Scattered Thoughts . . .

W e spent four days in Manhattan this past week and it was a really nice trip but not without its problems.   This Christmas trip to Manhattan was really for our two oldest grandchildren, Lukey and Kenzie, but Sheila and I enjoyed it too.  Christmastime is a great time to be in Manhattan because it seems like every window and every building is decorated very well. As I mentioned above, though, this relatively short trip was not without its little problems and even some big problems.   We had made two changes to our hotel accommodations in the weeks even before leaving the house.  In the end, we settled on staying at the Hilton Midtown and that was a good choice.  One problem was trying to find a hotel with vacancies when we needed a hotel.  Amtrak availability and hotel availability had to coincide.  Another problem is that we definitely wanted to be in midtown Manhattan where all the major sites are located.  We planned this two months in advance yet we still had some scheduling issue

S heila and I are in the process of changing our plans for our upcoming Christmas in Manhattan trip yet again.   Lukey broke his foot a few weeks ago and we were hoping he would be able to bear some weight on his foot by the time we hopped on the train to New York.  Unfortunately, is foot is broken a bit more seriously than we had expected so he'll be on crutches for another month which means he'll be hobbling around Manhattan on crutches.  Which also means we'll need to adapt some of our plans. We typically try to walk about 15-20 miles each day in Manhattan in order to see as many sites as possible.  We definitely won't be able to do that with Lukey hobbling around on crutches.  This means our previously scheduled itinerary is not even close to being accurate.  We needed to possibly cut some things while also stretching out the timetable to allow enough time to get from one place to another.  Additionally, this has caused us to need to add some flexibility to our itin

S heila and I were talking about hotels along the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade route this morning as we watched the parade on television.  We were agreeing that if we ever did venture to Manhattan for the parade, for a few very good reasons, we would want to have a hotel with a room overlooking the parade route.  So, out of curiosity, we opened up Google Maps to see what hotels would be preferable.  We found that there are actually a few options that look quite good and which were reasonably priced.  That got us talking about checking the prices of these hotels for our upcoming Christmas trip to Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie.  We already have a hotel booked for this trip but it never hurts to check options and check for a better deal. This parade route location where a few nice hotels are located was still a good central location for what we were planning to do on our Christmas trip with the kids.  First we looked into the Warwick Hotel, however and unfortunately, that hotel w

I n preparation of ice skating with Lukey and Kenzie at Rockefeller Center and Bryant Park in about a month, Sheila purchased a new pair of figure skates.   We went to an ice rink on Sunday for Sheila's first practice session in about two decades or so.  She did fairly well during that first session.  She was a bit stiff-legged but she did well.  During that first session, she noticed that one of her skates wasn't sharpened properly so we had them sharpened again today at lunchtime.  This evening, we headed to the rink again so Sheila could practice. She was doing very well this evening and it was obvious she was feeling more comfortable on skates.  She was making more progress than in her first session, that is, until she had a bit of a slow motion fall.  While trying to ease her fall to the ice, she did something to her right leg.  Her right leg sort of twisted and collapsed under her. As she limped off the ice, it was pretty obvious that she could barely walk on it so I drov

A lmost all the hotels in mid-town Manhattan are a bit beyond our budget so we always stay in the area just south of the Empire State Building which happens to be Koreatown.  The prices seem to be the lowest in this area but, regardless of the budget prices, some of the hotels are quite nice.  For this next trip to Manhattan this coming Christmas with Lukey and Kenzie, we had already made reservations to stay at the Life Hotel on 31st Street just a block or two from the Empire State Building. The Life Hotel was just recently reopened and is actually quite nice.  This building used to be the headquarters for Life magazine but it more recently had been converted to a hotel.  We were really excited to be staying in a hotel that used to be the headquarters for Life magazine. Since I will be our tour guide and this is Lukey and Kenzie's first trip to Manhattan, I was familiarizing myself with Grand Central Terminal late last night in preparation of this upcoming Christmas visit to Manha

While we were in Manhattan last week, among the  many sights we saw, we stopped at Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library. Not only does Bryant Park put up a large ice rink for Christmas but they also have very many little shops. It really is a well-designed little park with many events throughout the year.  This time of year, however, it is decorated for Christmas with a little Christmas Village. The rink is quite nice, however, it is not your typical hockey ice rink. This ice rink has illuminated boards topped by a smooth white handrail. The facilities are nice. The shops are nice. The Christmas tree is nice. Other Christmas villages around the country could learn a thing or two from Bryant Park.  Sheila and Adam are on line at one of the shops waiting for some French pastries and hot apple cider... A penguin skate aid... some of the adults could have used a skate aid too! It still was not dark out when we left the park but we were dee

During our visit to Manhattan last week, we managed to squeeze in a visit with some of my family. They live only a short commuter train ride away from Manhattan and seeing some of Manhattan at Christmastime sounded good to them anyway so we all met at a restaurant in the Empire State Building on our last evening in Manhattan. Sheila's family has been growing in recent years so we've been busy with grandchildren and creating our own new family events and memories so there really has been little time for anything else. Health problems, medical appointments and hundreds of miles of distance don't help with this situation at all either. So, it has been quite a few years since we've seen any of my own family.  After Sheila put her radiation treatment behind her, there were a number of things that moved up in priority for her, as can be expected. Seeing Manhattan at Christmastime was one of those things and getting to see my family again was another. So, once Sheila

Since Sheila's latest bout with cancer, I've been doing all I can to keep her happy and keep her mind off the cancer as best as I can. She had already received a few gifts to lift her spirits throughout treatment but she also expressed that she would like to visit Manhattan for Christmas. Needless to say, we headed down to Manhattan earlier this week to spend some time there while the city is decorated for Christmas.  As usual, we traveled on Amtrak so we didn't need to worry about staying awake while driving nor did we need to worry about where to park the car once we arrived in Manhattan. Amtrak has proven to be a mostly trouble-free way to travel for us. I'll write more about our journey on Amtrak soon.  I picked out an historic hotel and we reserved a good-sized suite by Manhattan standards. The location of this hotel was perfect for our plans... mid-town Manhattan, near all the animated storefront windows decorated for Christmas, near the Empire State Building

I don't know what it is about the State of Liberty... I've always been bothered by this French gift of art. Don't get me wrong, I love French art and architecture but the Statue of Liberty bothers me deeply for some reason... it creates conflict within me when it really should create welcoming warmth...  Perhaps it is the horrendously ugly and overbearing cyan color... perhaps what bothers me is the prison-like facilities on this tiny island and its sister island, Ellis Island, used to process our poor immigrants... perhaps it is a cluttered, poorly arranged harbor that has bothered me... perhaps the vision of a monstrous, overbearing "Lady Liberty" to greet our east coast immigrants bothered me... perhaps I agree with some movie-makers and think this piece of art is more aptly suited to be featured in movies like Planet of the Apes ... perhaps I just find this monstrous piece of "art" a bit unappealing or even hideous (of course, my own personal opini

So, since I am sitting around waiting for my spinal inflammation to subside, I thought I would sit here on my pillows and work on some old photos while sipping on some coffee.  I'm still sorting through the folder that holds photos from our 2013 trip to Manhattan. I was using an old, crappy Olympus camera back then so I often left whole folders of images left untouched because I was so frustrated by the images. This was one of those folders. After my experiences with two Olympus cameras, I don't ever want to use another Olympus camera for the rest of my life... the colors absolutely suck, white balance is always a problem, the noise is horrendous, the files are very shallow causing the image files to fall apart very quickly in post-processing... I just hate working with these files. I've found, however, that I can get some decent black and white images out of the files when color is my main problem as is the case with this particular folder of images. The Empire Sta

I slept away much of the day since I didn't sleep at all last night. Fortunately, my spinal pain has subsided a bit... down into the 4-5 range, at rest.  I'm about to head to bed but wanted to post a photo here first. I worked on processing this image this evening... selective dodging and burning... luminosity masking... selective sharpening... etc.  I shot this photo during a trip to New York City in 2013. The RAW image remained on one of my hard drives untouched. I hadn't even sorted it into one of my "best" folders as I do with the best images in most of my daily folders! When I was searching through the folder looking to pull out this image this evening, I saw a few others which might make some decent photos as well. For now, however, it will be only this one image to add to my collection of finished photographs. I love the contrast of this image... the sun rays... the clouds... the sun reflecting off the buildings in the center of the frame... and I esp

I've managed to get out of the house for a few short periods in the past few days... and that was really nice... today, however, I'm back indoors and I'm not so sure I'll be wandering outside today. I'm really worn out today... exhausted... and my spinal injuries are really bothering me. The pain started yesterday after overdoing my physical therapy the previous day. I knew I had overdone it while I was still doing my physical therapy! By nightfall, I was in considerable pain throughout my spine as well as having bone pain in my legs. Yesterday was a bit brutal so the only thing I accomplished was preparing and cooking baked ziti with garlic bread for the kids. Needless to say, sleeping is not going all that well. Last night, my sleeping problems due to spinal and bone pain were compounded by being cold all night long. Although the room probably was slightly chillier last night than usual (I removed the air conditioner from one of two windows in the room so we h

I went back into one of my external hard drive to search for a photo I thought I had shot while in New York City a year ago. In my mind, I remembered a shot that captured both the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in the same frame. It turns out that my memory was remembering this composition a little differently than how I actually captured this composition. When you are limited by distance and elevation, it is tough to get the shots you want... exactly the way you want or envision them... especially when you are just a speck in a large landscape which stretches in all directions including vertically.  In this case, the Chrysler Building is a little low and the angle is slightly off for my taste but it was worth trying out a composition with my location when I shot this image.  Putting these two iconic art deco buildings into the same frame with no other distractions seems like the right thing to do...

A little over a year ago, we brought Adam to New York City for his last visit to Manhattan before he graduated high school and left for the Air Force. As always, we had a busy schedule during our visit to New York and I shot a lot of photographs. Upon arriving back home, my health needed some time to recover and I somehow lost track of most of those photos from that trip. On this particular visit to New York, we spent a very busy day sightseeing in Manhattan. The goal was to show Adam some new sights we had not shown him already in previous visits to New York. Of course, some sights are visible no matter where you go in Manhattan... such as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. We did a lot of walking and even encountered some long detours and delays due to a parade that day. In the end, I believe I shot almost three hundred photos... many of which are quite impressive yet have never been seen by anyone other than myself. This past weekend, while we were shopping

Downtown Manhattan, One World Trade Center This past weekend was the long Columbus Day weekend so we decided to head toward Long Island to see some family.  It had been a year and a half since we had seen any of my family. That last trip was for the funeral of one of my cousins which happened to be the same day the grandchildren were born.  This particular cousin was also a neighbor and school classmate so I knew I needed to make the trip down to Long Island for his funeral. While I headed toward Long Island for that funeral a year and a half ago, Sheila headed to the hospital to meet Liza for the birth of the grandchildren. Afterward, Sheila and Adam hopped on a train and headed down to New York to meet me. Anyway, we hadn't seen any of the family since that very hectic week a year and a half ago.   The Empire State Building We headed south on Saturday for the long Columbus Day weekend while it seemed the rest of the northeast was heading north to check out the aut