Scattered Thoughts . . .

T he additional bag of grass seed for our new putting green arrived in the mail this morning so I changed my plans and finished up preparing the putting green before lunch today.  It didn't take long to finish up that project although my spine wasn't too thrilled with this project this morning.  Walking is exceptionally painful again this evening. I loosened up the soil in the putting green first...  cleaned out a bucketful of small stones (for the third time), roots and debris...  then seeded the green with the new bag of grass seed.  I had already put down 2lbs of seed the other day but that bag only got me less than halfway across the putting green.  A 5lb bag arrived this morning which allowed me to finish the seeding job.  Since I had more than enough seed this time, I just re-seeded the entire putting green again today.   Things are starting to look good.  I put a Fescue mix down in the "rough" or "mini-pitching-fairway" adjacent to the putting green l

Wow...  it was impossible to get comfortable enough to sleep last night.  My spinal injuries were painfully and debilitatingly inflamed after all of yesterday's yardwork.  I'd say the pain was in the 8-10 range on the 10 point pain scale.  At times, the good times, the pain was only an 8.  Other times, like when I try to move, the pain was pegged at around 10 and would buckle me at the knees.   Sleeping was difficult, at best.  For a long while, I simply couldn't sleep.  I eventually found a position or two that allowed a few minutes of sleep before I would need to change positions to the other position.  This wasn't until the wee hours of the morning though.  I actually thought about just getting up out of bed around this time.  It was around 5am and, typically, I would have no problem with that.  This time, however, I was thinking that if I'm finding bed extremely painful, then the couch wouldn't be any better.  Actually, sitting on the couch before we went to

It was a productive day today...  my spinal injuries are screaming at me though and I am looking like one big question mark...  but, unfortunately, I didn't get to accomplish everything I had intended to accomplish.  It turns out that I grossly underestimated the amount of putting green grass seed that I would need.   This will set us back another week...  at least half a week...  since the seed won't arrive here until Tuesday.  I was only able to cover about 1/3 to just under 1/2 of the putting green with seed.  I guess I will finished up this project next week sometime.  I managed to change the oil in the lawn mower.  I cleaned the air filter in the lawn mower.  I cleaned under the deck of the lawn mower and noticed that the blade is cracked and actually broken.  It was a pretty even crack so I was still able to mow the lawn without any balance issues.  A new blade will arrive early next week.  I also ordered a new spark plug for the mower.   I managed to spot seed all the di

I t has been a pretty quiet week.  The weather has been lousy and my energy level has been depleted so I have mostly been resting and sleeping this week.   We had a leaking washing machine.  I quickly determined it was a leak out the front door of the washer due to gunk, grime and sliminess on the door boot seal.  I spent a day and a half resolving that problem.   First, I spent half a day manually cleaning the inside of the washing machine as well as inside all the folds of the door boot seal.  I didn't want to be too abrasive on the seal because I knew that would only cause more leaking so I carefully and methodically cleaned it up, little by little.   While I was doing that, I also ordered a new boot seal for the front door in case my efforts failed or in case this fix only lasts a short time.  Plus, I don't want to be without a washing machine for a week or two so I would prefer to have a part that I know I will need on hand for when we do need it.  That new boot seal arriv

S heila took a day of annual leave today, the weather was exceptional summertime weather, my health was better than average, and I had a surprisingly good night of sleep so Sheila and I had a very productive day today.  Everything came together, for a change, to make today a productive one! I actually had a relatively pain-free night of sleep which made for a restful night.  That is highly unusual since our first bout with COVID just over two years ago.  For some reason, my inflamed joints didn't bother me enough to keep me awake last night so that made for a better night of sleep.  I awoke this morning feeling well rested and feeling pretty good which almost never happens!   By mid-morning, we were on the road headed to Lowes to pick up some summertime landscaping and gardening items.  We picked up quite a few plants for our planters and window boxes at Lowes.  We also picked up potting soil, gravel and sand for various other landscaping projects.   We then headed to a nursery to

S heila and I spent much of the day yesterday doing some rather heavy landscaping work (heavy for us).  It was a productive day but all the work significantly impacted my health.  More on that later.  Yesterday's project was to remove grass from one area and move it to another area so we can have an extended putting green.  It is heavy physical work but it was well worth it in the end.  We want to add a better putting green in the yard, mostly for Lukey, but we also needed grass in the area in front of our trash shed at the front end of the property.  The logical answer was to remove the unneeded grass where we are making the putting green and lay it down in front of the trash shed.  I did the removing of sod while Sheila did all the laying of sod.  That worked out well.  Considering how this affected my health, it would have taken me days to accomplish this on my own.   Digging out the grass is tough work even if there are no complications.  Making this project even more difficult

When Lukey and I were using the microscope a week or so ago, I noticed a few nagging problems that needed to be resolved before I attempted another microscopy session and especially a session that included photography and/or videography.  I spent the past week or so trying to resolve these problems and thought it would be best to document it all here. My first problem was that what I was seeing on my camera (and on the 32" monitor connected to my camera) was not nearly as crisp as what I was seeing visually in the binocular eyepieces.  This was really frustrating.  I had been using my Sony a6000 camera in a prime focus configuration.  Prime focus imaging involves no additional lenses including eyepieces.  This type of imaging works very well in astronomy but I was not liking what I was getting in microscopy.  The images and video were very soft, sort of mushy, un-crisp.  They looked really terrible on the 32 inch monitor. The next problem was figuring out what I actually needed to

T his is just a short blog entry to say that Sheila and I received our COVID Booster shots again today.  This will allow us to stay as protected as possible through the summer.  I suspect we'll be getting boosters again sometime around the holidays. Sheila and I are still laying low, staying home, and being as safe as possible.  Once a week we venture out to do our grocery shopping and we always wear a mask whenever we are in public.  This won't change at all regardless of being current on our vaccines.  This virus is deadly serious and nobody yet knows how the human body will handle the long term effects of this virus.  I know that my Epstein-Barr virus has been brutal on my body.  This current virus is still an unknown but significantly more deadly than even the Epstein-Barr virus so, if this virus is anything like all other viruses, there will likely be a painful and likely lifelong health penalty to pay if you get infected. This being said, Sheila and I have already had thi

One morning while Lukey and Kenzie were with us last week, Lukey and I decided to spend some time with my microscope.  Kenzie popped in and out of the room a few times but spent most of the morning in Gee's office playing with her dollhouse as Gee worked.  Kenzie and I had a few microscopy sessions together in the past but today was Lukey's turn.  Kenzie was welcome to join us but she preferred to stick close to Gee and her dollhouse.  My desk is set up with all sorts of monitors for different tasks sort of resembling my own little Command Center and one of these monitors would be used to display what was under the microscope.  On this morning, we had one of my Sony cameras mounted on the trinocular of the microscope.  I used the binocular eyepieces for setting up each specimen.  Lukey viewed what the camera was seeing on a 32 inch monitor over my desk.  The view through the binocular eyepieces is far crisper than what is seen on the big monitor but this arrangement allowed us

L ukey and Kenzie spent a few days with us last week during their break from school.  We had a good time with them and stayed pretty busy.  Gee had to work but I spent time doing activities with them each day.   Every now and then, Lukey and I will sit at the piano for a bit to do some improvisation and we did that again last week.  There is an audio clip, below, of our spur-of-the-moment ballad duet if you prefer to skip down to that so you can listen while you read the rest of this blog entry.   Lukey is now 10 years old and, although he has never had any true structured and regular lessons, he has an interest in the piano and sits at the piano to play at our house whenever possible.  Whenever I sit at the piano to play, he is quick to come over to the armchair right next to the piano so he can watch and listen.  In this way, he kind of reminds me of my cousin William.  William always sat right next to the piano whenever I played and he was a good page-turner for me since he read mus