What have you been up to lately?

[Chich]

The fire we have across the valley is getting under control. The weather has co-operated and FF have been able to get control lines established etc. Going to be a while yet, it always is. The highway has been closed for a week or so as it is steep terrain and so trees, dirt and rocks have been falling onto it.
Have to admit to missing it but I'm not in the same shape I was once upon a time. Climbing up those hillsides would take a bit out of me.
I have been skipping right over the FB etc comments/posts. Most are ok and in support of the effort but the armchair quarterbacks just get under my skin. Don't know why as they never bothered me before I retired. It is tempting to chime in and point out why their oddball 'solutions' will not work but I found out long ago that there is lots of truth in the old saying that trying to teach a pig to whistle only wastes your time and annoys the pig Besides, there is plenty of yardwork to do which is a better use of my time.

[Graeme1858]

....trying to teach a pig to whistle .....

Graeme

[DeanD]

Today is my last day at the Kaibab star party. I have set up only once just with my binoculars because an arthritic wrist - hauling a Z12 or doing AP would be painful. For the past 4 days there were 3 participants altogether: me, the organizer and his son. On Sunday we had one more participant. Maybe 9 days is too long and for sure we could use some more advertising. It was very nice to look through those two 22-inchers though, and to be under a glorious Milky Way. The skies were decent altogether and there was a lot of interest from the guests of the lodge and the campground. I spent the daytime exploring new hiking trails, all of them nice. Time to head back.

Looks like a great place to visit! Arthritis is a pain (pun intended), but it is great that you could look through other scopes.

I have always wanted to see the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains: but I suspect it wont happen. Our overseas budget keeps getting spent on trips to the UK- not many dark skies there(!) to visit my son and his wife and shortly our new granddaughter.

I'll just have to put up with twice-yearly trips to our Flinders Ranges with the SQM 22+ skies up there...

All the best,

Dean

[Lady Fraktor]

Preparing for the hurricane of August.
The first week will be in Germany for Wacken 2023 which is 4 day music festival (100+ bands) Then spending the crazy half birthday in Garbsen
(Hannover area) then a quick return home for one week of work before spending the rest of August on a motocycle tour of Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary then home.

[pakarinen]

Cursing wildfire smoke daily, although I was able to get a very short 50mm session in this morning and the brighter stars in Cass were reasonably visible. Hey, better than nothing...

[Frankskywatcher]

SHINGLE’S :::
I have been dealing with a bout of shingles!
I can safely assume that most of us here are older on the Forum.
I’m just curious to see who else has had to go through this.
I know most of you have probably seen those TV commercials “shingles can be painful”!
That is an Understatement!
Add sorrow to misery I threw my back out at the same time so I got the double whammy !
All I can say is I’m “ glad” it’s been overcast here for quite some time so I don’t feel so bad that I have not been able to get outside and observe.
I’m very curious, as to who else here has had to deal with that affliction and their experience’s dealing with it?

[pakarinen]

Heading out to check out a state campground that I gave up on years ago due to overcrowding and filth. Rumor has it that the current camp host has a fair-sized reflector.

I'm hoping the place is in better shape now b/c the skies there were very dark after midnight and it's only 90 minutes away.

[Graeme1858]

Heading out to check out a state campground that I gave up on years ago due to overcrowding and filth. Rumor has it that the current camp host has a fair-sized reflector.

I'm hoping the place is in better shape now b/c the skies there were very dark after midnight and it's only 90 minutes away.

Good luck!

Graeme

[helicon]

Well I hurt my back by climbing up a retaining wall and falling down hard on my left leg which wrenched a lower lumbar vertebrae out of position. After a couple of weeks I went to a chiropractor, he scheduled an appt for 4 days in the future but then unexpectedly the joint popped back into alignment. Pain and discomfort gone after a day or two. Then my right knee started hurting so I went to the doc for x-rays. The patella tendon (meniscus) and MCL are strained or torn. Hard to walk around. Currently trying to recover from this injury...with no improvemnt soon I will get a steroid shot in the knee (cortisone) as a next step, followed by an MRI and maybe surgery after that. The x-rays also revealed some early arthritis forming in both knees, so not necessarily a good thing down the road. Time for a new skeleton, I joked to the doc.

[Frankskywatcher]

Well I hurt my back by climbing up a retaining wall and falling down hard on my left leg which wrenched a lower lumbar vertebrae out of position. After a couple of weeks I went to a chiropractor, he scheduled an appt for 4 days in the future but then unexpectedly the joint popped back into alignment. Pain and discomfort gone after a day or two. Then my right knee started hurting so I went to the doc for x-rays. The patella tendon (meniscus) and MCL are strained or torn. Hard to walk around. Currently trying to recover from this injury...with no improvemnt soon I will get a steroid shot in the knee (cortisone) as a next step, followed by an MRI and maybe surgery after that. The x-rays also revealed some early arthritis forming in both knees, so not necessarily a good thing down the road. Time for a new skeleton, I joked to the doc.

Wow that must have really hurt not to mention twisting your back like that.
I can totally relate to those problems and yeah steroid shots were great.
I used to get tennis elbow really bad from lifting weights.
Hopefully that will work for you and I hope you get better soon.

[Graeme1858]

Well I hurt my back by climbing up a retaining wall and falling down hard on my left leg which wrenched a lower lumbar vertebrae out of position. After a couple of weeks I went to a chiropractor, he scheduled an appt for 4 days in the future but then unexpectedly the joint popped back into alignment. Pain and discomfort gone after a day or two. Then my right knee started hurting so I went to the doc for x-rays. The patella tendon (meniscus) and MCL are strained or torn. Hard to walk around. Currently trying to recover from this injury...with no improvemnt soon I will get a steroid shot in the knee (cortisone) as a next step, followed by an MRI and maybe surgery after that. The x-rays also revealed some early arthritis forming in both knees, so not necessarily a good thing down the road. Time for a new skeleton, I joked to the doc.

That sounds pretty bad Michael! Hope you're feeling better soon.

Regards

Graeme

[Richard]

After a 4 year break due to covid etc went home for 2 months , prices in Czech have gone up like 150% since I last went , I only spent 1 week in Prague but the rest in Janov and surrounding areas , what is crazy for me is that many shop in Poland , not far away (20-40km) for half the price , this EU cant work like that

[Nakedgun]

SHINGLE’S :::
I have been dealing with a bout of shingles!

~

I had chicken pox as a child, so decided to get the shingles vaccine a few years back, around age 60. No outbreak, so far.

Good luck with the recovery!




.

[pakarinen]

The patella tendon (meniscus) and MCL are strained or torn. Hard to walk around. Currently trying to recover from this injury...with no improvemnt soon I will get a steroid shot in the knee (cortisone) as a next step, followed by an MRI and maybe surgery after that.

I blew out an ankle tendon a few years back. Surgery was a piece of cake and I had zero pain afterwards - I didn't even need an aspirin. But it did take several months of physical therapy to learn to walk on it again. Good luck!

[DEnc]

SHINGLE’S :::
I have been dealing with a bout of shingles!....I’m very curious, as to who else here has had to deal with that affliction and their experience’s dealing with it?

I hear that shingles can be excruciating. Thankfully the Shingrix vaccine is “spectacularly effective”. Perhaps once symptoms subside it’s “worth a shot”?

I’m buried in the author line of this first-in-humans test of one of the components of the vaccine, the adjuvant MPL. (I spearheaded the development and execution of the lab testing of the T cell responses in the trial.) Funny, from internal R&D I knew I was a high responder to MPL, and sure enough, decades later when I got the Shingrix vaccination, I felt the worst I’ve been in decades—flu-like symptoms for two days. But that’s what it takes to get the robust response to the vaccine antigen, and apparently it’s far milder than the symptoms of shingles.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12399193/

[SkyHiker]

I saw the doctor for what I thought was an arthritic wrist. After some physical tests he decided that it had to be something else (which is great!). Blood work was ordered, also for an annual checkup. Today I realized that I may have a repetitive stress injury from doing Sudoku puzzles on my tablet. I use my left hand to hold the tablet upright, and that is now one of the most painful positions. There have been more reports of SRIs due to tablets. Just look for iPaditis. So, with some rest I should recover. It's getting better already.

[Chich]

SHINGLE’S :::
I have been dealing with a bout of shingles!

They are not fun. I had a bout back in 2014. Left side and shoulder/back. I went to the Dr the day they appeared and he gave me some meds. Can't recall what they were but largish blue pills (Valtrex?). He said the meds would not stop them but as it was caught early they should reduce the outbreak. Still had to wear only hawaiian shirts for a while, and even they were a bit much at times. Cleared up after two weeks or so and they gave me the shot so hoping they won't come back. So far so good.

But, could aways be worse. I was telling a friend about it and he told me of a male relative who had an outbreak in the worst possible area you can imagine.

Yes, many of us are 'of an age" I have a long time friend back east and we have just come to accept that each phone call starts with about 10 minutes of old guy complaints of aches and pains

[pakarinen]

Annual eye exam - switched to a new doc. The new guy is very quick compared to my former doc and does retinal scans as a part of routine exams - very cool! Looked like a refractor lens test. Former doc would only do a scan if he saw something suspicious.

Nothing new seen and I don't need new glasses unless I want them. Couple of floaters that I asked about zapping with a laser and he said no, so I guess that's a good sign if I don't need treatment.

[Frankskywatcher]

SHINGLE’S :::
I have been dealing with a bout of shingles!

~

I had chicken pox as a child, so decided to get the shingles vaccine a few years back, around age 60. No outbreak, so far.

Good luck with the recovery!

Thank you so much my friend. Yeah it’s very painful.
The only consolation is that I haven’t looked through my scope in almost a month!
We’ve been stuck in the same weather pattern of partly sunny mostly cloudy, and every night has been cloudy for weeks!


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[Ylem]

It's 5:00 EST here, wifey is officially retired!!!