Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ukey had asked for only one gift this Christmas which, on the one hand, made things easier for us but, on the other hand, created a need for some research on our part.  I knew that the specific item he requested for Christmas was junk and we're not going to buy junk. Lukey wanted his own drum kit and he knows this would be a big gift so he chose perhaps the least expensive kit he could find on Amazon and sent us the link.  Being a musician myself, I know that introducing a new student to a cheap, junky instrument almost always ends in failure and long-lasting disinterest.  I needed to do some research to find a better drum kit for a beginner. This really applies to anything though.  If you buy a kid junk, they are sure to lose interest quickly and it will leave a bad taste in their mouth for any future interest in that thing because they tell themselves, "oh man...  that really sucked" .  What really sucked was the tool and not the activity but their feel...

B ack a few weeks ago, I wrote about a Black Friday Sale that I couldn't pass up.  A camera I have had my eye on for a few years was finally in my price range as a result of this sale (used, not new) so I jumped on purchasing it.  I happened to luck out because I got a much newer camera than I thought I was getting and it was at a much lower price than the current used rate.  In the end, it was about one-third the price of a new one. Any new camera requires a bit of a learning curve but I didn't expect the learning curve for this new camera to be as steep as I have been experiencing.  This new camera is a much newer and updated version of my primary camera that I've been using for the past ten years (Sony a7) so I figured this transition would be fairly simple.  It hasn't been all that simple. It hasn't been a terrible experience but it has been more of a transition than I expected with some unexpected difficulties. First, I was sorely disappointed in Sony for ...

S heila and I have always exchanged Christmas presents on Christmas Eve so we did the same this year.  Below are a select few photos from last night.  We had a nice night! I received a tabletop micrometer for cutting very fine slices of specimens for viewing and imaging under the microscope... Sheila came home from her office Christmas party this year and was a bit bummed that someone chose to take her Yankee Swap gift.  She had a miniature sled that would have worked perfectly with our Christmas decorations in our garden window but someone chose to "steal" her gift.   Upon hearing this replay of events, I immediately and quietly got online to see if I could find the right size sled...  I found a package of three sleds that were the exact size she said she had at the Yankee Swap...  so, she was excited and surprised to see she had her sleds again! It was a hard find but I managed to get the book "Wicked" for Sheila at a rare reasonable price...  a...

W e just finished eating our traditional delicious Christmas Eve dinner and it was tender and absolutely delicious! I encrusted the rib roast with fresh minced garlic, thyme, parsley, salt, pepper and olive oil.  I seared it on the grill and then slow roasted it in the oven...   Although it appears to be rather small in this photo, below, it is a 5 lb rib roast.  This is how it looked when I took it out of the oven... The roast was unbelievably tender and tasted great.  I made some mashed potatoes with sauteed onions.  Our side dish was carrots with a sauce of butter, brown sugar and maple syrup.  Of course, I made gravy too but I didn't add it to the dish until after the photos...  the gravy covers what I'm attempting to photograph so I shot the photos first... And, lastly, I made some Yorkshire Pudding which was also delicious!  The last two times I have made this, however, they have stuck in the muffin pan so I think we need a new pan....

W e awoke to some snow again this morning.  There was only about six inches out there but it is supposed to warm up today with some mixed precipitation so I needed to clear the driveway and rake the roof before it got wet and heavy.  Wet and heavy isn't good for the roof nor is it good for my extensive spinal injuries.  Then it would all freeze again tonight and that would make it impossible to move so it needed to be done this morning.  While I was on the roof looking down on our little garden railroad in the backyard, I was reminded that I never did get a photo of this garden layout from the roof.   Lukey and I talked about capturing a few photos from the roof one day this summer but that day was far too hot to climb up on an asphalt roof!  As it was, we were chasing the shade with lawn chairs while we ran trains so we could stay as cool as possible.  At one point, I think our chairs were on the other side of the yard from the garden railroad si...

W hen we arrived back from Saratoga on Sunday, the new couplers for the trolley had arrived so I immediately opened the package to see whether I could make these new couplers work on my trolley.  I'm sort of mixing and matching here with this coupler project. I had to do some adapting to make these new couplers work but I think they are okay.  If I'm going to nitpick, I'd say I need to move the couplers a little deeper into the gearboxes but they should work fine as they are now.  I also should blend the paint between the couplers and the gearboxes a bit better.   These new couplers are offset couplers that are made to drop the height of the coupler down a bit.  The straight couplers I had installed last week were too high to couple with other trains.  Now these couplers match the height of my other trains.  The ridiculousness of this is that I'll probably never couple another train car to my trolley.   I've been feeling so lousy that a ...

T his past weekend, Sheila and I headed to Saratoga Springs for a youth hockey tournament.  Lukey's team was playing in this tournament and Sheila and I enjoy visiting Saratoga Springs so we made reservations the moment we heard about this tournament. I didn't sleep much, if at all, on Thursday night due to a painful sore throat and what seems like a head cold.  When we got out of bed on Friday morning, I immediately tested for COVID.  If I tested positive, we would be cancelling our plans for the weekend and staying home.  I tested negative though so we packed up and headed out within a couple of hours.   False negatives are a big issue with these testing kits so you are supposed to test again at 48 hours.  If you test negative again but are still symptomatic, then you're supposed to test again another 24 hours later...   and, I think, once again 24 hours later if still symptomatic.  We're back home now, 48 hours later, and I tested neg...

T he other night, Sheila and I attended a Christmas concert at Ellie's school and watched her perform at her first concert.  Last night, we headed out again for a Christmas concert at Lukey and Kenzie's school.  This time Lukey was performing.  This school has a nice "performing arts" building albeit a bit small.  It is an exceptionally small school so perhaps this room is large enough for expected crowd size but it sure seemed quite small to me especially considering the size of the sound gear (big sound for big spaces).  The first thing I noticed when we stepped into this building is all the Yamaha sound gear, a few pianos and nice lighting.  I found this to be quite impressive since I prefer Yamaha sound gear myself and the photographer in me is always happy to see good, effective and dramatic lighting! On this night, we found out that Lukey was singing two or three songs.  Lukey, on more than one occasion, had told us that he has been playing ...