Scattered Thoughts . . .

About a year and a half ago, I refinished our pine wood flooring in the kitchen. I had painted it a gloss white. At the same time, I replaced the carpet in the living room and adjoining front room with a Berber carpet. We just wanted to clean up the look with a cheap temporary fix until we were ready to replace all the flooring through the kitchen, living room and our front room (which is currently our temporary bedroom but will be a study/piano room when we finally renovate our master bedroom suite). Well... we're about ready to replace all this flooring... finally! We decided upon an antique birch wood flooring.  I bought a box of this flooring to bring home and test it out in our living room. Even though it is just lying on top of the carpet in these photos, it really looks great and is exactly what we were hoping to find! I ordered 23 cases of this flooring and it should be delivered in the next couple of weeks. We're collecting a lot of building supplies at this poi

We've needed two new screen doors for a few years now. This was just one of those projects that kept getting pushed back due to other problems arising and taking precedence. In early June, I decided it was time to pick up a couple of wood screen doors... but, I couldn't find any in stock! Sheila and I finally found a couple of doors a few days ago while we were out shopping for a new refrigerator. After looking at the available refrigerators, we walked around looking at other things on our list of projects for the summer. The doors we found weren't exactly what I was looking for but I knew I could make them work.  They both were bare wood so they would need some paint. Well... since the doors take a beating, they would need a few coats of paint. Now we needed to decide on a paint color. (This project, like all of my 'little' projects, kept getting bigger and bigger.) We have plans to repaint the house so I decided this was the time to address that too. We

We are in the midst of making a lot of changes.  We've always embraced change and only a complete fool would waste precious energy on fighting change. Embracing change is good for learning, for growing, for evolving, for reaching one's potential and beyond.  Embracing change does not mean you should live your life like a leaf being tossed about in a raging river. Embracing change doesn't mean we should just blindly go with the flow. Embracing change is about prioritizing, decision-making, problem-solving and effectively adapting based upon the changing environment around us so we can effectively grow. Fighting change is a complete and utter waste of time and energy. As with anyone struggling with a chronic incurable illness, energy is of very short supply. Even when I was perfectly healthy and at my strongest, I refused to waste time and energy. I made decisions, I actively participated in life and I grew.  I never wasted time and energy fighting change. Fighting chan

I have a little bit of time to kill before heading to another medical appointment this morning so I thought I would add a few more photos to my blog.  I'm heading to a new specialist this morning... a type of appointment which is never really 'fun' and with a new doctor you never know what to expect. There is a lot of unnecessary crap hanging over my head right now including the threat of losing my Social Security Disability Insurance benefits. Actually, this really pisses me off and adding in this new specialist isn't helping any.  So, I have a bit of time to kill this morning and thought I would share a few photos from last week... This first photo is of a slightly uncooperative loon. Although he was paddling away from me, he kept looking back to see if I was still there photographing him...  This was an early morning photo. The contrast was low because I had to bump up the exposure quite a bit to capture some detail in this mostly black loon. Now the loon

About three weeks ago, I wrote about buying an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) and being certified by the FAA to fly one of these things. My plan was to get some aerial video footage of the lake house and some of our activities.  As often seems to be the case when it comes to my experiences in new endeavors, nothing really went according to plan with this UAS. In my initial flight tests (just a couple of short flights in my first outing), I found that control of this UAS was rather lousy. You use your phone or tablet with an app to control this UAS and there was a lot of lag. You would use the app to try to rotate clockwise... lag...  lag... lag... finally, it would either slowly start to turn clockwise like it was trying to fly through molasses or it would suddenly start a fast, jerky movement to clockwise. It was usable but it was disconcerting and a bit frustrating. Next, I quickly realized that the video quality wasn't nearly as good as I had hoped. The bit depth was lacking

Although we have not made a 100% final decision just yet, we did say farewell to the lake house again yesterday and, perhaps, this was also our final farewell.  Upon arriving back home, last night we sat down and compiled a list of pro's and con's related to heading to the lake house every summer. There are very many pro's on this list but the con's are quite compelling and pretty damning.  I spent much of the past week sleeping through our time at the lake house. I was exhausted but I didn't want to sleep because there were so many fun things to do that I still had not crossed off my own 'to-do' list. Instead, I slept... then we packed up over the course of three days... and we headed back home.  I'll be sharing more photos and videos of our time at the lake over the course of the foreseeable future so this does not mean an end to that! Right now I need to rest up a bit so we can try to do a few more things this summer...  I'd especi

We hadn't seen the resident Bald Eagle pair in a couple of days so we were wondering where they were hiding. We also hadn't seen any other significant wildlife such as bobcats and bears so I was feeling I needed to wander out to find something worth photographing. Sheila and I headed out on our kayaks yesterday morning. I had three cameras in my kayak... a Sony action video camera, a Sony full-frame camera with a 70-200mm lens, and a Sony crop camera with a 400mm F5.6L lens which gives me an equivalent of 600mm. I also brought along a wide angle lens for any landscape photos that may present itself. With these cameras, I was confident I could capture photos of loons, Bald Eagles, bears, bobcats, turtles or whatever wildlife appeared.  About a mile from our lake house, I pulled to the shore to check a nice sandy beach on State land for any tracks... I saw none. We continued on down toward the dam at the end of the lake.  As we approached the end of the lake, I noticed a r

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, today was a day of sleep and rest.  My health hit a wall last night and then worsened as the night wore on... the fatigue was brutal! Much of the day today was spent sleeping. I still have some lingering effects of last night's health problems but I'm feeling much more stable this evening than last evening. During the few hours I was awake today, the wildlife around the lake house was minimal, at best. I didn't really see anything worth photographing. Early this morning, however, I did see some interesting, dramatic light hit the shore on the opposite side of the lake... I really like this one... the sun was peaking through some clouds and early morning fog... the light was like a spotlight on this cabin across the lake... I really like the reflection on the smooth morning water... I like the depth of the photo... and, I like the color... this is a really nice photo!

Yesterday was perhaps one of the most beautiful days we've had at the lake. The visibility was noticeably crystal clear... the sun was bright... it was warm... the water was warm... it was quiet... and I was in very nice company! Today, weather-wise, was fair but both Sheila and I were exhausted. We ended up sleeping away most of the day. I had some health issues last night too and that always has a tremendous bearing on the days afterward. Today was no exception. We pretty much just slept and rested all day.  This evening, however, I had some time to sort through some of yesterday's photos... At this point in sharing these photos here I must ask, "Have I mentioned lately how much I love my Sony cameras, microphones, stereos, mp3 players, and televisions?" These photos here remind of just how much I love Sony electronics. It is a joy using cameras which produce such beautiful tonality and color while also providing the fastest and most accurate au

Today was a rather lousy day for shooting photos of wildlife. We sometimes go through spurts of seeing absolutely no wildlife. One year, we didn't see any wildlife for almost two weeks! Today was just one of those days... quiet. Instead of shooting photos today (although, I kept my eyes open in case something appeared outside our lake house windows), I sifted through some of the photos I've shot thus far and I found another Bald Eagle shot worth sharing here...