Scattered Thoughts . . .

We were happy to have Kenzie visit with us again over the weekend.  This gave her a chance to play with her dollhouse with Gee. The dollhouse that I had built for Kenzie a few years ago has been buried in one of the bedrooms that Adam resided in when he last visited a few months ago. As a result, this dollhouse hasn't gotten much use in the past six months or so because it was sitting behind a bunch of new kitchen supplies for our new kitchen in this bedroom.   Our kitchen renovation was put on hold the moment Sheila was diagnosed with cancer again almost a year and a half ago so all the supplies we had already bought for this project were piled up against a wall in the spare bedroom.  That project is now on indefinite hold due to the costs of cancer treatments and a few other reasons and Kenzie's townhouse dollhouse was residing somewhere behind all of these kitchen supplies...  until Sunday. Gee dug out the dollhouse and brought it out to the living room.  While Gee

Our little lab... We had Kenzie visiting us for most of the day yesterday which was a nice surprise for Gee and me.  We started off with some tasty French Toast with bacon and sausage.  Then Kenzie played with her dolls with Gee for a little while.  As they played, I set up an area on my desk for a hands-on lesson in micrology.   I have always felt that this stuff would interest Kenzie so even I was a bit excited to have a short session with her to see how she would react.  If it didn't interest her, we'd just move on to something else. If it did interest her, then she could get excited about something new! We talked about what a microscope does... she learned that we can study the cells that make up each thing we view... she learned that healthy cells, generally speaking, are very similar... then we viewed all sorts of prepared slides to compare the cells. While Kenzie was viewing the slides through the binocular lenses on the microscope, I looked on by viewing each s

Okay, the lousy holiday of Thanksgiving is now out of the way. The nausea is behind us and we are both feeling significantly better today. It is time to move on to the next holiday. For some strange reason, the Scrooges of the world (I think most of them come from a dull place called  Bluesville) have some ridiculous rule that Christmas can't appear until after Thanksgiving.  Well, gruesome Thanksgiving is behind us and we are now celebrating Christmas! We spent much of the day decorating for Christmas. The weather has been snowy so we already have four foot banks of snow surrounding the house making it difficult to decorate for Christmas as we usually do so we are a little light on our decorations outdoors this year. Nevertheless, we managed to do some decorating today. As I type this blog entry, Sheila is decorating the Christmas tree in the living room. I already put together the tree in the stand and basket at the base of the tree. Then I put a few strings of lights on it

This Thanksgiving, as with most every Thanksgiving in my adult life, we are hosting a Thanksgiving Dinner with close friends.  We have done very little socializing in the past year due to a few different health issues starting with Sheila second bout of breast cancer and ending (hopefully) with my two and a half months of significantly poor health due to some poor decisions by a couple of so-called specialists. Needless to say, we're both looking forward to socializing with some close friends today! As most of my friends know, this is perhaps my least favorite holiday on the calendar for far too numerous reasons to mention here.  That being said, decades ago, I found that I do enjoy the day whenever I host a small gathering of friends for the day.  Better yet, I always enjoyed being on-duty in the Air Force and putting together a celebration for all those working with me. The same holds true for Christmas... which happens to be my favorite holiday on the calendar! So, in keep

In my zeal to stay ahead of the grandkids' education so I am able to continue to converse with them about anything they may care to share or question, I am constantly trying to stay on top of my own education. Fortunately, I enjoy research and educating myself so I do this everyday anyway.  I spent a lot of time during my primary and secondary education using microscopes for a wide variety of subjects. Even my college engineering education required the use of microscopes on occasion. For my last year of college, I was also a student teacher teaching various aspects of civil engineering to underclassmen. At times, even this required some microscope use. I also used microscopes in my physics classes at the Merchant Marine Academy. As if all of that wasn't enough microscope use, I've had my own microscope since around sixth grade. Now, many decades later, I like watching the grandkids' interests and knowledge evolve so I'm constantly trying to introduce them to new