Scattered Thoughts . . .

A s you've probably seen in recent blog entries, I'm still working on the homemade truss bridge I designed and built for our little garden railroad.  Although this bridge is looking pretty good, I felt it was still lacking something (see photo at right).  After painting it a few different colors and thinking long and hard about what is bothering me about it, I had decided to add some details in the form of truss plates and bolt/rivet details.    I thought about making these truss plates out of wood but cutting wood as thin as I would need would make them very susceptible to warping and splitting so I ordered some brass stock to make these truss plates.  I also ordered some round head brass nails to make bolt details.  I'll drill holes in the plates where I want the bolts and then glue everything in place.   The brass stock I had ordered earlier in the week arrived on Thursday.  So, yesterday, I cut the shapes needed for truss plates.  Although brass is a rather soft metal,

I 'm still feeling rather lousy so I stayed indoors again today.  I happened to find a small project to keep me busy for a short while so that was good. Since the time that I felt I had finished painting the new truss bridge for my little garden railroad, I've been thinking something isn't right.  I couldn't put my finger on it but I was left feeling the something wasn't right.  Part of me thinks the color isn't exactly right even though I've painted it and repainted it about a half dozen times.  I don't know if I should go lighter with the green or go darker toward a greenish charcoal.  I also realized that maybe I'm just feeling as though it is not "complete" yet and needs more detail.   In an attempt to add more detail to this truss bridge, this morning I decided to order some brass stock and tiny round head brass nails to add some detail to this bridge.  I plan to cut the brass stock into shapes depicted by the white paper in the photo

M y health has been quite lousy since returning from Long Island last weekend and it is still lousy...  perhaps even worse than I had thought it was this past week, actually.   Sometimes I don't realize just how poor my health is until I either get worse or start to improve.  Then I can better gauge just how miserable my health is or has been.  In this case, I'm very slowly improving (I hope) but, as I can think more clearly, I am beginning to see just how poor my health has been this past week.  A few days ago I couldn't think clearly at all! At this point, mostly, I am worn out...  too exhausted to even stand for more than a few short minutes.  I could easily sleep away each day and night.  The only problem is that I want to accomplish something!  This is a frustrating place to be...  wanting to accomplish something and not having the energy to even begin to accomplish anything. Today the weather was beautiful...  sunny, warm, big puffy clouds in the sky, good visibility.

A fter a week of exceptionally lousy health, I managed to have a fairly productive day today.   We went out-of-town last weekend and that took a lot out of me especially since we went out-of-town two weekends prior to that too.  Between the two weekends, my health had had enough and I spent all week in bed and on the couch.  I couldn't think straight...  I couldn't see clearly...  I had great difficulty breathing most of the time... I was often lightheaded...  my bones and joints were more painful than usual... I slept a lot ...  and I generally felt exceptionally lousy.   I was hoping things would be back to normal yesterday but I had significant problems shortly after getting up out of bed so I aborted my plans for the day.  This morning, however, I felt more "normal"...  my new normal, anyway...  so I jumped into setting up a new WiFi system through our house (which was supposed to be yesterday's project).   This WiFi project involved pulling out our living roo

W hile we were at FAO Schwarz this past weekend with Lukey and Kenzie, we saw quite a few demonstrations of toys but one demonstration immediately caught our eye.   As we approached one end of the store, our attention was captured by this woman with a magic floating orb and she easily drew us in while holding our attention.  I could clearly tell that Lukey was quite interested.   The orb would float in between open hands above and below the orb and then the open hands would move to each side while the orb continued to float in mid-air...  then the orb would fly off and around her body...  the orb would slowly lower toward the ground and then back upward...  sometimes hands were above and below, other times hands were on each side...  sometimes no hands were anywhere near this floating orb!  This glowing orb just floated around our young female magician.   After we watched her short demonstration, I asked Lukey if that was something of interest and he enthusiastically said, "YES!&q

This is a rant about televisions we've encountered while traveling recently.  I don't think I'm feeling lousy but maybe I am considering this rant and another rant in another blog entry.  Or, maybe I'm simply in a lousy mood due to a blackout causing expensive damage to some of our electronics. I n the past couple of weeks, we spent two weekends out-of-town.  In the big scheme of things, we had nice accommodations and a nice time at both places.  One place was a VRBO apartment with well above average accommodations, the other place was a Hampton Inn suite which was nicer than other Hampton Inns we've frequented over the years.  Both places were nice but the televisions were frustrating and not at all pleasing in any way especially to the eye.  The quality of the televisions did not match the quality of the accommodations. Both of these places were furnished with Samsung televisions.   Both of these places had frustrating televisions with poor colors, poor sound and

M y best desktop monitor that I use for photo and video editing...  4K, IPS, 27", wide gamut, calibrated...  has bit the dust.  This was a stark and painful reminder that even the best computer will look like garbage if you use a low quality monitor. We awoke to a blackout at 6am this past Friday around the time when we had planned to get up out of bed before leaving for Long Island for the weekend.  The power came on again just before it was time for us to head out the door so I never did check my computer.  When I turned it on this morning, however, the screen was black. When we arrived home, I had problems getting our living room television to work too.  It had the same problem...  the screen was black.  I immediately suspected this problem was due to the blackout and, fortunately, I managed to force a reboot on this expensive television and managed to get it to work again.  Actually, I had to reboot numerous times but I got it working again.  This morning, my thoughts immediat

A fter our short visit to Manhattan this past Saturday, we rode on the Long Island Railroad from Grand Central Madison to Rockville Centre then walked the few short blocks back to the hotel.  I have to say that, as a tourist wanting easy and quick access to midtown Manhattan, the new Madison extension to Grand Central is very convenient! I needed to make a short stop at a pharmacy so we stopped at a pharmacy that was next to the hotel.  While we were there, we picked up a few additional drinks for the hotel.  Below, we are waiting for Sheila to come out of the pharmacy...  we somehow got separated in the store so checked out separately... Six hours of sleep the previous night was now taking its toll on Kenzie.  She laid down to take a short nap with her new stuffed animal but I don't think she got more than a few minutes of sleep, if at all.  I managed to capture a photo of her lying with her stuffed animal though... Before long, it was time to drive to my sister's house for di

A s we were departing Rockefeller Center with the kids this past weekend, we were walking toward Sak's on Fifth Avenue.  When we got to Fifth Avenue I immediately noticed St Patrick's Cathedral and was reminded that we didn't get to show the inside of this cathedral to the kids when we were here at Christmastime.   We had hoped to show the kids this landmark cathedral when we were here Christmas week but it was locked up since it was nighttime.  On this warm morning, however, the cathedral was open to the public so we walked across the street to St Patrick's. Before entering the cathedral, we quickly went over a few rules and customs so nobody would make a fool of themselves in this famous landmark.  It would have been nice to do a tour of the cathedral but, unfortunately, we didn't have time for that.  I'm not sure the two 12 year olds would have appreciated the significance of what they were seeing in a tour anyway. St Patrick's Cathedral was perhaps Sheil

A fter a short stroll through Bryant Park this past weekend, Sheila, Lukey, Kenzie and I walked up the few blocks to Rockefeller Center.  We walked up Sixth Avenue so we approached Rockefeller Center from that side.   We had hoped to bring the kids to FAO Schwarz when we were here this past Christmas but the line to get into the store was ridiculously long so we aborted that part of our Christmas plan.  This day was a far better day.  It was much more quiet which allowed us to play with whatever we wanted in the store! As we walked up 49th Street from Sixth Avenue, we passed the Rainbow Room entrance.   Just beyond the NBC Studios and Rainbow Room entrance is one of the entrances to FAO Schwarz... One of the reasons we had hoped that the store would be relatively quiet is because we wanted the kids to be able to play a bit on the giant keyboard, if FAO Schwarz still had that giant toy made famous by the movie "Big".  If the store was crowded, then gaining access to this toy w