Scattered Thoughts . . .

B ack in January, my primary care doctor referred me to the University of Vermont for some skin cancer on the side of my head.  At the time, I had all sorts of other significant medical problems including, but not limited to, an upcoming bone marrow biopsy so the skin cancer was pretty much forgotten or, at least, put on the back burner.  I had much more immediate problems including ongoing anaphylaxis and significant breathing problems so the skin cancer referral seemed insignificant at the time.   In the past month or two, we noticed that this growth of skin cancer has grown significantly so it was immediately put on the front burner again. Last week during my last medical appointment, when my primary care doctor found that I had not yet seen a doctor for the skin cancer she immediately looked to see what happened with her referral way back in January.  She noticed that the referral was indeed put into the online portal but it just sat there.  The specialist's office at UVM never

S heila and I spent a good part of this past holiday weekend cleaning up the outside of the house.  The rain finally stopped for Labor Day weekend after an entire summer of daily rain and dark overcast skies.  We spent almost the entire summer indoors sheltered from the terrible weather. This past weekend, we washed all the windows, inside and out.  We cleaned screens.  I even cleaned mold, algae and mildew off one side of our house including the oil tank and gas tank.  The amount of moisture we've had this summer seemed to cover everything in filthy growth, some black, some green, some very crusty.  I also did some landscaping and Sheila did some gardening attending to our remaining flowers.  The gardens are still looking pretty good for this time of year even though they got very little sun through the summer! While I was cleaning windows on the back side of the house, I noticed that our neighbor's lawn is completely covered in leaves already!  Even though the temperature and

A fter using the new Alexa-enabled dimmer light switch for the train room for a few days, I still wasn't completely happy with the lingering potential for future train car disasters on these shelves.  As I mentioned in previous blog entries, when people would reach into the shelves to access the light switch that was mounted flush on the wall inside these shelves, they would sometimes snag or bump a locomotive and the locomotive would come crashing down to the hardwood floor resulting in significant damage to the locomotive(s).   I added an extra shelf immediately below the switch to help mitigate where the arm could swing as well as adding a voice controlled Alexa-enabled dimmer switch but I wasn't convinced this was enough.  After using this new configuration for a few days, I decided I should extend the switch box outward a bit to play it safe.  This would move the dimmer switch closer to the front of these display shelves so people wouldn't have to reach into the shelve

A fter five or six half days of cutting, sanding and painting shelves, on Saturday morning, I got started right away on installing these new shelves.   I  started installing at the top shelf and worked my way down the wall installing one shelf at a time.  I had to refine the shape of a couple of the shelves with the belt sander so they fit the wonky wall perfectly but, other than that, this job went relatively quickly.  The only casualty is a long drill bit that ended up bent at sharp angles in two places.  (Hmmm...  I'm not sure I ordered a new set of long drill bits yet...)   Now, when you enter this room, there are display shelves on both sides of the door.  These new shelves can be hidden safely behind the open door to the room.  I might even add a latch to keep that door secured to the shelves when I don't want curious little fingers and hands near my fragile trains.  The new shelves can be seen in the photo below.   After completing these shelves, I spent an entire aftern

S ometime back about seven or eight years ago, I installed a new hardwood floor in one of our bedrooms to be used "temporarily" as a multi-purpose room until we get further along in our renovations.  This room is slated to be the "train room" when we eventually finish playing musical chairs with bedrooms and renovations.  It actually is more like playing that numbered tiles game where you slide the numbered tiles to get them in numerical order.  In order to renovate one room, we need to move a few tiles out of place to make room for the appropriate tile.  Our numbers are still quite scrambled here for a variety of reasons though so this room is still a multi-purpose room.   So about seven years ago, I built a walk-in closet, repaired the walls and ceiling, painted the room, installed a hardwood floor and baseboard trim.  After I installed the hardwood floor over the subfloor, I built some display shelves right next to the door to the room.  My plan was to neatly sto

I had a medical appointment today to discuss my medications as well as some of my more bothersome current health problems especially my ongoing breathing issues.  The appointment went well, I suppose, and we added a new medication in an attempt to get my breathing issues under control.  I have another follow-up appointment in a month to see if there has been any improvement in my breathing. So, the main thing today was about my continued breathing issues.  Since my last bout of COVID, my breathing has been terrible.  I seem to be slowly...  very slowly...  improving but this has been a significant and debilitating problem for the past eight months. Consequently, I have been using my rescue inhaler two to three times every day.  My doctor would like to get this use down to no more than twice each week so I'll be starting on a corticosteroid inhaler, taken twice a day, as soon as my pharmacy can fill the prescription.   The general consensus is that my last bout of COVID has affected

S ince Sheila is back working from home for the foreseeable future again due to the devastating flooding in Montpelier, she decided we need to do something about her office chair.  She's been using an upholstered side chair since the beginning of the pandemic but she found that chair uncomfortable and it was bothering her back so it was time to do something about finding her a more comfortable chair. We briefly looked at options for a "standing desktop" but those would raise her monitors too much when in the sitting position at her desk so we nixed that idea rather quickly.   We were back to trying to decide on a new office chair that Sheila would find comfortable.  It didn't matter whether nine out of ten people found a particular chair comfortable.  We needed to find one that Sheila finds comfortable.  Buying online is our primary option here in Vermont and has been for decades.  The choices locally are extremely slim and always have been.  This applies to just abou

I was relocating some stuff that was behind a door in the train room so I can build and install some shelves on that wall.  One of these items was a panoramic photo print of Lake Champlain looking toward the Adirondack Mountains so I hung that on the wall next to the desk.  There was a Christmas sign that we put outside in winter that I moved to our storage closet (even though it will need to go outside soon).  And, there was a chalkboard that I had written our rules for the lake house.  I'm the one who wrote these rules on the chalkboard and I drew an image of the lake house on it too.  It came out fairly well although I wish the lettering was a bit more legible.  I actually like this idea and I even still think the rules are quite appropriate so I don't want to lose this chalkboard.  Actually, I should make another board with more permanent lettering for our backyard too!   Hmmm...  maybe even a smaller one for inside our home too. We haven't used this chalkboard with th

A s usual for this summer, it rained part of the day yesterday and was dark and dreary for much of the afternoon.  For brief periods, however, the sky did clear up nicely.  I was keeping a close eye on the weather and the sky yesterday because I was hoping that the night would be clear so I could get outside to watch and image the Perseid Meteor Shower.   August 11th and 12th were supposed to be the peak of the meteor shower but it rained quite a bit on those days.  We've seen very little night sky this summer and the 11th and 12th were no different.  I got a little lucky last night, however, so I was able to get some shots between fast moving clouds. Once we got dinner out of the way...  we had some delicious pork street tacos which consisted of a liberally seasoned pork loin that was slow-cooked on the grill until it was mouth-wateringly tender and then glazed with a homemade sweet and salty sauce, sauteed onions, and chopped grilled pineapple with a homemade spicy Mexican white