Scattered Thoughts . . .

I 'm still feeling rather lousy and coughing whenever I move so I'm laying low at home.  This morning, however, I accomplished a few small maintenance tasks on my astronomy gear.   First, I wanted to install a better saddle on my newly converted EXOS2 manual mount (photo at right).  I don't care for saddles with a single bolt holding my telescope on the mount.  I prefer two pressure clamps holding my telescopes.  I had ordered an appropriate saddle a few weeks ago and it arrived this past week.  I just needed to drill a hole and then assemble it so that was a small and easy task that proved to be unremarkable.  Then I moved to my best telescope.  My Explore Scientific 102mm APO refractor recently developed a sticky focuser.  It wasn't sticking to a complete stop but it was not as smooth as I like it.  Any bit of stickiness in the focuser causes some vibration in your view so I new I wanted to resolve this little problem before I got...

I am back into recovery mode.  It is funny...  well... maybe "funny" isn't really the most accurate adjective... but, even after having Systemic Mastocytosis for more than 10 years, I still forget how much down time my body and health requires. It isn't until I have tasks and projects stacked up like aircraft in a holding pattern waiting to land at a crippled airfield that I clearly hear that voice... "Hey... hey you, there... you are sick! What makes you think you could make plans to get things accomplished like a healthy person? Do you need another reminder of just how sick you are?"  Then I suddenly get whacked with crappy health. Last night we trekked up to Lowes to pick up a few more patio blocks (I learned long ago that I need to break all projects down into small tasks... we need more than a "few" patio blocks but I can only handle a few at a time) for our kitchen grilling area project in the backyard. We had no problems with that other ...