Scattered Thoughts . . .

I t stopped raining long enough today to paint (primer only) all the locomotive parts.  It was still overcast most of the day but the radar was not showing any rain so today was the day to start painting all the locomotive parts.  I set up a couple of saw horses with an old piece of plywood as a makeshift table and then placed all the parts on the plywood.   I just barely covered everything with a nice coat of primer before the can went dry.  Perhaps I should have purchased two cans of primer!  I had only purchased a single can of the charcoal black paint too so now I know one can won't be enough especially since I'll be painting multiple coats of the charcoal.   All the parts fit nicely on this piece of plywood... Here are the leading wheels... The cab without the window panes installed... Below is the lower half of the locomotive including the driving wheels.  These wheels no long need to conduct electricity to power the motor because I am converting this steam locomotive to

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, whenever I see the need for an emergency repair suddenl

I t is another rainy spring day here so I'm indoors for the day.  I decided to do a little more work on kitbashing this large scale 4-6-0 steam locomotive.   Long ago, I decided that I wanted to add marker lights to the front end of this steam locomotive whenever I got around to repainting and kitbashing it.  Back when this type of locomotive was manufactured for real-life railroads, there was no such thing as marker lights on locomotives.  Instead of lights, these early locomotives used flags.  However, these 10 wheeler locomotives were still in use when marker lights became more common in use rather than flags.   If I remember correctly most of these 4-6-0 steam locomotives added marker lights to the lower part of the front end mounted just above the cow catcher where the flags had been located.  I seem to remember seeing these older locomotives with marker light mounted this way.  However, I've always preferred the marker lights being mounted up higher on the sides of the to

T oday is Day 10 of my antibiotic for my tick bite that occurred about 15 days ago.  Hmmm...  yeah...  I guess it was two weeks ago last night that I pulled that tick off me.  I still have another four days of this antibiotic and, so far, I seem to be recovering.  I'm exhausted but I'm not feeling any of the symptoms that were very prevalent for a week or two after I pulled the big tick off me. As luck ( my luck...  which is rarely good) would have it, when I awoke from my long afternoon nap today (almost four hours), I headed to the bathroom so I could shower before starting on cooking dinner.  The moment I removed my shirt, I noticed a new bite on the inside of my left arm just above my elbow and there already appears to be a small bullseye developing around it.  Other than going to the grocery store with Sheila last night, I really have not been outside in a couple of days.  Well, I did walk out to get the mail around lunchtime both yesterday and today.  For the most part,

I 've been laying low while I continue to recover from my tick bite.  I'm still fever-free which I think is now the start of the third day of no fever so that is good.  I don't want to overdo it so I've been laying low inside the house.  While I'm laying low indoors,  I decided to start on a long-planned model railroading project. The particular trains I've been working on with this project are my largest trains...  narrow gauge F scale trains that run on G scale track.  These trains are quite large so are best suited for an outdoor garden layout unless you have a basketball court-sized building just sitting around unused.  We don't have that kind of real estate so we'll be setting up a small garden railroad in our backyard. About eight years ago, I found a beat-up freight set with a big 4-6-0 steam locomotive that was reported as "not running" at a small train show.  The guy was asking for $40 for the whole set so I jumped on it.  I figured th

I t is still only 7pm but, so far, today is the first day that I don't have a fever since being bitten by a tick.  I have been in much need of some good news so not having a fever is quite a relief.  For 11 days, my health got progressively worse.  The worst days were the 10th and 11th days after finding the tick on me and those were quite bad days. Right after pulling the tick off me, I was given a single mega-dose of antibiotic.  Unfortunately, that wasn't enough and my health worsened over the long Memorial Day weekend that immediately followed the tick bite.  After the weekend, I was called back into my doctor's office and they started me on the longest "at home" oral antibiotic treatment immediately.  So, those worst days at days 10 and 11 were only the 5th and 6th days on the long antibiotic treatment.   Those 10th and 11th days were miserable and that was clearly indicated by my mood.  I don't remember the last time I was in such a miserable mood.  It s

I didn't accomplish much of anything today.  I'm still dealing with fevers coming and going throughout each day since my tick bite.  My fever(s) never got above 100 degrees today so that is sort of good.   I'm still generally feeling quite lousy and  I also had difficulty focusing on any one task so I ended up bouncing from one thing to another within minutes, never really accomplishing anything.    I'm still in quite a bit of pain which certainly affects my ability to focus...  although the pain isn't as bad as yesterday but I'm still in pain.  My joints and my muscles hurt.  I have a bit of a headache too.   I stayed indoors today with the exception of wandering outside first thing this morning to water the flowers.  The first thing this morning the temperature outside was already up near 80 degrees!  Other than that, I was indoors all day long.  The weather was in the 90s again today and I don't do well in this type of heat even on a "good" hea

I know it is only Day 5 of this latest antibiotic but, still, I feel the need to mention that I feel like crap.  This second course of antibiotics will be for 14 days so I'm still fairly early in this second round of treatment.  I'm not all that confident in its effectiveness though.  I'm still getting fevers every night.  My abdomen hurts.  My joints hurt.  My muscles ache.  I still have a headache.  And, I just generally feel like crap. What compounds this tick bite and whatever illness has been transmitted to me is the fact that I was still struggling with long-COVID when I found the tick on me.  So, between my mast cell symptoms, my long-COVID symptoms and now these tick illness symptoms, I'm not sure which thing is causing which symptoms.  There is no doubt that a few things suddenly came on and/or worsened after the tick bite so I'm fairly certain what is due to the tick bite.  Then again, the tick bite could be causing a worsening of my mast cell disease sin

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