Good Morning All. It's clear and 37° out on the back porch, and the wind has died down to around 10 mph. Storms have moved over to the east and we'll see cooler (mid-50's) but settled weather until Tuesday when it warms up again. Damaging winds and hail in a lot of areas about 45-50 miles south of here and over into the East Texas area. Not as severe as the system that slid by me two weeks ago though .
Happy St Patrick's Day, bringing to a close St Patrick's Week, and ushering in St Patrick's Weekend! Corned Beef and Cabbage in the crockpot today, but no green beer for me. However I do drink Heineken which comes in a green bottle! Does that count???
Grocery trek went as planned yesterday, but some prices were noticeably higher. Eggs were lower though. There were some outages in the produce department which the girl said were things ordered but not on the truck. Gasoline was weird, two weeks ago it was $2.89/gal, last week it was $3.19/gal, this week it was $2.99/gal. Our weather guy must be setting those prices.
I did purchase a new garden tractor yesterday, a Simplicity Regent, with a 48" deck and 25 hp Briggs and Stratton engine. Had the highest Internet reviews of all that I looked at which included Cub Cadette, John Deere, Troy Built, Stihl, Toro and some other off-brands. I actually wanted a wider deck (old one is 54") but they are generally unavailable in my area. It will be delivered either late today or early tomorrow depending on when my wife drops off the check this morning, I didn't have the checkbook yesterday. Interesting that they charge a $175 upcharge for using the debit card, which I didn't want to pay. Price with tax and delivery was just under $4750, just $750 more than the old 18 year old Craftsman, which came with a bagger that I didn't get this time. Can't wait to use it this weekend. Yeah!
I did visit out in the train shed yesterday. I mainly worked on installing a couple of LED's in the Gateway Cafe structure that I will be using in the area between the existing scenery and the Ethanol refinery. I gotta come up with a name for the refinery! I rearranged the structures there and came up with this. I need a road in and out of this section.
Then I added another road, this time on the left or south as the RR runs.
I mopped up the glue squeeze-out after the photo was taken. The area to the left of the road will be a mostly tree-filled area, and the area to the right will be a parking lot for Gateway Market, another of
Chet's structures. I'll do backdrop art and other disguises to lead it out of the scene.
Tom O - I do believe that there is a lot of back room deals and manipulation going on between banks and politicians right now, especially SVB. Reading about it on either left or right leaning media seems to indicate an awful lot of cronyism regarding both "woke" investment and political contributions. Bailing out uninsured depositors means that the government is helping the very same folks that they constantly rail against, the 1%. I haven't seen this much crooked government since the 60's with LBJ.
Sherrel -
The scrap train - with a caboose - looked great; just needs some bending of the sides of those gons!
Perhaps you missed it in the last picture just ahead of the caboose, and these which may not be visible in the shots that I posted.
Everybody have a great St Patrick's Day and an awesome weekend.