Scattered Thoughts . . .

The guide scope and guide camera that I use with my astronomy gear is old.  Actually, by digital standards, the guide camera is considered ancient!  I've wanted to test this guide scope/camera combo again at night so I can determine if upgrading would be worth it.  I haven't been all that happy with the imaging I am getting with that camera.  Last night, we had completely overcast skies so there were absolutely no stars visible but the moon was faintly glowing through the clouds. I quickly mounted my guide scope on my tripod.  Then I attached my guide camera to the little guide scope.  Then I grabbed my Windows tablet and headed outside to the deck with everything in tow.  I pointed the guide scope at the moon and then adjusted the settings of the camera using my tablet...  and here is the resulting image... There are a few things worth noting here.   First, considering how overcast the skies were last night and how the moon was mostly obscured by those clouds, it i

You awaken in the middle of the night to the smell of burning wood.  You get up and quickly run through your home to see if you can find the source of the burning wood smell.  As you pass a window, you notice that your neighbor's house has a little bit of smoke leaking out of an upstairs bedroom window.  You call 911 to report a house fire, frantically trying to summon help. After reporting the fire, you then call your neighbor's house to awaken them in an attempt get them out of the house.  The neighbor answers the telephone but states he can't access the rest of the bedrooms in the house where his family is located and he, himself, is trapped inside due to fire.  The situation is quickly becoming dire. As you run out of your house to see if you can help somehow, the Fire Chief pulls up in his Chief's vehicle.  He orders you to stay away from the house.  As you try to get past the Chief, a fire truck (a ladder company) and an engine pull up (pumper for pumping wa

Sometime after midnight last night, I got up out of bed and wandered to the bathroom.  On my way to the bathroom, I passed by one of our windows and instantly noticed that the ground was covered in white stuff! This morning, I awoke to a little snow squall outside our windows and everything was blanketed in clean, soft white...   It is not yet after Memorial Day weekend so this snowy weather should come as no surprise.  After all, we are almost as far north as southern Alaska (54° latitude vs 45° latitude) .  Sheila, however, is in a bit of a lousy mood over the snow.  She's usually done with snow falling from the sky by mid-January.  Personally, I like when the muddy brown spring landscape is covered in fresh snow.  The snow hides the lack of vegetation and all the mud while it blankets everything in a clean soft look.  Plus, spring snow always melts on its own requiring absolutely no shoveling (almost always anyway). On the positive side, we haven't done any plan

Just like everyone else in the country right now, we are having difficulty stocking our pantry and keeping it stocked.  This, of course, is what people would refer to as a "first world problem" and they would be correct.  This is just one reason (of many) why I say that the United States is no longer a first world country.  Supermarket supply chains have broken down.  Many critically necessary supply chains have broken down.   Sheila and I realized in recent weeks that getting simple things like meat is difficult so we need to place orders of only meat that range from $200 to $300...  and that is just for two of us!  I don't know how families with children in the household are managing.   When it comes to purchasing meat, we can't seem to get much from Shaw's using InstaCart (I should point out that there is nothing 'instant' about InstaCart either...  it requires up to five days to get an order).  Schwann's has a two week wait for delivery.  And,

Lukey and Kenzie were featured on the local evening news today.  They had written a short little song about their feelings about COVID-19.  Liza recorded it...   then Pop submitted it to the news station...  then the news Producer needed Liza to release the video and give authorization for them to use the video clip on their News broadcast...  and here it is! </>

Just about all of my "cold and flu" symptoms seem to be behind me but my level of fatigue is still quite overwhelming.  I spent just about all of this past weekend sleeping.  I awoke only to use the bathroom, eat and take medications.   I still have some minor symptoms of a cold...  some gunk in my nose and running down the back of my throat at times.  The fever has been gone for days though so that is good.  Headaches still come and go but are so minimal at this point that they are hardly worth mentioning.  I still get bouts of difficulty breathing but that could be due to my primary illness since I do experience this regularly anyway.  What I was experiencing a month or two ago, however, was well beyond my usual breathing problems (since being on medications to control these problems).  Overall, most of these untested, undiagnosed "cold and flu" symptoms seemed to have dissipated.  The fatigue is worse than usual though.  It is lingering.  It is overwhelming. 

The other night went scrolling through an old hard drive of image files.  I came across a folder of bird photos from when I was testing my new little Sony a6000 camera three or four years ago.  I scrolled through the entire folder before realizing it was difficult to choose just one photo so I simply went back to the first photo in the folder.  There are a few things to point out about this particular photo: 1.  Song birds...  in this case, a Dark Eyed Junko...  flit around quickly, unexpectedly jumping from branch to branch so they are difficult to capture even when seemingly statically perched on a branch.  These birds are never static even if they appear that way in a still photo. 2.  Getting a camera to focus on something jumping around quickly and taking flight unexpectedly every couple of seconds is difficult enough but having to focus on this bird when it is hiding behind twigs, leaves and branches is even more difficult.  The camera often will focus only on the neare

Actually, this month's Pink Moon isn't named as such because it appears pink.  It is named the Pink Moon for the April blooming of the Ground Phlox which is a pink flower.  Anyway, tonight's moon was quite colorless from our neck of the woods as it rose over the Worcester Range.  It was, however, quite large.  I think this is the full moon that is closest to Earth for this calendar year, if I remember correctly, which would make it a so-called supermoon.   I shot this photo through our opened living room window.  Convenient, huh?  Since it was a last second decision to shoot this full moon, I didn't quite get all my camera settings set correctly.  Within a couple of minutes, the moon was moving behind some utility lines and then trees.  This image will have to do... For those interested in the technical aspects of this image...  I shot this with my little Sony a6000 camera body and my Canon L 400mm f5.6 lens mounted on a tripod.  I shot it at f8, ISO 100, with a

The other night, I went looking through old hard drives where I store old photos to look for something.  Instead, I was distracted as I came across a different photo that I found interesting.   I usually try to capture at least part of the eyes in my people photos because that is where emotion and the soul is typically found.  On rare occasions, however, a different approach may work.   In this particular photo, Lukey and Kenzie are turned away from me with their backs to me...  no faces, no eyes.  The photo still manages to tell a story and capture some feeling...  a feeling that they were cold...  huddled up close to the wood stove trying to get warm...  dressed in a way you typically only see kids under five years old...  in their underwear and shirts after a day in the water and on the beach...  the fire was just starting so there still were no open flames... their hands out in front of them feeling the little bit of warmth...   I can't believe it but I actually vividly r

Sheila and I are still quarantined at home as Sheila continues to work from home and the numbers of people infected around us multiplies.   Even before this virus, we very rarely wandered from the house for social things anyway so this new quarantine and 'shelter in place' order hasn't changed our daily life much at all.  By early to mid-January, it became abundantly clear to us that the virus was gaining a foothold in the US so we immediately stopped visiting restaurants, canceled all future travel plans for the foreseeable future and began cutting out our weekly shopping trips.  (This is when the Federal government should have began a serious attempt at containing and minimizing the effects of this virus.  We knew it was coming at this point so we immediately changed our behavior...   the White House, well, this White House only helps the wealthy so it would have been silly for anyone to seriously believe they would come up with an effective plan to minimize and contain