Scattered Thoughts . . .

W e have begun our outdoor shower project and we're looking forward to getting this fully finished and operational! The first step was the design including choosing finish materials.  That was fairly easy.  I roughly sketched some ideas on how to deal with drainage as well as what dimensions I should make this shower.  (The sketches are rough sketches and not close to being to scale.) We'll have a small dressing area when you first enter the shower.  The shower area will be adjacent to this dressing area.  In the dressing area, there will be a bench for sitting and hooks for hanging clothing and towels.   I did some online shopping searching for outdoor shower fixtures but I couldn't find anything that appealed to me so I decided to make my own fixture using black iron pipe, brass valves and a brass showerhead.  I'll write more about this later when I get to this part of the project... The next step was grading the area.  This took some time....

W e've had nothing but rain for the past ten days or so which means nothing was accomplished outside.  And, before these past ten days, I had one half of a day to get the lawn done.  We had about two or three weeks of solid rainy weather before that one clear day.  Since it has been raining for the past ten days, this also means that the lawn was very overgrown and needed attention before I did anything else so I spent two or three hours working on the lawn. After getting the lawn done, I pulled out the table saw so I could do some work on our garden railroad.  This was the first bit of work that I've done on the railroad this year.  I have a few things I'd like to accomplish in detailing this little garden railroad which I hope to get done little by little throughout the summer. Today's project was to cut a bunch of long ties to make a deck for the long compound curved wood trestle bridge.  I needed about 90 long ties.  Fortunately, I had enough scrap...

For the past few years, my mast cell episodes have mostly revolved around critical breathing difficulties, bone pain, joint pain and anaphylaxis.  These episodes have been so severe that it landed me in the hospital a couple of times. These past few years were a change from much of the previous 20 years though.  I still had the breathing difficulties in those first 20 years but they were not nearly as drastic nor as persistent as the past few years.  I also had anaphylaxis a couple of times a month but my body always seemed to rebound quickly to help fight the anaphylaxis.  Those first 20 years of episodes always seemed to involve severe, painful, nauseating gastro-intestinal problems too but these seemed mostly under control over the past few years.  I still had enough gastro problems to keep me near a bathroom often enough but the severe cramping and nausea seemed to be under control.   My first bout of COVID in 2020 seemed to change my 20 year patte...

A s I was taking my first of four doses of medications this morning, I was scrolling through Facebook to see if anything was new with my friends.  As usual, I saw nothing from my friends but I did come across an image from a guy in one of my photography groups that caught my eye.   This image that caught my eye was shot in infrared.  There is nothing unusual about an infrared image...  I shoot them often with a camera I had converted to infrared...  but this photo on Facebook was captured using a cellphone which is very unusual. He wrote that he shot this image using his iPhone with an R72 filter and it was an image of kids walking to school.  What I found interesting and what immediately caught my eye was the fact that using an R72 filter will normally require very long shutter speeds which would blur kids walking to school.  Cameras typically would block infrared light (more on that below).  This image in infrared, however, was sharp. ...

W e had another rainy and rather cool day today so I stayed indoors.  We even got some snow today!  Typically, what I do on days like today is start at the piano, then do my daily physical therapy, then do some sort of photography or art project, make something for lunch and then nap in the afternoon.  I mostly did that today too but I don't think I had any time at the piano.   Instead of my usual time at the piano, I chose to review whatever photos I've shot over the past month or so to see if there was anything worth sharing.  I came up with a few. These first two photos were shot out the moving car passenger window using my little Fuji X30 compact camera.  This first one is Mt Mansfield from our road.  I like the snow-capped Mt Mansfield starkly contrasting with the trees and grass in the foreground... This next one is perhaps my least favorite mountain anywhere in the world...  Camel's Hump.  There is just something about this mounta...

W e have another rainy day here so I'm staying indoors today but I'm feeling better than I have in a couple of weeks.  It seems to be exceedingly rare when my health is in sync with the weather and today, although my health is cooperating, the weather is not.   I have a lot to do outside but between poor health lately, rain and snow, I haven't gotten outside to get anything accomplished.  As I get older, I have absolutely no desire to be outdoors if I'm going to be wet or uncomfortable.  Getting quite sick for a month or two last spring due to a tick bite does not make me want to run outside either!  I'd much rather sit comfortably and safely indoors now. I have a new grill for our outdoor kitchen sitting out there in pieces in a big box waiting to be assembled and installed.  Our old grill was completely rotted out so I have already removed that from the kitchen cabinets and mostly disassembled it so there is now a gaping hole where the grill belongs....

T his is just a short blog entry, mostly, to document my health.   I skim through my blog entries before each of my medical appointments to remind me of things that should be discussed so I try to document these things here.  In this case, I'm slowly recovering from my latest bout of rather poor health so there isn't much to discuss about the recovery but discussing another unexplained illness with fever is notable.   First, the title of this blog entry is "Health Improving" but this does not mean that my overall health is improving with few signs of my primary illness.  It simply is referring to my health improving after a couple of weeks of poor health.  My overall health still is what I would call "poor" so I didn't want to imply I'm miraculously getting better.  A "normal" day or "good" day still means a day that sees lousy health but not lousy enough to put me down on the couch.   My fever was gone yesterday so that was some ...

I 've been struggling with typical mast cell issues over the past week or so but things worsened significantly this past weekend.  I've had increased breathing difficulties, more nausea than usual, and increased bone and joint pain.  Generally, I feel quite lousy and I'm having more trouble than usual with my breathing. I started wondering if I had food poisoning of some sort on Sunday because I spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom and was nauseated most of the past couple of days.  That being said, this could also be my mast cells being over-active, as usual.   This evening, however, I realized that some of what I'm feeling feels a bit like a fever too so I checked my temperature...  the thermometer was showing 99.0°...  then, since I felt that I'm feeling worse than just a 99.0° fever, I quickly wiped off the thermometer's sensor with one of my cleaning cloths for my eyeglasses...  I was then registering at 99.6° consistently.  Now, t...

L ukey and Kenzie's birthday is just a couple of weeks after Ellie and Gee's birthday so it is more like a birthday month! We picked up Lukey and Kenzie from their dad's house (he lives very near us while Liza lives an hour away so we saved her a couple of hours of traveling) and we spent the afternoon with them before we headed to Sarducci's for their usual birthday dinner.  There were no presents this year other than this nice meal since they will be joining us on our upcoming cross-country Amtrak journey.  We had to talk about clothes, packing and measure them for clothes so it was good we had some time to spend with them before heading to Sarducci's.   This annual birthday dinner at Sarducci's is always nice though!   We picked up Pop on the way to the restaurant... I always forget just how dark this restaurant is until I attempt to shoot some photos...  I believe this is the darkest restaurant we have ever visited!  I'm still learning about t...

I 've fallen way behind in blog entries once again!  I've been focused more on my health, daily physical therapy and resting in preparation of a hectic spring and summer.  We have a big cross-country rail journey coming up and I need to be as strong and as rested as possible.  Of course, I also have health struggles most days too so I always seem to be trying to recover.   About a month ago, we had a little celebration at our house for Ellie's seventh birthday.  She shares a birthday with Gee so it was also a little bit of a celebration for Gee as well.  This was mostly Ellie's day though... Ellie has a couple of Disney trips early this year so this year's gifts were geared toward travel and Disney... Gee made some brownies for Ellie's birthday rather than a cake since there were only a few of us present... Ellie is always fun and always smiling so we had a good time celebrating her birthday with her!