Scattered Thoughts . . .

I had no problems falling asleep last night.  I was dozing off by 8pm.  I awoke at 4:30am this morning when I tried to roll over onto my right side.  I was quickly reminded that the bone marrow biopsy was on my right side though so that woke me up suddenly.   I read in bed for a bit and then got up out of bed with Sheila when she got up for work at just before 6am.  However, I was unable to keep my eyes open by 8am and slept on the couch until just before noon (on my left side, of course).   I didn't even eat anything for breakfast because I was too exhausted to make anything.  I was originally planning to make some bacon and French toast because I was starving.  Due to a serious lack of energy, I changed my breakfast plan to just having a bagel with cream cheese.  I still didn't have the energy to make even that.  Instead, I grabbed a couple pillows from the bedroom and laid down on the couch.  I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow and didn't get up until almost n

W hat I realized very quickly yesterday during my third bone marrow biopsy is that the brain does a great job at blocking out most of our most painful experiences.  I thought   I was accurately remembering my two previous bone marrow biopsies quite well but I was sort of fooled by my brain doing what it does best...  adapting and protecting us.   As the doctor was digging deeper and deeper into my pelvis yesterday and the pain was getting unbelievably unbearable, a lot of my memories that I had completely forgotten from my previous bone marrow biopsies came flooding back in vivid detail. Apparently, the brain adapts to pain.  I've noticed this with my extensive spinal injuries as well as my everyday bone pain caused by my primary illness.  Honestly, for the most part, I don't really notice this constant chronic pain anymore.  It just sort of simmers there in the background.  I don't even remember what it is like to be pain-free.  I'm in significant pain everyday but my

O ver the past few days, I've been doing some periodic maintenance on my cameras and lenses.  Of course, this involved shooting some test images.  These images are really nothing special but I figured I would share a few of them here anyway.  All of these particular images are straight out of the camera with no extra processing.  (EDIT:  The last two photos did  require a bit of extra processing for the reasons mentioned at each photo.) This first photo was shot using my newest-to-me compact camera, a Fujifilm X30.  I like the background separation I can get with this very tiny compact camera.  It produces very sharp images as well.  This is my O scale trolley...   My recently purchased large scale trolley is up next.  Most people refer to it as a G scale model but, although I haven't taken any measurements of this trolley yet, I think it is an F scale trolley.  It is significantly larger than the trolley pictured above.  This photo, below, was shot using my Panasonic G3 at a

A fter my periodic camera sensitivity testing this morning in the infrared wavelengths, I pulled out one of my oldest digital cameras to shoot some snowscapes. As often is the case when I don't feel well enough to head outside, these images were shot through our open living room window because I didn't have the energy to dress for the winter weather outdoors.  For these photos, I used my Olympus E-500 with it's Kodak CCD sensor from way back in 2005.   This camera is nothing special but the Kodak CCD sensor is special which is the only reason why I continue to hang on to this camera.  The camera likes to clip highlights which is really frustrating.  I'm constantly applying a lot of negative exposure compensation to keep the highlights under control.  Also, I have found that the Olympus cameras don't auto-focus well on items with a lot of specular highlights like ice and wet snow in the sun.  These images came out fairly well though.   I shot in monochrome with a red

I've wanted to get into monochrome infrared imaging for quite a while but this has been one of those projects that keeps getting pushed to the back burner because it wasn't a priority.  Photographing in infrared is challenging with a very unique and distinctive look.  One of the reasons why I seem to keep pushing infrared photography to the back burner is that environmental and weather conditions must be "just right" for infrared imaging to work well.  You need the right weather conditions, the right environmental conditions, and the right scene for infrared photography.  You also need to use a tripod and infrared filters.  Just getting one good image can require many minutes of getting everything just right and then actually capturing a long exposure image. The first step toward getting involved in this type of imaging, however, was to see which of my camera bodies were best for this type of imaging.  I finally accomplished this over the past two days. This wasn'

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