Scattered Thoughts . . .

W hen I brought my telescope and mount outside the other day to do some solar observing, a leg bracket broke on my tripod as I was opening up the tripod legs.  This bracket holds the leg in place when it is in use and the tripod is useless with a broken bracket.  My day wasn't starting out too well. I wanted to use this particular telescope mount because it has slow motion control knobs.  These slow motion controls make it easier to keep the sun in the center of my view.  As I slowly turn one knob, the sun stays in the center of my view.  Now I had to move the telescope over to another small mount.  I went back to my new-ish Alt-Az manual mount.  I really wanted to use those slow motion controls for this session though so this was a bit of a letdown.  Having another thing break and added to my to-do list was an even bigger letdown.   As you can see in the photo, the tabs that hold the spreader bar snapped off.  I had fairly recently...

W e've done a lot of walking over the past week which has resulted in my ankle and knee swelling up again so I'm laying a bit low lately.  To recap, back in January, I first sprained my ankle badly enough that I could not put any weight on my left leg at all.  That required about four months to heal well enough to do some things again.  However, the four months of hobbling around with all my weight on my right leg only resulted in a sprained MCL (medial collateral ligament) on the side of my right knee.  The knee injury was mostly better until we did miles and miles of walking this past week.  Now my knee is painful and swollen again so I am now back to ice and elevation for a good chunk of each day.  My left ankle is a bit painful too but nothing like my right knee. Putting my health problems aside, I always try to accomplish something, anything, each day.  Mostly, I've spent my time at the piano lately but I have managed to squeeze in a few other lit...