Scattered Thoughts . . .

S heila took some much-needed time off yesterday afternoon so we headed up to Burlington for a change of scenery.  I was feeling rather lousy and my health was a bit unstable but everything turned out "okay" due to taking a bunch of extra medications throughout the afternoon.   Unfortunately, although it was dry, the weather was drab, overcast and very gray.  Also noteworthy is that Burlington looked like a run-down, filthy, abandoned ghost town.  There was graffiti everywhere and every building was covered in grime, dirt and chipped paint.  Burlington was on the verge of looking very much like a dying coal town. Traffic was almost non-existent.  Then, while we were walking around, we noticed that we saw very few other human beings.  Stores were empty.  Restaurants were empty.  A little bit afterward, I realized this was likely due to a lack of international tourism.   What was really bothersome is that all the storefronts were...

The other day (the day after Thanksgiving), we started putting up all the Christmas decorations inside the house.  I put the tree up and then starting pulling out strings of Christmas lights.  I quickly realized that most of last year's lights were no longer lighting up. I spent too much time troubleshooting each string yet I was still unable to fix any of the faulty strings.  We decided that perhaps this is the year to start replacing our old incandescent Christmas lights with LED Christmas lights.   I've been putting off making this switch to LEDs for two reasons.  First, the first few years of LEDs were only available in cool white which emitted a color somewhere between blue and cool white.  Those were a sickly color of blue and I didn't want my Christmas lights looking like that.  The other reason for putting off this switch to LEDs was the ridiculously high price.  Those early strings of LEDs were far too expensive. This year, I had no ...

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 ...