Scattered Thoughts . . .

Not much has been getting accomplished on the house lately. My health and the weather are not cooperating with each other in the least. I've been feeling absolutely miserable on some rare beautiful weather days and I've been feeling halfway decent on some rainy days... and, even if I were healthy, we've had a lot of rainy days this summer so getting much accomplished on the house would be difficult anyway. Regardless, I'm not too pleased with how little I've accomplished and how much it affects my health. At some point, I need to feel very well on a few very nice days! In the meantime, I'm trying to keep busy in the house. Most of my down time has been spent sketching plans for various projects around the house, researching building products, and even sitting at the piano whenever I'm feeling up to it. This evening, however, I decided to sift through some of my latest photos to see if I could find anything interesting. The first photo that captured my at

I had already written about Sheila's little birthday celebration here at the house the other night... we had a very nice dinner together... but I hadn't shot any photos of the gifts that Liza and the grandkids had given Sheila that night for her birthday so I thought I should shoot a couple of photos and share them here...   Plus, shooting these photos gave me something to do so I can say I accomplished something today!

That time of year came around and visited us yesterday... Sheila turned another year older yesterday!  Sheila had to work all day but we had a chance to celebrate a little bit when she arrived home from work. I had a nice dinner planned... some gifts... and Sheila was bringing home some cake...  While I was cooking a nice, tasty dinner of chicken parmesan, fettuccini, and some bread (I'm not a huge chicken fan but that meal was delicious!) , Liza and the kids stopped by to give Gee her birthday presents. They stuck around long enough to eat some tostada chips and help Gee open one of her presents. It was nice to see the kids even if it was a quick stopover before heading home to get ready for school in the morning.  Sheila stopped at La Brioche in Montpelier yesterday to choose two cakes for us to eat after dinner  (a large piece each) . These two "cakes" (although they don't deserve to be called "cakes") tasted as though they were really just dry, pla

Sheila celebrated another birthday this weekend. Well... actually... Sheila's had about a month of birthday celebration since she started receiving her gifts almost a month ago!  We attended a nice little dinner party at Tom and Karen's on Saturday evening. It was a beautiful weekend so we spent some time out on Tom and Karen's big new deck... then we moved inside and had a really nice dinner. As is the case at every one of Tom's dinner parties, the food was delicious. It was a fun time... and, after months of being quite sick (Sheila, as well), it was nice to socialize and laugh a bit. Actually, we laughed a lot! It was a really fun time! On Sunday (which was Sheila's true birthdate), the weather was even more beautiful than the beautiful weather we had on Saturday... bright, sunny and temperatures hovering close to 70 degrees all day... so we got some yardwork and housework accomplished before Tom and Karen visited us with a present for Sheila. As we were pr

I have been in the process of descriptively writing about some early morning kayaking I have done while at Lake Groton. It should be a really nice piece when I finally finish it. Because of that project, I have been skimming through my hard drives searching for the best photos I have shot from my kayak while the sun is rising and slowly burning off all the early morning fog. Occasionally, I come across an unrelated photo which captures my attention. This photo here was one such photo and understandingly diverted me from my original project. I'm sure that those of you from Waterbury recognize this cluttered but blurry background as  The Alchemist Pub & Brewery.  This photo was shot in May, 2011  before Tropical Storm Irene destroyed all of downtown Waterbury including this popular gathering place by submerging and swallowing our entire community and spitting out nothing but destruction, mold, mildew and tons upon tons of stinky, oil and sewage laden mud. My camera was new