Good Morning All. 53° and clear this morning. Thunderstorms last night were all pomp and no circumstance. Lots of thunder and lightning but the rain failed to fall here, just a trace in the gauge this morning. My wife must have thought it was going to be more serious, as there's candles out all around the house. Clocks are not blinking, so the power must have stayed on. I was asleep. Tornadoes didn't seem to have materialized either, luckily. Thirty minutes of anxiety still beats shoveling snow any day.
While out on the grocery/beer trek yesterday, I took my wife over to Home Depot to pick out the trim and moulding for the bathroom remodel. She decided on the inside and outside corner trim only, no moulding for the floor, ceiling, door or window. She took pictures of lots of choices and will study them before deciding. This is why home improvement projects take so long to do.
Out in the train shed, I added some ground cover to various locations and did some preliminary painting to the latest gas station model. Since I finished the benchwork and main line construction a few months ago, I thought that I would be doing scenery at a faster pace. NO! I am just running more trains.
Switched out my town of Graham, switching cars at a grain elevator, pallet manufacturer, paper goods distributor and the cannery. Tied up on a siding for the night (my night, the crew "went for beans"), today I'll continue with the scrapyard, tractor distributor, tannery and a small appliance manufacturer. Used a pair of GP35's for this run, along with six boxcars, a flat car, a gondola, three grain hoppers and a tanker full of corn oil.
Chet - My main issue with the washing machine was getting into the house. I used an eight foot 2" x 12" as a ramp up onto the porch, but my wife was guiding (commenting) through the doorway, you know the speech, "you're too close here, you're too close there" etc. It's not like I couldn't see for myself. This also wasn't my first appliance install, Other than the fridge and upright freezer, I managed all of the others myself. Of course she wasn't home for most of them!
Very nice job on the Alco switcher. It does make a nice addition to the family.
Garry -
Willie .... You said your Dad had a '53 Buick. We had a '50 Buick back then. We lived near Chicago, and made a lot of family trips in IL, MO, IA, and KS. ... Two lane roads, ... Burma Shave signs, .... Passing many smelly barnyards,.... Ah, the memories .....
Unfortunately on our road trips to the Catskills, all we smelled was our parents cigarette fumes. Between them they consumed three packs of Lucky Strike non filters a day. During his last year on earth, they threatened to kick Dad out of the hospital one time, for sneaking one in the bathroom.
Mark - Lutefisk just doesn't sound too tasty to me either. Right up there with
calf fries and
menudo.
Sherrel -
You have to realize that that is almost 25% of our annual rainfall of 13.32 inches.
Wow! I got that much in two days back in early October. Happens at least twice a year in these parts.
Your oil tale reminds me about buying gasoline with no ethanol. Normally it's only available at farm/tractor places, but I noticed that it's available at the new Buc-Ees gas station that just opened in Denton. That's the place we talked about on the phone the other day with the $1.69/gal gasoline.
Garry (again) - Have a safe trip to Florida. George H. W. Bush, may he rest in peace. I never got to meet him, but met "Dubya" several times at Texas Ranger baseball games when he was the majority owner (and also governor of Texas). He always sat in the stands with fans and the company that gave me tickets had the box seats right behind him.
Tom - That's quite the coal loader there at the club.
Louis - Good Morning. Glad to see that you found the new place. Yesterday evening's tornado watch was just a watch, not a warning. While they are unusual in the winter months, tornadoes do happen all twelve months of the year here in North Central Texas. In my 37 years in this house (57 years in Texas), I only actually took shelter once, that was in 2015 when one passed about three miles south of me. Weather Bureau actually tracked that tornado for over 25 miles across open land without hitting a single structure. Uprooted a few trees and fences along the way, but that was all. Could have been really destructive had it hit anything they said.
Well everybody have a great day and a wonderful weekend.