Scattered Thoughts . . .

I 'm feeling slightly better after a few more doses of antibiotic but my post-tick-bite fever is still lingering.  I still have a long way to go with the antibiotic so I'm still very early in the treatment which means I probably shouldn't be surprised by the lingering fever.  It is only a low grade fever but I am also taking NSAIDs which should be lowering the fever yet I still do have one so, without the NSAIDs, I can't help but wonder how high would my fever be?   I'm a bit more fatigued than what is "normal", I think.  It is difficult to discern what might be due to my primary illness (Systemic Mastocytosis) or due to this tick bite.  I am inexplicably exhausted though.  Hmmm...  maybe I should take some extra medications for my primary illness just in case this is related to that.  (EDIT:  I just did take extra medications.) Sheila and I did some grocery shopping this evening and I felt rather crappy through that relatively short outing.  I was a bit d

L ast night, after my doctor's office had closed for the day, my very low grade fever that I had throughout the holiday weekend, started rising.  Stuff like this always seems to happen on the weekends or at night.  By 8:30pm, the fever had reached 100.4 degrees so I was a bit concerned.   I still wasn't sure where the threshold should be for being concerned or seeking more medical attention but I figured the best thing would be to call my doctor's office in the morning.  If I started feeling miserable rather than lousy, then I would have to go to the hospital emergency department.  However, before heading to the bedroom last night, I realized that I could also write my doctor an email then, if necessary, follow-up in the morning after they opened for the day.  I definitely didn't want to wait so long that I would need to go directly to the hospital. This morning, the phone started ringing at 7:15am.  I get virtually no phone calls but now my line was ringing and it was

T he pain that has been radiating around the site of my tick bite is lessening but I'm still not feeling great.  My fever is increasing, little by little, especially this evening.  I'm at 99.9 degrees now.  We'll see how this develops through the night...  Why does this stuff always happen after the doctor's office has closed?   I'm assuming heading to a hospital isn't advisable until the fever inches above 101-102 degrees.   EDIT:  9:30pm - Before heading to bed, I decided to check my temperature again...  I was over 100 degrees.  I just checked again now at bedtime, about an hour after taking an Aleve and an aspirin, and my temperature has dropped to around 99 degrees again.  So that is good.  I definitely need to talk with my doctor (or any doctor) tomorrow morning.  

F irst, I should probably write a few things about the tick bite that I got this past Thursday.  Actually, I think it is past time for an update. The site of the bite hurts...  all around the area hurts.  The tick was latched onto the right side of my abdomen under my waistband and the pain radiating from that relatively tiny spot is felt past my groin to the left and down below my right hip on the right.  I can also feel the pain deeper into my body at the site of the bite.  It is sort of an ache...  a mild burning ache...  maybe not "burning" but a warm ache.   When I got out of the shower today, I noticed I have about a two inch diameter pale white area around the red bite area.  It is not a bullseye but it is an odd pale lack of skin coloring around the bite area.  I'm not sure what this means, to be honest.  (Note:  After being out of the shower about an hour or so, that pale white area is no longer visible...  so, strange.) I have a very low grade fever now.  I'

I 've been busy with landscaping projects over the past couple of weeks whenever I am feeling well enough.  This is good news because it has been helping me build up my strength again after months of COVID and long-COVID. Whenever I am done sweating from the morning of work in the yard, I then check myself for ticks before stepping into the shower.  Last night, unfortunately, I never made it to the shower because I was exhausted, I had to make dinner, I was still sweating, etc.  I just never got to the shower.  I had changed out of my sweaty clothes when I came in at lunchtime but I never did make it to the shower yesterday so I skipped a more thorough tick check too. This morning, I headed back outside to plant flowers into our window boxes.  We had purchased a bunch of flowers a few nights ago but I hadn't had time to plant them until this morning.  This was an easy job and only required about an hour of work.  After planting, I cleaned up the mess I made, put the gardening t

Over the past few days, I've been having a conversation in a photography forum about how to shoot monochrome images.  More specifically, someone had asked how to better utilize the in-camera color filters to get darkened skies.   She was having difficulty seeing much of a difference between images shot without a filter and images shot with a filter.   It just so happens that I spent some time running some experiments pertaining to this topic a couple of years ago so I had quite a bit of useful advice. This photographer explained that the skies were hazy and most of the scene was green foliage but that she could not see much of a difference between images shot without any in-camera color filters and those shot with a red in-camera filter.  Now she was wondering if she was doing something wrong or wondering if a true physical filter on the lens would be better. I was the first in this forum to respond to her.  I explained that hazy conditions are lousy for getting darkened skies in m

E ven though our summers are extremely short up here in Vermont, I've always had nagging thoughts about a small garden railroad nestled somewhere in amidst our flower gardens.  I think I finally found the right place among our gardens for a small elevated garden railroad.   Adjacent to where our backyard putting green was located (I'm in the process of repurposing this area to horseshoe pits...  another ongoing project for this spring), we had a small, overgrown garden area consisting of some shrubs, berry vines and mostly weeds.  In the process of cleaning up this area for the horseshoe pits, I saw this area in the very different light that I felt would be great for a small garden railroad.  The area is about 16' x 8'.   Here is an aerial view of this small area... The round things lined up in a row running across the top of the image are concrete test cylinders that I have been using as a border along one side of the pitching and putting green.  I've been using th

I had a few relatively "good" days so I tackled a small art project over the past two days.  I decided to shoot some photos of my HO scale Dreyfuss Hudson steam locomotive which then, as usual, morphed into a larger project.   This distinctive steam locomotive was perhaps the most famous locomotive of the New York Central Railroad, specifically, of 20th Century Limited passenger service fame.  This was considered the fastest passenger train service between New York City and Chicago back in the 1940s.  The route ran up the Hudson River then traveled westward along the Great Lakes.  Today, this route is named the Lake Shore Limited, a route Sheila and I have traveled quite a few times.  Unfortunately, the Lake Shore Limited is not nearly as glamorous as the 20th Century Limited once was but it is nice to retrace this historic route nevertheless.  The Lake Shore Limited can be referred to as many things but glamorous is definitely not one of them. I've always been most inte

I added another snapshot of a bird in our backyard to this year's collection of bird photos...  well, this bird is really in our neighbor's yard on his Frisbee Golf basket, not our backyard.  I did shoot this photo from our backyard though.  This is another photo from my initial test photos that I shot about a week or two ago but I just got around to editing it.   This was really a test of the autofocus system while using a new lens adapter but I feel the need to point out the negatives and positives of this image as a whole. I could have used a bit more light on my sparrow's face.  The sun was high and behind the bird so that was a problem.  I'm not too fond of the bird being perched on a Frisbee Golf basket either.  I would have preferred it being perched on a tree branch.  Plus, this sparrow is looking out of the frame which forces the viewer to wonder what he is looking at...  not a good thing.  You want your subject looking into the frame, typically anyway.  There

B etween typical lousy springtime weather and continued daily struggles with Long-COVID problems, I've been trying to find things to accomplish around the house.   I'm still having more difficulty than usual with breathing problems.  I'm always feeling like I'm trying to clear thick, nasty phlegm from my lungs.  Actually, I am still clearing this thick, nasty phlegm from my lungs (dark nasty stuff) but it is difficult to move this thick stuff and it seems to continue to replenish itself even after I clear some out.  So, this makes breathing difficult which also causes extra fatigue.   Another lingering problem is inflamed joints.  This isn't nearly as bad as it was from January through March but it is still worth mentioning.  As exhausted as I am, the pain continues to keep me up at night and keep me more uncomfortable than usual almost all the time.  I'm always dealing with pain due to my extensive spinal injuries as well as the bone and joint pain due to my sy