Utah Jazz

The new season is upon us. What better to bring a smile to the face is my favorite Utah Jazz moment: "John Stockton sends the Utah Jazz to the NBA finals!". It begs the question: where were you when it happened?

7 Moore

Wow...has our family grown. Despite your early disposition to say "they're looking to have seven more kids!?!", let me put your faint heart to rest and say, only one more. "7 Moore" is our current status, being 2 parents, 3 kids, 2 cats. My hope is this evening to get a 'latest' picture of each member and put the images as a collage in the title bar, obviously showing my curiosities are taking over useful things I could be doing. I'd claim lack of sleep, but the twins are doing much better recently (minus Natalie's cold). Normally I get so obsessed by whatever I'm doing, I finish quickly and spend time looking for other things to do. I think this has finally caught up to me, as I have a lot of time on the telescope yet needed before it gets really cold out. I haven't used my solar filter yet, and have had a hard time stepping away from work and the kids to view early morning or late afternoon. I'm in the middle of Zelda on the Wii, "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer (started reading during Lisa's ACL surgery and then never finished), etc.

130 SLT

130 SLT
from Josh Moore by Josh
For my birthday, and after several years of calling it 'too expensive of a hobby' ($500 = telescope, solar filter, eye pieces, ac adapter)...I finally bought a telescope for my birthday. It's a NexStar 130 SLT. When it arrived, and the next day extra eye pieces, then the AC adapter - 2 extra long days of waiting for power - it was time to view. Obviously around lamp posts I'm normally grateful for around the house, and so many other lights around, many DSO's (deep space objects) aren't as bright, but I had fun anyway. I'm learning leaps and bounds about each eyepiece, how the GOTO works (automatically moves the scope to the selected target), and many other things. But after a few days of really cloudy weather, a nice birthday gift was a clear sky. The moon was just gorgeous tonight, as was Jupiter and the 3 visible moons (for my telescope anyway). So many more stars were visible by the naked eye, and the texture on the moon was just amazing.

I think my next purchases will be an attachment ($12) to allow your digital SLR take pictures. My telescope isn't meant for longer than 30 second exposure pictures (telescope is constantly moving to keep the object in focus), but I'm sure in the next few years, after I buy another small telescope that doesn't require power to move the gears (or have GOTO), and a small camera/attachments, I'll eventually get a bigger telescope. It's sad I just bought one and I'm talking about another, but the small one should be <>

They say going to a location of no (at least much less) light pollution, you can see many more DSO's, brighter, and more clear. I didn't want to buy an external power tank or waste batteries, but I think I'll get two sets of rechargables. Our family lives on AA batteries anyway, and it'd be fun to take the scope to the big park, or every once in a long time, to a place where there are large locations of low light pollution. No picture can describe what you see through a telescope.

Surgery complete

After an hour of prep, and about three and a half hours of surgery and recovery, Lisa's knee surgery was complete. We're now at Lisa's parent's house being spoiled with lots of help with the kids and Lisa. I'll be working out here for the rest of the week, and am guessing we'll return home Sunday or Monday, depending how things go. Sydney is enjoying spending even more time with grandma and grandpa. I bought the book "Twilight" for Lisa for her recovery, and didn't have anything to read while waiting for her in the waiting room. So I picked it up, and am 130 pages into it. It's definitely a girl book, but it's very interesting. She has a very great writing style that fits the genre and the plot. Anyway, Lisa's upstairs watching "The Office" season 3, and I'm getting ready for bed. She's excited for her books, but was too excited for the new season of "The Office". Sydney goes back to school tomorrow and is very excited.

First day of school

What a fun day. For two months we've been talking to Sydney about school, what she'll learn, being able to play with friends, etc. It seemed like the day would never come, so I never realized how hard it would be to see her gone when I go up for a snack, etc. True, she'll only be gone while I'm at work, but who can pass up the fun opportunities to talk about what she learned at school, etc. This week they're supposed to wear red (learning the color), talking about 'A', alligators, apples, etc.

Here are a few pictures Lisa took before taking her to school.

Brighton

For Labor Day, we went for a walk around the lake up at Brighton with Lisa's mom. It was a lot of fun, and the kids were really good. Sydney (with the strap tightly around her wrist) was taking pictures throughout from atop my shoulders. The bottom picture is one of Sydney's. She's still learning not to put her finger over the lens, so we had to delete quite a few, but she's learning and having a lot of fun. We're looking into get her a very cheap but digital camera for Christmas. Hopefully she'll continue to love taking pictures like Aunt Wende.