Scattered Thoughts . . .

I wrote previously about this past week being pretty lousy and brutal. Then, I added a quick update earlier this afternoon (maybe only an hour ago) claiming my health had improved slightly into the "mediocre" category. Suddenly, and unfortunately, things are pretty damn brutal again. I was moving something far too heavy (sarcasm...  it was really a small package of toilet paper) to under the bathroom vanity and was suddenly slammed with intense spinal pain that instantly put me on the floor of the bathroom. I was just a heap of tangled, inflamed nerves stuck on the floor... and I couldn't get up!  As I laid there, contemplating whether to call out to Sheila for help, I eventually caught my breath and managed to get up and make my way to the living room where Sheila instantly noticed something was not right.  Now, my weekend has suddenly moved into the brutal stage... again... as I lay here on the couch icing my spine. 

Plain and simple, this past week has been brutal. Whenever we have a busy weekend of activities, it affects my health for the next week... or month. Last weekend was exceptionally busy from Friday through Sunday. We had squeezed in about three activities and three different places each day... I skipped my daily two hour naps... I was on my feet throughout most of the weekend... and we were on the go all the time. This is a recipe for a long bout of miserable health in my foreseeable future. In preparation of the long, busy weekend, I rested up in the days leading up to the weekend (longer naps each day and did virtually nothing each day in an effort to preserve energy). I also squeezed in more medications in the days leading up to the weekend as well as all through the three day weekend. I can get away with this particular plan of attack if I don't do it too often. It allows for fairly decent health for a few days but there is a price to pay... the price is exceptionally

My health has been quite lousy the past few days... I clearly overdid it this past weekend... and even my spine is painfully inflamed so I've been doing very little. I have, however, managed to spend a little time each day with a camera in my hand and that has been nice. This morning, I had intended to work on a different project but some trains from the long weekend with Lukey and Kenzie were in my way. As I was thinking about whether or not to use up the precious energy needed to put away these trains, I decided to shoot some photos of this particular set of trains instead (mostly, the locomotive interested me). It seemed like this option would use less energy than my original plan and, besides, this is another project I have been wanting to accomplish for quite some time anyway. So, here we have an O scale Hudson steam locomotive... with real smoke coming out of the boiler... and, I must say, this was a difficult shot to capture and it was a time consuming little project!

Every summer we try to get out on Lake Champlain at least once for a short cruise on The Spirit of Ethan Allen. The weather was forecast to be excellent this past Friday so we headed to Burlington with the grandkids in tow. They had never been on a larger boat so this was a first for them. However, the kids surprised us by not being too fond of the idea of a cruise at first. Yes... you read that right... the two kids who can't get enough of boats while they are at the lake house weren't too fond of the idea of a cruise! While they were eating breakfast on Friday morning, we asked them if they wanted to go on a cruise with us... they gave us some confused looks so I figured it was obvious they weren't too sure about the word "cruise"...  I then asked if they wanted to go out for a ride on a "boat"... oddly, they were enthusiastically negative about that idea too! What is odd about this is that neither one of them seem to get enough of rid

Yesterday, I attempted to shoot some photos out in the backyard but afterward I realized that my health was worse than I thought it was and it was interfering with getting crisp shots. I wasn't thinking clearly and my hands were shaky so most of my shots were terrible.  This morning, I am actually feeling even worse than yesterday... far worse, actually... but I decided to head outside anyway with my old camera in an attempt to correct the problems I had yesterday with motion blurring most of my shots.   What can I say? It was nagging at the perfectionist in me!  This old Olympus camera is a tough camera to shoot well  ( absurdly difficult... every time I pick up one of my Olympus cameras, I curse myself for buying any of them... I despise Olympus so much that it makes me sick to my stomach)   but, as I said, I wanted a challenge and I wanted to overcome that challenge. Here are a few photos from this morning's challenge...

The temperature was hovering around 90 degrees today and that is far too hot for my health. The nights have been beautiful with temperatures in the upper 40s to low 50s but it looks like this week will be a hot one when the sun is up! I had a fairly productive morning while it was still cool. I finished up another step in one of my model railroading projects. Then I decided to head outside with a camera in hand. I had decided to play with one of my oldest digital cameras... an Olympus digital SLR camera with a crisp, colorful, and contrasty Kodak sensor. Unfortunately, I needed to dig out a battery for it and that little bit of activity not only wore me down a little but it also raised my body temperature. At this point of the day, the temperature outdoors was in the upper 80s which isn't too good for me without extra medications... and I had not taken any extra medications... and now I raised my body temperature and wore myself out a little bit too. This is not a good combinat

This morning, I started gluing the grab irons on the O scale narrow gauge hoppers that I am converting and detailing. As usual, this is not working out the way I expected. Getting the Crazy Glue Gel into the tiny holes is a sloppy task even while using a toothpick. The glue is bunching up and I am leaving spiderweb-like glue trails between all parts. It seems to be taking forever to dry too. I expected this to require me to work quickly before the glue set with the grab irons solidly in place. It is not working that way. It turns out to be a bit messy and it is not holding quickly. I stopped after adding the grab irons to just one of the four hoppers. I decided it would be best to wait to see if the glue will indeed set up well enough to hold these tiny grab irons in place. I don't want to do all four hoppers this way only to find out it won't work.  In addition to seeing how well the glue holds after allowing some extra drying time, I also want to see how

One of my cousins, Kathy, recently posted a photo of having morning coffee while relaxing on the edge of a river. Her photo immediately reminded me of many years of morning coffee at my own home on a river quite a few years ago before my health took a serious nosedive.  Thinking about this old home also reminded me of all the visitors I had coming and going... all the weekend parties... all my friends' kayaks and canoes that resided in my yard all summer... and it reminded me of all the friends who still talk about my old house on the river whenever I bump into them. We had some really great times at that house! View from the firepit in the backyard. Seeing Kathy's photo encouraged me to dig out some old photos of this house to share here. For the most part, these are really lousy photos but they are good enough to see some of the memorable parts of this property and to remind me of some really nice times.  I wish I had better and more photos to share but this was a