Scattered Thoughts . . .

After our visit to the Newport Aquarium, we started our walk back across the river to Ohio.  For our route back to Cincinnati, we chose to walk a slightly different route across a different bridge.  This time we chose the Taylor Southgate Bridge across the Ohio River. Below, we have a view of the aquarium from the bridge.  The aquarium is the large blue building all across the entire center of the frame... Now we are looking northeast toward the Purple People Bridge... Kenzie amused herself (and us) by having one foot in Ohio and the other in Kentucky at the state boundary line on the bridge... As we approached the Cincinnati Reds' stadium, the ball game was in progress so we could clearly hear the announcer on the PA commenting on the game.  I think this area in front of us was the General Admission gates for the outfield bleachers.  We actually could have paid and entered at this time if we felt inclined.  The thought did cross my mind but, at this point,...

While we were in Cincinnati with Kenzie and Lukey, we chose to walk from our hotel in downtown Cincinnati across one of the bridges and into Newport, Kentucky.  Our destination was the Newport Aquarium across the river in Kentucky.  It was a really nice day albeit a bit too hot and humid.  Regardless of the oppressing heat, it really was a great day for a walk.  We each had a drink, a sling bag and three of us were carrying cameras... Once we were out of the hotel, we made our way southeast toward the Cincinnati Reds' ball field on the Ohio River... The Reds had a game on this day but we had arrived at the ball field before the crowd.  The ball field just happened to be on our way to the bridge over the Ohio River. Now we are at the waterfront park and walking toward those bridges in the distance... On our way to the aquarium in Kentucky, we chose to walk over the Purple People Bridge which is now a pedestrian-only bridge...  this bridge is half a mile long...

I made a single fairly large pancake for breakfast this morning.  I actually wanted one of these pancakes last night around dinnertime after our afternoon out in Montpelier but I didn't have the energy to make anything.  After thinking about one of these pancakes all night long, I knew I'd be making one of these this morning though... I came up with this recipe a year or two ago and refined it to today's recipe by the time I made it  the third time.  Since then, I've come up with a recipe to make blueberry compote to go along with it which I make if we have decent fresh blueberries on hand but that is rare.  Today was not one of those elusive days. Unfortunately,  "decent" and "fresh" are two things we don't really get here in our neck of the woods when it comes to fruit and vegetables so I rarely make this compote.  Today, we just had some butter and maple syrup as toppings. While I was refining this recipe the first few times I made them, I kne...

After driving out to Cabot yesterday to set up Kenzie with a second monitor and Fire TV, we stopped in Montpelier on the way back home.   On a sidenote here and because it is worth mentioning, there were mass protests against our current government yesterday all across the country and around the globe too so there were ten thousand protesters just a block away from us.  I agree with what they are upset about so I didn't mind being among them after their protest was over.  This current administration is destroying everything I fought for and accomplished throughout my career.  What is happening today is the polar opposite to what I fought for and accomplished which has left me a disabled veteran in a country I no longer recognize nor is it a country I ever thought I would see.   Sheila and I had a good time in the comfort of Sarducci's just a block away from the edge of the protests.  We had a few drinks, some dessert, some bruschetta, and a Venezi...

Yesterday, we drove out to Cabot to install a second monitor and Fire TV for our granddaughter, Kenzie.  This provided me with an opportunity to test this new Zeiss lens I picked up last week.   I only shot a few photos because it was a dark, gray, and gloomy day with very flat lighting.  To make matters worse, the clouds were creating an odd, unappealing color of light too.  Most of the leaves are off the trees now so the landscape around here is rather stark but I did find some patches of color worth capturing in photos.   As always, I was shooting out the window of a fast moving car... Even though the photos are nothing worth printing, I'm liking what I'm seeing from this lens.  The photos are sharp especially considering I was shooting from a fast moving car.  My guess is that my next opportunity to shoot using this lens will be in the snow.   On our way back home from Cabot after setting Kenzie up with a monitor and Fire TV, Sh...

When I picked up my primary Sony camera about ten years ago, it came with a basic "standard kit lens".  This wasn't a particularly good lens but it was lightweight so it got a little bit of use every now and then.   This kit lens was a bit large to use all the time but it was the lightweight characteristic of it which offset the rather uncomfortable size and made up a little bit for a lack of sharpness.  It still was rather bulky for lightweight carry all day long, wasn't all that great for low light photos and the sharpness was lacking but, in good light, I would occasionally get some good shots with it though.  This photo, at right, is one of the good photos I captured with it. I rarely used this lens because it was large enough to be uncomfortable to carry around all the time and, at best, it was a rather average performer, generally speaking.  If it performed well, I could overlook the larger size of this lens but I found I rarely used it.  I defin...

Over the past few years, I've been picking up only digital versions of sheet music for piano rather than paper versions or big piano books.  I'm doing this for various reasons but the primary reason is convenience.  It is nice having a good selection of sheet music on a single tablet.  It is also much easier to turn pages...  rather than trying to get my finger behind the page to be turned and then physically turning the page quickly without ripping the page (it has happened before more than once) all I need to do is a simple swipe across the screen.   Until the past few days, I've been using my 11 inch Kindle for this purpose.  Well...  I use this Kindle for many purposes but this was yet another purpose for my Kindle.   An 11" screen sounds like a typical full page size but, u nfortunately, screens are measured across diagonally from corner to corner so this "11 inch" screen was really only 5-3/4" x 9-3/4"...  so, it is just slig...

After posting this blog entry, I noticed that if you use the photo viewer to view all the photos (Lightbox), then you won't see all the photos.  Lightbox can't display the amount of photos I have in this blog entry so, if you want to see all the photos, then you'll have to scroll down the page through the entire blog entry. __________________________________________________________________ W hile we were in Ohio with our two oldest grandchildren back in June, there were a few places that we really wanted to visit.  One of these places was the Cincinnati Zoo.   We don't have any zoos in Vermont so visiting a zoo was one of our priorities since there is an outstanding zoo in Cincinnati.  Amtrak would drop us off in Cincinnati and this is the city from which we would depart too so we spent a few days in Cincinnati before getting back on the train to head home.  This would allow us some time to visit a few places in Cincinnati before we had to depart on the tra...