Scattered Thoughts . . .

S heila and our granddaughter, Ellie, share a birthday so we tend to celebrate both birthdays together each year.  For their birthdays over the past few years, we've visited the ECHO Science Museum in Burlington and then gone out for lunch and this is what we did this year too.  It was a really nice day for all of us especially for Ellie and Gee! Our drive up to Burlington was longer than usual with far more traffic because the interstate highway was closed due to a bad accident.  The traffic didn't actually get bad until the last 15 miles...  from Richmond into Burlington.  From Richmond on, we were in bumper to bumper, slow-moving traffic. We had to travel on US Route 2 which is only one lane each way.  Fortunately, I actually enjoy the drive on this road and we hadn't driven this route since last summer so it was a really nice change until traffic was too heavy.   I used to live on US Route 2 for many years and I liked that it is one of the lon...

A s I mentioned in my previous blog entry, we spent the day out for Sheila's birthday.  Most of the day was really nice while some of the day was pretty disgusting as will be described later in this blog entry.   The drive up to Burlington was nice...  the sky was clear and it wasn't snowing for a change!  The mountaintops clearly have snow but the snow at our lower elevation was mostly gone over the past few days and wouldn't return until the following day.   Sheila had gone for a massage in mid-morning in Waterbury so we were heading up to Burlington a little later than we normally would have started out.  She enjoyed her massage so that is good.  By the time we arrived in the Burlington area, it was a bit later in the lunchtime hours so we were pretty hungry.  We had decided to have lunch at a new Mexican restaurant in Willison called "Casa Grande" since we had never been there before and we do like Mexican food.  I think we visi...

Y esterday was Sheila's birthday.  She had already opened one gift a few days before her birthday (a good pair of ear buds) but she had another one to open on her birthday.   I had purchased a new ring for her...  the main stone is aquamarine (her birthstone) and it is surrounded by white sapphires... Shooting photos of jewelry isn't something I do all that often.  I had forgotten how surprisingly difficult it is to get a sharp photo due to all the specular highlights reflecting off the jewelry.  To compound this primary difficulty, you need a lot of light coming from many directions which makes even more specular highlight reflections.   Another problem I had with this particular photo is that a ring is quite small.  Since it is small, you need to try to get as close as possible which then results in a very shallow depth of field putting most of the ring out of focus.  I resolved that problem but the specular highlight issue is still a ...

A s I've mentioned a few times in this blog previously, Sheila has been practicing her figure skating in an effort to be as prepared as possible for our trip to Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie.  Until a couple of months ago, she hadn't skated in decades so she knew she needed to get on skates again before we were at Rockefeller Center and Bryant Park.  Lukey and Kenzie want to skate as much as Sheila has wanted to skate at these two popular rinks so this has been the plan since we started talking about a Christmas trip to Manhattan with the kids quite a few years ago. We've been heading to a couple of different rinks a couple of times a week so Sheila can practice.  Sometimes Sheila skates with Kenzie before Kenzie's skating lessons but most times she is out there alone while I practice my video and photography skills.    Sheila has improved quite a bit over the past few weeks but she is now done practicing.   She took a bad fall the other night and h...

S heila's birthday was last weekend.  I've been a bit too distracted with other things to write here in the blog for the past couple of weeks so I'm just adding some photos from Sheila's birthday now.   Sheila received her birthday gifts before her birthday even arrived this year.  I bought her an updated Samsung Smart/Fitness Watch (updated two versions from her old watch) which arrived a week before her birthday.  She opened that gift when it arrived in case it needed to be returned.   I also gave her some jewelry for her birthday and she opened that a couple of evenings early while she was video chatting with Lukey and Kenzie.  I gave her the gift while the kids were chatting with her so they could see her open at least one gift.   It turns out that Liza and the kids stopped by the house for a short while on Sheila's birthday too so I shot a few photos and we had a birthday cake for Gee.   It was nice spending a little time ...

S heila was featured on the evening news this evening!  I took the easy route and just recorded it with one of my cameras while standing in front of the television.  

T oday is Sheila's birthday so, Happy Birthday to Sheila! She took a couple of days off from work so we started her birthday celebration a couple of days ago.   It has been a wet, damp and muddy weekend so far.  We have some fresh snow on the ridge of the Worcester Range just outside our living room window, which looks really nice, but our yard is a squishy swamp and the driveway is like quicksand which is typical silty Vermont mud.  This month has been brutally bitter with high winds whipping across the flats and rattling our roof all day and all night long.  Between the wind, the rain and the mud, this really is rather typical weather for Sheila's birthday. Anyway, Sheila opened her birthday gifts the other night.  One of the gifts was a nice app-controlled heated coffee mug.  She seems to be enjoying this gift so far this weekend so this turned out to be a nice gift and especially for someone who works from home. There is no need to be microwaving c...

We ordered a few prints this past week so we can hang some nice photos in Sheila's home office.   Lately, we've been ordering prints mounted on wood called Gallery Mounts and we've been happy with them.  Since the wood that the prints are mounted on have beveled edges, these Gallery Mounts don't really need any frames so it is nice no-fuss option.  They look nice and the quality is high.   I keep saying I'm going to put together a few photo books...  in coffee table size...  but I just never seem to get around to starting a project this large.  With the number of good photos that I have, I could easily create an entire bookcase of photo books.  At this point, the idea of this project is a bit overwhelming but if I never start, I'll never get anything done.  

I just thought I'd write a quick update on Sheila's treatment problems.   After the ER visit a few weeks ago, Sheila's Oncology team decided that the significant symptoms she was experiencing were probably not due to her new treatment drug.  Since they were fairly certain that the treatment wasn't presenting these significant symptoms as side effects of the treatment drug, we came up with a plan to get back on the treatment plan and give it a shot again. Unfortunately, Sheila was back on this particular treatment drug only two days before one of the significant symptoms appeared again... and now it is only a week later and both of the significant symptoms that landed her in the ER are back again. At this point, we're both quite certain that these are actually side effects of her cancer treatment and they are far too severe to be tolerated for a long term treatment plan. Right now, these symptoms are more mild than the first time around but it is still only a m...

After Sheila's terribly rough night (and frightening) and middle-of-the-night ambulance ride to the hospital almost two weeks ago, we had a couple of follow-up medical appointments. Those are out of the way now but a few more appointments are scheduled for the next eight weeks or so.  (Plus, a few appointments for myself in those same eight weeks for diagnostics and treatment for my own serious health issues... this is a couple of months neither one of us are looking forward to.)  To refresh everyone's memory... Sheila is in treatment and still under constant medical care after her second fight (in ten years) with breast cancer. She has another nine years of treatment to go this time around and it has been rather rough going thus far. Honestly, if we were to compare her treatment today to treatments two+ decades ago, what she is experiencing is... let's say mediocre... by comparison. That being said, her quality of life has been rather low regardless. Sheila is ol...

Sheila nudged me awake in the middle of the night last night...  I thought she was waking me because I was having another violent nightmare again (which, unfortunately, happens too often)... and I immediately said to myself, "...wait a second... I wasn't having a nightmare."   I was thinking, "This must be serious..." All she said was, "I need you to... " and I jumped up out of bed to see what was wrong.   She was about to vomit... she couldn't move... she couldn't focus her eyes as they darted violently back and forth... she wanted me to get a bucket. I ran for the bucket and a plastic bag while all sorts of first aid techniques were running through my head... and, as I wondered why this was happening.  She kept saying, "I can't move... I can't move... I think I'm going to be sick..." and she looked terrible. She was stiff yet she seemed to be only as flat as the contour of the bed and pillow as though she were ...