upgrade and will be  very welcomed! My MTH O scale Hudson steam locomotive... This old locomotive runs great but it operates unrealistically just like the old Lionel locomotives... press a button on the transformer and the locomotive jumps into forward... press it again and it jumps back to neutral while coasting to a stop... press it again and it jumps into reverse...  press again, back to neutral... forward, neutral, reverse, neutral, forward, neutral...  So, what if I am going forward and I want to stop at a freight station or passenger station and I want to leave the station going forward again? The next time I press that "direction button", I'll be heading in reverse! I'd prefer to have complete

It's been a quiet week since Christmas. As with any major event in our life, my health needs a long period of rest and recovery afterward. This is especially true after the long buildup to Christmas and Christmas Day celebrations. So, this week has been a quiet week of rest and recovery. Right now, I don't want to do anything else for the next three or four weeks... I'm tired and worn out! There were a lot of great presents this year and a lot of happy expressions as gifts were opened which makes a photographer's job a whole lot easier! I had some time to sort through well over 300 photos and found some from Christmas morning to share here...  Here it is, in the wee hours of the morning, as we wait on Lukey and Kenzie... Sheila is chatting with Adam on Skype as I prepare breakfast... Lukey was excited about this ferry boat with cars... the boat actually floats and can be used at the lake house!  And, this ferry sort of resembles the ferries we

Christmas morning, as anticipated, was very nice... a lot of great presents to unwrap... a delicious breakfast... and, after the kids left for their daddy's house, we got to eat a nice quiet breakfast and then play with all the toys.  This morning, I whittled our 30 minutes of video down to 20 minutes and then rendered it in high definition. That little project required the entire morning... mostly work for the computer, not me... but the results are nice!  Having a separate camera mounted on a tripod while I shot still photography with my usual camera worked out great. I had hoped to get some video clips with the camera I had in my hand to add different angles but shooting video, shooting stills and cooking breakfast all at the same time proved to be more than I could handle. The results are really nice though... It was a magical Christmas morning... and everyone enjoyed it! It is really nice to have video footage to help remember our day. At some point, I'll w