Scattered Thoughts . . .

Sheila and I had a really nice and rather laid back time on Thanksgiving Day.   We started the day watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while eating breakfast. Then we headed to Sheila's parents' house for dinner with her family.   We started with a few drinks... some beer, some Apple Cider Mimosa's...  then we sat down for dinner shortly after everyone had arrived.   Dinner was delicious so I have to say that Sue did a great job. I honestly don't believe I have the energy to put together such a large meal! I'm not sure what happened for the next couple of hours after dinner because I fell asleep for a couple of hours! Then, we all Skyped with Adam who is located on the other side of the Earth. It sounds like he had a really nice Thanksgiving with his new extended family.  We called it an early night and headed home because I was exhausted and experiencing more bone pain than usual. Shortly after arriving back home, I needed a bit of a snack s

I managed to get the ceiling installed in our future temporary bedroom the other day. It is looking good! Yesterday, my spine was killing me from all the crouching (while cutting) and then standing (while installing each piece of planking)... over and over... one piece at a time. Actually, my spine is feeling almost as poorly as it gets since my original injuries. Any change in position sends a huge wave of pain to my lumbar spine and my feet.   Regardless of all the spinal pain, I managed to get the ceiling installed and then I managed to install the lighting yesterday.  The room is coming together slowly but surely. I made these ceiling planks from a few sheets of luaun underlayment so the cost was very affordable. It did require some work, however.  I needed to rip the sheets of plywood into 8" wide strips... stain each piece... then polyurethane each piece. This job was toughest on my spine because of all the up and down, crouching, stretching, reaching, etc. Logistica

Ceiling planks laid out on the floor for staining and polyurethaning... I needed to do this in two batches. Our day was a busy one today! I spent the morning staining the second batch of planks for a new ceiling in our new bedroom. Then, after my usual (and very necessary) 2-4 hour after-lunch nap, I managed to put a coat of polyurethane on all the planks just as the kids were arriving from day-care with Gee.  We had a nice dinner... watched "The Santa Claus" (the kids were glued to this movie from the very beginning)... the kids had some ice cream cones... then the kids helped Gee make some dark chocolate chip cookies... and I managed to get a second coat of polyurethane on all the ceiling planks as Lukey watched from the doorway.  All in all, it was a busy day and a very productive one at that! Tomorrow, I hope to stain and polyurethane trim and/or our nightstands.  Little by little... things are coming along... Shot using one of my manual f

All these delays in our home renovations has really snowballed at this point. My health and the weather were nowhere near in sync and, as a result, so many projects were delayed. Whenever the weather was good, my health was miserable so I could not accomplish anything. Whenever my health was well enough to accomplish a few things, the weather was so lousy that we couldn't get anything accomplished.  Now, the temperatures are below freezing every night and not much higher than freezing during the days. These cold temperatures makes finish work such as staining and polyurethaning impossible to do outdoors.  Unfortunately, I have a lot of wood to stain and polyurethane. Since I can't move all this wood outdoors, I am stuck trying to get it all stained and polyurethaned indoors without ruining our floors, walls, furniture, etc. This means I am stuck inside the small room I am currently renovating. I started staining wood today... I managed to stain half of the wide planks f

Today, I installed a new dimmer that has a remote which we can access while in bed... plus, this dimmer turns on the lighting smoothly and slowly... and smoothly and slowly when turning off. Today we backstepped to an old, unfinished project... our new bedroom. Health problems and inclement weather had caused a lot of delays. Health problems are simply a fact and seem to be more of a problem in recent months but I'm still getting little things accomplished whenever a good hour or two presents itself. Trying to get the weather to cooperate with my health is a crap-shoot though and this causes significant delays. Today's task in moving forward with this bedroom project, however, was to jockey things around the house in order to make a clean spot in this room. I had finished quite a bit of work already but the room was filled with tools and leftover construction materials. We needed to find a place(s) to put all this stuff. I had already demolished the old closet and bu

It was another rainy, windy, cold day today so I was stuck indoors. I was feeling a bit worn out anyway so I probably would not have tried to tackle anything significant today anyway. Instead, I did some work on the dollhouse project. I'm in the finishing stages of this little project so any little bit I accomplish really makes a big difference in the appearance of the dollhouse. The "Georgetown" style is really becoming visible at this stage of the project and that is a relief and makes me happy. Sometimes projects can unknowingly morph into a different style. This project, however, really is identical to what I have always envisioned in my head... a Georgetown-style townhouse.  Today's task was to glue on all the little pieces of wood for the detailed cornice across the top of the townhouse. This was a bit tedious but well worth the trouble. I actually did contemplate just leaving this trim plain without all the little pieces but I knew I would be disappointed i

I can't begin to tell you how much I despise that question no matter how innocently and friendly it may be asked... "Are you a cop?" Especially when it comes as a complete surprise from left field. It is a question which gets me so angry that I cringe, get frustrated, get angry and have to use all my willpower to restrain from unleashing a torrent of expletives, drill sergeant style, on the clearly unobservant and ignorant inquisitor.  Whenever I travel to other states in the United States, everyone...  and I mean  everyone... seems to pick up on the fact that I am either active duty military or a veteran... everyone. I get comments and questions about my military status and experience everywhere we go outside of Vermont. I even get handshakes and thanks for my service from complete strangers. Nobody outside of Vermont ever walks up to me and asks, out of the blue, such an absurd question like, "Are you a cop?" Within the borders of Vermont, however, I

I had written previously about an old film-era lens I picked up at an exceptional price but feel it is worth revisiting again today in this blog post.  The lens is an old Konica Hexanon AR 40mm, f1.8... I added a short vented lens hood to this lens which helps reduce flare when the sun is not backlighting my subject (when the sun is in the frame, no lens hood will help). I also needed to add a lens adapter so I could mount this Konica AR mount lens to my Sony full frame camera. This is a small but very solid lens... built exceptionally well... and I'm liking the image quality! This old lens shows some character flaws in certain shooting conditions which you don't often find in today's digital lenses. I went back through the few photos I shot this morning while testing this lens and I found a couple of photos which I'm really liking... showing these flaws... the film-like flare of decades ago can't go unnoticed yet, even with this film-like flare, the images stil

Konica Hexanon 40mm, f1.8 lens As I wrote in a blog entry a few days ago, I found a beautiful old lens for sale after searching for almost a year. I quickly ordered this old but 'like-new' lens as well as a lens hood and a lens mount adapter to allow this lens to work with my particular camera. In total, this beautiful old lens was dirt cheap. I attempted to head outdoors yesterday morning to get some shots but between some very lousy health and very windy conditions, I captured nothing but blurred photos because of shakey hands and everything blowing violently in the wind. This morning, however, was a completely different story... There was no wind this morning... it was cold and crisp   (still below freezing when I headed outdoors)  with no wind whatsoever... my health had stabilized within the past 24 hours so my hands had steadied up to a normal level (which comes in handy when shooting a manual focus lens)... This was the time to put this new lens to the test.

Even considering I had some poor health this morning (Sunday morning), I managed to get quite a bit accomplished on the dollhouse this weekend.  Let's start with the poor health... I spent far too much time in the bathroom late last night, sick as a dog... I was dying to sleep and was having difficulty keeping my eyes open but I was still sick and stuck in the bathroom... I thought I would be napping in the bathroom for a bit there. This morning, although a bit worn out and weak, I thought I was doing considerably better but I had more serious problems come on very suddenly while Sheila and I were at the grocery store.  I was worn out from the previous night's poor health spent in the bathroom but I thought that would be the extent of my problems. While we were passing the frozen food aisle, I started seeing 'sparklies' in my eyes... I was feeling weaker and more worn out... and my breathing was beginning to become shallow... I knew the process of anaphylaxis ha