Scattered Thoughts . . .

As it rains, sleets and snows outside, we have remained indoors all day. Some of the details for the dollhouse have arrived so I spent some time working on these details. I have two staircases to install but, first, I need to paint each of the staircases as well as all the balusters and railings. Today, while watching a couple of movies, I managed to put a coat of paint on all of this stuff. While I was painting all these tiny pieces, I was trying to figure out the best way to assemble all of this (and shaking my head, wondering why I got myself into all of this...)... the only thing I figured out is that this will be a frustratingly tedious task! I guess if I just take it one piece at a time, it will eventually get done. EDIT:  Sheila and I were just talking about these staircases. There is about a 95% chance that either Kenzie or Lukey will break the railing and balusters within a matter of hours so... I am now thinking that I'll eliminate the railings on the sides of

(As I've written before when writing about this Christmas project, since Kenzie is still young enough to make it impossible for her to read this blog entry, there really is no problem in writing and publishing blog entries about her Christmas present so here is an update.) The front facade... before trim... before brick sidewalk... Despite my relatively poor health lately (and for the past three months), I've squeezed in some time here and there during the halfway decent periods to make some progress on the dollhouse Christmas project! It is still unassembled to make it easier to work on different areas of the house. At some point, however, I'll need to assemble this townhouse... glue, screws and nails... and then just finish it with tiny brushes and a lot of patience. For the purpose of this photo, I carefully placed the pieces together and then tied it together with a cord (seen across the top in the first photo). The windows and doors are just placed into thei

After our journey to Burlington International Airport with the grandchildren, our stomachs were grumbling so we took the kids out to lunch at 'The Windjammer'. As always, our food was delicious and even the kids enjoyed their meals!   (...which is sometimes hard to do at a restaurant.) These two toddlers were very well behaved and were all smiles the entire time which made it a carefree lunch. Actually, these two kids are almost always all smiles so this lunch meal was no different than any other time.   Anyway, as you can see in the photos, the kids enjoyed lunch! In the interest of working on Lukey's fine motor skills, I played a little game with him trying to get the crayons to stand on end. He persevered and succeeded. Lukey was pretty happy with himself to get all the crayons standing on end... We couldn't convince Kenzie that this blue cloth was a linen napkin and not some sort of kerchief... A porthole mirror... ...a phone call from

After we toured Burlington International Airport and spent some time in the tower watching air and ground traffic with the grandchildren, the kids spent a little time playing on a little biplane in one of the airport's waiting areas... Lukey kept making airplane noises which clearly requires his lip actuators to be in this configuation...  Apparently, Kenzie wants to be a wing-walker...  By this time stomachs were growling so we made our way back to the car and headed to 'The Windjammer' for lunch...

Arriving at the terminal... We're always looking for something new to introduce to the grandchildren. Our theory is the more they are exposed to, the more they understand life and know what is available to them. One of the many things we've introduced to the kids is aviation. The great thing is that every single thing we've introduced to the kids thus far, they have always responded with, "I want to do that!" That is a very good thing. Yesterday we decided to go on a field trip with the kids. It was a beautiful day and I was feeling well enough to visit some of my own past... aviation and air traffic control... so we brought the kids up to the Burlington International Airport and visited the tower. We walked the kids around the airport in a little private tour explaining what happens in each area of the terminal. Then we headed toward the tower to give them a bird's eye view of the airfield and all the aircraft coming and going. As we watched the

I haven't had the energy to head out with a camera and a tripod so I've resorted to capturing photos of the autumn leaves while sitting in the passenger seat of a fast moving car on an interstate highway. Yesterday, we headed up to Burlington with the grandchildren. (I'll write more about that in another blog entry.)  Sheila drove while I shot photos out my passenger-side window.  I love autumn weather... perhaps my favorite weather of the entire year... although I do love snow at Christmastime (between Thanksgiving and February), autumn weather is probably my favorite because of the moderate temperatures and crisp air. That being said and truth be told, I'm really not a big fan of a forest in bright funky colors so I don't ever push myself to waste energy by trying to photograph these landscapes. Springtime colors... now, they are beautiful... more shades of green than one could imagine, new growth, deep textures, colorful flowers... that is a beautiful l

It was a rough, uneventful and rather boring morning with my health problems (see my previous blog posts). Times like this always feel like periods of 'nothingness'.  I took some extra medications around lunchtime and then I ended up sleeping through the afternoon. When Sheila arrived home at 5pm, she noticed our resident cat sitting on our deck outside our front 15-lite glass door...  sitting in the rain...   watching through the glass at me lying on the couch...keeping a close eye on me through the glass. Whenever I get this type of attention from any cat, particularly this cat, it is a sign of exceptionally poor health... dangerously low levels of health.  Fortunately, I had medicated myself as best as I could...  well, I suppose I could have added a bit more medications... but, I'm awake now and feeling 'okay'. I'm not feeling 'good', but well enough to find something to eat for dinner.   I guess we had better do something about dinner befo

When I first procured this illness... Systemic Mastocytosis... I experienced a lot of very varied symptoms. Once I started on a cocktail of medications, some of these symptoms slowly waned. Most did not, but some did. Back then, I experienced all sorts of neurological symptoms. I experienced so many of these neurological symptoms that all my doctors thought I was developing Multiple Sclerosis. Fortunately, my cocktail of medications slowly helped to alleviate these symptoms. Sometimes, however, my health dips quite low and these symptoms appear again...  today is one such time. Today, my left hand has been twitching consistently all day thus far. Also, my taste buds seem to be all screwed up today... nothing tastes right! Everything is tasting very acidic.  In the big scheme of things, these two symptoms are hardly worth mentioning but it is worth mentioning that when twitching appears and continues for a few hours, it becomes quite maddening! All food tasting acidic is frust

It is only 9:30 in the morning yet I am already ready for bed. I'm exhausted... fatigued... feel like I have been awake for weeks... I'm weak... I'm having difficulty breathing... I simply don't have the energy for anything. There are a million things I actually want to do... work on the house... work on a dollhouse I designed and have started building... work on some model railroading projects... do some landscaping... get some more work accomplished on the bbq grill kitchen area outside in the backyard... do some biking... get out to do some landscape photography... take a short hike to a nearby mountain summit... lately, I've even been thinking of sitting down at the piano again after a very long break from music in general.  (A side note here:  I did, however, have an unusually good day yesterday... I ran some electrical through some existing renovations... I did a little painting... I did a little bit of spackling... I even did a load of laundry which is

The new Comcast Xfinity X1 Entertainment System A few days ago, our Comcast box required another hard reboot which, of course, erased all of our recorded programs. This is something we needed to do far too often... upwards of ten times each year. This is frustrating, time consuming (you need to gain access to the cabling in order to pull cables and power for a hard reboot and then the reloading requires another five to ten minutes), and unnecessary for today's electronics. Worse yet, Comcast's interface has been clunky... sort of like 1980's-style graphic design... slow... dog slow... and the menus were insane! Comcast has been in need of a major upgrade for many, many years... decades, actually. So, our box was not working correctly yet again and needed a hard reboot. Oh, and I should point out that, up until now, we've installed more 'new' boxes (because of burned out components) than years we've had Comcast service. Those older HD Comcast boxes w