Scattered Thoughts . . .

Early last week was quite lousy as far as my health goes.  I was down doing absolutely nothing for three days.  As the week progressed, I started to feel a bit more like myself.  By Friday, I was feeling better than I had in recent memory.  Unfortunately, that was short lived, very short lived, as it usually is.   Feeling as good as I was, I actually did think that maybe my health was about to crash.  This is the usual thing for me.  I feel better than I have in a long while and then, usually within hours, my health suddenly plunges into anaphylaxis.  This time I felt really good through Thursday, then even better on Friday...  I must have been feeling pretty good on Saturday because I don't remember any remarkable problems.  I think I was thinking that with all the extra medications I took earlier in the week, I should be feeling better than I have in quite a while so I sort of pushed this old pattern out of my thoughts.   I'm still hobbling around with my knee injury.  Even t

I had mentioned in a previous blog entry that I had a photo of Kenzie from nine years ago that shows the same expression I captured on Ace last week.  I went digging for that old photo this morning. Here is Kenzie at four months old in 2012... And, here is Ace at two months old in 2021 with the same expression in the same living room...  Although there are distinct differences in their facial features, the expressions are the same.  Even more interesting is that I vividly remember this particular afternoon with Kenzie nine years ago.  When I saw Ace with the same expression, it immediately brought me back to 2012. I thought this was worth sharing here so here it is!

A s I am laid up with a bad knee...  oh yeah...  I don't think I wrote that I have a pair of crutches now.  I got tired of being set back to Day 1 of recovery every time we went grocery shopping or if I walked across our lawn so I broke down and ordered a pair of crutches so I can keep most of my weight off my right knee.   I don't use the crutches around the house but I do need them whenever we leave the house.  Leaving the house means a lot more walking than I do inside our house.  I haven't cut the lawn in about a month now because the last time I cut the lawn, I was set back to Day 1 again.  I definitely do not want to be set back to Day 1 of recovery yet again so it was time to be a bit more careful and allow my knee more time to heal before testing it.  The year is actually coming to a close and I started this year with an ankle injury which lead to this knee injury on the opposite leg.   This has been one of the most miserable years in my life already as far as my he

O ur living room wall clock has been an intermittent problem for months and it finally bit the dust about a month ago.  So, we were on an internet search for a better clock.   There was a beautiful clock at Monticello that is sold as a reproduction that both Sheila and I really liked.  I've mentioned this before in this blog but I should mention it again here in this blog entry that I have always been fascinated by Thomas Jefferson and his Monticello homestead.  I even studied this historic home design while in college as an engineering student.  I like Monticello's fusion of old European, French Provincial and Early American styles.  One could also argue that Monticello has many Craftsman features and details as well.  These are all styles I am fusing together in our own home.   So, finding a wall clock at the Monticello gift shop was a plus and we both really liked this clock.  The problem was that I had never spent more than about $40 for a clock in my life and this clock co

S ometimes, when Sheila or the grandkids are observing the sky with me, I can't help but think that having two telescopes mounted side-by-side would make things a bit easier.  For years, I've been saying that I'll put together a piece of hardware to allow me to do this but I never got around to it.  I could always set up two complete telescopes with two complete mounts but that is a lot more work.  Plus, then I would be going back and forth between the two mounts making sure they are both centered on the object we are observing.  A way to mount two telescopes side-by-side, tracking together on the same mount, would be a bit easier.   Well, while I was laid up with my knee injury (I'm still mostly laid up with this knee injury), I was doing some internet surfing looking at astronomy parts.  I found a source for a nice heavy duty dovetail mounting plate that would be perfect for this assembly and I already knew I had a good source for two saddles.  I ordered all three pa

I 'm still mending a sprained MCL in my right knee so I'm still not really accomplishing much on my To-Do list.  Every now and then, however, I feel halfway decent and am able to jump into a small little project at the kitchen table.  This still needs to be short because I need to keep changing positions...  no sitting for a long period of time, no standing for a long period of time.  This keeps the size of these occasional projects on the very small side.  Plus, the longer I work on any project, the more likely I am to do something stupid with my knee.  The last thing I want at this point is to be set back to square one yet again.   I have this old Celestron 70mm refractor telescope that, in recent years, I adapted to a different type of mount.  In order to do that upgrade, I needed to remove a bunch of mounting hardware that was bolted through the optical tube.  This hardware wasn't needed and was in the way of the new mounting cradle rings and dovetail bar so most of the

L iza had an appointment yesterday so she stopped by our house before the appointment to drop Ace off here so he could spend some time with Gee and Papa.  Gee took a few hours off from work and emerged from her home office so she could take full advantage of this opportunity.   As with just about all babies, Ace immediately took notice of the camera clicking away a few feet from his face.  This is actually a good thing because it makes it very easy to keep their attention for a short while.  Since the camera has their attention, they also will naturally look directly at the camera as the shutter is clicking away.  The other great thing about photographing newborns is that they don't dart around and scurry about in fast unpredictable directions like a toddler does.   Although these photo sessions with newborns can be pretty easy to accomplish, time is extremely limited so you need to have a plan and move quickly.  Within minutes, hunger, pooping and naptime happens and then everythi

A bit more time has passed so I thought I should write a bit.  I haven't been writing much lately simply because I am accomplishing nothing each day...  well...  weekly...  hmmm...  monthly...  okay, pretty much for the whole of 2021.  I actually long for 2020 again.   I'm still laid up with a sprained knee.  To refresh, I started 2021 with an ankle injury.  I couldn't even put the smallest amount of weight on my ankle for weeks.  Within about four months, I was back to trying to build up my muscles around the injury.  Unfortunately, all that time off my left leg and consequently hobbling around on my right leg caused some problems with my right leg and, more specifically, my right knee.  I am fairly certain I have sprained my right MCL. By June, I was able to get around again.  I was playing soccer with Lukey and Kenzie daily.  I still had some pain and I continued wearing a brace but I seemed to be recovering nicely.  It was a long recovery but it was looking like the wor

This past week or so has been rather miserable for me.  Pain has been my primary complaint followed by overwhelming fatigue coming in a close second. I am still off my feet most of the time   due to aggravating my knee injury while cutting the lawn last Friday.  The swelling is still slowly receding but my knee is not yet anywhere near ready to jump back into getting anything accomplished while on my feet.  I limp to the bathroom then limp back to the couch.   I'm doing a lot of sleeping...  well...  some sleeping and a lot of tossing and turning.  The pain is keeping me from sleeping all that well.  At this point, the lawn needs cutting again but I know my knee cannot handle that yet without making my knee worse...  again. My spinal pain is worse than usual but that really isn't unexpected since I'm not moving around as much as I should.  I'm also not doing any of my usual daily physical therapy because I'm staying off my knee.  The spinal pain gets so bad that bre

I am typing this blog entry as I lie on the couch with my leg elevated and an ice pack on my right knee...  again.   I cut the lawn on Friday.  The lawn was long because I skipped a week (it was too hot and humid for two weeks for me to manage to get anything accomplished outdoors) so I needed two passes on most of the lawn but, even so, it seemed like a pretty easy job since the heat and humidity had broken.  I had absolutely no problems until my last couple of passes on the last section of lawn where I must have turned a little carelessly and twisted my right knee a bit.  All of a sudden, I could no longer put any weight on my right leg without a lot of pain.  I finished the lawn while limping along and then put everything away.  Usually I will water all the gardens after cutting the lawn but I skipped that this time around and went directly inside hoping my knee would feel better after sitting for a while. Unfortunately, since that time, I've been spending most of my time on the