Scattered Thoughts . . .

I never did finish writing about our Christmas trip to Manhattan so I should try to get back to that now since I am feeling well enough to write at the moment.   I came home from Manhattan with COVID and have been struggling with this virus and complications since then.  (We are now a week into March!)   As if that hasn't been enough to knock me down, I'm also now dealing with a significant re-injury to my extensive spinal injuries which may or may not be related to long-COVID inflammation.  I've had problems with COVID inflammation in other bouts of COVID so I'm leaning toward this spinal problem being triggered by the same.   So, for more than two months, I have been mostly couch-bound.  Needless to say, I never did finish writing about our trip to Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie.  I'll get back to that now. Our pre-Christmas trip to Manhattan was so long ago at this point that I've forgotten about many of the details of this trip.  Maybe some of the details

F or the past few years, I've been going back and forth on whether to purchase a little mount and tripod that can automatically track the sun.  This upcoming solar eclipse nudged me to go ahead and purchase this little piece of gear of convenience.  The solar eclipse happens very quickly so any automated gear will help.  I want to get as many exceptional photos as possible during this very short couple of minutes and this will likely be my last total solar eclipse of my lifetime. This mount with its lightweight tripod is quite small and lightweight which is nice.  Another nice feature is that it is relatively inexpensive for an automatic tracking mount.   This particular mount is made by Skywatcher and is called the SolarQuest.  After leveling this mount, you simply turn it on.  It will automatically connect to satellites to attain the necessary GPS data and then it will slew to the sun automatically and begin tracking the sun.  You can't get easier than that! This nice little

T his morning, Sheila and I picked up her dad so we could drive him to the airport.  He's heading to DeSantisland for a long visit with some family, friends and Disney.  This part of our trip went relatively well but it was not without a few concerning problems. While I was moving my medications and ice packs to the car for our drive northward toward Burlington, my right leg kept buckling under me.  In an instant, periodically, I was briefly losing the ability to control my leg.  This worsened the longer we were away from home.  Losing control of your legs when you have a spinal issue is not a good thing.  It is not good physically.  It is not good mentally.  It is not good emotionally.  This was a new development that is a bit concerning.   Unfortunately, I've been down this road before when I was originally recovering from my first and second line-of-duty spinal injuries.  At times various times after my injuries, I could not move my legs nor could I walk.  Regardless, this p

W e were supposed to attend Kenzie's annual figure skating show last night.  Normally, I would be the one shooting photos and video of the event. Unfortunately, I was feeling quite lousy all day long with a sore throat and generally feeling pretty weak and miserable.  By mid-afternoon, I had a fever (yet again) so I tested myself for COVID again since we were supposed to be meeting with a lot of people at the show.   I tested negative, which I suppose is a good thing, but these symptoms as well as the fever are the same as I have been fighting since testing positive just before Christmas.  Plus, I'm simply feeling pretty miserable most of the time.  I have occasional good moments but I'm feeling less-than-good far more often.  It has been a long couple of months.   Considering my sore throat and the fever, I knew I should stay home rather than risk passing whatever I have on to someone else.  Plus, I knew that wearing myself down more by wandering from the house, keeping bu

I've been using an old Olympus telephoto lens on my Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera bodies for wildlife photography.  Well, I also use my Sony camera bodies at times but I'm lacking fast-focusing long lenses for my Sony bodies so I lean toward the micro four thirds bodies for this purpose.  These micro four thirds cameras and lenses are indeed "micro" sized and that is one of the major reasons I have this Panasonic gear.  Relatively small and lightweight is a very good thing when it comes to my extensive spinal injuries. I've used this long Olympus telephoto lens quite often when in my kayak shooting loons, ducks, hawks and eagles but this old lens is just a little too large and a little too long for easy handholding for such a fast moving type of photography.   Of course, when I'm sitting in a small kayak, I don't have much of a choice but to handhold this lens.  It is a challenge to keep such a long lens trained on my subject especially when in a roll

I've never been one to be a follower.  I definitely will not follow the masses in purchasing popular products by inexplicably popular manufacturers.  I am no lemming, I am no blind follower.  As such, for this reason as well as others, I'll never promote anything made by Canon, Nikon, (cr)Apple, Tesla/Musk (jeez...  I don't even like writing these two names), or similar manufacturers just to name a few that come to mind first.   (I have to point out that my negative feelings and opinions of Musk go far deeper than simply not following the masses after decades of giving lectures on the evils of this lying, dishonest, rapist of our Earth...  and it is a topic I have beaten to death in professional lectures touching upon, unfortunately, only deaf ears.  In time, unfortunately when it is too late, people will understand what I had been warning about decades earlier.)  I don't just blindly dislike these manufacturers.  I do research these manufacturers and try some products

W e had planned to go to a rather unique diner after skating at Bryant Park during our trip to Manhattan at Christmastime.  Actually, we had each of our meals planned for our entire trip, even our breakfasts.  After skating at Bryant park, we walked the few blocks to this diner on Broadway only to find that the line to get into the diner was wrapped around the building and then, as we peered around the corner, we noticed the line was more than a block long!  Instead of waiting on that very long line in the brutal wind and frigid temperatures, we headed to Junior's diner one or two blocks closer to Times Square.  We had only a 10 minute wait there so we had breakfast there.   Skating at Bryant Park was later than our skating reservation at Rockefeller Center so, by the time we left Bryant Park, we were well into the busy time for breakfast.  I was hoping we would still be early enough to avoid the big crowds but we were not!  Fortunately, I had a few restaurants in mind as backups t

I 've been waking up pretty hungry lately.  I'm not sure why but it may have to do with taking so many extra H1 blockers.  Those class of medications tend to make people very hungry.  Whatever the reason, I've been hungry in the morning so I have been making larger breakfasts for myself. This morning, I made some French Toast with fresh raspberries and some bacon on the side... Breakfast was delicious but this wears me out.  I slept for two hours or more after cleaning up all the dishes from breakfast.  This caused me to miss lunch. The other problem with these big breakfasts is they won't be helping my cholesterol levels at all!  It hit the spot this morning though.

A s if having the COVID virus for a month now isn't enough, I'm also developing various secondary health problems. First, I developed a sinus infection.  Since I was still struggling with active COVID including fever, I needed to stay in quarantine so that I wouldn't infect my whole primary care practice.  This meant that when I thought I was developing a sinus infection, I had to resort to a televisit meeting with my doctor.  Since I was just video chatting with my doctor this meant that she couldn't examine me for additional problems and only had my descriptive assessment of symptoms to form a diagnosis and prescribe a treatment plan.   There was no doubt that she was right in that I was suffering from a sinus infection.  That was obvious by the symptoms.  Unfortunately, we are now thinking there were more serious underlying problems as well that had yet to show any symptoms. I got up yesterday morning at around 5am.  I hardly slept through the night mostly due to bei

Although I've been feeling quite lousy since being home from Manhattan...  so for the past month...  due to having COVID and some secondary infections and now awaiting results of some more serious tests, I've been a little bit bored at times too.  Most of the time, I've been feeling too lousy too be bored but, sometimes, I feel just well enough to want to accomplish something. I don't have much energy and my health problems seem to continually get worse in waves, but I still hope to accomplish something small each day with a very short burst of energy.  "Burst of energy"...  that is a bad joke so let me rephrase that.  I push myself for a few minutes at a time when I'm feeling a little better than I have previously and then need to rest.  Sometimes I sit at the piano briefly, sometimes I read, sometimes I watch a movie (or listen to a movie with my eyes closed), sometimes I pick up a camera and shoot some still objects in the living room. I had a few very

When I got up out of bed this morning, I only got as far as the kitchen (directly from the bedroom while on the way toward the bathroom) before I told Sheila I was already ready for a nap!  Since then, all I need to do is walk from one room to another before needing to sit down to take a break to restore some energy.  Then I walk another 10-20 feet and I need to sit down to take a rest again.  To say that I am "exhausted" is a gross understatement.  I am what I would consider to be dangerously low on energy. Since we arrived back home from Manhattan a few days before Christmas, I have spent most of my time either in bed or on the couch.  This has been my view from the couch...  and, for a change of pace, I sometimes sit in that armchair... Most of the time, I've had a camera or two at my side hence the snapshots here in this blog today.  Below is a photo of my favorite camera, my Sony a7 which is about nine years old at this point.  I shot this using my less-than-favorite

While I am still recovering from COVID and a secondary infection, I pulled out one of my film cameras.  This is my Mint TL70 TLR Instax camera. I have sort of lost all track of time but I think I've been in quarantine for three weeks now.  I should be at the end of my quarantine period though as long as I test negative for COVID this evening.  I already went through the Paxlovid treatment and I am just finishing up my antibiotic for my secondary infection.   I'm feeling a bit better than I have been feeling, finally, but I am still quite fatigued.  Actually, I'm quite exhausted by mid-morning.  I'm still seeing signs in my nasal mucus showing that my body is in overdrive fighting this infection but the mucus volume is significantly smaller now which is good.  I've been fever-free for a few days now which is good because I had a fever coming and going for a long, long time.  My joints are pretty painful.  My spinal injuries are quite lousy as well but that might be m

This blog entry consists mostly of photos of windows we saw on Fifth Avenue.  We did some window shopping, however, I should mention that we did quite a bit of shopping in quite a few stores on Fifth Avenue during our stay in Manhattan too.   I'll cover our disappointments in another blog entry but I have to add a bit about our disappointments here in this blog entry since window shopping, in general, is something that left us quite disappointed during this trip thanks to Sak's Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor.  (Plus, I'm still a bit bitter about being infected with COVID yet again due to this trip so I'm left with a lot of bad feelings about this trip... a lot of bad, bitter feelings.) First, Lord & Taylor is now gone so their windows and Christmas decorations were sorely missed.  Their Christmas window displays were always among the best on Fifth Avenue.  Sak's Fifth Avenue also used to be among the best but, this year, Sak's seems to have given up on