Scattered Thoughts . . .

I 've been feeling rather lousy the past few days....  maybe COVID again or maybe a cold with all the symptoms that go with each...  so I've been doing a little work on the trolley between naps.  It's been raining steadily most of this time so I've been stuck inside the house anyway.  This allowed me a bit of time to go back to working on my large scale trolley for our garden railroad.  The new motor block that I added to the trolley about a month ago is slightly taller than the original motor block which changes the appearance of this trolley.  Even before adding this motor block, I was never all that happy with the way the trolley appeared to just teeter on the four wheels near the center of the trolley.  I felt like it looked like the trolley was set upon an upside-down triangle.  Raising the body of the trolley up slightly to fit this new motor block made this odd look even more noticeable.  I figured that adding some skirting to the underside of the body might help

K enzie had spent a few days with us last week and, during that visit, she and I did a couple of art projects.  This week, both Lukey and Kenzie were with us so we pulled out the art supplies again.  Kenzie didn't feel like painting so Lukey and I tackled what I initially thought would be a simple project.  Honestly, in hindsight, it was not the best project for someone completely new to watercolors but we still pressed on and did the best we could. We chose to paint a silhouetted girl on a swing against a colorful sky.  Since the girl on the swing was silhouetted, we wouldn't have to worry about depth nor details.  What I didn't think about was how difficult it would be to paint the fine lines of the rope holding the swing.  Drawing is one thing once a child learns to control a pencil but painting fine lines is completely different and requires a different skillset.   Painting fine lines is really a skill that requires a lot of practice.  This is especially true when paint

I'm adding an update at the top of this blog entry since I was notified of most of the laboratory test results shortly after writing this blog entry.  There are no big surprises so far in these test results so that is good.  We're still waiting on the results of the newest type of test that is mentioned below.  Honestly, I really don't expect any life-changing revelations to come from that test either though.  The severity and frequency of anaphylaxis that my body is enduring is a bit of a problem though. W e had to head up to Burlington a few days ago for what we thought would be a quick and uneventful visit to Oncology for me.  This is an every-six-months visit (well...  it is supposed to be every six months but the Oncology department is so busy that they are scheduling about nine months out at this point...  the soonest they could get me in for my next appointment isn't until June, 2025).  Since we're at oncology approximately three to six times a year due to re

L ukey and Kenzie are staying with us for a few days again.  Tomorrow we plan to go on a cruise on Lake Champlain and tonight we're hoping to get a fire going in the backyard if the weather cooperates.  We're having Pork Street Tacos for dinner tonight...  one of our favorite dishes.   The pork loin is slow roasted on the grill with a dry rub.  After it reaches temperature, I add a glaze to the meat.  While that sets for a bit, I grill some pineapple brushed with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon.  After grilling, I chop that up.  I will saute some onions until the onions are slightly caramelized.  We also have a mix of spring greens to add to the street tacos.  Each taco is wrapped up in a warm tortilla with a delicious sauce that is both slightly spicy and citrusy with a sour cream base, the caramelized onions, the chopped grilled pineapple, the spring greens, and sliced slow cooked glazed pork.  My mouth is watering now! After preparing everything needed for the Pork Street T

L ast weekend, Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us so we had a small fire in the backyard to make some hot dogs, corn on the cob and S'mores.  The weather was beautiful, for a change, we had music playing, and we had all sorts of activities and games to keep everyone busy.   It was a nice afternoon and evening but, once it started getting dark, Lukey and I were able to have our first nighttime garden railroad operating session...  which was a lot of fun!   I plan to eventually add more lighting to this little garden railroad along with more people figures, another bridge and a few other interesting features.  The current lack of lighting became very obvious when the sky was completely darkened so I'm thinking I could use a few more features that are illuminated.      This first nighttime session was fun though!  Here is a short video of some of the action...

T oday, Kenzie and I had a really nice "art day" and we produced some nice pieces of art.  I need to purchase a few more frames and mat board because I realized today that I don't have any on hand anymore for framing small pieces of artwork.  Actually, I found that we are short on a few art supplies so I'll need to remedy that also before I forget. After spending far too much time searching for and digging out our art supplies, we sorted out what we would need for today and then came up with a plan.  We chose a couple of ideas and decided upon some nice compositions for two pieces of artwork each.   We sketched a few ideas and then did a little practice on some scrap paper before we touched the watercolor paper.  Then we talked about shapes, colors, values, light and shadows for our compositions.  Below are a couple of our initial sketches to help iron out sizes of the basic shapes... The first watercolor piece of art was sort of a memento of our Christmas week in Man

Y esterday, for the first time, I had the opportunity to run two trains in our garden at the same time.  I was able to run my newly upgraded trolley (reassembled yesterday morning) and my big steam locomotive with its tender and two passenger cars.  I have little to no experience running two trains at the same time, by myself, so I did everything much more slowly than usual.  I didn't want a collision! While I was running these two trains, I kept moving the camera around the garden to get a few different perspectives.  The next time I do this, however, I need to pay closer attention to the levelness of the camera.  The camera I used doesn't have an electronic level so I eyeballed it on the small LCD screen in bright daylight...  less than an ideal way to clearly see things I need to see clearly.  I also need to be more creative and careful with different angles.  That being said, this is a fairly nice first video showing two trains running at the same time in our garden.  The p

I spent much of the day yesterday finishing up wiring the large scale trolley for the new electronics, new motor block, and new battery power.   I had all sorts of room in my big steam locomotive's tender when I did this same upgrade to that locomotive but this trolley has far less room so it was a frustratingly tight fit and things are not fitting as well as I would have preferred.  That being said, even with seeing some wires inside the trolley, this was definitely a worthwhile upgrade because I would not have used the trolley otherwise.     My plan was to keep everything I added to this trolley out of sight.  I added a lot...  the battery was perhaps the largest thing, a speaker in a homemade speaker box is large too, the electronic circuit board, a charging jack, a fuse holder, an on-off-on switch, and all the wiring.  I was hoping to be able to hide everything snugly up against the underside of the roof while the jack, switch and fuse would be under the seats with access from

M ore than a week ago, I decided to put together some photos and a video that more closely show the vast upgrades I accomplished on my large scale steam locomotive.  Since I was so busy getting ready for a barbeque with the grandchidren, I completely forgot about all these photos as well as the video until I was showing Sheila a photo of something our grandson, Lukey, noticed about one of my gondolas that I had never noticed.  He noticed that it is a model of a gondola meant specifically to carry gold from mines.  I had no idea but it makes sense since these old ten-wheelers were among the first locomotives sent out to the wild west.   Since I never really finished showing better photos of these upgrades, I guess I'll try to get this blog entry completed before heading to bed tonight. _______________________________________________________ First, let me preface this with a quick update on my health since things weren't so great today.   Quite simply, today was a rather lousy he

N ow that my large scale steam locomotive is running nicely in the backyard garden railroad (although I have not had a chance to run it much), I started upgrading my large scale trolley this past week.   I had to order a few different parts for this project but our USPS delivery service is abysmally slow so this little project is going very slowly while I impatiently wait on parts to arrive.  That being said, I've still made some headway the past few days. Just as I did previously with the steam locomotive, I started by disassembling and stripping down the trolley.  I pulled out all the wiring, removed the motor block and started coming up with a new wiring plan.   I have a new motor block that runs much more smoothly than the stock motor block so that was a definite upgrade.  The issue was that I needed to figure out how to mount this new motor block to the trolley since it was not made for this particular train.  I needed to come up with some sort of adaptation. Anyway, the first