Scattered Thoughts . . .

We had a really nice weekend and had an especially nice Sunday dinner with the grandchildren, Liza, and Sheila's parents, Will and Sue! Lukey arrived at the house with a golf club in hand which immediately reminded me of creating golf courses when I was a kid myself. We kept the course design simple on this day, however.  First, we dug one single hole, inserted a cup, and then we figured out where to place five different tee off areas... one straight-on... one off to the side... one which we called "down in the hole" which placed the tee off area lower than the green... one which was off to the side of "down in the hole" requiring chipping around tall brush and foliage... and one which required chipping over our firepit.  We took a little break for lunch... cheese quesadillas, tomato soup, apple sauce and berry jello for the kids... some leftover fried okra for me... and a cherry tomato medley salad for Gee... then back outside to play more go

The grandchildren were with us again on Sunday. It was a rainy and rather uneventful day but, as always, it was very nice.  I gave Lukey a haircut... some playing with dolls, dollhouses, trains, airplanes... some baked ziti for dinner, hot Italian sausage on the side, and some bread... and ice cream for dessert.  The fairly typical shot of Lukey and some of his trains... EDIT:  The photo of Lukey playing with his trains (above) was the first photo I shot this day. I quickly realized it was far too dark in the house on this dark, rainy day. My auto exposure chose a very high ISO of 12,800. Typically, anything beyond 1600 is avoided by photographers because things tend to get noisy, grainy and ugly beyond 1600. This shot above had doubled that limit three times and the photo still looks pretty good! Once I realized the house was this dark, I grabbed my little Nissin i40 hotshoe flash and mounted it on my camera... set it to TTL and a negative 1.5 exposure (so I only added a smal

Helping Gee make some brownies... I'm still feeling rather lousy but we had the kids, Liza and John over yesterday anyway. It was a nice change of pace and nice to socialize for a little bit. I've hardly wandered from the house over the past three weeks other than to pick up some food, pick up medications or see a doctor! The kids helped Gee make some brownies... Lukey helped me prepare our pork roast (and liked taste-testing my dry rub)... we made some blackberry mint tea... we watched some movies... I slept for an hour or so... and we had a nice dinner.  Today I head back to another medical appointment for imaging of my lungs. This appointment isn't a moment too soon since I had great difficulty breathing last night. In the past eight months or so, I've had consist difficulty breathing but last night was significantly worse. This sort of worsening health happens from time and time and can be expected but it will be nice to find out why... whether it is due to