Scattered Thoughts . . .

J ust about all of this summer, thus far, has been nothing but rain showers, thunderstorms and flooding.  In between rain showers we get some sun trying to shine but, if the sun isn't obscured by clouds, the sun is mostly obscured by wildfire smoke from the Canadian wildfires.  For the most part, the skies have been far too consistently either cloudy or white due to wildfire smoke.   This wildfire smoke does not help my breathing issues at all.  I've been managing to get through each day without any major catastrophes (unlike earlier this year) but this calendar year, as a whole so far, has been filled with health problems and the leading and most consistently nagging problem has been difficulty breathing.  I'm pretty sure that even without the wildfire smoke, I would be struggling with breathing problems.  These breathing problems started with one of my bouts with COVID and it has not let up after my last bout with the virus.  The wildfire smoke is just not helping in the

So, once again, between rain showers, I've been pulling tools and lumber out of the shed so I can finish my dryer vent repair.  As rain showers would approach, I would quickly put everything back into the shed...  then back out again...  then back in...  etc.   ________________________________________________________________ To update - After all the moist, rainy weather over the past month or so, we noticed that our clean clothes were coming out of the dryer smelling terribly.  Once we opened the dryer door and stuck our head in the dryer, it was clear why our clothes were smelly after being in the dryer.  The dryer itself smelled terribly! It sort of smelled like a mouse nest or dead animal so I was originally thinking that I would find one or the other in the vent or inside the dryer.  I disassembled the dryer and found nothing.  Then I ran our shop vac up the vent from the outside to see if it would grab a dead animal.  Once again, I found nothing but some lint.   The photo, a

T his summer has really been quite lousy for scheduling a day out.  Every day seems to be filled with rain showers or steady rain or thunderstorms.  It has not been the summer for outdoor activities so far. Every year we try to schedule a few barbeques in the backyard around a fire, a few day outings at nearby attractions and we also spend a day with Sheila's parents and the grandkids on a cruise on Lake Champlain.  Although we would like to get together with a bunch of friends in the backyard, I think we've pretty much given up on socializing outside in the backyard lately. We've also been waiting on some good weather so we could go on our annual cruise on Lake Champlain with the grandchildren and Sheila's dad and that is what this blog entry is about this time.   We had a rare day-long break in the rain showers one day last week so we chose that day for our cruise.  I had managed to get the lawn mowed a couple days earlier in between rain showers but the day we chose