Checking out Venus

After way too much turkey, fixings, and wine this afternoon with some of our squaredancing friends, I decided to check out Venus who was screaming at me outside our front door in the west to come look. I set up the ETX70 in front on a makeshift stand consisting of a card table. Not the most stable of mounts! I powered everything up, leveled the tube with a bullseye level, rotated the scope to approximately north, did an 'easy' align using Capella and Formalhout and just accepting the position without checking it. Then I hit 'goto venus', and began a spiral search. Venus showed up fairly fast and I synced on it. Then I put on a 10mm ep with a 3x barlow and focused. It took quite a few turns of the little focus knob but the view was worth it. There was little 22" Venus with a clear half-moon shape. Not bad, maybe there's hope for the ETX yet. The motors hummed along and kept everything at least in the field of view with minimum adjustments required. I stayed out long enough to give my wife a look and even managed to attract a little attention from passersby but clouds moved in before I could do any real 'sidewalk astronomy'.
The 10mm + barlow combo should be good for some double star splitting later on. I was able to see a fairly bright star which may have been SAO164476 in the field along with Venus. The field was too small for it to have been Del Cap (Nashira). I put the 27mm ep on to get a better view before Venus went behind a palm tree but the clouds moved in and I wasn't able to continue. If the clear skies hold, I'll have to try again the next couple of days as Venus wanders through this fairly rich star field.