Scattered Thoughts . . .

Sheila and I both have some issues with cholesterol plus additional dietary restrictions due to our own health problems so we've been fairly careful about what we eat in recent months.  Well, that is not entirely true.  We both have had dietary restrictions for years but now we have both added the high cholesterol dietary restrictions and limitations.   On the positive side, neither one of us has an appetite like when we were younger so cutting some stuff out of our diet has not been much of a problem.  We often can split a single dinner.  Eating less is not a problem for either one of us.   I've had significant dietary restrictions for about 15 years and, as a side effect of that and my health problems, I've been eating far less.  Adding in some cholesterol restrictions or limitations really isn't much of a change, to be honest.   Tonight, however, was something unusual for us...  a dinner without any meat whatsoever!  I'm big on balanced meals that include m

As expected after all the heavy work yesterday, today has mostly been a day of recovery.  I slept most of the day so far but I did manage to get a little bit of clean-up accomplished around the telescope pier. I was able to backfill around the pier.  There was only about a foot to backfill here because the rest was filled with quick setting concrete.  After leveling it off, I put down some grass seed.  Someday down the road (certainly not this year), I may add stone or concrete pavers to this area.  For now, it will be grass. Those four little stakes in the ground along the timber step (seen in the photo below) are where I will be putting in 4x4 fence posts.  I'll have a gate in between the second and third posts and then the fence will turn back toward the house at the end posts.   The grass seed is green in these photos...  the areas that appear to be just plain dirt on each side of this telescope pier area are wildflower gardens that we planted yesterday.   I desig

After we had finished cleaning up from our concrete work yesterday and while I was making a pasta salad for dinner, we received a call from Liza saying the kids wanted to come over for dinner.  Naturally, we thought that was a good idea and told them to come on over.   Lukey helped to start a fire...  which was a little smokey at times...  Kenzie was afraid the fire department would show up and I think we all went to bed with slightly irritated eyes!  The kids made some hot dogs on the fire before dinner.  For dinner, we had bacon cheeseburgers and pasta salad. Since it was one of those days when the moon was high in the sky all afternoon, I decided to take one of the telescopes out so the kids could view the moon as night approached... Kenzie had a little difficulty correctly positioning her eye over the huge eyepiece but she eventually figured it out.  If you are too close or too much to one side of the big eyepiece, you sometimes will see nothing.  In this case, mo