Scattered Thoughts . . .

NOTE:  Lukey and Kenzie are getting older and bigger but they still cannot read my blog, therefore, I have no problems writing about Christmas gifts for both Lukey and Kenzie. For those who can read this blog, please don't mention these gifts to Lukey and Kenzie until after their Christmas. Thanks. I'm slightly early this year... I usually begin my Christmas shopping in September but I decided to start a month early this year in the hope of easing the financial burden that far too many people feel at the end of the year. Grandchildren at Christmastime will do that! Lukey has been focused on and infatuated with Amtrak for years. Actually, we plan to do an Amtrak day trip soon so he can finally say he's traveled on an Amtrak train. He's seen Sheila and me do quite a few Amtrak trips over his four short years but he is still optimistic and excited about taking an Amtrak journey for himself. Whenever Lukey plays with his freight train, he always stops at the sta

Even though this past week has been lousy as far as my health is concerned, I did manage to have a couple of productive hours yesterday morning. As a result of pushing myself too much in the morning, my afternoon and especially through the night was absolutely miserable but, I'm happy to say I had a couple of productive hours yesterday morning! I cut and sanded all the wood that I will need for two small step stools for the grandchildren as well as doing the same for all the wood necessary for a little stand for a power controller for Lukey's train set. The sanding isn't finished but I did a coarse sanding on all these pieces of wood to remove the previous finish. All of this lumber was recovered from an old church. I've had it sitting around for about a decade at this point but I finally put it to use.  Over the years, I've had various ideas of how to use this lumber but the small sizes of this lumber made it perfect for this little project so this chur

This has been a very looonnnnnnggggggg week. I feel as though two weeks have passed in the span of this past week! My health has been quite lousy all week but last night it turned to a rather brutal and painful stage. Of course, pain is always present, even on relatively good days, but there are far too many periods of worsened pain. This is one of those times.  Whenever my mast cells pick some area of my body to "attack" due to Systemic Mastocytosis, they degranulate and release many mediators. These mediators cause all sorts of problems in varying combinations... anaphylaxis, hindering effective bodily function, breathing difficulty, nausea, lightheadedness, dizziness, difficulty with neurological systems, skin rashes, flushing, hives, itching, etc... and some of these mediators cause nerves to inflame and become very irritated which causes even more pain at a brutal level. So, each time I have a mass degranulation of mast cells as they indiscriminately attack a particu

For the most part, this has been another rough week with some lousy health. I had health issues over the weekend starting with being borderline anaphylaxic... then numerous other symptoms and problems in the following days... then, last night, the nausea hit levels which are difficult to keep in check without puking.  Through all of this, I am left exhausted. This little cellular war being waged inside my body wears me out more than I could effectively express so I'm not even going to try right now. Whenever the symptoms have subsided a bit and I can think fairly clearly, I've been scribbling plans for a few things I intend to build.  First, I came up with a plan to build two small wood step stools for the kids to reach the sinks in each bathroom. This little project is long overdue. We've wasted years searching stores for a little stool which does not exist in Vermont. I'll build it instead.  Next up... now that we have room in a spare bedroom, I have moved Luke

Sometimes the light magically falls on an interesting subject perfectly.  I had a small fleet of fairly large sized O scale (same scale as Lionel trains) F9 diesel engines sitting on a couple of tracks and the sun was low and streaming in a nearby window as a sliver of light... this light was reflecting off a windshield, which was nice, and some of the light was reflecting down in between the two tracks softly illuminating the sides of the locomotives in shadow... I really like the period when late steam engines shared the tracks with early diesel engines. It was a time of change... a time of growth... a time of moving forward... a time when railroads were the way to travel and move freight. This was a period at the pinnacle of the golden age of railroads and, unfortunately, as time would prove, the beginning of the end of the golden age of railroads. The only thing I can think of to improve this shot would be to have had a late steam engine softly illuminated in the background

This past Saturday, Sheila and I attended the Lake Champlain Maritime Festival and Antique Boat Show at the Burlington waterfront. The weather was beautiful and it was a really nice day, for the most part.   Adam had planned to meet us at the boathouse for the show but then was invited to visit a friend's house on Lake Champlain that same day. This friend of Adam's is an old student of mine and I knew that he and Adam are rarely in the same place at the same time. They both have been traveling the world extensively and on completely different schedules and completely different routes.  Anyway, their paths finally happened to cross, serendipitously, so Adam had the opportunity to spend the day and evening with this old friend and there was no way Sheila nor I would ever even think about requesting he change those plans to spend more time with us. It wouldn't be fair to Adam nor would it have been fair to his friend, Jonathan. If I would have requested anything, it wo

...In the wee hours of the morning!  Long before sunrise, we were up and about getting ready to head back to the airport to say goodbye to Adam... once again. It was a bit dark before 4am...  it definitely reminded me of my own career this morning... I rarely see these hours of the day! We had already said goodbye when he left for his basic training... then said goodbye after his graduation and he was headed to his technical training... then he visited us at the lake last year and we said goodbye at the airport when he departed for his first duty assignment which was about as far away from his home as is physically possible on our little planet... and now we said goodbye, again, as he heads to his second duty assignment. It is funny... it was cool, damp and very dark when we arose this morning and it vividly reminded me of mornings while I, myself, was training at Lackland Air Force Base. This was very appropriate considering why we were up so early. On this day, I was r

After we met Adam at the airport yesterday, we came back to our house with the grandkids in tow. Once Liza arrived from work, I grilled dinner for all of us but there were a few hours to kill before dinner though so Lukey, Adam and I pulled out Lukey's new train layout (from this past Christmas) to play with some trains. This was a rare occasion so I allowed Lukey to run some of my newer locomotives which Adam had not seen yet... the ones with locomotive sounds, smoke, operating lights, and crew sounds. This also entails allowing Lukey to use a much more complicated controller with far too many little buttons to erroneously press but he did well and learned quickly. He'll probably forget how to use it before we use it again but he did well and didn't destroy either of my locomotives.  Lukey accidentally found that one of the buttons on this big controller activates a crash sound sequence... the locomotive makes these horrendous crashing sounds as it comes to a sudden st

Adam was scheduled to arrive in Vermont sometime last week but, as luck would have it, his aircraft had a mechanical problem and they diverted to not only a different airfield but to a completely different country.  Adam has had the worst luck in air travel ever since we sent him to a Young Eagles encampment when he was 12 years old... a school run by the Experimental Aircraft Association. No matter when he has flown... no matter where he has flown... whether it was with the airlines or during flight lessons or with the military... he has consistently run into weather cancellations and maintenance cancellations. This three or four leg journey was no different. On the positive side, this time, his aircraft actually diverted to a country which he had intended to visit. His leave schedule never worked out for a trip to this country so his originally planned visit was cancelled. Now, here he was stuck in this country for three or four days!  This diversion actually turned into a luc