I lasted 50 minutes on the back deck last night. Just too tired to face even an 18 minute drive. The wind was pretty well blocked by the house, which no doubt made my session more pleasant. I struck out on an open cluster in Gemini (2266) and Comet Kushida. At that point, I'd spent 30 minutes to see… nothing. I decided to do a scan for Lulin, and I'm afraid I don't understand the difficulty. With my 11×56 binoculars, it was easy to pick up about 10 degrees to the west of Regulus as a very diffuse patch. With my 17mm Hyperion, I could clearly see the core, and could just make out the broad tail. This was about 8:40PM, so it wasn't very high up in the sky yet. I then turned to Saturn, and it made my night. In spite of being so low, seeing was incredible and I could make out two bands – one above and one below the rings. I could see the rings across the planet and the shadow of the rings was a thin black line just below the rings (north). I pushed my scope up to 240x, a power I rarely can use, and was rewarded with a grand view of Saturn. I saw the four moons Dean cited, as well as one more on the west side of the planet, almost in the glare of the rings themselves. Very faint in my 10". Titan might have presented a disc.
The good news is that my finder is now focused. I can actually see through it!
I have a Crayford focuser on the way via Astromart, so that may make for an interesting daylight project. It's a replacement from a stock Orion tube, so there should be no "customizing" necessary. At least I hope not! So long Rack & Pinion!