This Monday has turned out to be beautiful, exciting, creative, and satisfying. We did a lot of good.

The big news is that I got enough money to buy the train set for the Mansion I have been fundraising for. I got a ton of small, touching, and much-appreciated donations and a larger one that took me over the top. I’m going to Adirondack Train & Hobby on Wednesday to pick up the 60 x 40-inch set.

I have some checks that have not yet arrived, and with them, I believe I can buy some of the little people and buildings that the train will weave around. The train blows steam, has a spotlight and whistle, and the caboose lights up. The Mansion staff is working to build a wooden platform that will be a permanent home in the Great Room.

(Landscape and sky, one hour later, Q2).

I still need to buy a smaller unit of a different kind for the Memory Care Unit. I promised them their own train set.

This excellent idea by Activities Director Paryese Bates Becker has gotten the Mansion even more excited than the cats we got them a couple of months ago. Thank you all so much; this is a big deal, creative, and right on the money.   Working with the activities class, we are helping to make the Mansion a more exciting, engaging place.

They are all abuzz.

The final cost looks like $400 plus tax. Any overage, if any, will go to buying elements of the small town the train will encircle. This is an outstanding thing., I hope it will prove to be one of the best things we have done.

I also got a Paypal offering enabling me to buy Joan Chittister books on aging for everyone in my Meditation Class who wants one.

In other and more personal news, I’ve changed my mind and decided to keep my Leica Q2, it took both of these beautiful landscapes this afternoon, and I was so enchanted with the SL2-S that I was about to trade in the Leica Q2 for a wide angle lens.

I can’t send this camera away. First, it’s a tremendous grab-and-go camera, small and easy to use. Secondly, it has an incredible 35 mm zoom, and the landscapes I take are pretty beautiful.

Along with my SL2-S, my Iphone 13, and the Q2, we will all work well together, and I can expand my horizons. I will try and figure out a way to get a wide-angle lens one of these days; no rush now.

Enough is going on in my life; I have nothing else to trade,  although I won’t forget about getting one. I love the Q2 and won’t forget it again.

I am happy to say my surgical wound has no pain or discomfort. Thursday, the stitches come out.

I spent an hour on the phone with a nurse this afternoon preparing for my subsequent surgery on May 12th. I learned I would be anesthetized for that procedure, which isn’t as pain-free as I expected. The sound wave machine will smack me around a bit.

And I can walk back into the house and walk around on my own steam (hopefully). Maria will have no trouble staying in her studio.

I should prepare for a couple of days of recovery, though, of course. Thanks again for your support of our work. We will leave the world a little better than we found it. The haters will have their hate; we will have our love and compassion.

These tulips just grew out in the middle of the lawn. We think a squirrel with some seeds might be the father.