Scattered Thoughts . . .

A s with most of my projects, I had thought that painting my homebuilt truss bridge would be a quick and easy job.  It hasn't been difficult but it has not be the least bit quick. This paint job is becoming a very long process.   First, I primed it with a spray can or two.  Then I spray painted an Anvil Gray spray paint and it was far too blue.  I wouldn't even call it a gray.  It really was a very dark blackish-blue and I didn't care for the color at all.  Once I started spraying this color, I realized that I had been fooled by the name of this color once before when I was painting my steam locomotive.  It was far too blue for that project too and ended up wasting a few days while I searched for a more appropriate color.   Then I sprayed a can of something named Deep Gray.  One would think this would be a gray that is into the darker shades of gray but, on the contrary, it was a rather light shade of gray.  This paint also had an odd hue to it that seemed to be leaning int

W e've been having problems with our WiFi router overheating for well over a year.  The entertainment cabinet that I built into the side of our fireplace unit had no ventilation at all other than the shelves being open to the front of the unit.  Inside that cabinet, especially in the summer months, the temperature would probably get into the triple digits quite easily and far too often.  This consistently has caused wireless issues requiring numerous reboots and even occasional cool-down periods.   Consequently, I highly suspect that the wireless router is now damaged and I've known for quite a few months that we are on borrowed time for this rather vital piece of hardware.  I say it is vital because Sheila needs the internet for work.   Lately, we need to reboot far more often than ever before and our WiFi has been intermittent for many months.  I knew the solution was to purchase a new router system and to install an exhaust fan into the side of this cabinet.   One of today&#

W e arrived back home from our weekend in Portsmouth yesterday afternoon.  The three hour drive was uneventful but Sheila has been sick since shortly before arriving home.   At first we thought she might have a stomach virus but now we aren't sure if it's a stomach virus or COVID or even a result of some bad food.  She is feeling rather poorly and hasn't eaten since breakfast in Portsmouth yesterday morning.  We both tested for COVID this morning and we tested negative but that doesn't mean much since these home tests are known to be highly inaccurate indicating negative results when the person is really infected with the virus.   We'll continue testing and we'll see what happens.  Hopefully, she'll feel like eating something by dinnertime tonight.  (...and, hopefully, be able to hold it down.) On our last night in Portsmouth, we went to an ice cream shop two doors down from our apartment right after dinner at a nice restaurant on Bow Street.  The restaurant

L ast night I received a short note from my Oncologist about one of my most recent test results from tests done a month ago.  It is a relatively new test and so had to go to a separate lab.   I didn't see this note from my oncologist until we were heading to bed so this new information kept us up for another hour or so while we talked about it and what this possibly means for our immediate future as well as for the bigger, longer-term picture.   To be honest, I really wasn't expecting anything other than negative results from this new test so I have to admit I was a bit surprised to see that this time the results were positive.   This is a relatively new test that I had to pay in advance fully because no insurance companies are covering it just yet.  Although a relatively new test, it is a test result that can explain critically and chronically poor health like I am experiencing.  Naturally, this test also provides us with not only an additional diagnosis but with a significant

I spent much of the day yesterday working on our garden railroad again.  I stained all of the bare wood for two reasons...  first, bare wood looks unfinished but I wanted more of a finished look and next, the deck stain that I used will help to protect the wood from the elements.  I also primed the new truss bridge.  Right now it is primed black but I will probably finish it with a medium gray color and then weather it. I plan to add some gravel to this front section of the railroad to be used as ballast.  In an effort to keep the gravel from inevitably falling off this elevated train station section, I needed to add some short guard rails along the edge of this decking to keep the gravel up where it belongs.  Once I had cut and installed all of these side rails, I was ready to do some staining. There is a rather stark difference between the unstained wood in the above photo and the stained wood in the photo below... I also primed the new truss bridge.  Next week I hope to get to toni

S o, the other day, I built a retaining wall for the front side of our little garden railroad and wrote about it here  in this blog previously.  That new "model" retaining wall looks great and I have to say it was a brilliant idea to add this detail.  Today, I started working on building a truss bridge for the back side of the garden railroad.   I've been sketching different ideas over the past couple of months because I always knew I wanted one of these bridges on this garden railroad but I finally decided on a plan this morning.  Once I had the plan sketched and figured out all the dimensions of each of the parts, I immediately headed outside to start cutting lumber and building a truss bridge.  My civil engineering days are long behind me but, if I remember correctly, this would be a Warren Truss bridge due to the equilateral triangles across each side of the bridge. Designing this bridge required me to test my geometry and trigonometry skills (and my memory).  Other t

I 'm still recovering from my last bout with COVID so let me mention this continually lingering illness so nobody mistakes no news for good news.   My breathing is quite lousy...  I'm constantly trying to cough up the thickest of thick mucus...  I'm having difficulty breathing when laying down which makes getting some much needed sleep more difficult...  I have extremely painful joints...  and I'm generally feeling quite lousy.  Even so, I've still been trying to accomplish something, anything, each day.   The other day, I decided that I didn't like the front side of our garden railroad.  I have this front section up on 4x4 stilts so it has always looked a bit weird to me.  I'm planning to build a train station for this part of the railroad.  First I need to figure out the best way to make a model building that is completely weatherproof.  This little straight section on this low deck will also have a road crossing the two tracks and it will be filled in wit

T his morning, I noticed that the weather was unusually nice so I decided it would finally be a good day to do a little more work on my large scale steam locomotive and the trolley.  I had painted and weathered both of them but I never got around to sealing all my work with a matte UV resistant sealer.  This is something I would prefer to do outside since I would be applying this sealer from a spray can and it appears as though today would be a good day. My plan was to go outside to grab a couple of sawhorses and a piece of plywood so I could make a utilitarian table where I could safely place my big steam locomotive and trolley.  We've had bears and skunks in our yard quite often lately so I've been very vigilant about scanning the area before I step too far away from our door.  I stepped outside...  no bears...  no skunks...  then headed to behind the house where I left my sawhorses. As I was about to place my right foot back behind the sawhorses so I could more easily lift t

J ust this past week, I picked up a used anamorphic lens adapter.  This adapter allows me to convert a useful selection of my lenses to be used to create cinematic wide screen videos with most of the characteristics of far more expensive cine lenses.   True cine lenses are both huge in size and exhorbitantly expensive when compared to typical camera lenses used for still photography.  These anamorphic lenses are used mostly by filmmakers because this type of lens is actually designed to fit wide-screen cinematic video on smaller film and digital sensors. Back in the 1950s, movie studios were filming on 35mm film.  Some studios were probably still using 16mm film too but major productions were using 35mm film.  By comparison, home movies were being filmed on 8mm film.  I was very well versed on 8mm film through the 1960s and 1970s as that is the format my family used for all our home movies.   By the time I was in high school in the mid-1970s, I was cutting and splicing 8mm film to cre

E ven after multiple negative home COVID tests, I am now absolutely certain that I am struggling with another bout of COVID.  This would make it the sixth time I've developed this insidious virus.  Since the first bout with this virus in early 2020, I've been struggling with long-COVID problems. Each time I'm infected with the virus again, my long-COVID problems worsen significantly.  I have occasionally gotten colds, infections, etc, and yet these illnesses never worsen my long-COVID symptoms.  Each time I have developed COVID again, however, my long-COVID problems significantly worsen.  Keeping this in mind, I am certain that I have been struggling with another bout of COVID over the past two weeks regardless of what the crappy home COVID tests indicate. So, my breathing has worsened significantly.  I am struggling with phlegm as thick as...  hmmm, thinker than sour cream...  thicker than butter...   I guess, as thick as kindergarten school paste is the best description.