Scattered Thoughts . . .

Every evening, Kenzie (usually Lukey too) will call Gee on our Alexa devices.  During last night's conversation, she was a bit more animated than usual so I quickly picked up my camera and shot a few photos of her...   I have to say that these Echo Show Amazon devices were a good idea.  These devices make it easy to stay close even though we may not see each other in person for a week or so.  Of course, we also have all sorts of other uses for this Show...  our calendar, recipes, music, news, timers, alarms, notifications, even asking Alexa to add something to our shopping list.   Uncle Adam has an Echo Show also so we keep in contact with him in California as well.  Actually, we had Nan and Pop over for dinner this past weekend and while we were all at the table, we simply looked over at the Echo Show and said, "Alexa, call Adam" , and we had a little virtual visit with him while Nan and Pop were here.   Anyway, it is nice hearing from Lukey and Kenzie and actua

After I did a little bit of work on the telescope pier the other day, the weather was too good to pass up doing some work on our decks.  They were in desperate need of sanding and staining since I had skipped a couple of years due to spending far too much time at the hospital (Sheila's cancer).  The weather was ideal...  sunny and warm but not too warm...  so I pulled out the belt sander and some sanding belts and jumped right into sanding everything that needed to be stained. Everything that needed to be stained was filthy and needed to be cleaned first.  It turns out that using the belt sander was the easiest way of cleaning.  Plus, this allowed me to smooth out the old decks a little bit too.  I grabbed my largest brush, stirred up the stain, and started staining.  The following morning, I added the second coat of stain... After two days of drying under the sun, we had a day of solid rain and some localized flooding.  The deck now has nice beads of water sitting on top ra

I got a little more accomplished on the metal telescope pier adapter.  Today, I drilled holes for 1/2 inch stainless steel bolts (running thread, actually) which will be used to enable fine leveling of the mount.   At this point, I'm running out of oil for keeping the drill bits cool while drilling.  I only have about five more holes to drill...  and two of those holes will require tapping...  maybe I do need some more oil.  We'll see...  The drilling went well.  I was left with two pairs of four holes perfectly aligned with each other.  I will have 1/2" stainless steel threaded rod in these holes.  The running thread will separate the two halves of the adapter...  top and bottom...  about four inches apart...  and stainless steel nuts will allow me to level this adapter.   Here is the top of the telescope pier...  this metal adapter will bolt directly to this wooden top plate through the four holes around the circle scribed into the wood.  The two diagonal l

I've had a couple of busy days.   I started off yesterday by doing some woodworking.  I needed to make the wood top to the telescope pier.  This wood top will then be topped with an all metal universal adapter which still needs some machining.  Yesterday was all woodworking though.  I started working in the kitchen on the kitchen table since the drill press was already inside the house and I didn't want to risk inflaming my spinal injuries by carrying the heavy drill press outside if I didn't need to do so.  The kitchen table is a nice height for working so I placed some newspaper down on the table to protect it and then placed the drill press on top of the table.  This project quickly proved to be too messy to continue in the kitchen so I reluctantly moved everything out to the backyard.   I had a series of holes to drill in two pre-cut pieces of poplar.  In the end, I needed four slots in each board...  larger slots in one, smaller slots in the other.  First, I h

Sheila and I both have some issues with cholesterol plus additional dietary restrictions due to our own health problems so we've been fairly careful about what we eat in recent months.  Well, that is not entirely true.  We both have had dietary restrictions for years but now we have both added the high cholesterol dietary restrictions and limitations.   On the positive side, neither one of us has an appetite like when we were younger so cutting some stuff out of our diet has not been much of a problem.  We often can split a single dinner.  Eating less is not a problem for either one of us.   I've had significant dietary restrictions for about 15 years and, as a side effect of that and my health problems, I've been eating far less.  Adding in some cholesterol restrictions or limitations really isn't much of a change, to be honest.   Tonight, however, was something unusual for us...  a dinner without any meat whatsoever!  I'm big on balanced meals that include m

As expected after all the heavy work yesterday, today has mostly been a day of recovery.  I slept most of the day so far but I did manage to get a little bit of clean-up accomplished around the telescope pier. I was able to backfill around the pier.  There was only about a foot to backfill here because the rest was filled with quick setting concrete.  After leveling it off, I put down some grass seed.  Someday down the road (certainly not this year), I may add stone or concrete pavers to this area.  For now, it will be grass. Those four little stakes in the ground along the timber step (seen in the photo below) are where I will be putting in 4x4 fence posts.  I'll have a gate in between the second and third posts and then the fence will turn back toward the house at the end posts.   The grass seed is green in these photos...  the areas that appear to be just plain dirt on each side of this telescope pier area are wildflower gardens that we planted yesterday.   I desig

After we had finished cleaning up from our concrete work yesterday and while I was making a pasta salad for dinner, we received a call from Liza saying the kids wanted to come over for dinner.  Naturally, we thought that was a good idea and told them to come on over.   Lukey helped to start a fire...  which was a little smokey at times...  Kenzie was afraid the fire department would show up and I think we all went to bed with slightly irritated eyes!  The kids made some hot dogs on the fire before dinner.  For dinner, we had bacon cheeseburgers and pasta salad. Since it was one of those days when the moon was high in the sky all afternoon, I decided to take one of the telescopes out so the kids could view the moon as night approached... Kenzie had a little difficulty correctly positioning her eye over the huge eyepiece but she eventually figured it out.  If you are too close or too much to one side of the big eyepiece, you sometimes will see nothing.  In this case, mo

I'm in the process of building a few different things around the house.  Depending upon how I feel and how the weather is at the time, determines which project I attempt to tackle each day.  Today, was a beautiful day and we were both feeling quite well this morning so we jumped into some labor intensive projects outside.   First, we tackled the easier project since we are already quite far behind with this particular thing...  spring planting in our wildflower gardens.  We took care of six wildflower flowerbeds and planted new seeds.  This was the easier project and it was finished in a very short time.  It was nice to finally get the wildflowers planted though.  We still need to buy some plants for our window boxes and the three larger planters on our deck but that is typically a "June thing" anyway.  The wildflowers really needed to get accomplished because it is getting late in the growing season. Then it came time to tackle a heavy and very labor-intensive pro

A few months ago, I wrote about Sheila and I discussing whether or not to continue Sheila's cancer treatment.  The treatment was making her daily life miserable.  Worse yet, this treatment was to continue for a total of ten years.  Ten years of absolute misery didn't seem like a very wise option to choose for someone who is supposed to be recovering from her second bout of breast cancer with lymph involvement.  After some serious complications, ER visits, and a significant deterioration in her quality of life, we both decided it was time to stop treatment.  As one would expect, Sheila's oncologist wasn't too thrilled with our choice.   The oncologist recommended some further testing to determine risk factors with and without her continued treatment and we felt this would be a good idea.  In the back of our minds, even though Sheila's quality of life absolutely sucked during treatment, we always knew we would second guess this decision to abort her treatment i

I made a little more progress on my homemade telescope mounts this morning.  I decided to drill and tap each of the axes on each of these mounts so I can add a clutch of sorts to each axis.   In this first photo, you can see both locking clutches on the equatorial mount.  I drilled and tapped 1/4-20 holes on the edge of each axis.  I can now add some friction to each axis or I can even lock down an axis.   This next photo shows the three locking clutches on the dual telescope altitude-azimuth mount.  Now I can control how much friction is applied to each of the axes.   Although it appears as though the 1/4-20 locking clutch makes direct contact with the threads on the axis, it does not.  I have some heavy leather inside the hole I drilled so the leather is pressed down on the threads of the axis.  This will protect the threads while applying enough pressure to have a useful clutch.  If we had metal on metal, then the threads would quickly be ground down by the metal on meta