Stargazing on the longest night

Tonight was clear after several days of overcast skies. Just after sunset I tried to spot Mercury along with Venus and Jupiter but had no luck. Maybe tomorrow? We drove to Hidalgo to see the Christmas lights and ride the trolley. They had added several new clusters, notably the 'China Lights', inspired by this year's Borderfest theme of China. When we came back home, it was nice and clear (and warm) so I hauled the ETX out to my backyard 'observatory' for a bit of viewing. I thought I'd check out the variable star Algol. I got the ETX aligned Capella and Mirphak as usual and then went to Algol. Bang, right on center. Algol seemed a bit brighter than Eps Per so perhaps it's close to its minimum. I wasn't sure of the name of my other 'brightness estimator' star (Gam And or Almak) so I didn't check the brighter star to bracket Algol (maybe tomorrow?). I sketched the field around Eps Per and Mirphak in order to compare against CdC and to practice sketching. My 'sketchpad' (the back of a CdC starchart) was getting a bit damp and limp but I was able to sketch something close to what CdC was showing. The limiting magnitude in the 70mm ETX was about 7.5. I noticed a nice serpentine asterism connected to Mirphak, about 21 stars in an 'S' shape with a head like a snake and Mirphak as the tail. This was part of Mel 20 cluster and was pretty in its own right. While on Mirphak, I hit the Az button on the Autostar and went right through the double cluster! It was a nice group of clusters so I hit the Identify feature on the Autostar and it came up with Double Cluster. Pretty neat. Since everything was working nicely, I decided to try the 10mm ep and checked out the Orion Nebula which was very nice. I wasn't able to see much detail in the Trapezium though. Need more power than the ETX-70 is capable of. I wanted to try for the Andromeda galaxy but had waited too long and it was behind the house. Better luck next time.