Scattered Thoughts . . .

W hile Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us this week, we did a little bit of painting.  Sheila and I have been wanting to do this with them for quite a while so it was great that we finally had some time to do this with them. This was supposed to be a lesson in watercolors but we chose to use the kids' new set of acrylic paints instead.  Honestly, I didn't feel like digging out the watercolors and the acrylics were already sitting on the kitchen table so we painted with acrylics.  I needed to adapt my lesson due to the last minute change in paints and because I haven't used acrylics for artistic painting in decades.  So, I demonstrated each step before having them do it.  This would allow me to adapt my plan as necessary.  That being said, this also seemed to introduce some unnecessary confusion.  If I had been more concise without adapting, what I was attempting to teach would have been more effectively communicated.   On the previous day, the kids "just painted&quo

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. ___________________________________

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