Scattered Thoughts . . .

I accomplished another small task this morning with my large scale steam locomotive kitbashing project.   I spent about an hour this morning grinding the window panes down to size, however, looking at the photo here, they could still use a bit of finer sandpaper on the edges.  That will take only about five minutes though.  Grinding down the window panes from their large rough sizes to the finished sizes was a little time consuming.  It was easy with my belt sander but it was a bit time consuming.   I also ventured outside into the wet, damp, soaked yard to survey some facia damage I noticed last night while grilling dinner.  The facia along the back section of the house is so rotted out that the gutter is now falling off the house. These little emergency repairs that continually pop up really screw up accomplishing what I had hoped to accomplish.  Our summer season is far too short.  A long rainy spring doesn't help any.  So, whene...

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 u...

S heila and I spent a good part of this past holiday weekend cleaning up the outside of the house.  The rain finally stopped for Labor Day weekend after an entire summer of daily rain and dark overcast skies.  We spent almost the entire summer indoors sheltered from the terrible weather. This past weekend, we washed all the windows, inside and out.  We cleaned screens.  I even cleaned mold, algae and mildew off one side of our house including the oil tank and gas tank.  The amount of moisture we've had this summer seemed to cover everything in filthy growth, some black, some green, some very crusty.  I also did some landscaping and Sheila did some gardening attending to our remaining flowers.  The gardens are still looking pretty good for this time of year even though they got very little sun through the summer! While I was cleaning windows on the back side of the house, I noticed that our neighbor's lawn is completely covered in leaves already!  ...

The snowstorm that was forecast to hit us actually did materialize and it dropped a fair amount of snow on us.  Sheila and I spent about three hours clearing out the driveway, the paths, the mailbox, the fuel tank, and the roof.  This is the longest amount of time snow removal has ever taken us! We removed about 14 inches of snow and, since then,we've had another few inches.  I actually expected far more snow to be dropped on us this storm but, considering how much work it was to clean up today, I'm thankful that we got considerably less snow than was forecasted. Thanks to some of Sheila's old co-workers, we have a nice snowblower and that has come in handy many, many times since it was gifted to us.  This helps out my spine significantly but, I should point out, it is still a painful experience.  The snowblower is actually a bit too heavy for Sheila to handle so I am the one to manhandle the snowblower while Sheila gets started on raking the roof and doi...

Even though I had great difficulty breathing again today (it is my 'new normal', I suspect) , I managed to start working on a new project this morning. I didn't get a whole lot done but it was nice to have a fairly productive morning, for a nice change of pace. Our old bedroom has been relegated as a temporary storage facility rather than a nice bedroom since we moved into our new bedroom just before Christmas. This morning, I started moving things out of this room so we could begin renovating.  I needed to take a lot of breaks to catch my breath... used my inhaler about three times... got a little dizzy a few times... but, slowly, I managed to make a slightly noticeable dent in clearing this room of clutter.  After lunch, I went outside and started excavating for a small foundation for a small three window alcove we plan to add to this bedroom.  The good news is I did not encounter any buried utilities. I started this digging by hand with a plastic shovel just ...

Even considering I had some poor health this morning (Sunday morning), I managed to get quite a bit accomplished on the dollhouse this weekend.  Let's start with the poor health... I spent far too much time in the bathroom late last night, sick as a dog... I was dying to sleep and was having difficulty keeping my eyes open but I was still sick and stuck in the bathroom... I thought I would be napping in the bathroom for a bit there. This morning, although a bit worn out and weak, I thought I was doing considerably better but I had more serious problems come on very suddenly while Sheila and I were at the grocery store.  I was worn out from the previous night's poor health spent in the bathroom but I thought that would be the extent of my problems. While we were passing the frozen food aisle, I started seeing 'sparklies' in my eyes... I was feeling weaker and more worn out... and my breathing was beginning to become shallow... I knew the process of anaphylaxis ha...

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...