Running Bear's December 2023 Coffee Shop


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Good evening gang!

Its been crazy here of late. Grandaughter's 7th birthday was today, so Friday they left for the beach, leaving their French Bulldog with the wife. Last night before bedtime (I retired early) the dog had a seizure. In fact through the night she had several and the wife and son #4 gathered her up and were off this morning to the Pet ER. Needless to say they kept this news from the kids until tomorrow when they return, but the daughter is a mess worried about "her baby", while trying to keep a happy face in front of the kids. Long story short, they believe she has Epilepsy. Somewhat fairly common in Frenchies. There is medicine to help, but no cure. The children will need to be taught how too deal with is, as the dog is only just a little over a year. They actually have a medicated nasal spray for the dog that can be administered at the onset of a seizure, that can lessen the effects. The dog is currently staying at the ER and may go home tomorrow if she is stable all night. By then the daughter and the kids will retrieve her. (and pay the bill!)
Meanwhile I had a prior commitment made to help run an open house at a friends layout (why I retired early) and standing on concrete floors really put the screws to my back today, but I'm over it. All in all it was a lot of fun,, including networking with other modelers.
On my layout tonight, I really boogered up a curved Shinohara turnout trying to make it DCC friendly. Needless to say I will be traveling tomorrow to the not so local LHS for a Walthers DCC friendly replacement tomorrow. I've done a bunch of them and they were all fine, this one is hopeless. Good thing I have a $100.00 gift certificate from Santa to use! Plus I need some other supplies, so why not.
Time I turn in, I've consumed a few beverages, sleep should come easy.
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Night all!
 
Bruette said:
The word Epiphany comes from the Greek word "epiphaneia" which means “manifestation, striking appearance, or revelation”. It originally referred to the appearance of a god or a divine reality to humans. Later, it was used to describe the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, as represented by the Magi, and his baptism and first miracle.
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Interesting. I've always know what the work epiphany meant, but always as the third definition - a major revelation, usually as in a person's brain suddenly clicks on and "understands a profound thought or meaning".

Still one would have thought I would have picked up the rest of this in Bible college (Bob Jones specifically) especially since one of my room mates was a Greek/Hebrew major. But maybe this is mostly a Catholic thing, not us from the ranks of the Anabaptists.

As I have understood the story, the magi had studied about "his star" ( to our knowledge possibly being the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn as we saw in 2020). When this happened they knew the country to go to but made the mistake of going to the King who was threatened that there would be a "new" king of the Jews. So he queried them to figure out when the "star" had appeared and when they skipped town, he ordered all the male babies born after that time to be killed.

And I also agree that Christ was most likely NOT born in December as shepherds would not have been tending the flocks at night. My grandparents raised sheep and said most likely they tended the flock by night during lambing season, or "high country" grazing season.
 
Smudge617 said:
I can see Montana getting a bit crowded soon.
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Montana: Boy, don't get your hopes up that folks will come here. Over the years we have found that ones that try to brave our Winter decide that there are better places. I think I remember reading that something like 70% of those move out the following Spring, a good percent of the others follow the year after. It does not seem to matter what part of the State either. We had been under 1M in population forever. Went over that 2ish years ago.

My fav shirt still is: "Welcome to Montana! Now go home"..

Later
 
kbkchooch said:
Good evening gang!

Its been crazy here of late. Grandaughter's 7th birthday was today, so Friday they left for the beach, leaving their French Bulldog with the wife. Last night before bedtime (I retired early) the dog had a seizure. In fact through the night she had several and the wife and son #4 gathered her up and were off this morning to the Pet ER. Needless to say they kept this news from the kids until tomorrow when they return, but the daughter is a mess worried about "her baby", while trying to keep a happy face in front of the kids. Long story short, they believe she has Epilepsy. Somewhat fairly common in Frenchies. There is medicine to help, but no cure. The children will need to be taught how too deal with is, as the dog is only just a little over a year. They actually have a medicated nasal spray for the dog that can be administered at the onset of a seizure, that can lessen the effects. The dog is currently staying at the ER and may go home tomorrow if she is stable all night. By then the daughter and the kids will retrieve her. (and pay the bill!)
Meanwhile I had a prior commitment made to help run an open house at a friends layout (why I retired early) and standing on concrete floors really put the screws to my back today, but I'm over it. All in all it was a lot of fun,, including networking with other modelers.
On my layout tonight, I really boogered up a curved Shinohara turnout trying to make it DCC friendly. Needless to say I will be traveling tomorrow to the not so local LHS for a Walthers DCC friendly replacement tomorrow. I've done a bunch of them and they were all fine, this one is hopeless. Good thing I have a $100.00 gift certificate from Santa to use! Plus I need some other supplies, so why not.
Time I turn in, I've consumed a few beverages, sleep should come easy.
Night all!
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Karl-

Happy Birthday to your Granddaughter!

Sorry to hear about the dog, praying all will be well with her!
 
ctclibby said:
Montana: Boy, don't get your hopes up that folks will come here. Over the years we have found that ones that try to brave our Winter decide that there are better places. I think I remember reading that something like 70% of those move out the following Spring, a good percent of the others follow the year after. It does not seem to matter what part of the State either. We had been under 1M in population forever. Went over that 2ish years ago.

My fav shirt still is: "Welcome to Montana! Now go home"..

Later
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I like to travel there, beautiful state. And one of the reasons is exactly the low number of people. Having grown up in Poland, which has basically the same kind of winters, i could live there. Especially having a CDL i would just do what a lot of folks seem to be doing; haul poultry, cattle, or grain. The city slickers who try to move there probably watched too many movies😆
 
Yesterday before friends came over, i was able to mate the caboose body with running gear temporarily. Giving the term "the red caboose" a literal meaning:
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Here i have also taken out Archbar trucks and after putting in new wheel sets in original trucks, i screwed those in. It looks a lot better with these. Next will come ladders, handrails which i haven't made yet, decaling, slight weathering and eventually i'd like to make windows for it. The windows i'll have to cut from clear styrene, since to my knowledge no available windows were ever made for Roundhouse caboose. The reason i bought this particular one is the "low slung" look of it, that gives it the narrow gauge character to it.
 
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dgrafix said:
Wishing everyone a happy new years eve..
Now i am off to get totally s-faced. 🥴 (well that will be later as its still 3pm, but gotta prepare)
Have a good one :)
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Boy a snot-slinger sounds good. Well, until we decided to leave the Holiday's to those amateur drinkers. We will probably be in bed around 2200 as we think we have seen too many New Years! Be careful even though it is Montana!

Later
 
Good Morning All. Happy New Year's Eve everyone. As David pointed out yesterday, today's date is 123123. Outside it's mostly clear and 40°, but with a heavy frost on the cars. Does that count as a white New Years Eve?

An absolutely glorious day here yesterday, sunshine, no wind and 64°. I spent most of the day in the yard. Since rain is predicted for Tuesday, I covered 60% of the garden with another layer of wood ashes and I will do the remainder today. The ashes that I cleaned out of the stove yesterday still have embers in them, but I have a large stash of dry ashes left from last year to complete the job. Later on, I also cut another week's worth of firewood from the tree pile. It really doesn't look any smaller.
While on the subject of my garden, I did look at the remaining stash of onions that I picked back in May.
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I always consider it a successful harvest when I still have them left by Christmas Day, extended by a bit this year, a week already and maybe two more coming up. Reminder that I will be planting 2024's crop between 1/25 and 2/8.

Coming up this week and next, is a resumption of medical appointments which I have been spared from since Oct 3. I know that I need to go, but they are a real time consumer.

Oil Protestors - I have a morbid sense of humor. When they glue themselves to the street, I always wish that the authorities would just leave them there for 8-10 hours before removing them. Especially in August! Those who glue themselves to railcars should be allowed to stay there while the train travels at 50 mph to the next yard. Presumably they won't fall off. They'll quit doing it rather quickly.

I didn't spend a lot of time out in the train shed yesterday, as the weather here was just too good. I did mostly finish up painting the mobile home, finally. A bit of touch-up will probably be needed, but this will be outside the 3' rule so it won't be much.
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Next up will be the roof vents, skirting and steps.
I am also looking forward to resuming the cemetery during the next week.

David - You Brits have a peculiar way of expressing things. I loved the "Abnormal Load" sign on the escort vehicle.
Tom O - Yup! Investments were good to me as well. I have a Roth IRA that netted 21.6%. My much bigger traditional only netted 9.7% since 60% of it is in money market. Some other investments did OK, but not as well as the two main ones.
Mike - Re: ScaleTrains - In my case I only purchase ATSF engines and I noticed that once they hit the states, they're gone instantly. Even the ones offered as "damaged box" don't last more than a day after the weekly mailing. I see that some other roads last longer.
Todd -
ctclibby said:
Over the years we have found that ones that try to brave our Winter decide that there are better places.
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We used to have the opposite happen here in Texas, after one summer, they would move back to cooler climates. It doesn't hold true much any more though, once they experience no state income tax. That savings pays for air conditioning.

Lots of birthdays today, but they're people that I have very little interest in, so I won't bore you with details.
Everyone have a great day.
 
Good morning all! The wife changed her mind about moving stuff to the daughter's condo today, and the son cancelled the grandkid visit due to his wife's birthday and general visit fatigue over the holidays. Can't blame him for that, been there myself! Bottom line is I get another modeling day. Ain't that a shame!

219 e-mails in the inbox this morning, 201 of which were bulls**t. Conservative politicians fundraising, liberal politicians fundraising. Every online vendor I've ever traded with wanting me to spend more money. Uber wanting me to order food so they can charge for delivering it, and a bunch of other obscure crap. Bleh! I'm going to drown in spam!

Tomorrow the decorations come down, which is always a depressing day as it also signals the end of Christmas vacation and a long holiday dry spell until Memorial Day. Bleh again.

Scale Trains: I have two, a pair of SP tunnel motors I got. They were DCC ready, and now have ESU decoders. What a pain in the A double S to get apart without breaking anything! Nice models, on par with Rapido.
Nice trailer Willie, any special metallic silver or just good old plain silver? I've been fiddling with metallic paints like Alclad and was wondering if anyone else does.

31 here this morning, wet and cold with some snow in the forecast. It won't stick, it hasn't been cold enough long enough yet.
 
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