Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ittle by little, I've been working on building a custom homebuilt, non-commercial spectroheliograph for solar astronomy.  A spectroheliograph is a scientific instrument used for imaging/graphing the sun in one specific wavelength at a time.  It is not an instrument for visual observations though.  It is used to capture any single wavelength between 400-700nm at a very narrow 3 angstroms (0.3nm) in graphical waveform.  Then specialized software is used to transpose that waveform into an image.   This particular spectroheliograph was designed by Christian Buil in France.  He kept this particular design small and relatively simple for do-it-yourself amateur astronomers such as myself.  I believe he also has spectroheliograph designs that are research-grade and costing tens of thousands of dollars.  I opted for the dirt-cheap do-it-yourself and a-little-more-difficult route to build what is considered a beginner spectroheliograph.  It is still a scientific instrument but, in order to

After spending much of the day shopping and going out for a late lunch, we came home and spent the evening in the backyard with Lukey, Kenzie and Pop.  Pop joined us just as we were starting on dinner.   Earlier in the evening, we played quite a few games of Giant Jenga.  I had already written about that here .  There wasn't a whole lot of down time spent sitting around the fire.  We did do some of that but it was really only between games.  This was our first evening out in the backyard for the season so there were a lot of games we wanted to play.  It was fun but it definitely wore me out!  (Being so busy in the backyard also caused me to forget a dose of medications.  This caused significant problems for my health the following morning.) Although this photo, below, appears as though this is a perfect example of poorly applied makeup, this is really the result of eating cherries...   Before we headed out to do our shopping in the morning, I prepared dinner...  Shish-Ka-Bob.  When

A s I mentioned in a few previous blog entries, we did a bit of shopping with Lukey and Kenzie while they were staying with us last week.  This will be the blog entry with the photos of us shopping. Liza was in the hospital giving birth to Sophia and would be tied up with Sophia for a while when they arrived home so we felt it was best to get Lukey and Kenzie some things that they will need in the coming weeks so Liza wouldn't have to do it herself. Here, below, is the usual shot of us heading up to the Burlington area... We went to Dick's mostly because Kenzie needed running shoes specifically for running and Lukey needed sneakers.  Of course, we did some looking in some other departments too and, as a result, we found some life preservers for Lukey and Kenzie.  They outgrew their old ones.   Kenzie, the jumping string bean...  this is usually a pretty good sign that she is happy... We found some running shoes for Kenzie.  It was time consuming though and we sort of had to set

O n our day of shopping up in the Williston/Burlington area with Lukey and Kenzie, we stopped at Agave for lunch.  By the time lunchtime rolled around, we were all starving.  We briefly tossed around the idea of going to a sandwich shop but the kids wanted to go to Agave and I have no problems with going out for Mexican food so we went to Agave!  Sheila and I like Agave but I was a bit surprised that the kids wanted to go there.   I think Lukey and Kenzie wanted to play Table Shuffleboard but I know they like a few of the dishes there too.  While Lukey tends to stick to Americanized (rather boring) ground beef tacos, I opt for more authentic tacos.   I had a Carnita taco with Mojo pork, slaw, pickled fresnos (which added a nice depth of flavor) and chimichuri (which added some nice heat).  I think they must have a new chef because this was the first time any of our food had some authentic Mexican spices and heat.  In the past, I found the food to be rather bland.  It always tasted good

I t is that time of year...  albeit a very short period of time up here in Vermont...  but it is sailing season!   All the grandkids will be here this coming weekend so I want to make sure the sailboat is ready for playing.  I raise the sail, install the rudder and run all the lines so that the kids can play.  Well...  that's assuming it isn't too windy for the sail to be up. I store the sailboat upside-down through the very long winter.  Today, I cleaned the bottom of the hull and then Sheila and I turned her over so I could clean the topside.  She was filthy!   After I cleaned the hull, I applied a quick coat of wax and then buffed it out.  It could use another coat or two of wax but the hull is looking nice already with a minimal amount of work.   I still need to clean the sail, fix the mast with a new part which will test my metalworking skills (which I do rarely), run new lines, and put a quick coat of varnish on the rudder and centerboard.  All of this should go fairly qu

A few evenings ago, we visited the Waterbury train station with Lukey and Kenzie.  It was a day when I was not feeling all that well so I kept things simple in the hopes of an uneventful quick trip downtown.  I didn't bring a heavy camera bag.  I put some emergency medications in my pockets, I grabbed one camera body with one lens, and I grabbed a scanner so we could listen to the chatter on the radio as the Amtrak train approached and departed the station. Both Lukey and Kenzie were happy to be at the train station waiting for the train.  I think we all preferred to be getting on the train to head out-of-town but watching the train arrive and depart would be enough to create some smiling faces and some nice photos... The Amtrak Vermonter from Penn Station in Manhattan was running a little late this night so we had some down time.  There is a park across the street from the train station so the kids wanted to go over to the swings while we waited for the delayed Amtrak train to ar