Scattered Thoughts . . .

You can clearly see the joint failing here. I'm frustrated... and exhausted. That's not a good combination.   As many of you have probably already read in previous blog entries, we've been searching for wood screen doors for months. Actually, we've been on the hunt for wood screen doors since last summer!  To save on time and energy, rather than build my own doors from scratch, I opted to buy a good quality stock door to customize.  I could (and, in hindsight, I should)  have made my own doors, completely, but opted for a stock door to save some much needed time and energy. I have very little energy due to my health and I have very little time due to the very short summer season here in Vermont. Our summer is packed solid with renovations which must be accomplished.  I had to add these screws to hold the joints together. I have a kitchen and living room to renovate and this includes new windows, new insulation and new exterior siding. The summer season

I was out shooting some photos at around 5:30 in the morning as I usually do while we are at the lake house... covered completely in clothing from head to toe yet still getting eaten by millions of flying insects. Even though I hate dealing with all the biting insects, I'm always hoping to capture a good photo of some early morning wildlife while the lake is calm and the sun is low creating a warmer, softer light. That rarely happens but I can always hope for the best.  On this particular morning, I was attempting to compose a landscape shot that I've shot far too many times already but I prepared to shoot it again anyway.  As I was looking through the viewfinder, I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be the moon at the top edge of the frame in the center. I pulled my head away from the camera... looked up... sure enough, the moon was still rather high in the sky.  I snapped a quick photo of the landscape and then switched gears.  I grabbed my other camera that has a b

Our new refrigerator finally arrived this morning and the installation was flawless! As I wait for the temperature in the refrigerator and freezer to drop to safe levels, I decided to capture a few photographs of it to share here...  I've already flushed two gallons of water through the fridge water lines so it is ready for drinking... the ice needs 24 hours... then dump all the ice and it is ready to go after the new ice is made... Sheila is particularly excited to be done making ice in ice trays! This fridge sports a partial stainless steel interior... It is difficult to see here because the kitchen is so dark on this dark, dreary, rainy day but this next photo shows the quick access door... This is a Bi-Zone drawer... we can choose any of four preset temperatures for this drawer ranging from deep freeze to mild refrigeration... Much of the interior of this particular refrigerator is stainless steel... And, of course, it is a Samsung... So.

We're in the process of renovating our kitchen. We've done most of the design work (although, there is a little bit more to be done), we've ordered some of the major appliances, and now I've started re-routing plumbing.  Our current kitchen is old, worn, and a confused mix of mismatched cabinets. We have some cabinets which were gifted to us by a friend... we have some stock oak cabinets... and we have a few cabinets that I made to somehow match certain features of the previously mentioned cabinets. It is a functional kitchen but not at all organized, cohesive nor attractive.   After years of searching for an affordable counter-depth refrigerator, we have a new counter-depth refrigerator arriving on Thursday so I've been making room for it in our old kitchen. Our current fridge is only 32 inches wide but this new fridge is 36 inches wide so I needed to remove some shelves between two wall cabinets and two base cabinets to make room for this wider fridge. I rem

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