Scattered Thoughts . . .

I 've been trying to keep up with moving snow each day this week.  Winter finally arrived here in our neck of the woods and we are finally seeing some snowfall.   The snow this morning is deep and exceptionally heavy.  We're trying to dig out as quickly as we can because Lukey has a state championship hockey game at 1pm today.   Getting to the game depends on two things...  digging out the car...  and my health after digging out...  I've been moving snow almost every day this week.  Most days I've had to move about four inches of mostly light snow.  Yesterday or the day before was about eight inches of snow that needed to be moved...  that is from our driveway, pathways around the house including to the oil tank and gas tank, and removing snow from the roof.  Today was clearly a minimum of 12 inches of wet heavy snow...  more in some spots, less in others.  Most important is removing the snow off the roof when it is heavy and over about six inches.  The biggest problem

Our new refrigerator arrived today, as scheduled, so that is a bit of good news during perhaps the worst start of any new year in my life.   The furnace broke down in the middle of the night in late January and now needs to be replaced.  The refrigerator broke down and needed to be replaced because it was beyond repair.  Sheila's mom is in the hospital with a fractured spine, Alheimer's, and now COVID.  Sheila's dad also now has COVID.  I spent some time in the hospital and I need to head back to the hospital next week for a bone marrow biopsy.  My health is still rather poor with continued problems that had landed me in the hospital about a month and a half ago.  It really has been a miserable start to the new year. Just as I finished shoveling the deck and snowblowing in preparation of this refrigerator delivery, the truck pulled up to the house.  That was perfect timing since it was still snowing fairly heavily.  If they had arrived later in the day I would have had to d

I think I had previously written that our big, high end and relatively new refrigerator (I think almost six years old) bit the dust late last week.  The icemaker was defective and has been a problem for a few years and that ended up frying our compressor.  There was also some other damage to another part that is not replaceable.  In the end, Sheila and I ordered a far lower end refrigerator which is scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday.   We had to compromise quite a bit in our selection of a new refrigerator.  There are not too many choices when you need a refrigerator as soon as possible.  The pandemic has put a hurt on the market as well so inventory is far lower than normal too.   As we wait for our new refrigerator to arrive, we moved all of our salvageable frozen meat to a cooler and secured it outside in the sub-freezing temperature.  We moved all of our refrigerated items to an unheated storage closet in our back hallway.  Fortunately, this happened during the winter.  If it w

I am still working on learning all I can about my new-to-me classic digital camera, the Fujifilm X30.  Each day I'm learning a bit more...  mostly good but I'm also finding its limitations.  No matter the tool, you must always know that tool's limitations and cameras are no exception.  Finding this camera's limitations is a good thing.  I want to know its limitations. I've saved seven custom profiles that I might prefer in various situations and environments.  I still need to get out to test these custom profiles but I now have a starting point for each.  One of the things that makes Fujifilm cameras so desirable to many photographers is the amount of customization you can do to each shot.  There is an uncharacteristically wide choice in choosing the perfect dynamic range, color, sharpness, shadows, highlights, noise reduction and white balance.  This camera provides more control for shifting the white balance than any other camera I have ever used whch is incredib

The start to 2023 has been absolutely horrible and the next few months, at the very least, already promise to be just as stressful and rather miserable. Sheila's mom, known as Nan in many other blog entries here, has been struggling with Alzheimer's Disease for about four years now.  Over the past few months...  hmmm, I think it has been since summer...  she had dipped into end-stage Alzheimer's and is now in the hospital with a fractured spine and in the worst condition she has ever been in to date.   I'm not going to go into specifics here but this has been incredibly stressful for the rest of her family as one would expect.  She has been hospitalized for a couple of weeks at this point and I'd say she is just "surviving" now or "holding on"...  not "living" like we all try to do but just surviving one moment to the next. This is sort of like the body being on autopilot.  So, the past couple of months have been terribly rough for Shei

I 'm still familiarizing myself with my new-to-me Fuji X30 compact camera and thought I should write a bit more about this really amazing little camera and especially Fuji's Camera Remote app. Over the years, I've recommended this camera to quite a few people who were mostly beginners with very little photography experience.  This can be a great camera for those who know little about photography yet it produces some stunning images.  Unfortunately, I don't think anyone ever went ahead and purchased this camera after asking for my advice (I could write a book about all the times I was asked for advice and then they did not heed that advice instead often going for something I would never purchase for myself nor recommend under any circumstances) but, I can now say with complete honesty, that this recommendation of mine was a solid one.   Even today, nine years after this camera was first released, I would still recommend this camera to someone who wants a small, easy to u

I had written in a previous blog entry that Kenzie and I did a mini photo session this afternoon in our living room with one studio light.  The primary purpose was to do some shooting with film using her Fuji Evo Hybrid Instax camera and my Mint TL70 Instax camera so today was mostly about film cameras.    We also shot some photos with my new-to-me Fuji X30 digital camera since I'm still learning about that classic old digital camera.  I just picked up this little Fuji compact camera a few days ago but this was the first opportunity I had to shoot a few portraits.  I shot only these two photos below with the Fuji X30 and I think they turned out great.    For a compact camera with a relatively small sensor, this camera handles very well and produces some nice images.  I'm still learning how to best use this camera and its wide variety of features but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far.  I think I can get even better images with this camera with a bit more practice and tw

K enzie and I did a short mini photo session this afternoon.  She did some shooting with her Fuji Evo Hybrid Instax camera while I shot a few photos with my Mint TL70 twin lens reflex (TLR) Instax camera.  It was nice to see the side-by-side comparisons.  This blog entry is really only about my Mint TL70 though. This Mint TL70 camera is closer to being a medium format camera than a typical instant camera.  Most instant cameras have a pinhole for an aperture (or close to a pinhole) but this camera has a pretty nice lens with a manual aperture ranging from f5.6 to f22.  It captures an image right on the film so it is comparable to medium format film.   This camera has a nice lens and a huge and fairly bright waist-level viewfinder that you look down into from above.  The tonal quality of the Instax prints is really quite nice although that is not really seen accurately in photographs.  I should find a better way to show those prints on my blog because my photos of these prints are not do

Kenzie and I played around with her Fuji Evo Hybrid Instax camera today and came away with a few nice prints.  We also learned a little more about her new Instax camera that she received this past Christmas. I set up one studio light for our little photo session this afternoon.  We started with her hybrid Instax camera.  It is a "hybrid" camera because it has both digital and film capabilities.  It captures photos and saves them to a memory card in the camera.  The photos can be viewed on the rear LCD screen like most other digital cameras.  What makes this camera different is that it has Instax instant film loaded inside it too.  If you want to print a particular photo to the Instax film, then you simply crank the "print" lever which is the same sort of lever used to advance the film on old film cameras.  The image is then developed onto the Instax instant film and the photo is ejected out the side of the camera just like on the old Polaroid cameras.   I actually s

W e had plans to head out of town to Saratoga this coming weekend...  actually, tomorrow through Monday.  Lukey has a hockey tournament in Saratoga so that was our primary reason for this trip.  We also enjoy trips to the Adirondack Mountains anyway and there is a nice inn in Saratoga that we like so we immediately made reservations when we learned of the hockey tournament.   Actually, back in October, we made reservations at this inn within minutes of learning of the hockey tournament! Unfortunately, earlier in the week, I had a lousy night as well as a pretty lousy following day.  I was having great difficulty breathing again.  This was followed by some time spent in the bathroom.  The good news is that my health didn't spiral down into anaphylaxis this time but my health was lousy enough to make me want/need to stick close to home. Needless to say, I simply do not trust my health to head out of town.  The three hour car ride would likely trigger dangerous health problems.  Then