Scattered Thoughts . . .

Homemade cranberry sauce... the white chunks are pears... I'm definitely  no fan of Thanksgiving dinner... I never have been... too much food... not even all that satisfying yet far too much work... even more work to clean up... and, as far as I'm concerned, turkey is really only good for a club sandwich paired with tons of bacon.  Every now and then, however, I do get a craving for mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, corn and some chicken breasts. Earlier today I had one of these cravings. The grandchildren are coming over for dinner with us tomorrow night so I decided we should have this pre-Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow evening. In order to ease the cooking burden tomorrow while the kids are here (and so I can play with them for a bit), I decided to make the homemade cranberry sauce this evening.  One of my sisters sent me a recipe for cranberry sauce a few years ago and it was pretty good... a little too 'orangy' for me, but it was good. As

I've been trying to hone my skills with my digital pen and graphics tablet over the past couple of days. I have to say, this is not helping me get any rest though! Last night I started on what I thought would be a little test project. It is something I've always wanted to draw and paint... an old rural gas station... some dramatic lighting. By 3am, I knew I bit off more than I could chew for a "little test project". My intention was to just sketch out some ideas. The sketches developed quickly and then I was adding background and foreground (although, for me, the foreground could use something more)... and filling with color. Before long, I was having difficulty keeping my eyes open! The problem with a project like this is that I've learned that once I get my creativity flowing, I really need to allow that flow to continue for as long as possible. Coming back to an art project later rarely works well for me.  The next time I sit down and try to start that

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

The past week has been quite lousy as far as my health goes... and, as a result, I've accomplished almost nothing this week. This morning, however, was finally a productive morning! I can't begin to explain how good that feels! First, I did some weed-whacking... then mowed the lawn. The weather is considerably cooler this morning so I managed to mow the lawn and be able to breath. Usually, I am struggling to breath when I cut the lawn... weak... close to losing consciousness... my health crashing... I finished with the lawn by 9:30 am and still felt pretty good, relatively speaking. The sign of a good, clean caulking job... a nice wide bead yet it is invisible! Since it was only 9:30 am and I was still feeling fairly well, I decided to get some work accomplished in Adam's old bedroom. It still needs another coat of paint... two colors... but I decided to tackle something I've been putting off doing. The windows needed to be re-caulked.  Before I could re-caul

I just came across another photo that was hiding in one of the folders on my desktop computer... shot almost a year ago on a day when the grandchildren were visiting for dinner. Little Miss Mackenzie was deep in thought at the table and I happened to capture a quick photo of her... Young Thinking Woman...

As I've written in a few other blog entries, I occasionally miss a good photo and it just sits in a folder on one of my hard drives.  Months later, I stumble across the photo while looking for a different photo and I say to myself, "Wow... how did I miss this one?" This photo of Kenzie is one such photo.  While at the lake house recently, Kenzie and I were about thirty or forty feet apart... on different levels... and I had my long telephoto kit in my hands hoping to get some photos of the sailboat, ducks and loons out on the lake. I noticed that Kenzie was a bit more animated than usual so I pointed the camera in her direction. This camera and lens combo is not one I would use for portraits nor in this particular situation but it was all I had at the time. I quickly changed a couple of settings and then fired off one shot before she was no longer facing me. The result, however, is a pretty decent photo... not great... but a keeper for our purposes.  I can'

Face Detection enabled and Eye AF selected. In photography, there are some very basic rules to follow. Yes, rules can be broken at times but there are simply some which should never be broken. The rule about where to set your focus is one such rule.  For photos of people, the rule is to focus on the eyes. In particular, you need to focus on the nearest eye. Whenever I miss this focus, the photo is culled and goes into the trash can. Quite simply, if that nearest eye is not in focus, you misfocused and ruined your shot. When your subject is up fairly close to you, focusing on the eyes can be a fairly easy task. On the other hand, when your subject is a little farther away and especially if your subject is moving, this tasking can quickly become a very tall order! You have these little, tiny focus points overlaid onto your camera's screen... you need to ensure the one point that focuses is the one over the eye when the shutter release button is pressed. This can be tough

I've been scrolling through photos on my hard drives trying to find some interesting photos to have printed to hang on the walls in our new master bedroom. We will be moving into Adam's old room as a temporary home for us. This move into Adam's room will provide a couple of things... First, this will give us a nice new bedroom... new bedding, new furniture, refinished furniture, new curtains, and a clean, crisp room freshly painted and trimmed. It will be much like a hotel room... just a bed, nightstands, a built-in desk and some shelves. Secondly, this move will allow us to move out of our current bedroom which will provide me with some room to work on the back end of the house finally. We've had a problem working on different areas of the house because it has been difficult finding space to work because of a serious lack of storage space.  My plan is to hang some of my photography, framed, on the walls... highlighted with spot lighting but I must admit that I

We've had quite a bit of rain in the past couple of weeks... hmmm... maybe even longer! Everything outside is waterlogged... the house is damp... towels never seem to dry... and the grass is growing wild. Regardless of whether or not I can specifically remember the daily weather, I'd say all signs are that it has been rather wet lately. My health has been rather lousy, off and on, so it is hard for me to remember much about the weather. When my health is lousy and particularly when it swings back and forth between lousy and miserable, I seem to spend most of my time on the couch in the living room. During these periods, the days blend into one another and the nights fade together. Lousy health due to Systemic Mastocytosis is oftentimes accompanied by brain fog so this makes remembering specifics like daily weather difficult as well. I do, however, remember the other night quite vividly because the kids had visited us. While the kids were visiting us, we had some more rain s

Today was a rather slow day (poor health through the night) so I took a little time to shoot a photo of a tank car I picked up on eBay recently. There is some significance to this particular tanker though... it has the name "Gramps" written in large lettering across the car like it is a special production train car rather than a true model of a real train.  The moment I first saw one of these unusual freight cars, I thought of my own grandfather, whom we affectionately called "Gramps", and how he is one of the main people to get me interested in model railroading as a young child. Dear 'ole Gramps is no longer with us but he is in my thoughts often. Both he and my grandmother were responsible for providing piano lessons for me... for my sailboat... for my love of antique wood boats... he got me started in photography... he is responsible for my nautical knowledge and interest in boating... my grandmother is responsible for much of my cooking skills and ab

Those of you who follow this blog know that I've been excited about getting our outdoor kitchen grilling area completed. Unfortunately, this project has been put on a back burner. About two weeks ago, I found that the roofing material I need/want for this grilling area is out of stock. This is what happens when the building season is extremely short and places to buy supplies are even shorter. So, I need to wait until this product is back in stock. Who knows how long that will take?  In the meantime, I decided to do a "quick" project in Adam's old bedroom.... While he was home on leave... for a whole month... he was supposed to pack up all his stuff, toss out whatever he does not want anymore, and clean up his room a bit. Everything he owned fit into this tiny bedroom so this was by no means an overwhelming task for him nor was it an unreasonable task. Sheila reminded him a few times that he needed to get started on his packing... he chose to just sit in front

We had a brilliant, colorful sunset last night that lit up the stormy skies...resembling a distant forest fire or even a distant bomb blast. The colorful, bright, fireball setting sun contrasted perfectly with the stormy clouds looming overhead...

We had a very busy day on Wednesday with a visit from Sheila's family. Everyone had a really good time in some magnificent weather on the lake especially the kids.  I'll venture to say that the weather we had yesterday was the most beautiful weather we have experienced in a very long time... perhaps the best ever while at the lake!  It was sunny and clear... it was warm... the lake was calm... the water was clean and warm... it was a perfect day for all water activities and we all took advantage of that by starting our morning at 6am by paddling on the misty morning lake. Sheila had Kenzie in her kayak while I had Lukey in my kayak. Nan and Pop caught up with us on the lake within a few minutes.  When we arrived back at the house, we made some french toast with fresh strawberries. About the same time that we finished cleaning up breakfast, Sheila's brother arrived with his kids. By lunchtime, Liza had joined us as well.   The day was spent kayaking, sailing, swimmin

New grill placed in the backyard in its temporary home... a new grilling kitchen area is being built off the backside of this log shed... you can see some blocks out marking locations of posts for the roof. It was a busy and productive morning today! First, I added much needed RAM to my desktop computer as well as my laptop computer. Getting that task done is a huge relief especially after the difficulties I had with the laptop computer ( see my previous post ). After accomplishing those tasks with my computers, I headed outdoors to see if I could make some headway in getting our new grill out of our living room. The grill was still sitting in the living room after assembling it a few days ago because I had no place outdoors to set it. The old grill was located in a place where we are building an outdoor kitchen grilling area under cover. If I set the new grill there, then it would be in my way while working on building this outdoor area. I first had to find a level area nearb

I regularly struggle with vision issues as a result of my Systemic Mastocytosis illness. Actually, not a week goes by which does not include some sort of vision issues which demand a change in plans. This past week I struggled with quite a few symptoms at the whim of angry mast cells some of which made me sick as a dying, mangy dog but I also struggled with vision issues such as blurriness, some double vision and a slight loss of color saturation. For the most part, my vision was rather poor all the time this past week but as my overwhelming fatigue would worsen, my eyesight worsened exponentially. There is no doubt that fatigue plays a role in the severity of my symptoms and these problems with my vision are impacted in the same way. The loss of color isn't too annoying and typically affects reds the most but the blurriness really gets on my nerves. The only time the loss of color saturation is annoying is when one eye is different than the other. Of course, the blurriness is

Whenever we travel, we like to bring some entertainment with us in the form of music, movies, magazines and books. Our Kindles are capable of holding almost all of this media plus they save so much space and weight! Typically, what we can't fit physically on the Kindle's drive, we can access in our Amazon Cloud... if we always have internet/wifi access.  Our next trip, which is a cross-country Amtrak excursion in a sleeper car, promises to have spotty service throughout most of the trip so we needed to prepare. I never know when my miserable health will appear so I like to ensure I always have something to do to keep my mind off of my health. Plus, if my health is so poor that I am stuck behind while everyone is out and about sightseeing and celebrating, I really need something to entertain myself. This is where the HD movies, music, magazines and books come into play. I downloaded music to my Kindle Fire... no problem with that because I have more than enough space for tha

Whenever I have a rough night because of my health, the following day is always a quiet down day. On these down days and perhaps needless to say, I crave some comfort food... Today, my comfort food was some country fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy for lunch. It was delicious but I ate more than my not-so-healthy stomach can handle right now. Nevertheless, it was quite satisfying and delicious!  

I go through spurts of trying to get nice crisp shots of the moon and I think I'm nearing the end of one such spurt. (Which means I will soon spare everyone of these rather boring moon photos!) Full moons are the toughest to shoot because the light is so bright and yet flat. By flat, I mean that the sun is shining on the moon so straight-on that there are very few shadows being cast by all the large features on the moon's surface. It is this lack of shadow that makes for a very 'flat' image. For instance, if I hold a tennis ball out in front of me with one hand and hold a flashlight next to my ear shining on that tennis ball, we won't see any shadows on that tennis ball. If we don't see shadows, we don't see depth.  If I hold the flashlight out in front of me, next to the tennis ball which is also in front of me, we will see a big shadow around one side of the ball as well as little shadows showing the texture of the fuzzy tennis ball. There is much mo

I just thought I would add another shot of the moon here... I had been outside the other night digging my car out of the snow so I could work on it yesterday. It was cold and crisp that night and our snowy landscape was eerily illuminated by the bright, almost-full moon in the sky.  When I finished digging out the car, I went inside and grabbed my camera... swapped lenses for the appropriate lens... and headed back out into the cold. Physically demanding activities like shoveling snow really do a number on me nowadays... obviously, it affects my spinal injuries but it also affects my mast cell disease in various ways which rate from just annoying to dangerous. When I emerged from the house with my camera in my hands, I quickly realized that I had tremors in my hands and couldn't keep the camera as steady as I would like. This is one of the annoying symptoms which can really drag down my photography. Regardless of the shaky hands,  I felt the need to take advantage of the h

The first of seven shots... deer in headlights look... I'm really not much of a 'cat' person but, for the past few years, I've had one of our neighbor's cats follow me around like my shadow.  This cat is definitely not one of the more friendly cats in the neighborhood but whenever my health fails, this feline is right there peering in the window at me... for hours... It doesn't matter which room I am in, this cat will be there right outside that particular room at the nearest window peering in at me.  Whenever I do some work outdoors, this cat follows me around and, at times, has been known to leave me little gifts at my car door (mice).   Adam tried many times to get a photo of our resident shadow but never really had much luck. Today, as I was playing around with my oldest remaining digital camera (Edit:  I checked camera release dates and it turns out that I do have a digital camera much older than this one which happens to be one of my all-time fav