Scattered Thoughts . . .

I  don't think I've pointed a telescope nor camera toward the sky since the total eclipse on April 8th and even that day was overcast with thin clouds.  It has been a truly abysmal year for astronomy.   While the rest of the east coast has been capturing photos of a comet lingering in our night sky as well as capturing photos of unusually southernly northern lights colorfully illuminating the night sky, we've been under the clouds, rain and fog.  Even on the rare mostly clear nights, we've seen no northern lights.  Then again, I may have headed to bed far too early on those few clear nights to see the northern lights.  Regardless, as far as astronomy goes, the past six months have been absolutely horrible whether we're talking about daytime solar astronomy or nighttime astronomy. Tonight, however, I noticed the moon trying to shine through the clouds and decided to grab a camera, open the living room window, and shoot a few quick photos.  The moo...

L ast night, after my doctor's office had closed for the day, my very low grade fever that I had throughout the holiday weekend, started rising.  Stuff like this always seems to happen on the weekends or at night.  By 8:30pm, the fever had reached 100.4 degrees so I was a bit concerned.   I still wasn't sure where the threshold should be for being concerned or seeking more medical attention but I figured the best thing would be to call my doctor's office in the morning.  If I started feeling miserable rather than lousy, then I would have to go to the hospital emergency department.  However, before heading to the bedroom last night, I realized that I could also write my doctor an email then, if necessary, follow-up in the morning after they opened for the day.  I definitely didn't want to wait so long that I would need to go directly to the hospital. This morning, the phone started ringing at 7:15am.  I get virtually no phone calls but now my line ...

M y piano has been broken for almost two months which has been a bit frustrating.   It started showing signs of a problem with my pedals one day.  As I was playing a piece, I instantly noticed that the piano was sounding very muddy like I had my foot mashed down on the sustain pedal but I hadn't been using the pedal.  I stopped playing and then played a single staccato note...   the note sustained rather than being a short duration.  I snapped the sustain pedal up and down a few times...  the pedal unit still wasn't working correctly. I turned the piano off and went around to the other side of the piano to unplug the pedal unit and re-plug it into its jack.  I did that and then started up the piano again.  It seemed okay for a day or two but then the same thing happened again. Over the course of the next few days, sometimes the pedal unit would sustain all the time, other times it would not respond at all, sometimes it worked as it shoul...

I was sitting on the couch in the living room yesterday evening before starting on cooking dinner and picked up my notebook.  I write thoughts and ideas in this notebook everyday (I now have a whole library of notebooks tucked in all sorts of places around the house) and, quite often, add some sketches of some of my ideas or thoughts.  Yesterday, I was thinking about Christmas and the lake house. Every year of my life, in the few months preceding Christmas, my mind always drifts to spending Christmas in an Adirondack lodge-type of home or lake house setting.  I have not had the opportunity to do this just yet but I do plan to do this at least once before I have no Christmases left.   The closest I have come to living this annual dream of spending Christmas in an Adirondack-type lodge or lake house has been a few Christmases spent on various air bases.  Back in my earlier years of my Air Force career, the Airman's Club was typically the hub of social life o...

We've had a few new regular visitors to our backyard lately but this morning was the first time I had any luck in capturing a photo of these new visitors.   We have a couple of rabbits who now visit regularly but I haven't been able to get any photos of them.  We also have a large pileated woodpecker who visits the yard daily but he has been very skittish whenever I have tried to get close with my camera.   Our other regular visitor is a ground hog and I managed to capture a photo of him this morning through one of our windows.  I tried to step outdoors to get the photo but he was about to run off due to the tiny bit of noise I made with the door so I opted to shoot through a closed window and window screen.  This made for a rather blurry image but the image is still decent.   When I first noticed him in the yard this morning as I was walking past our living room window, I thought he was one of the neighborhood cats.  When I went to the ...

H ere is a photo that I shot this morning in our living room.  This is an Asiatic Lily plant sitting in sunlight coming through one of our living room windows.  I've mentioned a few things in previous blog entries about infrared light but this photo is a good example showing a few of these unique characteristics. First, the chlorophyll is glowing white which makes the green leaves render as a very bright white in infrared.  All else inside the house is dark.  It is like the lily plant is illuminated from within itself!   I've also mentioned that another characteristic of infrared imaging is exceptional clarity.  This is certainly visible in this shot but, honestly, it is really noticeable outdoors when shooting a wide landscape shot.  Infrared light seems to see through much of the haze that our human eyes see in visible light.  Well, it doesn't see "through it".  The haze that we see simply isn't visible in the infrared wavelengths. The...

I think I had previously written that our big, high end and relatively new refrigerator (I think almost six years old) bit the dust late last week.  The icemaker was defective and has been a problem for a few years and that ended up frying our compressor.  There was also some other damage to another part that is not replaceable.  In the end, Sheila and I ordered a far lower end refrigerator which is scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday.   We had to compromise quite a bit in our selection of a new refrigerator.  There are not too many choices when you need a refrigerator as soon as possible.  The pandemic has put a hurt on the market as well so inventory is far lower than normal too.   As we wait for our new refrigerator to arrive, we moved all of our salvageable frozen meat to a cooler and secured it outside in the sub-freezing temperature.  We moved all of our refrigerated items to an unheated storage closet in our back hallway.  ...

O ur living room wall clock has been an intermittent problem for months and it finally bit the dust about a month ago.  So, we were on an internet search for a better clock.   There was a beautiful clock at Monticello that is sold as a reproduction that both Sheila and I really liked.  I've mentioned this before in this blog but I should mention it again here in this blog entry that I have always been fascinated by Thomas Jefferson and his Monticello homestead.  I even studied this historic home design while in college as an engineering student.  I like Monticello's fusion of old European, French Provincial and Early American styles.  One could also argue that Monticello has many Craftsman features and details as well.  These are all styles I am fusing together in our own home.   So, finding a wall clock at the Monticello gift shop was a plus and we both really liked this clock.  The problem was that I had never spent more than abou...

After I did a little bit of work on the telescope pier the other day, the weather was too good to pass up doing some work on our decks.  They were in desperate need of sanding and staining since I had skipped a couple of years due to spending far too much time at the hospital (Sheila's cancer).  The weather was ideal...  sunny and warm but not too warm...  so I pulled out the belt sander and some sanding belts and jumped right into sanding everything that needed to be stained. Everything that needed to be stained was filthy and needed to be cleaned first.  It turns out that using the belt sander was the easiest way of cleaning.  Plus, this allowed me to smooth out the old decks a little bit too.  I grabbed my largest brush, stirred up the stain, and started staining.  The following morning, I added the second coat of stain... After two days of drying under the sun, we had a day of solid rain and some localized flooding.  The deck now h...

Adam is visiting for a short while as he travels from his previous assignment to his next assignment. It has been nice catching up with him about stuff at home as well as Air Force stuff.   Last night, Adam realized that he had an award to show us and went digging through one of his bags...   Adam was recently awarded his second Air Force Achievement Medal (hence the reference to an "oak leaf cluster" on the certificate). The citation (the narrative describing his particular accomplishment for this medal) cannot be shown here because it contains classified and sensitive information but I can say that this is definitely a noteworthy achievement relating to specific Air Force operations and missions on multiple continents. Congratulations, Adam!

It was a fairly nice afternoon the other day so Sheila and I went for a walk with the grandkids. This was a pretty good opportunity to test my new little action camera so I brought that along for the ride. A screenshot from the video... preserved highlights...  detail in the clouds...   nice clarity...  nice color... nice video!   I figured this would really be putting this little camera to the test... I'm walking with a pronounced limp lately so I knew to expect a bouncy, jerky video... I didn't have any way to strap this camera to anything so I just held it in my hand down at my side... and it was quite breezy out so I knew wind noise would be an issue. Regardless... the resulting video clips look pretty good! I definitely want to make a little homemade wind-cut filter out of open-cell foam to cut down on the wind noise. The primary purpose of this action camera is to use it for recording video of kayaking at the lake and there is almost always some variab...

I was notified this morning that Blogger had added some new templates providing some updated looks. Once I had a few minutes, I decided to take a look and see if any of these new templates looked appealing to me. The old templates in Blogger were not appealing to me at all. They were very dated and most of the templates reminded me of the horrendous designs provided by MySpace twenty years ago! I've been struggling with creating a look that I like for my blog for quite some time so hearing of new updated templates was a welcomed change! This morning, Blogger offered 15 new templates and two of these 15 templates looked like they had some potential.  Regardless of which of the two templates I chose, I would need to find a new header photo to use so that was my first task... find a header photo that would be appropriate for each of these two templates. Naturally, I chose a landscape since the aspect ratio of this header photo is 3x1.  For now, I decided to use a photo...

My health is still consistently 'poor'...  since January, for the most part. I really haven't gotten much of anything done around the house as a result. Unfortunately, my 'to-do' list continues to grow. I'm really itching to feel well enough to do something significantly productive!   W hile my health tries to recover, I've been occupying my waking hours on the couch with creating sketches of plans for the train room. There are a LOT of things on my 'to-do' list before I can even begin to try to tackle this project but it is always nice to have a plan! It is also nice to exercise my brain while my body recovers.  The room is 12' x 8'... so, it is a decently sized room.  I've already done some work in this room including installing new flooring, a new walk-in closet and new heating. I still need to build the little workbench alcove on the lower right side of the image, finish the ceiling, and build high-end bookcases.   Underneath...

Those whom have known me my entire life will probably be surprised by this but I haven't touched a piano in three years. Those whom have only known me in recent years will probably be surprised by the fact that they had no idea I ever was an accomplished pianist. The truth is that until three years ago, I had accomplished quite a bit as a pianist throughout my life but it was a rather quiet side of my life.  I've performed with many outstanding musicians. I've performed for quite a few dignitaries. I've won many awards. I've performed and competed in the classical music world. I've performed in rock bands. I've performed with the US Air Force. I've performed in concert bands, orchestras and marching bands. I've performed with Top-40 bands. I've performed jazz. I've performed at events, weddings and countless parties. I've performed with some amazing R&B groups. I've even performed with a few choral groups. To be honest, however,...

My health has been interfering with everything for the past week and even interfering with something as simple as putting together blog posts and sorting through photos so I haven't posted much lately.  I've been wanting to write about bringing the grandkids to the Montshire Museum of Science last weekend because it was a pleasant surprise for them and they had a great time... actually, Gee and I had a great time too! I shot a few dozen photographs and hope to put an album together to share but, for now, we'll just have to settle for one photo from that outing.  Here is one photo of Lukey that I really liked from that day...

I haven't written anything in about a week and a half because I've had some exceptionally lousy health and, more recently, I've been busy working on the house and out in the yard during my good health. Working on the house only happened after taking a few weeks off because of spinal problems. I managed to have a productive and busy weekend but I didn't get to touch a single thing that has been on my long 'to-do list'.   On Saturday afternoon, we had a broken water supply pipe due to repeated stress. The pipe just broke completely in two! The water was shooting out of the broken pipe like a garden hose with a nozzle on it! Water was everywhere! Our vanity was filled with water, soaking everything in the vanity. The flooring was soaked. On the positive side, the adjoining bedroom is a construction zone so no finished materials were damaged. The problem was gaining quick and easy access at a time when we needed to move quickly to minimize damage. The wate...

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...

Unfortunately, the consequences of the work I accomplished on our wildflower gardens and landscaping over the weekend has caught up with me.  Saturday was a productive few hours for some much needed yardwork. I felt pretty good on Sunday... only relatively minor spinal pain... but, apparently, the inflammation in my spine was slowly building over the course of a few days because by Monday I could hardly walk and the pain was stingingly brutal. I spent Monday and Tuesday doing whatever I could to alleviate the pain and inflammation. This mean occasional stretching but mostly staying off my feet. It meant extra anti-inflammatory medications. It meant extra water intake. It meant occasional icing of my spine... and I truly hate using ice at this point! After almost two decades of struggling with spinal injuries, there are some things which really get to me and ice is one of them. It just bothers me to even think about applying ice to my spine. That being said, when the pain gets...

Last summer, as with most summers, we had guests coming and going at the lake house constantly. We had a really fun time with everyone! Among those visitors were Tom and Karen. Tom and Karen brought their kayaks with them so we could do some paddling around the lake together. The weather was beautiful albeit a little windy so we paddled all the way down to the south end of the lake where the dam is located. The wind made paddling back a little tough but it was nice to get out on the lake with them.   Most of the land south of the house is State land on our side of the lake so it is a great direction to paddle if you want to spot some wildlife so that is the direction we headed. Also at that end of the lake is a bit of marshland which I quickly learned is a wonderland to Karen. We paddled into the marsh until we hit some beaver dams which were blocking our way so we turned back and visited the man-made dam at the end of the lake.  I've been to the dam a number of t...

This morning, Liza and the kids came to the house for a quick visit for Mother's Day.  Kenzie had a bouquet of flowers in her hand and she firmly and clearly stated "these are for Gee " as she held them away from me. She was so firm in her intentions that I think she might have knocked me over if I had reached for Gee's Mother's Day flowers. So, we now have a bouquet of flowers on our kitchen table and I wanted to shoot a quick photo of them to share here.  After shooting the photo and uploading it to my computer, I couldn't help but notice something rather significant... a photographer's happy mistake... The one flower which naturally caught my attention... the flower which instantly captured my undivided attention... the flower which I intentionally put in clear focus... this one flower is standing tall, standing proud... standing beautifully... as though she is standing tall over her children and grandchildren providing comfort, protection and lov...