Scattered Thoughts . . .

A new photography product arrived on my doorstep the other day.  I was eager to test it and play with it for a bit.  I have to say that my initial testing was rather painless, quite easy and fun! Let me point out that many of the photographic prints hanging in our house are actual lab processed prints developed in chemicals the same way that prints were produced from film back when I was a child decades ago.  I learned photography when I was a child   shooting film  and I processed my own photos in a darkroom...  well, sometimes and I sometimes sent them out for processing and printing.  I learned photography using cameras with no automatic focus, no automatic exposure, no automatic prints and I knew my way around a darkroom as well as how to effectively handle an all-manual camera.  In my opinion, these types of darkroom lab prints are far superior to modern inkjet prints.  Truth be told, I feel that typical home photo "printers" are a rather poor medium for showcasing

I continue to have cognitive difficulties and overwhelming fatigue due to my mild-TBI.  I whacked my head on a low 2x4 brace while building our new trash shed back in early June of this year.  I briefly grayed-out...  knees buckled as I fell toward the ground...  then came to seeing stars in my vision.  Then, I whacked my head about half a dozen more times in the summer months while working around the house... same area of my head too! This fatigue I am experiencing is both cognitive and physical.  I often forget about this injury but I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out why I've been so completely exhausted lately...  why I can't even write...  why I have no energy to even talk. I struggle with overwhelming fatigue with my primary illness too but I usually have other symptoms accompany the fatigue.  These other symptoms are clearly related to my primary illness so I don't question the overwhelming fatigue at those times.  Lately, I am struggling with on

Our visit earlier in the day to The Palace of Fine Arts was beautiful and, honestly, I could have spent another few hours there just shooting photos of the gardens, architecture and wildlife.  I am drawn to classic architecture and this architecture is classic, immense and not something you see often on this continent.  Additionally, there was plenty of wildlife to capture in images all day long as well.   The environment, as a whole, was peaceful and comfortable while the weather was sunny and beautiful especially since we were still mostly accustomed to the snowy, wintry weather we had departed just a week earlier.  Unfortunately, our time in San Francisco was very limited since this was just one city of many we visited during our long cross-country journey by rail.  We had a lot to fit into two short weeks so there was no lingering to be done during any of our sightseeing excursions.  Before long, we needed to get going.  We had one more thing planned for our day after walking a

This is just a quick blog entry to write about some recent lousy health.   Since most people assume all is well when they hear nothing about health issues, I try to remember to write about some of these issues every now and then because all is not well with my health.  This is one of those times. Thinking back, this started with some mast cell issues for a week or two after we met some friends for dinner.  Quite often, just an afternoon and early evening out on the town can severely impact my health for a few weeks.   Then I had some significant spinal issues after removing some snow from around the house and the roof.  Actually, I am still trying to recover from the spinal inflammation and pain. Now I'm dealing with an annoying cold.  Unfortunately, a cold agitates and angers my already over-active mast cells which compounds and prolongs the cold and brings on all sorts of other debilitating symptoms.  A cold also makes my breathing issues worse and I've had a lot of brea

Note:  I found this blog entry about the very beginning of our cross-country rail journey in my "Drafts" folder long after I had already started writing about this trip so this entry is not in chronological order with the rest of my entries about this trip.  Chronological or not, it is now finished and published. I've been very undecided about how to tackle writing about such a long trip while sharing some of the photos I shot  (I plan to share only a select few of the 8500+ photos) and even a few video clips.  For now, I decided to write mostly chronologically.  If some other topic pops up in the middle of a different topic, I may stray from this plan.   In the months leading up to this rather complex trip while planning for this once in a lifetime cross-country journey by rail, we knew that we would be traveling for a minimum of two weeks.  The plan was to squeeze in as much as possible in this relatively short period of time.  Any delays, any weather problems an

Once again, living in Waterbury has proven to be an absolutely miserable geographic choice for viewing anything in the sky other than clouds.  I'm certain that we must see less sky throughout the year than people in rainy Seattle.  As a result of snowy weather, I missed the last planetary solar transit that I will be able to see in my lifetime.  To say that I am disappointed is a wild understatement. This past Monday morning, Mercury passed in front of the sun.  This doesn't happen all that often.  The next time we will have an opportunity to watch this event will be in 2032...  but, not from the United States.  Unfortunately, during this event this past Monday, we had snow falling out of the sky here in Waterbury during the entire six hour event. I spent a lot of time planning for this astronomical event.  I spent a lot of time and energy ensuring all my gear is ready to go.  I planned how I wanted to image and video the event too.  I even built some new gear just for this

The other day, I noticed the weather forecast showed that we had snow heading our way that evening or the next day.  I instantly remembered that I hadn't gotten to any of the maintenance needed on our snowblower due to health problems and miserable weather.  Actually, I hadn't gotten to a few other things on my To-Do list that were ahead of the snowblower maintenance but now the snowblower was bumped up to be the priority.  It took me about an hour to find and collect the right tools and then to block up the snowblower.  The weather wasn't too bad so it was nice being outside.  The temperature was in the upper 40s and the sun was peaking through hazy clouds low on the horizon.  It is that time of year when the sun never gets higher than the treetops so any sunlight is a bit of a surprise.  Anyway, I had collected all the necessary tools and the snowblower was now blocked up on chunks of 4x4's.   I needed to change the oil.  That actually went well and quickly.   T

I had previously written about Kenzie taking over photographer duties for me at a family bonfire event.  Later in the evening, I grabbed my camera and picked up where Kenzie left off. As the sun went down, it got colder and darker.  Kenzie was now having difficulty capturing people without motion blurring so badly that you can't identify the people in the shots so it was my turn to be the photographer.  She did an awesome job during the daylight hours though and that gave me a nice break!   As expected, Kenzie fluidly switched gears and focused more on S'mores and sparklers. We were in the yard out beyond the fairly new solar panels.  It was a good day for solar energy! We roasted hot dogs over the fire for dinner.  I brought along some bacon, shredded lettuce, chopped tomato and homemade maple honey mustard for some BLT Hot Dogs for anyone who wanted to try one.  Mmmm...  I could go for one now! It was definitely getting colder out at this poin