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WEEK 15 2021
Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week
Saturday - OTR. Nice weather.
Got up, showered and ate, did some more boat cleaning things.
Late morning I drove up to Ojai, and S and her dad Don and I went out for lunch at Bocalli's, then S and I headed home.
Traffic was decent, but the I-14 north was just jammed until over the pass. Still busy, all the way into Lancaster. Weird.
Bob had ordered a battery pack for the 90GT off the internet, and it has arrived and the scope seems to work. Except that the weather is so bad, overcast and drizzly, that he can't take it outside and check!!
The same is true here, I've been out for a few minutes with the new binoculars, but it's cold and very blustery. Very frustrating.
Friday - OTR.
Dragging a bit, but I got up and made breakfast (I remembered to bring coffee from this decade this time!) and just lazed about. Surprisingly there wasn't a line for the single shower stall and I got a shower in before noon.
I was going to do a bit of varnishing, but my locker had no lock and there was what appeared to be a bucket of ash in it. I was annoyed, thinking I'd been robbed, but on second thought I might have tossed most of the old varnish & stuff last year.
I was going to wash the boat, but there is no water from the tap...
Met up with Dave in the afternoon,and got a small box of stuff and a free pizza dinner, early, sitting out on the truck tailgate in the parking lot.
The wind was coming up by late afternoon, and the boat was a bit noisy, but the marina proper was quite quiet, a big change from the noisy place of a few years ago on Friday and Saturday nights...
Thursday - Windy. OTR.
My friend S called, asked if I could drive her to Ojai to visit her ailing father. I said yes, been a while since I checked on the boat and my friend D has a box of stuff from the office he's closing to give to me.
I packed and cleaned, and we left about 7:00pm, and I dropped her off about 9:30 and went down to the boat.
The boat was dry and tight, and I had a good night. Very cool and calm.
Wednesday - Warm and a bit windy late in the day.
I set up two of the sun sails, the two that shade the french doors and the bedroom in back. I'm tempted to add a third between them so that there is nearly complete shade for 30' or so, but am unsure that it would be a good idea, since they are just attached to screw eyes at the house rafters, and the wind load from three sails on a single attachment point would be fairly large.
I guess I could still use three rafters, or attach some sort of ledger board to distribute the load.
I did go into town, and got a haircut from S, and waved at R as he went off to get his Covid-19 shot.
I guess, as of the 1st, that anyone can get a shot.
I'm partial to the idea of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which isn't mRNA, but am still dithering a bit.
The new Vortex binoculars arrived in late afternoon - a day ahead of predicted. They are lighter and more compact than the Fujinon's, and came with a case.
Although it was windy and quite cloudy by 9pm I went out and took a gander between the clouds at Ursa Major and Orion. Very nice! I didn't do a head to head with the Fujinon's, but the nebula in Orion's sword was well delineated.
A magnification of10x is a bit hard to hold steady, but practice and probably sitting or resting in a chaise lounge chair would help.
My left eye is noticeably fuzzier and dimmer than the right, it really is time to get my eyes checked again.
Tuesday - Windy, scattered clouds.
Too tired to do much, but I bought some primer and did some painting in the garage, where it was still brown drywall. It isn't an urgent task, but it's all I felt up to, and I was quite sore afterwards.
Book #18 was The Ninth Sorceress, by Bonnie Wynn. It was OK I guess.
I'm not sure it was good enough to buy the sequel, though I suppose I
probably will.
Fiddling with the app. I've got it to compile, and was able to provision and use the newer iPad, but now there's some weird issue with the resolution - there is a bunch of border to the right and lower portion. I've got 1x and 2x assets, so maybe it's a 3x thing?
I've also worked with the Instruments, which say there isn't a memory leak, despite the app size increasing by several megabytes for each round of the game. There are other potential things - 'lost memory' and 'caching' which could be the culprit.
Monday - More warm and windy weather, but not too bad.
I can actually open the door in the early evening and the wind pushes a cool breeze throughout the house.
And the cats like to look out.
I use a towel at the base of the security screen to keep the
creepy-crawlies out, though the very small flying critters can get through
the screen.
I'd seen a 90GT Celestron Wifi in the Reno Craig's List, so I emailed my brother, and he went and bought it for $50. These aren't made or sold any more, but the price is listed as $400 and there is someone in Santa Barbara trying to sell one for $325.
The Celestron 90mm f/10 OTA is good, and even if the electronics are bad (ca. 2015 product) even a lightweight alt-az or eq mount should be more than adequate, and you can get those very inexpensively.
I went ahead and pulled the trigger on some Vortex Diamondback 10x42's via Amazon. There's a poster on Cloudy Nights that says that there was plenty of play in the focus for his myopic 10+ diopter eyes, which would probably be close to my prescription.
My Fujinon's 7x50's are the best I've ever used, but looking through my glasses at night whilst stargazing is annoying.
I'd have gotten the 8x42's, but they are out of stock everywhere.
Sunday - Easter Sunday.
I went shopping with S, picked up some much needed groceries.
