Scattered Thoughts . . .

T he first of our 50 tulips has bloomed today!  Kenzie, our playhouse gardener, will be happy to see it in person.  For now, this photo will have to do.  Gee showed this first tulip to Kenzie this afternoon during their daily video chat but seeing it in person will be much, much nicer though.   It will be interesting to see how many different colors we get.  So far, we are seeing only yellow and what appears to be red.  It looks like that red one next to this yellow one will be the next to bloom...  probably tomorrow...

O ther than preparing dinner like I usually do, I accomplished one small task this evening.  As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I designed a telescope mount pier extension and I am in the process of building it.   When I wrote that blog entry, I had just spray painted the parts and was waiting on them to cure.  I waited about 48 hours and then started on the next step. I have six 1/4-20 threaded inserts that need to be inserted into six holes.  I had pre-drilled these holes before painting but I hadn't double checked the depth of the holes...  I simply eye-balled it.  Well...  as luck would have it...  these holes were not deep enough so it was back to the drill press. This evening, I drilled those six holes about a 1/4" deeper.  These inserts fit perfectly now.   The next step will be to drill holes in the 4-1/2" x 12" pipe that is the actual extension.  I have six corresponding holes to drill in that pipe.  I marked those holes this morning so the pipe is now

B ack in October, I built two flower gardens flanking the steps to the playhouse.  After I finished the rock border and filling these two gardens with soil, Kenzie and Gee planted 50 tulip bulbs which were gifted to us by Sheila's parents, Nan and Pop.   After the bulbs were planted, I covered both gardens with chicken wire to keep animals from digging them up through the long winter.  I then added a bit more soil on top of the chicken wire.   This spring, we've been patiently waiting for these two tulip gardens to bloom.  We weren't sure these flowers would bloom in this location because they don't get much sun here but things are looking very good so far.  Tulips have been sprouting up over the past two weeks and now both gardens are filled with healthy green tulip plants.   The new news is that these young plants are now showing buds that are getting ready to bloom.  I know that these buds will bloom suddenly and then we'll have all sorts of color in these garden

T he few who actually follow this blog probably think that since I haven't mentioned my ankle injury lately that my ankle is back to normal.  That is not true.  No news isn't always good news. While it is true that the swelling is down and the pain has subsided quite a bit, I am still walking delicately on that ankle and my range of motion is still fairly limited.  When I do too much walking, it still swells a bit.  Then the ice packs come out and  I'm still resting with the ankle elevated too.   The pain, for the most part, isn't nearly as bad now.  I do get twinges of excruciating pain when I do something stupid like put too much weight on it or trip when working in the yard but, overall, the pain is just a dull ache most of the time.  I'm also getting weird tingling in my ankle like I have one of those useless, torturous TENS units attached to my ankle.  Sometimes it develops like pins and needles.  I assume these types of sensations and pain is a sign of my ankl

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.