Hey Guys Tell my wife (Leni ) I,m not alone!

Hey Gang,
Hey guys, I need a little support here. I,m 55, kids out of the nest, grandkids, you know the story.But at a time in my life when you can really enjoy our hobbies.Well theres a little sign on my den that reads" Dave,s Boyhood Stuff" and in that room are all my old chemistry sets, microscopes,rock collections,old astronomy books I had as a boy,my first telescope proudly displayed,old Edmund catalogs along with all my present astronomy stuff.Well Leni says I can go into that room, shut the door and be in there for hours just looking and having fun and watching my copies of Science Fiction theatre, remember that series.She can,t believe there are others out there. Come on guys, help me out!!!





Dave

You and your kind are legion, my friend :-)

I'm 51 and own a CCD camera and *almost 6 telescopes (*my Lady, Valarie, claims ownership of our 18" Starmaster which she has dubbed "Starmistress")

For my calm wind, daylight hours, I live a mile from an AMA certified field and I own 2 R/C planes; a DHC2 Beaver and a P-47 Thunderbolt. They both rock and Valarie gets a kick out of watching them.

She enjoys the fish, too - As I write this, I am glancing over at the 10 denizens of my latest hobby; freshwater fish. I have 5 Columbian Tetras, 2 Yoyo Loaches, 2 Panda Corys, and a powder blue Dwarf Gourami.

I guess I'm lucky, getting to have things both ways a little - I'm content to while away the hours completely alone and enthralled with either my hobbies or researching associated info about them on the web - but any time Val is interested in joining in, we make it a duet and enjoy them together (She's already completed a 109 object Messier-a-thon - OK, she was using the DSCs but, hey, she turned around the following night and recapped about half of them the old fashioned way. She's quite the star trooper.)

We have both enjoyed team-teaching astronomy at a nearby facility for the severely head injured and helping them to put together a working observatory. My brother(a film maker) and I have just completed a screenplay based on that experience.

Hobbies rule. And they are so much more than a way to idle away the hours. My astronomy hobby had inpired a real fire in the mind of my youngest brother's neice. At Thanksgiving, she sat with me at the computer and spent a whole hour touring the solar system using Celestia (Google it).

Her questions and her focus amaze me - she's only 5 and she's got way more on the ball than most of the adult newbies I talk with at starparties.

There's a long an nefarious list of evil things a man without a hobby can get into. We are wise men to have developed one or more of them and I think our women are lucky to have it so.

I'm aware that some men submerge themselves too deeply and to the intentional exclusion of their spouses - or to escape reality in some way. As with all things, balance is everything but it's been my obsevation that these men are by far the exception.

Hi Gang,
Leni got a kick out of all your responses.


As always, thanks a ton,Dave

Dave, I am Single, But I have a room that definitely sounds a lot like yours. It's full of all my Hobbies, I can stay in
there for an entire day and never be bored, reliving all the good times in my life. Everybody needs a room like that.

Clear, Dark and Steady Skies,

Spaced-Out Bob

I'm 60, single, and retired, and can't say I have a room devoted to my hobbies - the whole house is a Hobby Lobby. Besides my two Golden Retrievers, two Maine Coon and two domestic shorthair cats, there are four scopes, three binoculars, and too many tripods.

Then there is the model railroading stuff...and usually somebody's computer on a workbench in the midst of repair.

Trains by day, stars by night, and no worries...