Scattered Thoughts . . .

I had no problems falling asleep last night.  I was dozing off by 8pm.  I awoke at 4:30am this morning when I tried to roll over onto my right side.  I was quickly reminded that the bone marrow biopsy was on my right side though so that woke me up suddenly.   I read in bed for a bit and then got up out of bed with Sheila when she got up for work at just before 6am.  However, I was unable to keep my eyes open by 8am and slept on the couch until just before noon (on my left side, of course).   I didn't even eat anything for breakfast because I was too exhausted to make anything.  I was originally planning to make some bacon and French toast because I was starving.  Due to a serious lack of energy, I changed my breakfast plan to just having a bagel with cream cheese.  I still didn't have the energy to make even that.  Instead, I grabbed a couple pillows from the bedroom and laid down on the couch.  I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow and didn't get up until almost n

W hat I realized very quickly yesterday during my third bone marrow biopsy is that the brain does a great job at blocking out most of our most painful experiences.  I thought   I was accurately remembering my two previous bone marrow biopsies quite well but I was sort of fooled by my brain doing what it does best...  adapting and protecting us.   As the doctor was digging deeper and deeper into my pelvis yesterday and the pain was getting unbelievably unbearable, a lot of my memories that I had completely forgotten from my previous bone marrow biopsies came flooding back in vivid detail. Apparently, the brain adapts to pain.  I've noticed this with my extensive spinal injuries as well as my everyday bone pain caused by my primary illness.  Honestly, for the most part, I don't really notice this constant chronic pain anymore.  It just sort of simmers there in the background.  I don't even remember what it is like to be pain-free.  I'm in significant pain everyday but my

O ver the past few days, I've been doing some periodic maintenance on my cameras and lenses.  Of course, this involved shooting some test images.  These images are really nothing special but I figured I would share a few of them here anyway.  All of these particular images are straight out of the camera with no extra processing.  (EDIT:  The last two photos did  require a bit of extra processing for the reasons mentioned at each photo.) This first photo was shot using my newest-to-me compact camera, a Fujifilm X30.  I like the background separation I can get with this very tiny compact camera.  It produces very sharp images as well.  This is my O scale trolley...   My recently purchased large scale trolley is up next.  Most people refer to it as a G scale model but, although I haven't taken any measurements of this trolley yet, I think it is an F scale trolley.  It is significantly larger than the trolley pictured above.  This photo, below, was shot using my Panasonic G3 at a

A fter my periodic camera sensitivity testing this morning in the infrared wavelengths, I pulled out one of my oldest digital cameras to shoot some snowscapes. As often is the case when I don't feel well enough to head outside, these images were shot through our open living room window because I didn't have the energy to dress for the winter weather outdoors.  For these photos, I used my Olympus E-500 with it's Kodak CCD sensor from way back in 2005.   This camera is nothing special but the Kodak CCD sensor is special which is the only reason why I continue to hang on to this camera.  The camera likes to clip highlights which is really frustrating.  I'm constantly applying a lot of negative exposure compensation to keep the highlights under control.  Also, I have found that the Olympus cameras don't auto-focus well on items with a lot of specular highlights like ice and wet snow in the sun.  These images came out fairly well though.   I shot in monochrome with a red

I've wanted to get into monochrome infrared imaging for quite a while but this has been one of those projects that keeps getting pushed to the back burner because it wasn't a priority.  Photographing in infrared is challenging with a very unique and distinctive look.  One of the reasons why I seem to keep pushing infrared photography to the back burner is that environmental and weather conditions must be "just right" for infrared imaging to work well.  You need the right weather conditions, the right environmental conditions, and the right scene for infrared photography.  You also need to use a tripod and infrared filters.  Just getting one good image can require many minutes of getting everything just right and then actually capturing a long exposure image. The first step toward getting involved in this type of imaging, however, was to see which of my camera bodies were best for this type of imaging.  I finally accomplished this over the past two days. This wasn'