Assorted Photos

Sheila and I are in the process of changing our plans for our upcoming Christmas in Manhattan trip yet again.  

Lukey broke his foot a few weeks ago and we were hoping he would be able to bear some weight on his foot by the time we hopped on the train to New York.  Unfortunately, is foot is broken a bit more seriously than we had expected so he'll be on crutches for another month which means he'll be hobbling around Manhattan on crutches.  Which also means we'll need to adapt some of our plans.

We typically try to walk about 15-20 miles each day in Manhattan in order to see as many sites as possible.  We definitely won't be able to do that with Lukey hobbling around on crutches.  This means our previously scheduled itinerary is not even close to being accurate.  We needed to possibly cut some things while also stretching out the timetable to allow enough time to get from one place to another.  Additionally, this has caused us to need to add some flexibility to our itinerary.

We also had a problem in trying to reserve a couple of restaurants we wanted to go to for dinner.  The most desirable Christmas destination restaurants are booked solid into mid-January at this point.   We needed to find different restaurants and make reservations.  

In the past, we were pretty satisfied with just grabbing some pizza or some other relatively fast place to eat.  For this Christmas trip, we were hoping for nicer, more impressive places to eat...  ie, places that serve better food than we can get in Vermont, places that are decorated nicely for Christmas, places that are unique, etc.  So, Sheila and I went on another hunt for suitable restaurants. 

We'll be firming up everything related to this trip in the next couple of days and these plans will now be based on one of us being on crutches.  

Sheila had injured her right leg while skating a couple of weeks ago so that put an end to skating practice for a week.  She then developed the flu so that put her down for another week or more.  We got back to the rink the other night and Sheila had a chance to skate for a bit with Kenzie before Kenzie's skating lesson.  

I've been playing around with my cameras and lenses lately in an attempt to help me decide on what to take with us to Manhattan.  I have decided on a camera and lens combo for capturing the skating at Rockefeller Center and Bryant Park but there still is a wide selection of other sites to photograph and these sites vary from benefitting from very wide views to narrow views, in good light as well as nighttime in what would be considered poor light.  

So, while testing a few combinations of cameras and lenses, I shot a few photos of our Christmas tree.  This photo was captured using an "Auto ISO" feature that shoots at a high sensitivity which is good for static nighttime shots because it captures a burst of three images and then combines them in the camera.  Combining the three images allows the camera to cancel out most of the noise but any movement in the frame will be blurred so there is a limitation to using this technique.  In this shot of our Christmas tree, below, it worked quite well while also keeping the image sharp...

I just received a package in the mail the other day that included some 5x7 prints mounted on wood.  I really like these prints.  One wall in our bedroom has a bunch of these gallery mounts of the grandchildren.  Sheila also has a few of these gallery mounts on her office wall over her desk which are also images of the grandchildren.  

These gallery mounts are really nice.  The print is mounted on wood that has a beveled edge and the edge is painted black.  It really is a great product.

My health is still improving a bit each day which is a vast improvement over most of this calendar year.  I've been consistently doing my daily physical therapy with no health consequences which is great.  I just need to be careful not to overdo it.  If I trigger anaphylaxis, then that could put my down for a couple of weeks.  Our trip is only a bit over a week away so I need to continue building my strength and improving my health.  

A few days before we leave for Manhattan, I'll start pre-medicating with extra doses of medications.  I also do something similar whenever we head out for a short day trip anywhere away from the house.  For just a few hours out of the house, I load up on extra mast cell stabilizers and maybe an extra H1 blocker and H2 blocker depending on what we want to do.  For the longer, more physically strenuous trip to Manhattan, I'll need a much more complex pre-medication regimen.