Scattered Thoughts . . .

I didn't get any sleep the night before last.  I awoke early in the night during a dream about having a throbbing scab on my eye.  When I awoke from my couple of hours of sleep, I quickly realized that the painful eye was not just in my dream.  My eye was actually throbbing in my waking life. I shouldn't really call it "throbbing" because the frequency of the throbs was much slower than you think of when you hear about throbbing pain.  It was really a ten second extremely painful period followed by about 30 seconds of very little pain.  Although a slow throb, it continued at this frequency and severity which made sleep impossible. I got up immediately when I awoke from this dream so I could check my eye.  It was all red, irritated, but I saw no obvious problems.  For a little while, I assumed that perhaps I was developing Conjunctivitis.  I washed my eye with eye wash and then used some Natural Tears.  Both of these products stung terribly.   After lying in bed, awak

A nother little project I have been working on lately is making a couple of aperture masks for one of my telescopes.  I've been using my Celestron 120mm refractor for planetary views.  Well, actually, I purchased that telescope specifically for solar imaging but, at night, it is a decent telescope for planetary as well as lunar views so this is the telescope I currently use for planetary observing.  I'd like to eventually get a telescope with a much longer focal length for planetary astronomy but this telescope will do for now.  I'd like to eventually purchase a longer refractor telescope for planetary astronomy but I might settle for a Cassegrain telescope instead.  For now, I'll be using this Celestron 120mm refractor with a 1000mm focal length. This 120mm refractor is an achromat so there is a lot of chromatic aberration on planetary views.  I added a Baader Contrast Booster to the front end of my diagonal and that has helped cut down most of the chromatic aberration

A s usual, whenever my health allows, I tend to be working on a few projects at the same time.  At the moment, I'm working on making a couple of aperture masks for one of my telescopes, I'm doing some landscaping around the house, I'm making some small springtime repairs around the house as I come across them, I'm repairing the grill in our outdoor kitchen, and I'm designing and making a telescope mount pier extension.  This particular blog entry is about the pier extension project thus far.   Quite often, especially if I use one of my longer refractor telescopes but it is not limited to this one telescope, I find myself wishing I had a taller tripod for my telescope mount.  Sometimes, even when sitting on a very low stool, I need to get my butt off the stool and sit on the ground because the eyepiece is closer to the ground than my eye in a sitting position.  If I use my longest refractor telescope, the telescope will even hit the tripod legs when pointing at or ne

W e had pulled pork for dinner last night and it was pretty good.  I made my own maple cole slaw and some hand-cut fries to go with it.  It was a really nice meal but it was an all day affair making it! One thing is certain... Having an outdoor kitchen under a roof makes something like this far easier and more pleasant to accomplish.   I did something a bit differently this time around.  Usually we take the quick and easy route by slow cooking the pork in the oven for about four hours.  That always turns out well but this time I went with a much slower cook on the grill.  I did it on the grill this time around for two reasons.  First, any meat tastes better on the grill.  And two, if I used the grill, then I could actually smoke the pork for even more flavor.   I applied my homemade dry rub on Friday and let the pork sit in the fridge overnight.  Then I started the grill at around 9:45am with a combination of Cherry wood chips and Apple wood chips (all pre-soaked overnight) in the smok

It has been a very quiet Christmas this year due to pandemic distancing and staying as safe as possible at home, alone.  Sheila and I chose to open our Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve.  We had a really nice Christmas Eve too!  Since we will be spending the entire Christmas season alone, safely away from the grandkids, safely away from family, and safely away from friends, we decided to record a video of the two of us opening our gifts.... Tonight, we are having a rib roast, potatoes, gravy and carrots.  Sheila made some cookies yesterday and we also have an apple pie and some other assorted dessert things.  At the moment, Lukey and Kenzie are opening gifts on the Echo Show in our kitchen while Gee watches so I should get back out there before finishing this blog entry... UPDATE - 22 April 2021:   I just noticed that this blog entry was never finished nor published here.  Oh well.  I guess I've really been distracted with health issues.  I didn't think 2021 could be worse, h

O ther than writing about my badly sprained ankle, I haven't written much about my health lately so I figured I should attempt to write some stuff down.   Overall, my typical mast cell disease stuff has been 'typical'.  That means occasional anaphylaxic symptoms, breathing difficulties, dizziness, lightheadedness, and a lot of joint and bone pain.  Plus, regular gastro-intestinal problems, nausea, and too much time spent in a bathroom.   What has been worse for the past year...  far worse...  is the brain fog.  This may have been compounded by fighting off COVID-19 a year ago.  I have had brain fog throughout all my mast cell disease but it has been far, far worse in recent months.  I become non-functional for anything other than simply surviving from day to day.   While fighting off the virus last year, I also had consistent problems with vision and hearing.  My eyes were swollen and it seemed like I had a torn retina but that was probably due to the swelling in my eyes. 

O ne of the things on my very long to-do list is to build a small observatory shed next to my outdoor telescope pier and then fence the entire area to keep out bears, bobcats and skunks.  I have sketched all sorts of plans but, between continuing health issues followed by the pandemic and lack of available lumber, I have made absolutely no progress in actually building this shed/observatory area.  Well...  I did build the telescope pier and the foundation for the shed but that is all that has been accomplished thus far.  My plan was to use an old Hewlett-Packard desktop computer for controlling my astronomy gear and it would be housed in this astronomy shed.  This old computer is in the eight to ten year old range and hasn't been used at all over the past two years.  When I purchased a new computer two years ago, I saved this old computer specifically for the purpose of using it in my new observatory.  I recently started loading astronomy programs onto this old computer to get it r

I t has been about nine weeks since my old ankle injury flared and I'm still limping around wherever I go.  It is slowly improving but, as expected in any recovery, I keep getting set back in recovery whenever I attempt to do anything that requires a bit of weight to be put on my left foot.   On the positive side, I'm now doing some light exercising in an attempt to get back some flexibility in my ankle.  Actually, my whole left leg needs daily physical therapy at this point.  My left leg is now noticeably thinner than my right leg due to lack of use over the past nine weeks.  I have been slowly and carefully getting back into some very light exercising (mostly stretching) to get back to "normal".  Unfortunately, this sets me back by causing a bit of pain, inflammation and swelling again.  I sort of cycle back and forth between feeling "okay" and limping around in pain which is normal during recovery.  We're now assuming that I had a severe case of sprai

T oday is Sheila's birthday so, Happy Birthday to Sheila! She took a couple of days off from work so we started her birthday celebration a couple of days ago.   It has been a wet, damp and muddy weekend so far.  We have some fresh snow on the ridge of the Worcester Range just outside our living room window, which looks really nice, but our yard is a squishy swamp and the driveway is like quicksand which is typical silty Vermont mud.  This month has been brutally bitter with high winds whipping across the flats and rattling our roof all day and all night long.  Between the wind, the rain and the mud, this really is rather typical weather for Sheila's birthday. Anyway, Sheila opened her birthday gifts the other night.  One of the gifts was a nice app-controlled heated coffee mug.  She seems to be enjoying this gift so far this weekend so this turned out to be a nice gift and especially for someone who works from home. There is no need to be microwaving cool coffee anymore!  The m

It has been warm the past two days and today is looking to be a beautiful, sunny, warm spring day too.  I had planned to utilize the good weather to start working on things outside where sawdust is not an issue.  This week is looking good for that and I have a bunch of small projects that need to be accomplished.  Actually, I've been waiting months to be able to pull out woodworking tools to accomplish a few things. Unfortunately, once again, my health is being a bit uncooperative.   My ankle is still healing.  Sheila and I wandered outside yesterday to take down wreaths and Christmas lights.  I stepped up on the first step of a stepladder and quickly realized my ankle was still in no condition for climbing a short stepladder.  I instantly fell off and onto unlevel snow on the ground.  This hurt both of my ankles again setting me back a couple of days.  I have no need for my cane now but getting around is still a bit painful and slow-going.  I'm taking small steps and taking th