Scattered Thoughts . . .

Our little picnic area on Lake Groton... I wanted to write about this last night but just could not find the energy to do so.  I did, however, manage to post a link late last night on my Facebook page to a small album of photos from our visit to Lake Groton last week.  So, now I will also post that link here and write a little about this latest visit to Lake Groton... First, here is the link to the album...   Lake Groton - 15 Aug 2013. Our original plan was to head back to Groton on Adam's birthday...  August 14th.  Well, the weather didn't cooperate so we postponed the short trip by a day.  Unfortunately, because we postponed the trip, nobody was able to join us.  We still enjoyed ourselves but it was a little disappointing that nobody could make it for Adam's birthday celebration. Putting that disappointment aside, the weather was awesome!  It was a little chilly when the sun was behind the scattered clouds, but the sun was very warm (actually, it was HOT at tim

Imagine this... You invite some family and friends to your house for a dinner party.  You spend time leading up to the party planning a nice menu which is flavorful and exciting.  You spend time shopping for all the perfect ingredients for your amazing meal.  Then you spend hours preparing and cooking the meal before everyone sits down at the table.   The moment your guests see, smell and taste your well prepared meal, you hear the "ahhh's" and "mmmmm's".   You are relieved to hear the sounds of happy dinner guests...  until...  a thoughtless and somewhat dim, foolish guest loudly exclaims for all to hear, "This is DELICIOUS...  you must have great pots!" Photo shot using a $79 camera... Absolutely ridiculous, is it not? Unfortunately, this is exactly the same as when some thoughtless, somewhat dim person states, "This picture is beautiful... you must have a really good camera!" Let me explain a little by going back to the

Anything wears my health down...  perhaps I should rephrase that...   Everything wears my health down, even if it is not a physical activity. It is common sense that physical activity can wear us down.  All physical activities easily wear down my health requiring days of rest to recover.  What most people do not understand, however, is that even rather sedentary interests wear my health down just as effectively.   For instance, last week I finished up producing my sailing video.  That entailed sitting at my computer editing video...   taking notes for more edits...  calculating synch times...  applying those edits...   repeating over and over, as necessary...  until the video was finished.  No physical activity nor strenuous exertion was necessary yet this rather simple, sedentary activity wore me down as though I had been at hard labor and sleep deprived for months.  A week later and I am still worn out and exhausted.   This is something that healthy people simply do not unders

A small splash for the girls, but I was hit from behind by the wave that caused this splash!  I was down low in the rocks... We enjoy being out on the water, kayaking and sailing, whenever the weather is cooperative.  This environment, however, has always made me nervous whenever using any of my cameras.  Just a little bit of splashed water can ruin a camera.  If it is salt water, that is even worse!  The corrosive properties of salt water will completely destroy the electronics of today's digital cameras. We were at the beach a few years ago, visiting family on Long Island, and I managed to damage one of my cameras.  Sheila and I were out on a jetty shooting some photos of the kids.  We managed to get some nice shots but suddenly, out of nowhere, a large wave crashed down onto the jetty soaking all of us and my camera gear.  Not only did my camera get very wet, but it was covered in corrosive salt water.  Not a good thing.  Salt water is like a deadly virus...  not only doe

My sailing video is finally produced and published online! This video was a long time coming and required a lot of work over the past few months.  I will write more about the challenges I faced in producing this video in the next few days.  These challenges ranged from difficulty getting the sailboat ready to video workstation problems.  More on that will be coming soon. In the meantime, I would like to present my sailing video.   I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

I had previously written about problems I was having with editing video for my sailing video.  My software was freezing up constantly and, as a result, I just couldn't seem to make any headway whatsoever.  I may have found a solution to my problem. In the last day or so, I managed to make some real progress in editing and producing this video. Whenever I make significant progress, I get excited about the whole project again! CyberLink PowerDirector Ultra...  a very nice program but proving to be annoyingly unstable. One of my problems is that I have a vast amount of video footage that I must review, cut, and edit and it is more than my computer can process all at once.  Many of the video clips are 30 minutes long because we just left the camera running while it was mounted on each of the camera mounts.  So, for each 30 minute video, I need to snip out the best 15 second clips.  All this excess video footage was bogging down my computer.   My temporary solution was to

Last night wasn't one of the best nights of my life.  It certainly wasn't the worst, but it was lousy nevertheless. Once again, my Systemic Mastocytosis negatively impacted my health.  This illness affects my health negatively every day, but that is my "new normal" so I don't really think much about my limitations when my health stays in this "new normal" range. How any transient symptoms manifest can vary greatly so, each time I have any problem of failing, debilitating health, it can be a relatively new experience.  Last night was a little strange... Earlier in the night, I felt 'okay'.  I was feeling a little full or bloated but nothing that would arouse suspicion.  (In hindsight, it should have.)  I had some moderate joint pain, but with the drastic change in weather today, I attributed this pain to the weather.  I was wrong, however, and these couple of things should have aroused some suspicion! In the middle of the night I ended up

Yesterday, we attended a little birthday celebration for Sheila's mom.  Fortunately, the weather was unusually cooperative and tolerable with temperatures 15-20 degrees cooler than it has been in recent weeks...  yesterday was sunny, 83 degrees and slightly breezy. That was some really nice weather for sitting out on the deck. If we had last week's weather with temperatures over 100 degrees, the afternoon would have been completely unbearable and miserable!  But, this short post isn't really about the local weather, it' s about Nan's birthday celebration yesterday.  Actually, it is about Nan's surprise birthday celebration yesterday... Will had quietly invited the family to come over to celebrate Sue's birthday.  We arrived first and I suspect Sue simply thought we stopped by to see the grandchildren.  Although we were indeed interested in spending time with the grandchildren, we were really there to celebrate Sue's birthday.   As a few more gue

Sunday was a beautiful, sunny day which was a very nice and welcomed departure from weeks of solid rain and humidity.  The rain was taking its toll not only on our emotions but also on the house.  We ended up with water damage, rot, mold and septic problems (none of which has been fixed just yet, by the way). Anyway, on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, the grandchildren visited after doing some swimming at the Waterbury Pool.  After playing out in the sun on the sailboat, we had some shish-ka-bob for dinner.  Of course, Liza and Sheila's parents were with us as well.  We try to arrange for a Sunday dinner at least once a month and, when all our schedules mesh, it is always a nice day.  This past Sunday was no exception.   The kids are growing far too fast.  They are now running around.  They are constantly talking to each other in their own language, seemingly understanding each other.  And, as always, I try to get some good photos of them whenever they visit. Here is a s

The hot, humid weather has finally broken!  Let's hope that the rain goes back to normal rainfall amounts and frequencies too! Now that the weather is cooler, I have tons of energy again.  That is great news!  So, I started working on the house again yesterday. I decided to continue the renovation that involves replacing most of our waste plumbing.  In particular, I started working on our new half bathroom yesterday and figuring out how to tie this into my waste plumbing plan. I had replaced all of our supply plumbing a few years ago.  That was a major upgrade and I can't tell you how comforting it is to know that all of our supply plumbing is brand, spanking new!  Now comes the much dirtier job of doing everything I can to upgrade and fix our waste plumbing (not to mention being a much stinkier job).  This waste plumbing project must be completed in order to install this new half bath. Test fitting fixtures... We have almost everything we need for the bathroom...