Scattered Thoughts . . .

T he sky was clear this morning so I decided to do a little solar observing rather than woodworking.  I'd really like to get the two woodworking projects I am working on finished but I couldn't pass up the clear skies especially since I haven't really done any solar observing yet this year.   I had a couple of things related to solar observing that I wanted to try so it seemed like a good morning to do some experimenting with astronomy gear.  The weather should be nice for the next few days so I could easily put off the woodworking projects for a day so I could finally get to spend some time observing the sun. I had a lot of nice success with a larger telescope when using my new binoviewers while viewing the moon, Venus and Mars last night so I wanted to try solar observing with the same binoviewers for solar observing.  Viewing with two eyes provides far less eye strain than viewing with one eye and eye strain is something I have been experiencing lately.   Last night I wa

W hen I was doing some solar observing last week, I was having some problems keeping my single eye focused and open while also keeping my other eye closed.  After about five or ten minutes of observing with one eye, my eyes were twitching and they simply were not cooperating anymore.  I am definitely getting old!   These types of eye difficulties are often related to typical weakness due to old age but it is also partially related to my primary illness.  If I am beginning to have difficulty seeing through my telescopes as I did the other day, then that is a serious problem and I need to find a solution to this problem.   I felt the best solution was to get a binoviewer made specifically for telescopes so I could view the sky with both eyes instead of only one.  This is known to alleviate the typical eye strain from viewing with only one eye for longer periods of time. So, a couple of days ago, I ordered a binoviewer to be used on my telescopes and it arrived in the mail today.  Natura

I 've been working on two small woodworking projects lately.  Well, they are what I would consider small projects but they are taking forever to finish! Everything in the photo, at right, has been sanded with 80 grit sandpaper followed by 120 grit sandpaper so I am making some progress.   As seen in the photo at right, I made a table for the backyard and I am making a Giant Jenga game.  Each of these small projects has required a lot of cutting and even more sanding. Giant Jenga will be played on the ground.  It is only sitting on the table for the photo, at right.  Actually, I wanted to keep the bare wood off the damp lawn so I placed everything on the new table.  All this wood in this photo still needs sanding with 220 grit sandpaper but that finish sanding with 220 grit should go quickly.   This photo only shows about two-thirds of the Giant Jenga pieces because I still need to sand the remaining third of pieces.  I ran out of energy yesterday and I ran out of 80 grit sanding be

I had previously written about getting a new refrigerator back in February or March when I was doing a bit of whining about needing to settle on choosing a new refrigerator and that we were not happy with what was available.  We also were not happy about the prices of what I feel is garbage.  Unfortunately, prices are up and options are severely limited due to the circuit board shortage.  On the positive side, we were able to replace our broken refrigerator within a few short days.   One of the things I complained about when I previous wrote was the terrible water and ice dispenser on this Whirlpool refrigerator.   In particular, we were not happy with the water pressure coming out of the water dispenser.  It was very much like a trickle.   The other night, Sheila was trying to dispense some water and an alarm sounded.  An icon lit up on the display indicating we needed to change the water filter.  I had already ordered replacement water filters for this refrigerator when we had purch