Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ast weekend, Sheila and I joined some old friends for a weekend out of town.  We all attended the largest annual train show in the country after a long break due to the pandemic.  It was nice getting back together with these friends for a nice weekend.   Sheila booked us in a suite on the other side of town.  Honestly, it is a rather crappy location that is difficult to navigate but the suite was nice.  We've definitely been in nicer rooms and suites but at least this place was clean and everything worked as it should.   We all gathered in our suite that first night.  I was feeling better than usual so I suspected I would last longer than everyone else so we chose to hang out in our suite rather than one of the other suites.  Had we been in someone else's suite, I likely would have overstayed our welcome so it was good we chose to invite everyone to our suite.  I actually stayed up long enough after everyone left to watch a Dayton...

D uring our last weekend out of town just last month, we noticed a few significant problems with Sheila's car.  Actually, between the poor weather and the car problems, our three hour drive to Saratoga became something like seven or eight hours.  That was a brutal trip.   To make matters worse, I was feeling pretty miserable.  I had the flu or some virus that started the day before our trip and I'm still trying to clear our my lungs a month later.  Well...  my lungs have been problematic since my first of six confirmed bouts with COVID but things have been worse this past month very similar to my bouts with COVID...   not as severe, but bad enough.  This started the day before we left for Saratoga. We made it back home safely that weekend and without any additional problems but her car definitely needed some work done before our next trip which happens to be coming up quickly. Once Christmas was out of the way, I ordered all the parts we...

W e have an upcoming train show to attend very soon so I was looking at photos from past years to help me decide which camera gear to bring with me.  Sometimes what I choose works, sometimes it doesn't so I wanted to see what had worked in the past and choose that gear again for this year (or similar/better gear).  Plus, it's been so long since we've been at a train show that I can't remember what worked for me in the past so revisiting old photos helps for something like this.   Train shows are in huge warehouse-type buildings and tend to be rather dark.  Shooting photos of small models in less than good light can be tricky so, if you plan to come away from the show with some good photos, you need to have the right gear for the environment. We haven't attended this huge train show since 2019 due to the pandemic as well as my own poor health due to actually having the virus so we're looking forward to getting back to the show for a change. Unfortunately, the hot...

A lthough I happened to finish my antibiotic for my recent sinus infection last night, today was a day of very poor health! My sinus infection is clearing up but I fell asleep on the couch before I could make lunch today.  I slept straight through to dinnertime.  So, I slept four to five hours this afternoon which is double the amount of time I normally nap each day.  I was exhausted and couldn't keep my eyes open.  Plus, falling asleep before lunch is exceptionally odd.  Sleeping straight through to dinnertime is even odder.  To make matters worse, missing a meal almost always results in anaphylaxis for me.  Systemic mastocytosis is brutal and unforgiving of even one mistake. Considering the amount of cold medications I was taking since before Christmas but had stopped taking days ago, I should be well rested already.  I slept a lot while I was recovering from the sinus infection.  Theoretically, I should be feeling pretty good today so feel...

W hile Sheila and I were discussing our upcoming Amtrak journey with Lukey and Kenzie, I had to dig through old photos to figure out something about a previous Amtrak trip.  (That's one of the advantages of shooting so many photos and keeping them stored on external hard drives...  they become records of all we do, when we did it, and where we were located at a specific time.) During this search for Amtrak photos, I scrolled through all of my photos from 2018 and 2019.  In one of these daily folders, I found a photo of the moon that I don't think I had shared previously so I figured I would share it. I purposely rotated this image for a different perspective than we normally see from Earth and I'm liking how it looks.   When I came across this image, I was surprised by its clarity.  As best as I can tell, I think I shot this image through my Explore Scientific 102mm APO telescope and captured the image using my Sony a6000 camera mounted on the telescope's f...

L ukey and Kenzie have been dying to take a long distance trip on Amtrak for many years.  Last Christmas, we were booked to take Amtrak to Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie but our train was cancelled as we were waiting for it to arrive in Waterbury.  It was cancelled due to flooding here in Vermont and, at the last minute, we decided our only option was to drive down to Manhattan instead.  That means Lukey and Kenzie missed out on a huge part of last Christmas' surprise trip.  That Amtrak travel was supposed to be the highlight of the trip but it was cancelled! They were definitely sorely disappointed but we still had a great time in Manhattan at Christmastime.  That train cancellation really put a big damper on the trip though which we were reminded of constantly during the long 12 hours in the car contending with heavy rain, traffic, and detours in a cramped car rather than a long train allowing us to get up and walk whenever we felt the need.  Having to s...