Scattered Thoughts . . .

T he weather was generally lousy while Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for a few weeks.  We didn't have many rainy days of solid rain but we had a lot of dark days with intermittent rain.  One particular day was indeed a solid rainy morning so we set up Lukey's trains in the kitchen while Gee worked from her home office.   Due to the pandemic, we converted our "train room" into Sheila's home office so we had to find another place to run Lukey's trains since Gee was working from home while Lukey and Kenzie stayed with us.   We cleared off the kitchen table and set his HO scale layout on the table.  That actually worked far better than I thought it would!  The layout hung off the end of the kitchen table but the layout itself was solid enough to handle the weight of the trains without the support of the table under the last foot of one end of the layout.  Having the train set on a table was far more comfortable than running them while the layout is placed

K enzie sort of inherited a small lot of China dolls a few weeks ago.  These dolls needed a bit of attention so Kenzie and Gee went to work on them a couple of weeks ago.  First, Kenzie chose the dolls she liked the most out of the small lot of dolls.  I believe she chose about half of the dolls for various reasons.  These were some nice looking dolls! Then it was time to evaluate their condition to see what needed to be corrected.  All of the dolls needed some cleaning and some airing-out.  Hair needed to be cleaned and brushed.  Clothes were hand-washed.  Even Papa was asked to fix one China doll's figure skates.  I had a gel cyanoacrylate glue that worked perfectly for gluing the figure skate blades back to the white upper boots.   This little project gave Kenzie some one-on-one time with Gee.  Plus, these are things that Kenzie adores...  dolls.  She was pretty excited.  In the end, Kenzie went home with a nice selection of China dolls.  

O ne of my latest projects has been to install rainbarrels to collect rain water coming off the roof.  We use this water to water all our flower gardens and potted flowers.  I also use it for the lawn.  This free water allows our house to look like a colorful and lush flowering oasis. I had actually purchased the rainbarrels last summer.  Unfortunately, one of them arrived with a fast leak in the barrel itself around the spigot valve so that rainbarrel sat around empty until this season.  I set them up on a stand anyway, rearranged the downspout off the gutter so it will fill the rainbarrels with rain water, plumbed both rainbarrels, and then attacked the leaking problem first thing this spring.   My first attempt at fixing the leaking rainbarrel last summer was a failure.  Finding the right adhesive to seal these barrels was a problem.  After my first failure, I ordered a tube of roofing cement and a small sheet of black acrylic.  First thing this spring, I cut the acrylic to fit over

W e went on a lunchtime cruise on Lake Champlain the other day with Lukey and Kenzie.  The lunch was good, the weather was beautiful, the cruise was nice and relaxing, and we had a great time! As always, I shot many photos but I suppose I should now say that we shot many photos.  Lukey and Kenzie may have shot as many photos as I did this time out.  They are shooting more and more photos as they get older and they captured a few great photos on this day.  Another plus with them shooting more and more photos with my cameras is that I end up with photos of myself too which never used to happen when I was the only one shooting photos! Until I find the time and energy to write more with more photos of our cruise, here are a select few of photos from our cruise the other day.  And, I should point out that all of these photos in this blog entry were shot by Lukey and Kenzie...

L ukey hasn't had any formal lessons on piano, but he is improving by leaps and bounds each time I sit down at the piano with him.  For the past couple of weeks, we've been working on a Hoagy Carmichael piece that just about everybody knows...  "Heart and Soul".   We worked on this piece only a few minutes every other day but that was enough for Lukey to learn it.  Lukey practiced his bass part whenever he could fit in some time at the piano.  He did very, very well and he took direction exceptionally well!   This morning, we kicked the girls out of the living room/kitchen area and set up a camera so we could do a quick recording of this duet standard.  After about 12 takes, we finally had a good one which made both of us happy...  finally!   Edit:  Lukey didn't really realize what I was talking about whenever I mentioned that recording is more difficult than simply performing.  You become acutely aware of every little mistake and then you become more cautious whi

L ukey and I played on the new putting green a couple of days early last week.  We had a great time and were looking forward to spending time "Pitching and Putting" more often.  Unfortunately, the putting green took a bit of a nosedive so we haven't been using the putting green at all.  Well...  we haven't been using the putting green for golf.  I've been busy working on trying to revive the new putting green. In order to choose the right remedy, I needed to figure out what went wrong.  This was a bit of a problem because I really only had a bunch of guesses on what went wrong.  Let's list them... 1.  We used the putting green too soon before the new grass had time to mature and become hardier.   2.  Maybe my new putting green had a disease. 3.  Perhaps I didn't keep it moist enough once we started using it. 4.  Or the opposite...  perhaps I had some root rot and I had been watering it too much.   5.  Maybe the pH wasn't right for this type of grass. 6

W henever the grandkids are staying with us, we try to do a weekly weenie roast followed by S'mores over a fire in the backyard.  Of course, the weather must cooperate and, naturally, the weather has been rather lousy this past week for the kids' first week here with us.  Fortunately, we managed to have a weenie roast on a rather chilly, damp but dry evening under overcast skies.  The fire definitely helped keep us warm even though it was a bit chilly.  And, regardless of a little bit of dampness and chilliness, we had a nice meal and a really nice time! The hot dogs roasted over the fire were delicious and I made some New York Deli-style potato salad to go along with them.  I don't make that potato salad often enough!   Here are a few photos from the evening (photos shot mostly by Lukey and Kenzie this time) followed by a very short video...

W henever Lukey stays with us we will play catch whenever the weather permits.  We had a couple of nice weather days so we threw a baseball back and forth on each day.  Most of our time was spent playing golf on the new putting green in the backyard though.  I'll write more about that another time.   While Lukey and I were throwing a baseball, Kenzie was busy in the playhouse.  She was doing a spring cleaning to get the playhouse ready for summer.  She wiped off all the accumulated dirt and pollen and vacuumed up all the spider webs and debris.  I haven't peaked into the playhouse yet but I am sure it is looking good.   Below is a short video of Lukey and me.  We decided to do something different by shooting some video of ourselves.  At the end of the video is a short outtake...  I had an annoying Deer Fly biting my legs, over and over, until I eventually squashed it against the top of my sneaker.  This outtake is a full minute of me trying to put an end to this relentless atta

L ukey and Kenzie arrived yesterday to stay with us for a couple of weeks.  It was a nice first day with them and they were greeted with a nice surprise when they arrived...  waiting in the yard were two new bicycles!  They had outgrown their old bicycles so Gee and Papa purchased two size-appropriate bicycles.  Needless to say, they were pretty excited so this was their first activity of the day.  Actually, they did a lot of riding... Kenzie arrived at the house wearing sandals but she changed into sneakers immediately so she could ride her new bike... While I was waiting for Lukey and Kenzie to make a lap past our house, I decided to shoot a photo of the house... I think Lukey was a bit torn between riding his new bike and playing golf.  After some initial bike riding, Lukey and I spent a lot of time pitching with a wedge onto the green and then putting on the green.  Lukey even got a hole-in-one once! After a short while, I realized that we needed to do some groundskeeping so I pull

K enzie has been participating in Girls on the Run this school year.  Girls on the Run is a program that is designed to build confidence and character.  As a part of this program, she has been training after school for a 5K run.  Each of the girls can have a running partner so she asked Gee if she would like to do the run with her and, of course, Gee wanted to do this 5K run the moment Kenzie asked her.   Unfortunately, running had been a bit of a problem for Gee.  She was getting some pain in her joints whenever she ran so she had stopped running and replaced the running with walking and yoga.  Gee started training for the 5K run right away anyway by starting very slowly.  Then, Gee had some possible heart problems that were picked up by her fitness smart watch.  We quickly scheduled a few appointments with the appropriate doctors and, fortunately, Gee was cleared for a 5K run with Kenzie.   (After some tests, we found that the possible heart problems were not worth mentioning.  What