Scattered Thoughts . . .

I've been overwhelmingly exhausted this past week so I really haven't been doing much other than sleeping, eating and using the bathroom.  This morning, however, we had an unusually clear, sunny sky so I decided to do some solar observing with a couple of telescopes.  I felt that I had enough energy in me to drag a couple of telescopes out of the house for a simple observing session so that is what I did.   I had quickly decided to just make this an observing session only though.  To do a "proper" imaging session would require far more equipment including a computer and associated cables and thus would require far more energy.  This was energy I still didn't have just yet.  Honestly, I was still feeling as though I could sleep for another week before diving into anything too taxing.  My plan was to just observe the sun for about an hour or so while saving enough energy to then put everything back in storage.  (It turns out that I did not have enough energy to prop

L ukey's train set is being improved little by little.  That was the intention when I first built this HO scale train set for him.  Every now and then, we would add something else to it.  About a week ago, we added railroad grade crossing signs. These buckboard crossing sign posts came as a laser-cut kit so there was a lot of work to be done to make them look like grade crossings! We cut out each part, filed and sanded the edges smooth, glued each piece, and painted them in appropriate colors.   We added these newly built buckboard grade crossing signs to the layout even though the actual road grades now need some adapting and attention.  We now have some buckboard crossing signs without a road in a couple of places.  Plus, even where there is a road, the road grade does not meet the track smoothly.  Finishing up these road grades at the crossing will be a project for another day.  Today's project was to assemble, paint and install the buckboard crossing signs... It may be diff

T he weather was generally lousy while Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for a few weeks.  We didn't have many rainy days of solid rain but we had a lot of dark days with intermittent rain.  One particular day was indeed a solid rainy morning so we set up Lukey's trains in the kitchen while Gee worked from her home office.   Due to the pandemic, we converted our "train room" into Sheila's home office so we had to find another place to run Lukey's trains since Gee was working from home while Lukey and Kenzie stayed with us.   We cleared off the kitchen table and set his HO scale layout on the table.  That actually worked far better than I thought it would!  The layout hung off the end of the kitchen table but the layout itself was solid enough to handle the weight of the trains without the support of the table under the last foot of one end of the layout.  Having the train set on a table was far more comfortable than running them while the layout is placed

K enzie sort of inherited a small lot of China dolls a few weeks ago.  These dolls needed a bit of attention so Kenzie and Gee went to work on them a couple of weeks ago.  First, Kenzie chose the dolls she liked the most out of the small lot of dolls.  I believe she chose about half of the dolls for various reasons.  These were some nice looking dolls! Then it was time to evaluate their condition to see what needed to be corrected.  All of the dolls needed some cleaning and some airing-out.  Hair needed to be cleaned and brushed.  Clothes were hand-washed.  Even Papa was asked to fix one China doll's figure skates.  I had a gel cyanoacrylate glue that worked perfectly for gluing the figure skate blades back to the white upper boots.   This little project gave Kenzie some one-on-one time with Gee.  Plus, these are things that Kenzie adores...  dolls.  She was pretty excited.  In the end, Kenzie went home with a nice selection of China dolls.  

O ne of my latest projects has been to install rainbarrels to collect rain water coming off the roof.  We use this water to water all our flower gardens and potted flowers.  I also use it for the lawn.  This free water allows our house to look like a colorful and lush flowering oasis. I had actually purchased the rainbarrels last summer.  Unfortunately, one of them arrived with a fast leak in the barrel itself around the spigot valve so that rainbarrel sat around empty until this season.  I set them up on a stand anyway, rearranged the downspout off the gutter so it will fill the rainbarrels with rain water, plumbed both rainbarrels, and then attacked the leaking problem first thing this spring.   My first attempt at fixing the leaking rainbarrel last summer was a failure.  Finding the right adhesive to seal these barrels was a problem.  After my first failure, I ordered a tube of roofing cement and a small sheet of black acrylic.  First thing this spring, I cut the acrylic to fit over

W e went on a lunchtime cruise on Lake Champlain the other day with Lukey and Kenzie.  The lunch was good, the weather was beautiful, the cruise was nice and relaxing, and we had a great time! As always, I shot many photos but I suppose I should now say that we shot many photos.  Lukey and Kenzie may have shot as many photos as I did this time out.  They are shooting more and more photos as they get older and they captured a few great photos on this day.  Another plus with them shooting more and more photos with my cameras is that I end up with photos of myself too which never used to happen when I was the only one shooting photos! Until I find the time and energy to write more with more photos of our cruise, here are a select few of photos from our cruise the other day.  And, I should point out that all of these photos in this blog entry were shot by Lukey and Kenzie...