Scattered Thoughts . . .

In my blog post yesterday, I mentioned that getting tasks and projects accomplished  around the house  the past few months   has been difficult, if not impossible, because my energy level is so low.  At low energy times like these, just collecting the tools I need for a specific task or project is enough to wear me out for the day. I suppose the first thing I should explain is what I mean by "wears me out for the day" and "no energy"... What I mean here is that I barely have the energy to walk across a room.  My legs are weak, wobbly and feel as though they could collapse at any time.  I get winded just trying to walk a few feet.  Nausea overcomes me.  My bones and joints hurt...  especially my spinal injuries, but also my ribs, pelvis, legs, knees, ankles and feet.  Sometimes my hands and fingers hurt so bad I cannot hold anything without excruciating pain.  I drop things...  I stumble and trip on things. My energy level is so low that simply trying to hold a

Since being clobbered by Systemic Mastocytosis well over a decade ago, I often have a full schedule of medical appointments and diagnostic testing.  A few years ago, I decided that I just could not keep up this schedule year-round so have consistently taken a break each and every summer.   Now the summer is over and my calendar indicates I need to head to the hospital next week.  I also received a phone call from my primary care doc this afternoon informing me I need to come in for a complete physical.  My energy level has never been as low as it has over the past two months.  I wore myself down at the lake house in mid-June and I just have not recovered.  When I attempt to accomplish something around the house, just collecting tools has been enough to wear me down enough that I can do nothing more.  Then I struggle finding the energy to put all the tools away...  never accomplishing anything other than wearing myself down unnecessarily.   Needless to say, having no energy while

At this time, I should be heading down to Springfield, Vermont for Adam's graduation from the Civil Air Patrol Northeast Region Glider Academy.  However, I will not be attending this graduation. There has been much frustration over how this Academy has been coordinated and managed in the months before Adam arrived for his session.  While Adam was attending the Academy this past week, this frustration boiled over into intense anger due to unprofessional behavior by an instructor at the Academy which could be described as immature and unprofessional, at best.  His behavior certainly was childish and inappropriate.  More importantly, his behavior showed no apparent signs of integrity nor excellence, both of which are core values that these instructors are tasked with instilling in their cadet students.  His subsequent actions (read inactions) have shown no acknowledgement of wrongdoing nor remorse. This incident has left me so incensed and deeply disturbed that my 'inner drill

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