Feast or Famine

I've complained enough about the worst winter ever for observing here at the C. E. Scovil Observatory, so I won't add to the litany of complaints.

But there is plenty of good news to report as winter seems to be loosening its grip on Michigan.
1- The weather has been good lately. It's still cold, but at least the clouds have found someone in Nebraska or Minnesota to bother. They've thinned out here.
2- I finished insulating and paneling the roll-off shed control room. It's actually almost too warm in there at night. I was in shirt sleeves tonight, and sweating a bit around the neck. Outside temperature, -2.3C.
3- Because of the crappy weather I had a lot more time to devote to fantasy football this season, resulting in my winning the championship in two out of three leagues I played in.

Not only did I get the satisfaction of finally beating my son in the playoffs (he has owned me for five years!), I won enough money to by a new CCD autoguider and 80mm guidescope to improve my photometry results. I also bought a new awesome treadmill for the living room. Irene and I can share the miles and smiles while watching all our favorites on DVR.
4- Even though my 12" GPS still can't point worth a damn, its now taking great data once I get it parked on a variable star.
5- The new photometry software, also compliments of fantasy football, is worth every nickel and making life much more enjoyable for me.
6- Not only is my own observatory ramping up the amount of data collected each week, but my request for remote observations from the Sonoita Research Observatory was granted, and now I am getting data 3-4 times a week on my target stars from Arizona.

So we have gone from no observations for November- January to working every free minute to keep up with the glut of data coming in and reporting activity and outbursts of CVs in my program in a timely manner to CVnet and AAVSO.

Like many things in life, sometimes it's feast or famine. This month it's feast.