Scattered Thoughts . . .

W e have begun our outdoor shower project and we're looking forward to getting this fully finished and operational! The first step was the design including choosing finish materials.  That was fairly easy.  I roughly sketched some ideas on how to deal with drainage as well as what dimensions I should make this shower.  (The sketches are rough sketches and not close to being to scale.) We'll have a small dressing area when you first enter the shower.  The shower area will be adjacent to this dressing area.  In the dressing area, there will be a bench for sitting and hooks for hanging clothing and towels.   I did some online shopping searching for outdoor shower fixtures but I couldn't find anything that appealed to me so I decided to make my own fixture using black iron pipe, brass valves and a brass showerhead.  I'll write more about this later when I get to this part of the project... The next step was grading the area.  This took some time....

M y health has been quite lousy since returning from Long Island last weekend and it is still lousy...  perhaps even worse than I had thought it was this past week, actually.   Sometimes I don't realize just how poor my health is until I either get worse or start to improve.  Then I can better gauge just how miserable my health is or has been.  In this case, I'm very slowly improving (I hope) but, as I can think more clearly, I am beginning to see just how poor my health has been this past week.  A few days ago I couldn't think clearly at all! At this point, mostly, I am worn out...  too exhausted to even stand for more than a few short minutes.  I could easily sleep away each day and night.  The only problem is that I want to accomplish something!  This is a frustrating place to be...  wanting to accomplish something and not having the energy to even begin to accomplish anything. Today the weather was beautiful...  sunny, warm...

I 've spent the past few days adding more coats of paint to my locomotive project.  This is a large scale steam locomotive so it is a very large model and it is requiring a lot more paint than I expected.  I've been delayed while waiting on paint to arrive (the USPS is dog-slow lately).  Regardless of a few little problems, this project is slowly coming along. A couple of days ago, I painted everything using Krylon Anvil Gray.  I was hoping for a charcoal neutral color but this Anvil Gray turned out to be more closely resembling something I would call Midnight Blue.  Midnight Blue was definitely not in my plan for this project so I had to order a different color (and wait a bit longer for it to finally arrive).  I couldn't find a gray tone that I liked because they were all too light in tone so I settled for a flat black.  I plan to weather this locomotive so starting with a neutral black will work even though my preference was for a neutral dark gray/...

O kay, this is the blog entry I've been anticipating for the past month or two.  This was more than likely my last total solar eclipse so I wanted to make sure I document it as best as I can.   I've seen one or two other solar eclipses but not the way we viewed this one.  The next one in our area won't occur for another 30 years so, being realistic, it is highly unlikely I'll be around to see that one especially considering my health.  We got to see this one though and we even got to share this with our two oldest grandchildren, Lukey and Kenzie.  We always enjoy our time with Lukey and Kenzie but sharing this event with them made for an even more memorable experience.   Another thing that made this eclipse special is that we had good weather for it even though it was April in Waterbury.  We are usually socked in under clouds with precipitation falling from the sky from November through April so we got incredibly lucky for this event. _______...