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Anaphylaxis In My Sleep, continued...

We had a busy weekend again with the grandchildren. It is always nice to have them around but this weekend my health did not cooperate. I screwed up a dose of medications on Saturday... and, other than a 15 minute snooze in the car on the way back from Burlington, I missed my usual 2 hour daily nap... and now my health is paying for these problems. I could barely keep my eyes open on Sunday (yesterday). I felt as though I had been heavily drugged and was fighting losing consciousness. I finally had a chance to lay on the couch in the afternoon to try to get some much needed rest. I slept for about two hours but I had a very difficult time waking myself up enough to even get up off the couch. I would try to awaken but my eyes wouldn't stay open and I would fall asleep again... and then again... and again.  As I was lying there, fighting falling asleep yet again, I was wondering if I might have experienced anaphylaxis in my sleep again.  The post anaphylaxis symptoms are very o

Conversion To Narrow Gauge Hoppers

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I've been focused on working on Lukey's train set (new scenery, new buildings, new trains) for some presents this coming Christmas. While I was looking for stuff for Lukey's train set, I ran across something which caused me to change gears briefly. For quite some time now, I've been reading about modelers who convert old S scale American Flyer freight cars to O scale narrow gauge. O scale is a larger scale than S scale but narrow gauge trains are purposefully smaller than their standard gauge counterparts so the smaller S scale trains often measure just right for O scale narrow gauge.  "Standard gauge" trains are the trains we see running around our real life world today... the rails are almost five feet apart (4'-8½", to be exact) and the trains are quite large. In smaller, tighter places, however, smaller trains were necessary (and a few are still running today) ... ie, winding through mountains, dense woods, around wharfs, in industrial comple

Golf, Some Rain, and Sunday Dinner

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We had a really nice weekend and had an especially nice Sunday dinner with the grandchildren, Liza, and Sheila's parents, Will and Sue! Lukey arrived at the house with a golf club in hand which immediately reminded me of creating golf courses when I was a kid myself. We kept the course design simple on this day, however.  First, we dug one single hole, inserted a cup, and then we figured out where to place five different tee off areas... one straight-on... one off to the side... one which we called "down in the hole" which placed the tee off area lower than the green... one which was off to the side of "down in the hole" requiring chipping around tall brush and foliage... and one which required chipping over our firepit.  We took a little break for lunch... cheese quesadillas, tomato soup, apple sauce and berry jello for the kids... some leftover fried okra for me... and a cherry tomato medley salad for Gee... then back outside to play more go

Commencing Christmas Shopping

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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

Yesterday's Two Hours of Productivity

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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 Week Becomes Brutal

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

Another Rough Health Week

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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

A Sliver of Light

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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

Antique Boat Show

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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

And... Back To The Airport...

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...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