Scattered Thoughts . . .

Once again, living in Waterbury has proven to be an absolutely miserable geographic choice for viewing anything in the sky other than clouds.  I'm certain that we must see less sky throughout the year than people in rainy Seattle.  As a result of snowy weather, I missed the last planetary solar transit that I will be able to see in my lifetime.  To say that I am disappointed is a wild understatement. This past Monday morning, Mercury passed in front of the sun.  This doesn't happen all that often.  The next time we will have an opportunity to watch this event will be in 2032...  but, not from the United States.  Unfortunately, during this event this past Monday, we had snow falling out of the sky here in Waterbury during the entire six hour event. I spent a lot of time planning for this astronomical event.  I spent a lot of time and energy ensuring all my gear is ready to go.  I planned how I wanted to image and video the event too.  I even built some new gear just for this

The other day, I noticed the weather forecast showed that we had snow heading our way that evening or the next day.  I instantly remembered that I hadn't gotten to any of the maintenance needed on our snowblower due to health problems and miserable weather.  Actually, I hadn't gotten to a few other things on my To-Do list that were ahead of the snowblower maintenance but now the snowblower was bumped up to be the priority.  It took me about an hour to find and collect the right tools and then to block up the snowblower.  The weather wasn't too bad so it was nice being outside.  The temperature was in the upper 40s and the sun was peaking through hazy clouds low on the horizon.  It is that time of year when the sun never gets higher than the treetops so any sunlight is a bit of a surprise.  Anyway, I had collected all the necessary tools and the snowblower was now blocked up on chunks of 4x4's.   I needed to change the oil.  That actually went well and quickly.   T