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Scattered Thoughts . . .

...a blog about managing and living life with chronically poor health

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Kenzie's Figure Skating Show

B ack in February, both Lukey and Kenzie had sports events on the same weekend. Lukey had to travel to Saratoga, New York for a hockey tournament while Kenzie had her annual end-of-season figure skating show here in Barre, Vermont. This particular holiday weekend was fast becoming a logistical nightmare and this logistical nightmare was developing at the last minute after months of planning. We were told about Lukey's February hockey tournament way back in October. Literally the moment we were told about this tournament, Sheila and I started discussing making reservations at our favorite inn in Saratoga. We like Saratoga so we were making plans within mere moments of Lukey telling us about the tournament. We knew the hotels in Saratoga would book very quickly and we were correct. In the few short hours that we were discussing and planning this long weekend trip, our favorite inn was filling up quickly so we knew we had to book the weekend immediately. Actually, within just

A Visit to Penn Station

December 30, 2023

W hen we traveled to Manhattan from Vermont, we were supposed to arrive in Penn Station on Amtrak and the kids (mostly Lukey) were really looking forward to pulling into this station and riding the escalator up to the new main train hall. Unfortunately, our Amtrak train was cancelled altogether due to flooding in Vermont so we had to drive down to Manhattan instead which meant that the kids missed out on their train ride on Amtrak as well as seeing Penn Station, especially the new train hall at Penn Station. On our second day in Manhattan, we found that even the Manhattan subway system was trying to recover from flooding. This caused some transportation issues for us. We had a reservation for a visit at a specific time at the Museum of Natural History but we couldn't get there in time due to these subway problems. On our way up to the museum, we only got as far as Columbus Circle (59th Street) but we had only minutes left to get to our reservation at the museum (81st Street). N

A Haircut for Lukey

December 18, 2023

W hen Sheila went to pick up Lukey and Kenzie at the rink last night, there was talk of Lukey needing a haircut. He has been growing his hair long for a few years now and it definitely needed to be cleaned up a bit. Honestly, I had intended to give him a quick trim to clean up his hair last night anyway before our trip this morning. It turns out that both his mom and his dad were talking about a fade for Lukey so that is what I did last night. We cut off a lot of hair! I had only planned to clean up his hair a bit with a quick trim but a fade would require a big change by cutting off a lot of hair. Needless to say, this took a little bit of time and Lukey was beginning to get a little impatient so I didn't get as picky as I normally would. Regardless, his hair looks pretty good now... clean... neat... and, best of all, Lukey likes it. Before we started on his hair, he chose a photo of a boy with a fade. I definitely wanted to make sure that we were both thinking about t

Cruise with the Grandchildren

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

A Big Surprise for Lukey and Kenzie

November 01, 2023

W e usually start all the Christmas festivities immediately after the holiday I despise, Thanksgiving. There are one or two other holidays that bother me a bit but I truly despise Thanksgiving. I always make the best of that holiday anyway and, by the end of that long holiday weekend, all of our Christmas decorations are up and the tree is decorated. This year, however, Christmas came a little earlier. We started our Christmas gift-giving on Halloween night! Those who read this blog regularly probably already know that this year has been absolutely miserable when it comes to my health but I'll add a little background here anyway. This year started out with an ambulance ride to the hospital and I've had about a dozen visits since then for follow-ups and tests. I had a more extensive bone marrow biopsy not long after my ambulance ride to the hospital. Shortly after that biopsy, I fell on the biopsy site. We've had to cancel about a half dozen weekend out-of-town tri

Birthday Barbeque

W e had a really nice birthday barbeque celebration in the backyard this past weekend. Although it was a bit smoky from the Canadian wildfires, the weather was actually quite nice for a change! The company was good. The food was good. The drinks were cold. There were plenty of games to play. The rain stopped just long enough for us to set up the yard on Friday, have a great time together on Saturday and then clean up before it started raining again. Looking at these photos, it seems to me that everyone had a good time! As always, the kids congregated on the sailboat most of the day. At one point, four of the grandchildren were on the sailboat at the same time (photo above). I have no idea how they all fit in that rather small cockpit! In hindsight, when I saw that the four of them were on the sailboat together, I should have had Liza place 10 day old Sophia into Lukey or Kenzie's arms too so I could get a photo of all the grandchildren on the sailboat at the same time.

Home Movie of Kenzie Figure Skating

September 12, 2023

I n mid-August, we went to another one of Kenzie's figure skating lessons and practice sessions. I really enjoy going to these sessions because, when the rink is empty such as it is during these sessions, I have access to the ice from one of the team benches rather than from behind hockey-puck-marred glass in the stands. When I'm on one of the team benches, I have no marred glass in my way... no safety nets in my way... I can even open the door in the boards to get down low to the ice rather than shooting down on Kenzie. Shooting photos at ice events is far more difficult because of all of these aforementioned obstacles when needing to sit in the stands. I always shoot a lot of photos during these practice sessions so, as usual, I came home from this practice session with far more photos than I need. I sometimes shoot video during these sessions and I did on this day too but, for some reason (really multiple reasons), I'm never really happy with the video files.

A Few Eclipse Day Photos

I pared down my selection of photos from our day of watching the solar eclipse to a nice, relatively small collection of good photos so I figured I would share a few of these photos here while I continue working on the video of the eclipse. The video will require some additional time and effort. I have started working on it but I quickly realized it will require a lot more time. I have almost 20gb's of videos totaling more than an hour of running time. Sorting, cutting and splicing video is time consuming. Since I used multiple cameras with different views, I'll need to spend some time interweaving different views in the proper order which requires a bunch of cutting and pasting. That sort of messes up a fluid sound track so then I need to get the sound track just right with more cutting and pasting as well as adding some background music. In other words, compiling a video from so much data from multiple cameras requires a lot of time and effort so I need more time bef

Flower Gardens This Summer

August 07, 2023

O ur flower gardens took a big hit with all the rain we've had and the lack of sunshine didn't help at all but, surprisingly, I've been able to keep most of the flowers alive. I found that all the rain was flushing all the nutrients out of the soil in the gardens, window boxes, planters and flower pots. Once I noticed that our flowers were wilting and dying, I realized that all the rain was probably flushing out all the nutrients from the soil so I started fertilizing the flowers daily rather than weekly. Once the flowers started to look a bit more healthy, I cut back on fertilizer but I'm still doing it far more frequently than usual. Of course, we're still getting more rain than usual too. As I said, the lack of sun has been a problem too and, unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do about that. I suppose we can just make sure the flowers are getting everything else they need. The other thing I didn't think about is that our flower pots, win

Amtrak's Vermonter Cancelled

December 24, 2023

S heila picked up Lukey and Kenzie the night before our trip to Manhattan was to begin. Kenzie had a figure skating lesson at a rink about a half hour from our house so Sheila picked them up at the rink while I stayed at home and cooked dinner. I often seem to be cooking dinner when the grandkids arrive and hear the same comments as they walk in the door... "It smells so good in here!", followed by "It always smells good at Gee and Papa's house!" This night was no different. I was baking a smoked and glazed ham, garlic mashed potatoes and maple glazed carrots. Dinner was pretty good. We packed, watched an episode of "Only Murders in the Building" (Lukey and Kenzie's favorite at the moment... and, one of Gee and Papa's favorites too), and then went to bed. In the morning we packed up the car in the pouring rain and headed down to the train station a few minutes earlier than planned so we could eat breakfast at the cafe in the train sta

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