Scattered Thoughts . . .

While I was trying to find something for the kids to watch on television last night (to give us a break from constant train videos), I came across a series called  "Bernard". I immediately thought it looked interesting as Lukey just kept shouting "No, no, no..." because it didn't have a train in the preview image. I hit the play button anyway... after all, regardless of what the kids may think, I'm in charge.   Within a few seconds, the kids were captivated... a few seconds longer and both of them thought this was hilarious to the point of tears and sore belly muscles! 

I spent the day, yesterday, cleaning and waxing the kayaks and our Minifish sailboat. It never fails... if you wax something, it will rain. Before we even made it to bed last night, heavy rain and thunderstorms began and continued through the night.  Fortunately, as the first few drops splattered on the pavement, I quickly found room for the mast, boom and sail in the shed. I didn't think they would fit in our relatively small shed but I somehow managed to get them in there! I definitely didn't want that sail getting dirty again before we even had a chance to sail nor did I want to have a lightning rod in the form of a sailboat sitting in our yard next to our bedroom. On the positive side... It appears as though I did a good job with my cleaning and waxing... the white sailboat is still clean and is only covered in crystal clear beads of water. That really is a nice sight! Today is a day of laundry... mostly... while the washing machine is doing its thing, I will be cle

Today was the day to prepare the boats for the summer and, specifically, for our time at the lake. The weather was perfect and I'm running out of time already so today was the day. My body is telling me it is April yet summer is here already! My spine has been rather inflamed the past few days so it was slow going but I managed to get everything ready... well... I think everything is ready... you know how that goes... Chances are we'll unload the boats at the lake house and find I missed something. I cleaned and waxed three kayaks. Then I figured out a way to mount my little waterproof camera to the bow of my kayak so I can get some video clips while kayaking with the kids. That should be fun!  The kids really enjoy seeing themselves in video and they enjoy videos of the boats so they should really light up when they see themselves in video on the boats. One of these days I'll shoot some video of them watching themselves in video... they're pretty funny. The

After my most recent flare up of my spinal injuries over this past weekend, I am now back to my daily physical therapy. The pain is still quite bad and I still have limited mobility but I feel I am well enough to start on limited physical therapy for all of my spinal problems including this latest flare up of my lumbar spine. This is a critical stage... if I do too much, I risk getting worse...  if I do too little, I risk getting worse.  After some light therapy this morning, I am feeling pretty good. The worst of the pain is isolated to my right side... my pelvis, hip, groin, buttocks, etc. I still have some pain on my left side, but the pain on the left side has diminished by a fair amount. This could easily change by lunchtime though. I have to say, however, that getting myself up out of bed this morning... I mean the physical act of moving my legs out of bed and rotating upward... was excruciating and quite difficult. At that point I wasn't sure if I would get anything ac

A little graphic I put together to depict most of today's pain. Even though I have broken up my small stone pathway project into many small tasks, these smaller tasks were clearly still far too much for my injured spine. There is no doubt in my mind nor should there be any doubt in anyone's mind after reading my blog that once you seriously injure your spine, your spine will always be a significantly weak point of your body... enduring re-injury after re-injury.  The latest cause of this re-injury was due to overdoing it while trying to install a small stone pathway in our yard. Everything I attempt to do has a price... no matter how small and insignificant the project or activity. In this particular segmented project, I would move about six or eight stones out of the way... shovel out the exposed lawn... put the lawn in a wheelbarrow... move the stones back into place... then dump the wheelbarrow full of grass. Then I would move to the next small section.  Clearly, t

I made a bit more progress on the outdoor grill and kitchen area which allowed me to let out a small sigh of relief after a few weeks of alternating between poor weather and poor health.  I believe we have enough patio blocks for the small kitchen area that will be under a roof. This area is only about 42 square feet so I didn't really need a whole lot of blocks. They are heavy, however, so we had to buy them in about three batches because we've been transporting them in our small cars. As a result, we encountered a problem when Lowes restocked with a different shade of block than we had originally bought in the first batch. I had to settle for two shades of gray, but it will look fine when it is all put together.  Since we were transporting these patio blocks in our cars, we had to make multiple trips back and forth to Lowes. This was fairly easy to do... whenever we were up in the Burlington area running errands, we just stopped at Lowes also to pick up about 200 lbs of b

I love railroads, trains, even model trains... I think that has been abundantly clear to those who follow this blog. But really, what I find fascinating is any and all engineering which is also classified as art with character not just function. I love any engineering design which exudes so much character and details that it is an inspiring work of art. This includes trains, boats, aircraft, cars, homes, cottages, lodges, bridges, cityscapes, urban buildings... as well as old train stations. On our way to San Antonio, we had a layover at Chicago's beautiful Union Station (as well as an unscheduled overnight layover on the return trip). I captured many photos of the station and, I must say, some of these photos are as beautiful as this historic station so I felt I should share them here with my thoughts about the station. This huge train station in its current design opened in 1925... ninety years ago. In a time when many railroads are being dismantled, destroyed and sent to

While visiting San Antonio to attend Adam's graduation ceremony, we visited a number of well known places as well as a few lesser known places. One of these lesser known places was the Tower of the Americas.   We had previously spent a rainy day briskly walking the Riverwalk through downtown San Antonio. The Riverwalk can be a beautiful downtown area but when it is raining, that really puts a damper on sightseeing. When it is raining, you are focused on getting to your next destination... quickly... and staying as dry as possible. We were wet and a bit uncomfortable the day we walked (almost ran) the Riverwalk and I think I can safely say that none of us were looking forward to another day dodging rain outdoors. Most of our time in San Antonio was under cloudy skies with precipitation falling from those clouds. By the time our last day in San Antonio arrived, we were pretty tired of getting wet (and, admittedly, tired of all the walking) so we were hoping to visit a place wh

I honestly don't know how often I write about it, but it is time to write about it again even if I have written about it often.  Fatigue is something I struggle with every day, all day. The past week or so has been pretty lousy when it comes to the energy vs fatigue struggle so I thought it would be a good time to write about it. "Overwhelming fatigue" is a much more accurate term than simply saying "fatigue". Telling my doctors that I am "fatigued" doesn't even come close to describing this debilitating symptom. Just saying "fatigue" sounds silly... childish... minuscule... not worth mentioning... it seems like something a nap will cure. Even calling it "overwhelming fatigue" doesn't seem to cut it either but it is the best term I know. I've had mononucleosis three times in my life (thus far) and I have always said I would never wish that fatigue on anyone... not even on my worst enemy. This overwhelming fatigue th