OOOPS! It's Been Almost Two Weeks....!

 Just been busy, and haven't felt like posting. So much for my "try and post at least every three days" commitment. Oh, well....

The last two days have been fabulous; bright, sunny skies, moderate winds, and temps in the low 60's. I even got the garage swept out in preparation for Spring Cleaning! Hopefully this is a sign that Spring is rapidly approaching. I expect two more snows before the season is over. Usually one of them is heavy, wet snow that breaks branches and things, and the other one is a "Nuisance Level" storm.

This morning opened up overcast and drizzly, but it quit raining around 1600. Radar shows there's still a lot of rain out there, and some of it looks intense, due East of Denver, out towards the state line, but I don't think we'll get anymore tonight.

Work continues on the Heathkit transmitter, and I've taken pix of the work. Which has led me back down the Camera Rabbit Hole in search of a Nikon Macro lens. I have some excellent Nikon "General Purpose" lenses, and a couple of killer telephoto lenses, but nothing for close-up work, which is what Macro lenses excel at. I'll probably be getting one of these, a Nikon "AF-S FX Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8G ED" lens, which seems to best fit using the selection guides on several websites, and my intended use. This one has some "ED" glass elements in it, which is to correct for chromatic (color) aberration, the blue and yellow fringing some lens designs produce out towards their edges. And it's an f/2.8, which means it has a very narrow Depth of Field wide open. This means it's very good at keeping the main subject is perfect focus, while softly blurring the background/foreground. It really makes the subject pop out of the picture. I can't get close enough sometimes with the lenses I have to get the subject to fill the frame, and this will allow that. They also work very well for portrait photography, so I'll get some Really Good Pix of The Little Guy this year.

 

And speaking of which, he celebrated birthday #4 last Saturday! We had a small gathering, and there was pizza, ice cream, and CAKE! A splendid time was had by all.

He's now gone through his "Paw Patrol" phase and moved on to Super Heroes. Sooooo, all the Paw Patrol toys have been packed away in a YUGE Rubbermaid Roughneck bin, and the former "Paw Patrol Room" is now the "Avengers Room". Yes, redecorating is involved. And seeing as the bedrooms are on the second floor here, and the basement storage area is in the basement (duh), I get 5 flights of cardio exercise with each round trip! Sweet Little Wife is now in the middle stages of planning for when grandchild #5 arrives. TLG's current bedroom is the smallest in the house, and with a little brother/sister coming, she's thinking of making the current Avengers Room into their bedroom, and reverting the smaller, middle bedroom to her use. So we're prowling Nextdoor.com and craigslist for some kid's furnishings.

 And he's discovered the Lego kits of various Super Hero vehicles and "accessories". These seem to be based on the hugely popular Lego Movies that people of a certain age group are fascinated by. These kits aren't your Father's Lego kits! They're much more akin to the "Snap Together" model cars of my youth. They use Lego-style pins and recesses to snap together, but there are many, many custom molded pieces for each kit, although most of the kits have common parts, usually molded in a different color.

I built this one last night, a Lego "Ironman Mech Suit", your basic Armored Fighting Suit.

And the assembled product. This is where a Macro lens shines. This was a close as I could focus, with my 18~70mm zoom lens all the way out to 70mm.

 It came in three bags of parts, and took about 30 minutes per bag to assemble. The front "breastplate" hinges down so you can put Tony at the controls, as shown above, but I'm sure Jarvis could run it remotely if requested.

I've also built the Lego Spiderman car, but I'm not sure where it is right now, maybe upstairs.

Yes, the probability of my stepping on a Lego piece in the dark, while barefoot, has gone up exponentially the last two weeks! TLG is very good about putting his stuff away. "Grandma's House = Grandma's Rules" works very well with him, and he has specific play areas where this stuff is allowed. But I'm sure there's a piece out there with my name on it. It might not be here yet, but it's out there.....

Hope y'all have a great upcoming weekend!