Scattered Thoughts . . .

This past weekend we met up with a group of friends and family for one of the largest annual train shows in the country. The grandchildren accompanied us this year as well. This was their first visit to any train show and I suspect it was probably the first of many train shows for them. I shot quite a few photos as well as some video... a bit of each will be shared here in the coming days depending upon how my health is holding up through the rest of this week. Right now I could use about a month of sleep! Before I get into any specifics about our trip, I thought I would start with something simple and show some photos of a train I bought while at the show. I always begin the show with a long list of items that I want to purchase and/or research while we are at the show but, by the end of the day on Saturday, I was a bit disappointed in that I didn't find anything I was hoping to see. Just as I was sharing my disappointment with Sheila, George and Barb, and as the words

A Mastocyctosis Angel, created by a fellow patient and gifted to me... a symbol of compassion and energy. Gift of Extra Spoon Since many of you reading this blog are actually personal friends with me already, you know that I've been extremely busy for the past two months with family events. Whenever I get busy in any aspect of my life, all other areas of my life must be put on hold. I simply do not have the energy nor health to focus on more than one thing at a time. Every now and then, I get newly diagnosed patients asking for my help, advice and guidance. Just this past month, I received a number of requests for such help but I have been silent in my responses and feel I should try to explain my situation.   If I get involved in helping newly diagnosed patients, nothing else in my life gets done. There is no additional energy for anything beyond what I must focus on at any given time. Systemic Mastocytosis literally sucks the life right out of those of us struggling with

This is our first week since Adam has left for basic training so the house has seemed unusually quiet lately. This evening, however, the grandkids visited for dinner which changed things up and into a bit of a hectic pace... which, believe it or not, was a nice change. These kids really are a piece of cake whenever they visit us though. We had a nice dinner, some cake that was leftover from Adam's going-away party, some little snacks and even watched a couple of movies. Of course, the kids also had a chance to play with toys that reside in our home... especially the train table. The train show is quickly approaching and this will be the first show for the kids. I'm not sure they understand where we are going just yet but they seem excited nevertheless! It will be fun watching them at the show... unless stimulation overload takes over, of course. Anyway, here are a few photos from this evening... Kenzi

My new O scale, 2 rail, F-unit diesel locomotive on a short test track...  (that yellow locomotive in the background is a Lionel GP unit on 3 rail track). My health has been quite lousy for the past week so I have not gotten much of anything accomplished in this new year. I don't want to write about my health right now so this blog post is about something less painful to read. The first good thing that happened this morning is that my health was in the "fair" range.  The next good thing that happened this morning is my car started! It is frigid here... well below zero with wind chills approaching -50 degrees. I know I need a new battery so it was a small miracle that my car actually started this morning.  I ran some errands and arrived home to find our postal carrier leaving a package at my door. Just yesterday, I had found a few trains online in eBay at great prices. These are all O scale, 2 rail (same size as the 3 rail Lionel trains everyone knows except using

One of the many exceptional models at the show... Christmas is now behind us... tomorrow is New Year's Eve when we say goodbye to 2014 (or good riddance, whichever the case may be) and welcome in a bright new year. In the first month of the new year each year is the biggest and best train show in the United States.  This enormous train show is something we look forward to every year. Actually, we look forward to the following year's show the moment we leave the show the previous year! We now have only another few weeks to wait before we find ourselves in Springfield, MA again with tens of thousands of other model railroading fanatics. This year Adam will not be attending the show with us since he will be beginning his new career in the Air Force. The weekend of the show will be his first weekend at basic training. We will, however, be accompanied by some new train fanatics to take Adam's place... the grandchildren and they will be bringing along their mom. It is g

Church Street in Burlington, Vermont Back in early December, our good friend, Frank, asked us if we were available on the Sunday before Christmas to visit Burlington. Fortunately, this day was still open for us and we jumped at the chance for another Christmas in Burlington so we put the day on our calendar. We missed an opportunity to get up to Burlington during Christmas last year so we were pretty excited at the thought of getting back up to Burlington during Christmas this year. Our plan was to do a little barhopping and to get some photos on Church Street while it was decorated for Christmas. We set out at lunchtime for our short trip north to Lake Champlain and Burlington. There were plenty of shoppers which made for a lot of traffic and parking scarce. Fortunately for us, all these people were actually shopping and not venturing into the restaurants and pubs that line Church Street. It was nice to be able to choose a place to go and then find available space at the b

This past weekend we trekked out to the woods to choose and cut five Christmas trees.  The day we chose was a relatively beautiful day, thankfully, because the snow was deep! If it had been cold outside on this day, we would have had a rough time out there in all that snow. In the preceding days, we had a pretty nasty storm here in Vermont...  a lot of snow, followed by a lot of freezing rain...  more snow...  more sleet and freezing rain...  more snow...  more freezing rain...  Many areas were left with downed power lines which included the area where we went searching for five perfect Christmas trees. On our drive up the mountain, we passed a line crew working on a number of downed lines. They had about a hundred yards of line left to hang on the utility poles. The downed trees and limbs were already cut and removed by the time we ventured into this winter wonderland but the tree farm was still left without power.   When we reached the tree farm and parked our cars in the sno