Scattered Thoughts . . .

Today is a perfect example of how just one small errand can put a quick end to my day. I awoke feeling halfway decent... I decided to tackle some small tasks around the house this morning since I was feeling well but first I needed to run a quick errand. I needed to run to the local grocery store this morning to pick up something for lunch and a few other odds and ends. On the short drive down to the store, I actually felt much better than I have in recent memory. As a result, my thoughts were filled with all the wonderful things I could accomplish today... even thoughts of activities I used to be able to do when I was healthy.  I knew this errand wouldn't take long and I was looking forward to having a very productive day for a change.  I had so few things to purchase that I was in and out of the store within a few minutes but, unfortunately, this simple errand required more energy than I had in me to expend today despite how great I felt only a few short minutes earlier.

Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8 lens... 40-something years old and in excellent condition. I've been searching for a low-priced, yet high quality 35mm or 40mm lens on the used market for about a year. (I'm disabled with no income other than my ridiculously small disability insurance pension through Social Security so all my photography gear is acquired used at bargain basement prices.) I have been in no hurry so I just patiently waited until I found the right lens for my needs. Late last week, I found a beautiful 40mm lens that fits the bill and instantly ordered it. I also ordered a lens hood and the appropriate mount adapter so I could mount it on my best camera. Now, I was excited about getting this lens and playing with it! The lens arrived quickly...  delivered by Fedex  only two days later. As I removed it from the box, I immediately noticed that this lens is in excellent condition for a 40-something year old lens. Now I was really excited to get to mount this on my came

As one might expect, according to Liza, the kids awoke on Halloween morning and wanted to jump right into their costumes and all the Halloween festivities. Needless to say, by the time evening had arrived and time for 'trick or treating' with the rest of the little ghosts and ghouls in our neck of the woods, the kids were having difficulty keeping their eyes open... actually, they were even having difficulty holding their heads up!  Liza and the kids arrived at our house at 5pm to get ready for their night of festivities in downtown Waterbury... asleep, groggy and even a bit cranky (which I should mention that Sheila and I rarely see!) . They had fallen asleep in the car on their way to our house and now needed to catch a second wind. Little by little, costumes were put together again and put on the kids. Makeup was applied... well, re-applied... they had been wearing makeup all day but most of it was smeared under eyes and rubbed off... onto their couch as well as c

My health always seems to be teetering on disaster.  I actually had a "relatively good" day on Sunday...  possibly the best day of health I've had in the past four months of consistently lousy health... contrasting that "good" health on Sunday, all of that quickly changed today. The crazy thing is that I think my health has crashed today not because of something completely out of my control but because I had to spread out today's four doses of medications over a significant longer period of time and, frankly,... I did not manage my medications effectively. Typically, my first dose of a cocktail of medications for Systemic Mastocytosis each day is at around 8am before breakfast.... then noon before lunch... then 4pm before dinner...  and then around 9pm before bed (I always must take these medications on an empty stomach). So, as you can see from this normal schedule, I only spread out my medications up to about five hours apart. History has proven that

Homemade cranberry sauce... the white chunks are pears... I'm definitely  no fan of Thanksgiving dinner... I never have been... too much food... not even all that satisfying yet far too much work... even more work to clean up... and, as far as I'm concerned, turkey is really only good for a club sandwich paired with tons of bacon.  Every now and then, however, I do get a craving for mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, corn and some chicken breasts. Earlier today I had one of these cravings. The grandchildren are coming over for dinner with us tomorrow night so I decided we should have this pre-Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow evening. In order to ease the cooking burden tomorrow while the kids are here (and so I can play with them for a bit), I decided to make the homemade cranberry sauce this evening.  One of my sisters sent me a recipe for cranberry sauce a few years ago and it was pretty good... a little too 'orangy' for me, but it was good. As

I've spent some time painting the doll townhouse the past few days. What I've been envisioning in my mind has been taking form in real life... and now, in color! I'm really liking this paint scheme and I think it favors the Georgetown Townhouse style I was envisioning.  The traditional yellow walls with a nice (but non-traditional) stucco texture... the clean lines of white trim... contrasting black window shutters... and a welcoming red front entry door... this is all coming together very nicely and is very reminiscent of the traditional Georgetown style. I'm actually getting excited as this homemade dollhouse comes together. The yellow exterior paint has been a major problem though... I think I now have about six or seven coats of yellow paint on this dollhouse due to some errors in choosing the correct shade of yellow. The first shade of yellow I chose was a bit dull. The second shade of yellow I chose was so bright that it had a bit of a fluorescent tint

Windows 10 screenshot... the Start menu opened. For the past few months, Microsoft has been nagging me by way of popup notices on my computers to upgrade my Windows 8.1 Operating System to Windows 10. I've been holding off downloading this incredibly huge (file size) upgrade in the hope that Microsoft would iron out all the little quirks, kinks and bugs. In the meantime, I would have to tolerate the constant barrage of nagging prompts from Microsoft. I chat with a lot of photographers from around the world everyday and more and more of them have upgraded to Windows 10 lately. The general consensus was that the upgrade was relatively painless and there were no problems with any software and much of the hardware issues have been ironed out by now. This was the news I was waiting for so I decided to upgrade my laptop first and see how it performs. In Microsoft's defense, the biggest problem up until lately was that third party software and hardware developers were dragging

Near the end of our stay at the lake house this summer, my health took a major nosedive after a physically demanding incident on the water ( can be read here ). Pushing my body since developing Systemic Mastocytosis  always results in failed and deteriorating health and this incident was no exception   (even for a short spurt of only two minutes, like this time) .  For about four months, my health has been deteriorating more and more each day. Breathing capacity was limited and breathing has been difficult, at best, due to inflammation in my lungs. Along with this inflammation was some fluid buildup. I felt as though I was drowning and suffocating.  My energy level plummeted. I don't have much energy to begin with so any loss of energy is significant. For example, even on the best of days since developing Systemic Mastocytosis, I am only about 40-50% of my physical self as I once was when I was healthy. Plus, for a more accurate assessment, we should add the intense chronic pai

The prints arrived packaged beautifully and safely... I recently ordered some prints of my photography and one print of a piece of art I created. I always order my prints through professional printing services because I prefer a very high quality and this last order was no exception. This order arrived just yesterday and I wanted to make a few positive comments about this latest print job. The first thing I should mention is that this order arrived packaged beautifully and safely. It actually took me twenty minutes to unwrap all the prints! I ordered a finished product which I have never ordered before... a product called 'Mini Mounts'. These are 5"x7" prints (Kodak, if I remember correctly) mounted on a fiberboard/wood backing. This backing is painted black with beveled edges for a beautiful finished look. As you can see in the photos below, these prints really look great. I also ordered one of my pieces of artwork printed on an 8"x12" canvas. Th

I was working on refining some of my photography skills and techniques tonight and came across two photos from a year ago. Whenever I practice some new techniques, I always go searching through my hard drives to find some images with which to practice. The two photos below caught my eye for tonight's session. These are two images which slipped through the cracks last November and have been sitting quietly, in relative obscurity, on one of my hard drives all this time. A few photos slipping through the cracks every now and then should come as no surprise since I have shot about 10,000 in just the past year! I can't keep track of all of my photos nor is it possible for me to show even a quarter of them. Needless to say, some really nice images slip through the cracks and never get shown. Anyway, here are two images... one of Kenzie and one of Lukey... both being a bit animated and showing some attitude...