Scattered Thoughts . . .

What a miserable, lousy day today has been.  Sheila did a fairly quick and, thankfully, very uneventful recovery from her colonoscopy yesterday but my health crashed sometime between yesterday and today.   I spent the morning sleeping on the couch because I had absolutely no energy and I was overwhelmingly fatigued.  Then I awoke around 2pm having great difficulty breathing.  I took some extra medications, used my inhaler but neither seemed to make much of a difference.  My inhaler rarely helps and today was no exception.  Personally, I think it is because the cause of my breathing problems is not related to asthma but related to anaphylaxis.  Then again, I don't really know the specifics of what happens in the lungs with this illness or with asthma.  All I know is it becomes very difficult to breath at times and my inhaler rarely, if ever, helps my breathing.  Anyway, today, my breathing was poor and the inhaler did not help at all.   I'm just feeling lousy.  I'm havin

I am now two weeks into this mild TBI...   two weeks ago I slammed the top of my head into a temporary cross-beam on a trash shed I am building, saw stars, passed out very briefly...  and I am now feeling a bit better than early after the injury.  I really haven't done much of anything over the past two weeks though.   Whenever I attempt to do anything, my headaches grow increasingly worse, sometimes throbbing, and behind my right ear begins to hurt.  I've been good about stopping whatever I'm attempting to do whenever the pain comes back or worsens.  Yesterday, I was feeling pretty good and the weather was dry.  It was hot and humid, but dry.  I knew the lawn needed some attention so I figured I would do that slowly.  Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it, I had my woodworking shop set up in the yard and I was finally doing some work on the trash shed again.  The heat and humidity was really affecting my mast cell disease which is my primary illness and m

It was a beautiful day today so I got up and was ready to jump into getting some things accomplished outdoors.  I have a few different projects in progress around the house so there was plenty of work to choose from this morning.   I started searching for and collecting tools.  Before I even made it outdoors, my spine was screaming at me and I was walking around bent over like an elderly man in pain.  As if that wasn't enough, my recent head injury was throbbing again too.  I decided to call it a day before I even had breakfast. I ended up sleeping away most of the day and doing some sketching and reading on the couch.   I hear the weather is supposed to be lousy again for the next few days so I doubt much will get done for much of the rest of the week.  That should give my spine and head enough time to recover though.

I wasn't feeling all that great today but I managed to get one sidewall installed on the trash shed.   During yesterday's frame assembly, I slammed my head into a temporary crossbar holding the frame together, saw stars, and things got a bit dark briefly.  The rest of the day yesterday, the area of my head in question was throbbing.  Today, it started throbbing again rather quickly.  Overall, I'm not feeling all that well either but my head is hurting the most.  I think I have a little bit of an abrasion there too. Anyway, I managed to get one sidewall assembled.  I also made a couple of jigs for the roof rafters so I am ready to go on that when I get the right length lumber.   We just finished eating dinner...  some restaurant quality eggplant parmesan with linguine...  it was delicious.  I'm ready for bed now...  well before 8pm...   PS...  this blog entry is entitled "One Test Sidewall" because this first wall is a bit of a test to check the appe

We've had a problem with bears in our garbage so I designed a trash shed that is, hopefully, bear-proof.  I dug out the area a week or so ago then we had days upon days of rain that delayed the project.  Then yesterday, we started building.   I hope to get a little more accomplished today but the hard part is done.   The only part of the build that is a bit fuzzy in my head is how to latch the front doors.  It needs to be easy to access for us yet impossible for a bear to open.  I'll figure something out once I get the doors built, I'm sure.

Every evening, Kenzie (usually Lukey too) will call Gee on our Alexa devices.  During last night's conversation, she was a bit more animated than usual so I quickly picked up my camera and shot a few photos of her...   I have to say that these Echo Show Amazon devices were a good idea.  These devices make it easy to stay close even though we may not see each other in person for a week or so.  Of course, we also have all sorts of other uses for this Show...  our calendar, recipes, music, news, timers, alarms, notifications, even asking Alexa to add something to our shopping list.   Uncle Adam has an Echo Show also so we keep in contact with him in California as well.  Actually, we had Nan and Pop over for dinner this past weekend and while we were all at the table, we simply looked over at the Echo Show and said, "Alexa, call Adam" , and we had a little virtual visit with him while Nan and Pop were here.   Anyway, it is nice hearing from Lukey and Kenzie and actua

After I did a little bit of work on the telescope pier the other day, the weather was too good to pass up doing some work on our decks.  They were in desperate need of sanding and staining since I had skipped a couple of years due to spending far too much time at the hospital (Sheila's cancer).  The weather was ideal...  sunny and warm but not too warm...  so I pulled out the belt sander and some sanding belts and jumped right into sanding everything that needed to be stained. Everything that needed to be stained was filthy and needed to be cleaned first.  It turns out that using the belt sander was the easiest way of cleaning.  Plus, this allowed me to smooth out the old decks a little bit too.  I grabbed my largest brush, stirred up the stain, and started staining.  The following morning, I added the second coat of stain... After two days of drying under the sun, we had a day of solid rain and some localized flooding.  The deck now has nice beads of water sitting on top ra

I got a little more accomplished on the metal telescope pier adapter.  Today, I drilled holes for 1/2 inch stainless steel bolts (running thread, actually) which will be used to enable fine leveling of the mount.   At this point, I'm running out of oil for keeping the drill bits cool while drilling.  I only have about five more holes to drill...  and two of those holes will require tapping...  maybe I do need some more oil.  We'll see...  The drilling went well.  I was left with two pairs of four holes perfectly aligned with each other.  I will have 1/2" stainless steel threaded rod in these holes.  The running thread will separate the two halves of the adapter...  top and bottom...  about four inches apart...  and stainless steel nuts will allow me to level this adapter.   Here is the top of the telescope pier...  this metal adapter will bolt directly to this wooden top plate through the four holes around the circle scribed into the wood.  The two diagonal l

I've had a couple of busy days.   I started off yesterday by doing some woodworking.  I needed to make the wood top to the telescope pier.  This wood top will then be topped with an all metal universal adapter which still needs some machining.  Yesterday was all woodworking though.  I started working in the kitchen on the kitchen table since the drill press was already inside the house and I didn't want to risk inflaming my spinal injuries by carrying the heavy drill press outside if I didn't need to do so.  The kitchen table is a nice height for working so I placed some newspaper down on the table to protect it and then placed the drill press on top of the table.  This project quickly proved to be too messy to continue in the kitchen so I reluctantly moved everything out to the backyard.   I had a series of holes to drill in two pre-cut pieces of poplar.  In the end, I needed four slots in each board...  larger slots in one, smaller slots in the other.  First, I h

Sheila and I both have some issues with cholesterol plus additional dietary restrictions due to our own health problems so we've been fairly careful about what we eat in recent months.  Well, that is not entirely true.  We both have had dietary restrictions for years but now we have both added the high cholesterol dietary restrictions and limitations.   On the positive side, neither one of us has an appetite like when we were younger so cutting some stuff out of our diet has not been much of a problem.  We often can split a single dinner.  Eating less is not a problem for either one of us.   I've had significant dietary restrictions for about 15 years and, as a side effect of that and my health problems, I've been eating far less.  Adding in some cholesterol restrictions or limitations really isn't much of a change, to be honest.   Tonight, however, was something unusual for us...  a dinner without any meat whatsoever!  I'm big on balanced meals that include m