Running Bear's Coffee Shop LV


Good afternoon 'Engineer & Switchmen',
Hi Flo & Francine, Jeffreys' Dinner is fairly packed today, no wonder with the heat here in Central Calif.

WW says it's - Clear & 105.3 °F - Feels Like 106 °F;
Winds are Variable at 2.7 mph;

Today's extended forecast is with held so as to not scare anyone!
Pressure 29.84 in
Visibility 10.0 miles
Clouds Clear
Heat Index 106 °F
Dew Point 59 °F
Humidity 22%
Rainfall 0.00 in
Snow Depth Not available. > 58 inches and falling, I feel much cooler now! LoL


Joe: I would imagine everything will go well with the procedure as long as you've had no pulling associated with waste elimination.

Your smart not to cut your grass too short when it's hot. I leave mine about 2.5 to 3" in length with this Central Cal. heat. In fact I just came back in a little while ago from watering most of the patchy front lawn to keep it from drying out too much.


Ken: Correcting things like that can be a real challenge, sorry to hear you had so many problems.



PRR Modeler said:
Afternoon All,

We had a storm cell last night go through and afterwards I noticed a large tree branch was partially broken (still attached) which is good because it would of landed on my truck. So this morning my son and I cut it down and cut it up. The air is like a sauna today. I put the signs on the layout a little bit ago. The picture is of 1 of 4 in the area to keep out the plastic people coal thieves!

CA Dave- Good luck. Fingers crossed. Maybe the button connection is bad?

20160814_142419_zpsryj7lufp.jpg


I hope everybody has a good night.
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Curt: Glad the rather branch limb of the tree didn't fall on your truck and that you and your son were able to cut it off and cut it up. Sounds like a close call.

Glad you caught the, little coal pickers, otherwise fairly soon they'd pick your coal company clean.

As for my problem, I'm not sure if it's a compatibility issue between the MRC transformer and the older Crest Radio hand throttle? I have the variable power turned up almost full like I did with the old Troller transformer but the power just doesn't seem to be there but the loco does run at prototypical slow speed and will maintain it briefly but I still have to keep pressing the power button most of the time.
 
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PRR Modeler said:
...Louis- I guess music is a generational thing. When I ride in my sons car his music wants me to slam my forehead into the dash!
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You hit the nail on the head Curt! I felt like jumping from the car, but I choose to reach over and turn it off. Road noise is more interesting most of the time. Now with my kids all having the new touch screens I would not know how to turn it off. Fortunately they are considerate of me and usually turn on a classic rock station, but those stations play the same old songs over and over.



WJLI26 said:
...My favorite album of all time is Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. I have owned it in every medium, Vinyl, 8 track, Cassette, and CD, and play it frequently as a break from my obsession with Western Swing.

My wife found this cartoon, a day after my latest property tax bill.
View attachment 58148
I think all homeowners, can identify with this. BTW, because of the new Market Value based annual reassessment, my property taxes have dropped, for the first time in 30 years. However, those with the big ticket houses are screaming...Oh well, they can afford it...:rolleyes:.

The new carpeting in our Master bedroom is in and looks great. Wife is very happy. Now I have to re-install the closet bi-folds. hopefully, they will fit without trimming. may need some new hardware though.
I also need to trim my lawn, although, I'm sort of waiting until it cools off a bit. Its not exactly dormant, but if I cut it now, it will burn again. The upcoming week will be busy.
Today, I'm on a starvation regimen, I have a colonoscopy scheduled for tomorrow. the ""fun" with the cleansing potion comes later to day. :(.

Louis: Southern Rock has a different appeal than say metal or Zeppelin.
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I have never been much of a fan of Folk Music if that is what you would call Dylan, but "Like a Rollin Stone" is a true classic and is always good to hear.

I love the cartoon! If it were row homes it could be Canton. Can you imagine how the old timers in Canton feel when the new tax bills arrive?

I like all types of rock music It's hard for me to describe why, I know nothing about the technical aspect of music. I like everything from this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vstNm5xzuKM

To this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPcuNC-L5bc

And even this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhqRMzoyV4g Caution may induce head banging.
 
Good Morning All, 72° and partly cloudy right now. Weather Underground says rain about 9:00, but from the looks of the radar, it may be sooner. Didn't even go to the train shed yesterday as the other things in life took precedent. Had a good time at my daughter's house in Dallas, came home and went to bed. Hopefully I will make that time up today.
Corey - Welcome back to the Coffee Shop, seems like it has been a couple of months. Good luck on the lifestyle change. Stick with it.
Toot - What was that? LOL That's what volume control is all about, 10's everywhere!
Louis - Yeah, DJ's did to Free Bird the same thing that they did to Stairway to Heaven. Played them both to death for me.
Joe - Gotta admit that Highway 61 Revisited is one of my all time favorites as well. Speaking of property taxes. Here in Texas, state law freezes property evaluations for the school portion (the greatest % in rural counties) of the property taxes when one reaches the age of 65. Obviously that changes if you add on or otherwise improve the property.
Good luck with the procedure.

Missed some of the regular visitors yesterday, hope to hear from them today.
Everyone have a great day.

Willie
 
Good morning folks.

It's sunny and beautiful out this morning.

Thank you for the encouraging words yesterday. It's a big change for me but one that's needed! I guess I knew all along that this needed to happen but I didn't want to give it up. It's amazing how much power a person can give a liquid. I can already see that life is better for me without alcohol. Anyway, thank you to everyone for the kind words.

When spending some time in the train room the other day I laughed at how disheveled the layout is. I started by putting away tools that were left out and organizing my work bench. That lead to fixing some of the models that were damaged in the move THREE YEARS AGO! I must have a record for slowest progress on a layout! I even started cleaning some of nature's weathering (dust) off of some of the buildings. Holy Cow, the roofs on some of them changed color as I brushed off three years of dust. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have this hobby ready and waiting for me to get my head out of my you know what. I guess everything happens for a reason and there really is a plan for me.

I guess that's enough about me. Thanks for the welcome back. I hope you guys have a great day.
 
Good morning, 61 and sunny. Going to be a bit on the humid side today, temps around 83 but dew points climbing to the mid 60's.

Corey, glad to have you back in the train room. This is an awesome support group when it comes to life changes!

Here is my layout photo of the day!:

anewgroup 085.jpg
 
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Good morning. We're starting off at 52 degrees with a high expected in the mid 80's.

I have a bit of catching up to do on new posts over the weekend. Saw a number on the phone, but it is hard to keep up that way. On Saturday we managed to get all of the flooring installed in the two rooms. It was a bit of a mad house with 5 grand kids running around and two dogs trying to supervise everything that was going on.

Here's a shop of my son cutting the last of the flooring.

IMAG0817.jpg

Didn't get the electrical done, but that's a quick job. A few outlets, switches and ceiling lights. A quick job there. There was a but of grab-assing going on with the grand kids which slowed things down a bit, but the floor is in.

IMAG0818.jpg

Next weekend the baseboards and trim will be installed and hopefully I can move into the room and get my confuser hooked up and running. In a way, I really didn't miss the internet too much. Had steaks on the grill for the adults and the kids got burgers and hot dogs at the end of the day.

Joe - I really liked the cartoon you posted about taxes. So true. We are in a rural area with a small town close by and it is a pain to open the property tax bill every year and watch it go up. I happened to be home one day when the county came by to look over the property. One little twit made some comment about going around back because he noticed a deck there. I told the little A hole that the deck had been there since the house was built. School taxes are a killer. Over the years we have had so many people move into the area and demanding things that they had where they came from. Wish they would leave and not trip over the state line on their way out.

Garry - Congrats on your anniversary.

Karl - Like the B&O units. Not run of the mill locomotives.

Dave - Nice photo.

Without a NASCAR race yesterday, I did get to go down to the train room and run some trains for a while. It was nice to pay them a visit. They could have been getting lonely. Took a few photos which I'll post later.

Now I'll see what posts I missed over the weekend.

LATER
 
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Chet -
I happened to be home one day when the county came by to look over the property. One little twit made some comment about going around back because he noticed a deck there. I told the lottle A hole that the deck had been there since the house was built.
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I have had three visits from the "twits", well actually one from the assessor himself and two from the interns or whatever. The first from the assessor was about seven years after I purchased the property and moved in. He pointed out that they had only been charging me for "property" and not the house. I pointed out that the deed had gone through his office ( I even had a homestead exemption) and it was their bad. He agreed, but my taxes went from $90/year to $400/ year after that. The second came about when some "temp" labor came by to inspect and my agricultural exemption was revoked. I had to re-file and point out that they had come by in December when nothing was growing. The last time a few years ago, was after I built the train shed and they added it as a residence. I had them come back out to look and show them that there was no plumbing, so it didn't qualify as a residence. Reduced the evaluation by about a third, but they noticed my barn which has been there over 30 years, was not listed so they socked me for that. We also had a roll-back election about 20 years ago that passed , so they haven't raised the rates since...evaluations yes but rates no.
All in all I am actually happy; my yearly property tax for 15 acres and a 4-bedroom house with assorted out-buildings is still around $800 a year, that's lower than some of my friends pay for a single month in Dallas.

Willie
 
Good Morning All: It's gonna be another HOT one out here today. Was 103 yesterday - supposed to be 105 today. I feel for the firefighters trying to work in this type of heat. Seems as if half the State is on fire!

Corey: Glad to hear about the booze halt. I just attended an AA meeting with my daughter visiting from D.C. She, hopefully, will leave it alone after being hospitalized twice for her episodes. I can understand an addiction pretty well. It took many, many failed attempts to finally give up the cigarettes. I used to laugh and tell people that If I quit - then I might get cancer. Exactly, I quit, and then got cancer about 10 months after I quit.

Joe: Good vibes for the procedure. After a few of them the past couple years, I am sort of getting use to them.(cannot believe I just said that)! Property taxes are God's reminder that we never really own anything - same with auto registration. although your auto will not be taken from you for non-payment.

CHET: glad to hear that you are nearing the end of the current re-modeling project -- What's next?

CURT: Glad no major damage was done. I know how you feel about banging your head on the dash with the music! An't nothing around my radio except country, and most of it I don't care for here lately. My nephew is a DJ with KFROG out here. He has been there 25 years. He goes to LV and Nashville every few months, and hundreds of events around the Southland here.

HOW ABOUT THOSE CUBS! YAY!
 
CHET: glad to hear that you are nearing the end of the current re-modeling project -- What's next?
![/QUOTE]

Road Trip ?? Trains
 
Good morning everybody. it is 72 at 11AM under clear skies, going to high 80's later today.

Enjoying all the posts from everyone as usual.

Sherrel it is great that you are supporting your daughter by attending meeting with her, recovery is a long hard road.
I am a AA member and have been without alcohol for 41 years. This stuff just about destroyed me years ago.

Have a super day people!

Mel
 
Good afternoon. Another hot one here in the Free State.

Joe - I wish I had your grass "dormancy" problem. Mine seems to keep getting longer no matter how hot it gets. Gonna have to get out there and mow the next day or two since it was too hot to be out this past weekend.

Curt - Talking about car music, I'll tell you what really drives me bonkers: When we are on a long road trip and people insist on channel-surfing. A song ends and a commercial comes on, they just have to change the station to one where there is a song playing - why can't they simply wait for the commercial stream to end? This [surfing] sometimes goes on for 15 minutes, way longer than the ads would have lasted.

Garry - that is definitely a date to remember! I had a similar brush with death, but it wasn't medical: I was robbed at gunpoint while I was working the midnight shift at a 24hr gas station. One of the guys was ready to shoot me, but his older [and wiser] companion talked him out of it since I was "acting ok" and they just tied me up instead. That date [Dec 30, 1982] is permanently engraved in my memory.

Chet - maybe soon you'll be remodeling your layout?

Willie - You're lucky having only a $800 property tax bill! Here's a tax horror story: When my late MIL was is her final years and couldn't live [safely] by herself anymore, she went to live with my sister-in-law in Alabama [who had a large-enough house to accommodate her]. She was having all her mail forwarded there, and when the State found out, they declared that her home was no longer her "primary residence", and doubled her annual property tax from $3500 to $7000!:mad:

Sherrell - hope those wildfires don't reach your area!

Time for me to get back to work now...
 
Good morning fellow 'Engineers & Switchmen' it's 11:51 Am here in Central Calif.,
Hi Flo & Francine, How are you ladies doing? It feels like it may be cooler today? Some coffee and a Apple Fritter. Thanks.

Per WW: Clear at 94.8 °F - Feels Like 93 °F; So it is considerably cooler than yesterday fortunately!
Winds are from the SW at 4.7 mph
Today - Again no extended forecast?

Pressure 29.89 in
Visibility 10.0 miles
Clouds Clear
Heat Index 93 °F
Dew Point 56 °F
Humidity 27%
Rainfall 0.00 in


I hand watered the patchy front yard grass again about an hour ago as it had somewhat dried out from last nights soaking.


Curt: The little sign/s do make a difference

Ken: Sorry to hear about your ordeal at the gas station, I had something similar happen to me at a Liquor store I worked at part time at night about that same time period.

Sherrel: Looks like your getting the heat I had been experiencing.

Dave: Nice shot of your layout and interesting to see the loco emerge from behind the mountain.


Hope all have a good day.
 
Afternoon All,

Did a few chores this morning. I ran 4 locomotives today (2 were my Dad's) that don't get run very often. I think I have 2 tracks in the RH with power issues. I will check them out this week. Probably this was caused by the TT work under the layout. Oh well, it's always something.

Louis- We have an unofficial rule in the car. The driver selects the music on the radio, that is of course unless MOH doesn't want to listen to it. I prefer the 60's channel and she likes the 70's better.

Dave LASM- Very nice picture.

Chet- We get a lot of northern transplants here as you can imagine, and we frequently hear "that's not how we do it in NY or NJ", well guess what, you aren't in NY or NJ! You are more than welcome to leave if you don't like the way we do things here! Generally speaking my interactions with people from those 2 states (EMS at WDW) were the worst for the feeling of entitlement (I have never understood it). Don't get me wrong, I have met some really nice people from there and this isn't intended to reflect on anyone here in the forum.

Ken- MOH does that with TV commercials. She never seems to understand that most channels run them at the same time.

OK, I've complained enough...Sorry. I hope everyone has a good night.
 
santafewillie said:
ChetAll in all I am actually happy; my yearly property tax for 15 acres and a 4-bedroom house with assorted out-buildings is still around $800 a year, that's lower than some of my friends pay for a single month in Dallas.

Willie
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Pretty good. We live on a 3,500 sq ft corner lot on the edge of the state's capital city, in a 3 bdrm, 1,000 sq ft brick, 60-yo bungalow. We managed to pay cash ($70k), so no mortgage. Monthly, taxes and insurance break down to a total of $500/month.

Back in Vermont, we had a mortgage of $1,200 per month for a 2,500 sq ft house on 14 acres of wooded wetland.

I'm not sure how the two compare, since our retirement income is about half of what it was in Vermont. I guess what really matters is that we're comfortable, with disposable income, and aren't touching our retirement nest egg since paying off the car.

Incidentally, our present, 60 yo house is much better built than our previous 20 yo house. I understand this is a fairly common observation.



Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk
 
Good afternoon, thanks for the compliments on the photo. I am just about running out of new locations.

you are a great bunch!

Curt--I look forward to your afternoon check ins!

David Trussrod, you always do your homework!! don't miss a beat!

Garry, First class participant!

Too many more to mention!!! Ken, Louis, Tony, Eric, Beady, Erik...

Chet, always on the ball!
 
Curt - I can remember the people from New York and New Jersey coming into Florida when I was a state trooper. Some how they always got around to "well, I'm from New Yawk" and my response was "AND ???" The same laws applied to them as the residents and they had a hard time dealing with that. I also like when the said that they were tax payers, paying my salary and I told tham I was a tax payer too, so I guess I'm self employed. After a few years I could usually figure out what part of the country the tourist were from just by the way they drove. We have a lot of people from California and Texas moving in up here as the largest states, but also from all over.

Beady - When I built my place in 1977, my property taxes were $400 a year with a couple of acres of land. They are now up to almost $1,600 a year with over half of it going to schools. I'm 70 years old and my kids have grown up and are paying taxes. Sure wish I could get away from the school part of the taxes. All of the outsiders moving in want all of the crap they had in the states they moved away from up here. Many seniors who have had their mortgages paid off years ago are having to sell out or lose their homes to the county because they can't afford the taxes along with everything else going up in price.

Ken in Maryland - Don't know if I'll remodel the layout, but after 30 or so years, there are a lot of areas that have to be either freshened up or upgraded. The town in this photo was probably one of the first areas I started putting scenery into. The freight station was scratch built to fit the available space, but if you notice, I still haven gottrn around to putting up business signs on many of the buildings.

IMAG0830.jpg

I started feeling more comfortable with scenery and got busy custom painting locomotives and freight cars and just never finished the town. It is on the list of things that have to be done, some time in the future. The list is a few pages long.

Later.
 
"...Incidentally, our present, 60 yo house is much better built than our previous 20 yo house. I understand this is a fairly common observation...
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Yep, 60 years ago they knew how to build a house, and 60 years before that they were probably better again. All anyone has to do is go to an historical town to see that ... 150 plus year old buildings, still standing and going strong.

3,500 sq feet in the city or 2,500 sq feet in the country on 14 acres ... think I know which I would prefer if money wasn't an issue as such.
 
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