Scattered Thoughts . . .

I was feeling halfway decent this morning so I spent the morning working on the master bathroom. (Having only one toilet in the house this past week is getting old already! I'm definitely looking forward to having a nice new second toilet in the house!) I had previously removed the old finish flooring to reveal a lot of rotten wood subflooring and about three layers of old, nasty vinyl flooring. Today I needed to figure out how much of the floor was rotten and remove it all. I started pulling up the subflooring with my hands... it would just crumble as I grabbed it so it pulled apart quite easily but made a huge mess. It wasn't long before I decided to just cut back enough to make a 24"x24" hole. First I marked off a 24" square... then out came the circular saw... and I started cutting... first, at only a 1/2" deep... I pulled up more subflooring...  then I cut a bit deeper... pulled out more subflooring... I changed the depth of the cut four times

The few months after Christmas are always rough months for my health so I always expect health issues after the ramp-up to Christmas. This year is no different except that my energy levels seem to be at an all-time low too. Leading up to Christmas and through Christmas, I pound extra medications... adrenaline is flowing... and, I'm careful about my diet and managing energy. Once Christmas Day has passed, I'm exhausted... I mean completely spent... I mean overwhelmingly fatigued... I mean that just taking a shower oftentimes will use up whatever energy I had to use for that particular day. All this fatigue is accompanied by bone and joint pain. The joint pain is easy to describe... it feels like an ice pick being stabbed into the joint... my ankles hurt, my knees hurt, my hips hurt, my spine hurts, my shoulders hurt, my elbows hurt, my wrists hurt, my fingers hurt. If I attempt to hold anything... ie, a plate while attempting to wash a few dishes... the pain in my fingers, w

This past weekend, Sheila and I finally managed to get to one of Lukey's hockey sessions. We had a really nice time! This was my first attempt at shooting photos of ice hockey and I'd been looking forward to this opportunity in shooting photos of Lukey for a long time. (I also look forward to shooting photos of Kenzie at gymnastics... hopefully soon!) As far as photography goes, fortunately for me, the young 'House Mites' aren't really lightning fast so keeping up with them was fairly easy... they don't move fast enough to introduce motion blurring issues... and I recently picked up a Sony camera which is geared toward fast action. This all worked in my favor so I managed to capture some nice photos. Naturally, with a new camera there was a bit of a learning curve. I spent the past month working on setting up the camera to ideal settings for sports... then would get frustrated because I had no fast moving objects available to practice shooting... so I woul

Oh boy was yesterday a lousy day!  Earlier in the morning, I was feeling quite well. I was looking forward to some exercise and my daily physical therapy. I never got that far though... First, around lunchtime, I began to feel something wasn't right. I couldn't put my finger on the problem but I knew some lousy health to some degree was approaching. I ate lunch and then it started... As I was trying to walk my dishes to the sink, my legs would not cooperate. At first, I wondered if they had just started to fall asleep... and hoped it wasn't a mastocytosis issue... or, was this a result of my spinal injuries? My legs not cooperating to such a debilitating level was a bad sign though... my legs really were not cooperating at all...  I could barely move them. I made my way back to the couch. My bones and joints had been hurting since around Christmastime so that was nothing new and they were still hurting but the hurt was pushed to the background as some new symptoms e

A couple of weeks before Christmas, Sheila was offered a new job which also provided her with a nice promotion. She excitedly started this new job right after Christmas. Actually, we were both very excited about this opportunity for upward mobility as well as for personal and professional growth. Then, sometime either later that first week or in the following week, Sheila learned that there would be no time in this new position for annual leave during our time at the lake house! We had been waiting almost two weeks for an official determination on whether or not Sheila would be allowed take annual leave so we can head to the lake house. This decision sort of got waylaid by new training requirements and then a virus going around the office landing some of the decision-makers home on sick leave. Unfortunately, on our end, this wait was delaying our planning schedule, causing missed deadlines and, generally speaking, putting quite a damper on the new year thus far.  While we waited

Our annual extended weekend in Springfield for the biggest train show in the US is fast approaching so I was reviewing some of my video clips and photos from past shows to see if I can find some stuff to share to build some anticipation for the show. My videos and photos  of these shows now   have been published on multiple websites and have hundreds of thousands of views! While I was scrolling through my own videos as well as other people's videos of past shows on YouTube, I found one which I thought was interesting and worth sharing here... Lionel Strang... a well known model railroader, author and now host of a model railroading Podcast/Vlog... was wandering around the 8 acres of show space interviewing people. Check out the two people he decided to interview at the 2:00 minute mark... We're really looking forward to this long weekend with friends. My health has proven to sometimes crash while at this show but we always have a great time regardless. I just take

This past week has been rather lousy, overall, but this weekend has been thrust down to "brutal" levels.   We (mostly I) had hoped to get to the lake house yesterday to walk the frozen lake but my health was an obstacle nor was the weather cooperating... it was quite frigid yesterday! We abandoned that plan and ran some much needed errands instead. I don't get out of the house much...  the last time I was out and about was probably before Christmas sometime so I was itching to get out someplace where I could walk. Because of the aforementioned obstacles in heading to the lake house, we opted to head to the Burlington area to do some much needed shopping.  While in Burlington, we went into 'Homeport' specifically to find an oven thermometer and we instead found a couch that we both liked the moment we saw it. We did walk out with an oven thermometer but we also had info about the couch and contact info for the salesperson who was more than helpful with all of

I've been writing about some of the gifts we received for Christmas and another one of the gifts we received was a new wireless doorbell. I must say, this wireless doorbell is good enough to have put together a short video and write about here! Our old wireless doorbell was not all that appealing. The quality of the sound was rather poor. It sounded more like a child's toy than a real doorbell. Every time the doorbell rang, the quality of the sound really bothered me. Of course, those who know me probably aren't surprised by this since everyone knows I probably pay far too much attention to the tiniest of details and I'm a hopeless perfectionist. The sound of that old doorbell was really lousy though. I knew that if I was going to replace our doorbell I wanted one with better sound. The other problem we had with the old doorbell is that whenever the temperatures plunged below zero (which is often during six months out of the year) , the doorbell button contacts c

Quite by coincidence, Sheila and I each received gifts for our home from Monticello this Christmas! Monticello is a home I studied in high school and college as an architecture/engineering student. It has always been one of my favorites. As luck would have it, I also highly respect our founding father who designed and built this spectacular home, Thomas Jefferson. He was a wise man who has shared many of my own beliefs and who understood and has written extensively about the growing pains our country would face in the coming centuries. He is often pushed aside and minimized in history but someone whom I admire, respect and try to emulate. Having gifts in our home from Monticello is a nice reminder of an honorable man. Accompanying these gifts, we received a letter written in the hand of Thomas Jefferson. Here is an excerpt from this letter... "...Although more than two hundred years have passed since I've written this letter to you, through the magic of Christmas and t

Whenever I 'overdo' it, my health crashes into poor or miserable levels quite often delving into dangerous waters that causes a further deterioration of health which includes anaphylaxis. I've had some transient health issues on and off throughout the Christmas season but not anything classifying as 'dangerous'... until now.  Shortly after going to bed last night, my health crashed causing sudden anaphylaxis. My body responded to the drop in blood pressure as it should causing flushing and sudden palpitations. I was already in bed, however... already completely spent... now struggling with bigger issues... and, unfortunately, I never made it to my emergency medications.   I remember the sudden drop in energy levels... I remember instantly having difficulty keeping my eyes open... I had thought I was simply tired. In hindsight, I think these were signs of impending anaphylaxis. About an hour or two later, while still struggling with keeping my eyes open, I rememb