Scattered Thoughts . . .

W hen I got up this morning, it wasn't raining so I immediately went outside to collect tools and building supplies for one part of this outdoor shower project that has been nagging at me for quite a while.   I had originally planned to use some leftover roofing membrane as a sort of shower pan to lead the water away from the house and toward the French drain.  I couldn't find any of my leftover roofing membrane though.  My next option was to bend my own aluminum flashing in place of the membrane.   So, this morning, I collected the rolled aluminum, some shears, my hand seamer, a hammer, and some straight lumber to use as a makeshift bending brake.  I had planned to head indoors at this point to get ready for my day and eat breakfast but i t was quite nice out there this morning so I stayed out there and started working on shaping the rolled aluminum into a flashing resembling half of a shower pan.   This flashing would protect the exposed lo...

L ukey and Kenzie are both a part of the band at school and last night was their spring concert so we headed out to Cabot last night for a bit of middle school culture.   This was Kenzie's first time singing lead vocals in front of a crowd and she did well considering it was her first time.   Lukey already had another previous concert under his belt (their winter concert) before Kenzie joined the band so he moved around from instrument to instrument on stage during the performances.  I think he prefers drums but he spent time at the keyboard in addition to rocking a tambourine and singing lead vocals.   It was a fun night for all of us!  There is a short video at the bottom of this blog entry with a few short clips of the concert. Below, Kenzie is waiting to come out on stage... I've seen this Kenzie "dirty-look" before...  it is usually directed toward me when I'm joking with her about something.  I'm not sure what it was about on stage...

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...