The past few nights here have been completely overcast with not even a break in the clouds.
The other night I went down to Company 7 and picked up two things – a upgraded finder scope that is of the same spec as the one that came with my XT10 (9×50) but this one has a 90° eye piece on it so I no-longer have to make my neck contort to view through the original stright eye piece. Also, the image it shows is not inverted, so it makes maneuvering the scope and matching what I see against the star chars much easier and more intuitive.
I also got a sheet of Baadner AstroFilm for a small project. AstroFilm is a thin polymer sheet that sort of looks like mylar, but it isn't. Its used to make a filter and view the Sun directly with. The stuff sure isn't cheap. An A4 sized sheet of it cost me $30.
So what I'll do this weekend after I finish my New Years Eve hang-over is get out some cardboard and make an arpeture mask for my telescope. I'll size the mask so that it slows my scope down from f/4.7 to somewhere around f/12 and then put this AstroFilm over the opening. With this I can comfortably view the Sun stright on and at high mag and see solar flares and sun spots.