Saturday 7/11/2020
Up again at 4:30 to attempt another picture of the comet, this time with the camera on the tripod. And again my best shot is not quite in focus. It is extremely hard to focus the camera manually in near-darkness, but autofocus doesn’t work looking at a dark sky. End result, no detail in the comet and the few stars in the image look like white tennis balls if you zoom in. So in the daylight I carefully focused the lens exactly, and then taped it in position with masking tape, so I can’t mess it up, and I will try again tomorrow morning.
For breakfast I tried the vanilla flavor of the meal replacement I’ve been beta-testing. It was not very good. I wrote up my final beta-tester report and posted it. Short version: not ready for prime time, guys.
Under the new rules the garage is open on MW and Saturday, so I thought heck, I’ll go look at a couple of nurseries. Went to Wegman’s and the one in Ladera, and disappointed in both. I want some largish (12-inch) pots that aren’t ugly, and a couple of fuschias that have an upright pattern and interesting blossoms. Struck out on both fronts.
Nurseries, it turns out, are emotionally hard for me. I found myself tearing up when I walked by a shelf of little fuzzy cacti and succulents just like we had on the windowsill. Yeah, move on. Couple other times I noticed plants Marian had bought at various times. Notice I’m looking at fuschias? She was never very much for fuschias.
Back home, did some online shopping. First checked on the status of various orders I have pending. I have a total of three model car kits on the way. A week ago I was looking around for a kit and I was attracted by a 1955 Chrysler and ordered it from Amazon. Then today, I got the notion of an MG-TD kit, because some family friends had one in my childhood. Well there are none currently made, but oddly enough, there used to be, and people on ebay are selling them, unopened. So I ordered one. And then got to thinking how my first car, a 1941 chevy, is not available, but my second car was a 1952 Ford. Ah yes, 1953 (practically identical) Ford kits are available. So I have all these on the way and at some point I will have to decide which to do first. Probably the Ford. I spent an hour working out which model paint colors match the dark blue top, light blue bottom, of the car I owned.
Plus I wanted a new pair of jeans so ordered that from Levi’s.
And THEN I got an email from Frank at FOPAL. Boxes of computer books are stacking up in the courtyard at the Cubberly center. That’s a former high-school complex converted by the City into a community resource; FOPAL occupies several rooms there, and has been storing its donation overflow in stacks of boxes in a courtyard. At which point I realized: that’s out of doors. I could work out of doors, alone, sorting and pricing those books. Probably? So I checked with CH staff and later got an email confirming, yeah, that sounds safe. Yay! I’ll be able to do some volunteer work again.
Codgerville 