Scattered Thoughts . . .

We have two little inexpensive telescopes here at the house that I would classify as cheap garbage. When I bought each of them, I thought they would be "decent" but they were far from decent and well below my own level of "acceptable".  Neither of those telescopes are capable of relatively sharp viewing which has been a source of significant frustration. Even the little telescope that I had as a child produced far better images of the moon whenever I pulled the telescope out to view with my neighbors. I've gotten to the point where I want to just throw these two little telescopes on a bonfire and be done with the frustration. This sentiment has led me to a decision that it was time to shed my life of more unnecessary frustration including these two telescopes. If you follow this blog, you know that the past nine months have been nothing but stress and frustration for Sheila and me in every aspect of our life except for our relationship which, amazingly, hasn

It was our second sunny day in a row today! First thing this morning, we headed up to the hospital to see our warrior princess and her parents in their new PICU room overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. We picked up some coffee and breakfast for ourselves as well as for Whitney and Wayne and continued on to the hospital.  We were fortunate this morning to have arrived early enough to meet with the team of doctors. Although Ellie had a nice burst of energy and consciousness yesterday and seemed to have a great day (albeit with some visible pain)... which was perhaps the most "normal" day for her since being in the PICU... she had a rough and rather dangerous night through the night. Naturally, the doctors addressed this while also showing concern about her continuing struggles and evolving problems. Ironically, Ellie was awake during this doctor visit and seemed to be listening intently as the doctors talked and carefully examined little Ellie.  Ellie r

When we awoke this morning, the sky was a crystal clear blue and the sun was shining brightly! We hadn't seen this in weeks! The day was off to a good start for a change.  We immediately headed toward the hospital again to visit with Whitney, Wayne, and Ellie, our little warrior princess.  When we arrived at the quiet, empty hospital it was early Saturday morning so the hospital was eerily quiet. We made our way to the PICU which is in the opposite corner of the hospital from the main entrance.  As we approached Ellie's room, we could see the door was open with no commotion in the area around her room... a good sign...  We stepped into the room and it was relatively quiet other than the warning tones and beeps indicating relatively minor issues... the tones and beeps cutting through the silence. Mom was sitting on her bed in the corner of the room, dad was still sleeping, and Ellie seemed to be resting quietly but breathing deeply... The nurses are in the room 24

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!