Scattered Thoughts . . .

A week or so ago, I had written about having problems with our old home theater receiver. We had upgraded our television to 4K HDR but we found that our home theater receiver would not pass through a 4K signal. There were some other little quirks with that older receiver so I opted to purchase a new Sony Surround Sound Bar system.  I've been using this new Sony system for a few days now so I figured I would write a little about it now.  The first thing I noticed about this new sound system is it is very simplified compared to the controls of the old home theater receiver. This is good and bad. I'm not going to get into any detail here but being simplified is very much a positive and this part of it was very welcomed. That old home theater receiver made it difficult to tweak the sound because the controls were in the form of menus inside of menus inside of menus with no graphical interface. The sound quality of this new sound system is quite good. Most noticeably is that

The original plan was to celebrate Sheila's birthday on the night of her actual birthdate. Liza and the grandkids would come over... cake and presents... have some cake... and a little celebration. Plans were changed and her birthday ended up being a bit different. Whitney went into labor on the afternoon of Sheila's birthday and was headed to the hospital as Sheila was leaving work. So, Sheila's little birthday celebration was delayed while Sheila headed to the hospital to greet her newest granddaughter on their unexpected shared birthday. A couple of days later, Liza, Lukey and Kenzie arrived at the house to celebrate Gee's birthday. Sheila and I had already eaten most of the chocolate raspberry cake that we had cut into a few nights earlier so we had brownies this night... brownies... candles... some presents... cards... and we got to spend a little bit of time with Liza, Lukey and Kenzie for a late birthday celebration! Since Sheila's latest fight with can

Sheila's birthday is tomorrow but we did most of the celebrating over the weekend. She opened most of her presents already and we had a meal of her choice last night.  Oh, and she chose a nice chocolate raspberry cake which we'd cut into on Saturday night.   The dinner she chose for last night was delicious.  I roasted a garlic herb roast beef. I inserted some garlic cloves into the meat spread out across the top of the roast. Then I rubbed on a mixture of spices and herbs. That was in the oven less than an hour and a half. I tented it under foil while finishing up the rest of this meal. That roast beef was tender and tasty! The asparagus was wrapped with smoked bacon in small bundles. We placed the bundles in a baking dish and then drizzled it with a smooth mixture of butter, brown sugar and soy sauce. Then I added some garlic salt and freshly ground pepper before roasting it just long enough to crisp up the bacon. The potatoes were cut into chunks and par-boiled fi

Back in early December, we bought ourselves an early Christmas present... a new Sony Bravia 4K HDR television for our living room.  As most of you already know, I am a big fan of Sony products and we have many. We already had a Sony Bravia television but it was rather small for our living room and only "HD" in resolution ("HD" as in 720p...  not even 1080 Full HD). It was time for a much needed upgrade since there is such a tremendous difference between 4K and Full HD... and our resolution was even lower at 720p HD! Early December was a busy time for us... Sheila's cancer treatment and recovery, Liza's wedding, Christmas fast approaching, etc... so I made a quick swap with the televisions. I pulled out the old television and quickly hung the new, larger, better 4K HDR television. Everything seemed to be working fine and the picture was far better so I just left it all as is. Well... I must admit that I  did slightly adjust the picture settings to get a

Sheila's followup appointment with the surgeon was the other day so we were back at The Breast Care Center at the hospital. Sheila still has weekly appointments for her ongoing treatment plus daily therapy to do but the followup appointments at The Breast Care Center are slowing down.  As expected, Sheila is healing well. Her lymphedema looks good which means it is no worse than what is "normal" for patients in similar situations...    scarring is minimal and healing nicely...   and she is beginning to regain some of her energy. This newfound energy is in spurts at this point but it is some very welcomed energy after months of exhaustion and seemingly nothingness in her life.  Life sort of stood still for many months during treatment... and, in hindsight, feels a bit like it was a whirlwind at times. But, this was a period which we both see as nothingness and blackness on our calendar.  The imaging was normal so that is great. There is some fluid where the tumor

I'm not sure I have written anything here about this past Christmas morning with the grandkids. Uggg... I just checked to see if I did anything with all the photos from Christmas morning and it turns out that I have not! Wow... I am really behind in writing here on this blog and sharing photos.  So now I'm sitting here thinking about why I am so far behind in keeping the blog up to date...  I also probably haven't even shared much from Liza's wedding... Thanksgiving... and a few other things in December, January and February. Poor health, feeling miserable, being exhausted, and a lot of medical appointments  seems to have completely consumed our time and energy. Between the two of us, we really haven't done much in a couple of months. We're both exhausted and, until the past day or two, we've been feeling quite lousy, generally speaking. One morning after Christmas, the house was quiet and the toys were sitting there under the tree and it reminded me of

Okay, this blog entry should be the end of video clips from the train show in January. I had a lot of clips to put together! Fortunately, I was able to split them up into four separate videos so they are a bit more tolerable to watch. This video was put together with just a few clips of Maggie the Clown doing her show...  The kids always seem to enjoy her and she seems to enjoy interacting with the kids throughout the entire weekend!

When we went to the Amherst Railway Society's train show this past January, I had planned to shoot a lot of photos and a lot of video. We had nobody there with us this year so there was very little socializing to do. Well...  there was indeed some socializing done in the hotel bar at night but there was very little socializing at the show. I figured I had time and energy for both photos and video at the show. I always shoot a lot of photos but, since there would be very little socializing time, I decided to focus on getting enough video clips to put together a loonnngggg video of the various operating model railroads at the show.  Sheila, at the show Most of my photography gear is rather lightweight now. I traded in some older, heavier gear for newer, lighter and better gear. This year I walked around with one little camera body set up for video and another relatively small camera body set up for still photos. Then I had an extra lens and a bunch of batteries. It was pretty

My model of a Porter steam locomotive. One of the many attractions at the Amherst Railway Society's annual train show has been an operating steam locomotive running on 100 feet of track. This particular locomotive has made the journey from Maine to Massachusetts for the train show the past two years and it has been a really nice addition to this huge show. The Boothbay Railway Village loads their Edaville #11 Porter steam locomotive on a big truck along with 100 feet of track and makes the journey to Springfield, MA just for this incredible train show. I'm sure it is a lot of work but many of us at the show appreciate all their hard work to make this happen. All the kids at the show had an opportunity to learn about steam locomotives as the engineer showed them around the cab. They were able to pull the deafening whistle, ring the bell and even peer into the red-hot firebox. This is a great opportunity for everyone, especially kids, to learn a little bit about these st

There were a lot of great operating model railroad layouts at this year's show. I think there were over 50 layouts this year and that didn't include all the hands-on layouts for the kids to play. I put together a very short video of the "Best In Show" layout modules at this year's Amherst Railway Society's Train Show. I have to say that this particular layout was quite impressive and even evoked an "oh wow..." when I first approached it!  The layout was built by the 'Four County Society of Model Engineers' from Central Maryland. This layout was highly detailed with great lighting and I feel both of those points should be mentioned here. Beyond the exceptional detail, what I found exceptionally impressive was the realistic, cohesive color scheme used throughout the entire layout. The color of this model world was consistent and about as realistic as I've ever seen in a model railroad. The consistency from module to module was key t