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...

While we were at the US Air Force Museum, Lukey had a chance to try flying in an F-22 flight simulator.   This was on our second day at the museum.  Our first day was a rather short visit walking the grounds outside.  We came back again on a day that was forecast to be rainy so we could avoid being caught in the rain doing something outdoors so we spent the entire day at this immense museum.  And, we did get some loud thunderstorms and heavy rain mid-afternoon as forecast so we made the right decision to spend the day indoors at the museum. During our day-long visit, Lukey got to step into a fighter simulator.  This is a simulator that moves to whatever orientation you fly the plane...  it pitches up and down and can roll 360°...  if you spin all the way around to flying inverted, then your cockpit spins all the way around to inverted...  if you bank hard right, then the cockpit banks to a hard right...  whatever you input on the flight ...

T his past Sunday, Sheila and I participated in the Cystic Fibrosis Great Strides Walk in Burlington on our granddaughter, Ellie's, CF team.  The weather was great and Ellie was totally pumped up for this event as you'll see in the photos below. Ellie was wound up and super excited...  she danced most of the time we were waiting for the walk to begin! Lining the beginning of the walk were posters of each of the local children struggling with cystic fibrosis... The walk was along the waterfront in Burlington so we had great views of the lake and the Adirondack Mountains on the other side of the lake... Taking a short break at the midway point... After we completed the walk, we visited the treehouse... We all went to The Longhorn for a much needed lunch afterward.  We were all starving!  I definitely did not eat enough for breakfast but everyone seemed to be ready for a good meal after the walk.   It was a really nice day and we had a lot of fun on our walk a...

T he other night, Sheila and I attended a Christmas concert at Ellie's school and watched her perform at her first concert.  Last night, we headed out again for a Christmas concert at Lukey and Kenzie's school.  This time Lukey was performing.  This school has a nice "performing arts" building albeit a bit small.  It is an exceptionally small school so perhaps this room is large enough for expected crowd size but it sure seemed quite small to me especially considering the size of the sound gear (big sound for big spaces).  The first thing I noticed when we stepped into this building is all the Yamaha sound gear, a few pianos and nice lighting.  I found this to be quite impressive since I prefer Yamaha sound gear myself and the photographer in me is always happy to see good, effective and dramatic lighting! On this night, we found out that Lukey was singing two or three songs.  Lukey, on more than one occasion, had told us that he has been playing ...