Randall's Blog

April started off with a party for Ali - he turned 30! He denies it but his mom was there and she agreed that it was the big 3-0!

The next day Ali's mom, brother and family stopped over.

The deck seems to have come through the winter quite well. There was no issue with the floating deck design - it stayed level and flat.

I made some soil blocks this year to start seeds in the greenhouse. They seem to be working so far but I haven't transplanted anything yet.

Our magnolia tree still looks beautiful even if it's missing some parts.

My latest project is setting up a telescope pier in my yard. I had something like this in Epping - a base made from an old chimney. I attended the NorthEast Astronomy Forum (NEAF) and picked up a new equatorial mount for my telescope. I also picked up an imaging Newtonian but more about that later.

The first step was to make some adapter plates so I could attach my new mount to the pier. They sell these things but they are expensive and I did buy all those machines last year... I wound up using some aluminum plates that I salvaged from an ancient sequencing machine. The woodworking tools actually did a good job on the aluminum.

I decided to put the pier just behind the deck. It isn't the ideal location in terms of trees but it's convenient. I dug down about 3.5-4 feet and got some rebar and cement mix. Some old steel fencing added to the structure.

I used the plastic case from one of the old water filter canisters to make a form. I also found some slate that was at the back of the yard and brought it to the pier location to make a base.

I ran an extension cord over to the pier and set up a 12v power supply. I also made a wooden platform at the top. You can see the adapter plates in place here.

Here is the new mount in place.

I can't let it get wet and don't want to take it off and on all the time - which would defeat the whole idea of having it in a fixed location - so I had to make a little house for the whole set up.

Can't wait to try it out!

Congratulations to Rebecca & Ali on their new house! They are now proud homeowners in Ayer MA:

Here Smudgey is helping Debbie study for finals:

The Meep is still hiding under beds - we believe he must have been abused to be so afraid. He does come out to see Smudgey but she has little patience for him...

We celebrated Debbie's birthday out at Bombers. Debbie had been waiting for her free birthday drink for quite a while. When we got there it turns out that there were others waiting for their birthday drinks as well. Liz joined us and she got Debbie a whole ZhuZhu pet setup.

More photos are on my Facebook page. Don't worry, you don't have to join to view them. I have been posting photos up here on my blog and on Facebook.

Here's an image that I had posted on Facebook but it might look better here (images can be larger):

Here's a link to a much larger image taken by a big scope - VISTA's infrared view of the Orion Nebula.

We just returned from a short cruise to the Bahamas from Miami in celebration of Debbie's parents' 50th wedding anniversary.

If you want to see some of the pictures I took snorkeling visit my photo blog.

The duck had a good time as you might imagine...

After the cruise we had dinner with Carol and Art and Zinnia.

Again there are additional photos on my Facebook page.

Here are some shots from a walk we took yesterday at Five Rivers:

We really enjoy that place and it's only a few miles away.

Lastly, I attached the basketball backboard & hoop to the pole I put up last fall. Debbie & I shot some hoops this weekend.

Yesterday we got hit with lots of snow. The traffic in Albany was pretty bad around 5 and so we waited a while before we ventured home. The drive was pretty bad but when we got the the big hill just a short distance from our house all the cars just stopped. I guess the plows couldn't keep up with the snow because the road was really slick. Debbie was just in front of me and we sat there for a while. We decided to try and make it up the hill and we both went around the other stopped vehicles and started to SLOWLY inch our way up the hill.

This is a state highway with a 45mph speed limit! We made it home and were very happy to be in bed instead of digging our cars out of a ditch. This morning it was clear that we had been dumped on. I measured 18" and it was still snowing. Just up the road they got 27" plus. Our beautiful magnolia tree was damaged by the heavy snow and lost a large branch.

Still, this year hasn't been too bad. Lots of storms hit just south of us. I guess it was our turn.

We had another successful Groundhog party on January 30th. This year we had a big crowd that included friends from Boston, Dave from Ohio, Lowell from Florida, new friends from the Albany Vegetarian Meetup group and new and old friends from the Albany area. The ground was hard because it was so cold but there was little snow so this made parking relatively easy on the lawn. We had a lot of great food and drink for the pot luck and the party continued on into the night. Jennie Moak-Piazza came over with her daughter, Penny, and we found out that Penny works at PEF with Debbie! You may remember the "pink room" that was painted and now serves as Debbie's study room - Penny grew up in that room. Jennie also brought over two old photos of the house that were very cool. I wound up giving a lot of tours of the basement - showing off our solar equipment etc. Thanks to everyone who attended and made it a great party!

On Sunday, after the sleep-over folks departed, we all took naps - must be part of that getting older thing but we were wiped out! On Monday I took the day off and Lowell, Dave & I went skiing at Okemo in VT. I was a little worried about the conditions because it had been really warm and had rained but Okemo makes a lot of snow and the conditions were really quite good. We had a great day of skiing. We are pretty well matched in terms of ability and so this makes for a nice experience.

Today is Rebecca's birthday, she is 27! It seems like only a short time ago that she was a little girl running around the back yard in her favorite pink dress.

She has grown up to be a beautiful and accomplished young woman.

Happy Birthday!

She visited this weekend and we went to Van's Vietnamese Restaurant. We had an excellent meal - better even than the one we had at Van's a short while ago with the Albany Vegetarian Meetup.

Meep is doing somewhat better but he must have been abused at some point because he acts way more skittish that normal for a new cat.

Hopefully he will warm up to his new loving home but for now his is spending much of his time under the couch. Some cats spend most of their lives under furniture so I guess we just have to hope Meep isn't going to be one of them.

We got 3 inches of wet snow last night and I spent some time this morning clearing the driveway. The lawn tractor with snow plow that I have been using worked pretty well. It seems to work up to a certain amount of snow then it is pretty well useless. I guess this would be true of most snow removal machines but this one is pretty small so it's limit is also smaller. Overall I am happy with it - it's just that when we get a lot of snow we still have to get someone with a pickup to plow us out. Debbie has named him Herbie.