frustrating night

Last night was very frustrating.  I had cooled the 12.5-inch as I usually do and started observing after dark.  But the seeing was atrocious.  I could not form clean images on anything, even as low as 170x.  I started with Jupiter, then Mars.  Through the murk and haze I was able to see Syrtis Major, Sinus Sabaeus, Sinus Meridiani, and so on.  But it was very poor.  I tried different solutions but only the apodising screen seemed to help, but little.  There must've been some seriously bad roof currents, and general heat dissipation from the ground.  At 9:40pm I turned my scope back to Jupiter to watch Io reemerge from the planet's shadow; the ephemeris or my watch may have been off since Io was already there -- it wasn't supposed to appear until 9:44pm.  I thought perhaps the seeing would be better at zenith, so I tried Cor Caroli -- but it was horribly smeared.  I checked the primary mirror to see if it was dewed, or if collimation had somehow gotten way off -- but nether was the case.  So I packed it in early, and just had some simple naked eye viewing.

I suppose the only solution to suburban summer viewing is to get up early; it's the only chance for the local seeing to be somewhat settled.  It was a frustrating night, but I'm not upset about it -- you just have to take what the sky gives you.