Running Bear’s July 2021 Coffee Shop


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Tonight’s sunset viewed from our house.

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Well, howdy there internet MRR peeps

It's Troy again...

Thanks for all the well wishes on the anniversary!

MIL's visit with the neurologists was mostly uneventful. He's suspecting something I forgot how to spell... if he's correct, long term no treatment, just live with the muscle cramping in her arm. However, she goes in for another CAT scan to check for furballs... er... indications of past strokes. MRI not possible due to pacemaker/defib. So, wife will need the car all day again on Friday.

Todays the day the insulation guys show up and blow in a fresh batch into our attic. Stuck my head up there. What we've got is almost 50 years old, and matted down by every cable-TV, internet, electrician, dryer duct cleaning, et al people. Adding another 10 inches or so should know a few degrees off the upstairs temp swing. After this, the next major rehab project is the new shower we're still awaiting materials for.

TTFN! Got words to write and coffee to drink before insulation arrives.
 
Morning all,

Clearish and 65° in Doo-Dah today. High expected of 90°. I say clearish as there is the haze from the fires out west. I hope all in that direction stay safe. Wife wants another try at the 2-day trip on Route 66, so next Friday we're going to attempt it. I'm a bit reluctant as that where the spike in covid cases are in both Kansas and Northeastern Oklahoma. We are both vaccinated, but she's got other issues that covid in any form will complicate.

BBL, got to get a cuppa before the masses show up.
 
Good Morning! 58F with mild rainfall this fine morning. It's going to be a beautiful day; except for the heavy smoke in the air.
I hope the rains help out on all the fires, but, I just don't think it's enough.
I'm not sure if the local wildlife is having a noticeable time with the smoke:
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Thank you for all the likes on past posts!

Willie - The story on that 600 grand over-the-rails pedestrian white elephant. There is a newer road traffic crossing at that location. CN would not allow the town to build the road crossing over the tracks until they had that monolith built and in place. A complete garbage disposal of tax payers dollars. The only people I've ever seen on that bridge are fire-fighters training and children playing. Never anybody who is trying to get someplace.
Thanks for the comment, but, I don't usually make posts unless I have photos. That's just an integral part of who I am. I have the capability and the willingness to post photos, so I do, just like you.

Jaz avalley - Thank you for the wonderful photo of the extremely well modeled abandoned vehicles. Except, there is a couple of issues. There are no bullet holes in the vehicle bodies and the windows arn't smashed out just for fun. They still look like one could climb in and drive away.
Abandoned cars always have bullet holes, no glass and no wheels:
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Sherrel - Bless the fine looking MIL. Better pay attention to her, she looks like she could still run the marathon. You're a very lucky fella to have you're elders still with you.


Here's a close-up of a garden bee. It struggled trying to fly with that big body and short, stubby wings. It could get airborne, though, I don't know how. It's just a photo I share for the conversation:
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Have a great day, everyone!
Points taken…gulp I shall got look into it do you think a 17 HMR will be too big?
 
Morning all,

Clearish and 65° in Doo-Dah today. High expected of 90°. I say clearish as there is the haze from the fires out west. I hope all in that direction stay safe. Wife wants another try at the 2-day trip on Route 66, so next Friday we're going to attempt it. I'm a bit reluctant as that where the spike in covid cases are in both Kansas and Northeastern Oklahoma. We are both vaccinated, but she's got other issues that covid in any form will complicate.

BBL, got to get a cuppa before the masses show up.
I would say try to find a reason to not go, it is obvious you care about her health, and Covid is indeed getting bad again I saw Las Vegas had an issue out of the ordinary, show her this….Australia avoid the worse in the beginining now succumbing to the Indian/Delta plus variant, Netherlands removed lockdowns and masked etc and 3 weeks later had to publically apologise when figures when ballistic the UK has just allowed nightclubs to open…..yeah well 2m or 1m distancing will not apply kissing close dancing and masks sighs I am guessing our hospitals will soon be full of young ‘adults’ who could not keep their hands to Therese,vets…no I do not blame them I blame the government, yes yes I know companies are screaming at them but hospitals and Covid figures should be more important than this.
India they think 400,000 deaths is more likely 4 million ie x10 because they are awash and bodies thrown in the Ganges their religious river is such a good idea, and Indonesia is in free fall at the moment, oh and China admits to a whole 65 new cases, not deaths just cases, but they kicked out foreign reporters last year, and I believe native reporters have a habit of going poof like a puff of smoke - must be related to all the smoke that is not related to the crematoriums running overtime.
My advise search YouTube for a nice drive by of the area your wife likes, get sone travel goodies, a fan, and seat her down and watch it like a hone movie. I jest thee not.
 
Good morning from Wisconsin. 67f degrees now with a solid breeze making it feel like 61 and only heading to 77. Very cloudy. The south deck is blocking most of the breeze.

Garry, great picture of the moon. We went to the airport last night and while our moon wasn’t as big it still had the orange coloring. Hit the pillow at 2am. I just never think of taking moon pictures, well done.

Seems noisy on the deck this morning. I can hear the land moving equipment as a new sub division is going up on land we sold just before Covid in 2019. We won’t see it from the house but I can hear the construction efforts.

I got a new phone 2 weeks ago tomorrow. I can operate the features fairly well. But, until last night in the cell phone parking lot I realize I never answered a call in. I think Terry was still laughing when we went to bed. I couldn’t figure out how to answer it. I will practice this morning. Life!

The girls were at The Game last night. I watched the last 2 minutes and a bit of the celebration. The Bucks are the 2021 NBA Champions. Wowie!

Spent some of yesterday afternoon playing lifeguard at the pool. The granddaughter’s play group adventure fizzled out so they asked if they could use the pool. 4 adults, me and the daughter’s 2 teenage neighbor girls who are trained life guards watched 12 kids in the pool. I had beverages but no food and everyone for 3 hours had fun. All girls between 8 and 10. I spent sometime with the graphpaper working on the layout design.

enjoy your day
TomO

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Good Morning Everyone. Clear and 68° right now. Only made it up to 87° yesterday, unheard of cool weather for this time of year. Weather geeks are shooting for 90° again today, but they've been wrong all week. They are predicting 101° for Monday, that's more like it. Without any significant rain lately the mowing has slowed down here, but yesterday I finally got around to the savanna over the lateral lines and septic tank. I have been pretty much ignoring that area for no real reason. Didn't finish because I was up against my self-imposed 45 minute limit for doing tasks outdoors.
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I actually did much more than shown before getting over there. Hopefully I will finish this area and some more of the "back 40" later today. Meanwhile I have to get the grass clippings to the garden for composting and mulching.
Resumed grilling last night with some 93% lean Angus beef burgers, low-carb homemade zucchini fries for my wife and delicious homemade onion rings for me. It will be interesting to see what my blood sugar reading is this morning. Fries and rings were made in the oven since we haven't used the deep fryer in about ten years.
Speaking of food, my buddy outside the train shed scored a big ole grasshopper yesterday.
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Sausage, cream gravy and grits for me this morning Flo. A glass of OJ of course.

Thanks for those likes and comments yesterday: Christian, Tom O, Patrick, Hughie, Karl, Garry, Tom, Rick, Jaz, Gary.

Much of what I did in the train shed yesterday is not really photogenic. Mainly ground cover. I did arrange some farm equipment in the John Deere lot though.
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That goes with the equipment on the flat car.
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I need to be looking at this load some more as I don't think I reloaded the tractors the way that I originally had them. The deck cribbing just seems to be off.
I also painted a concrete pad for the vinegar tank and pump building, crude but effective since it is set back from the aisle a bit. Note also that I replaced the vertical tank with another horizontal tank for corn oil storage. Still trying to decide whether to pave that area or use ground cover.
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Jaz - Are you feeling better? It was sciatica if I recall.
Tom O - Four miles is tough for me. I rarely go more than 1 1/2 miles any more except once a week when I walk the 2.3 miles to the mailbox and back. Even that is getting tougher but I am still able to maintain a 3 mph pace. It's lonely though, not that I mind, I usually see one or two vehicles max, most times none at all. Going at daybreak, I do get to greet many coyotes and deer heading for the woods for the day..separately of course. I don't see the bobcats or the mountain lion any more since the newest neighbors developed their 100 acres into a "country estate". The mountain lion may have met it's demise as I first starting seeing it about eight years ago. The bobcats are most likely still around but not staying in their semi-visible hangout since they cleared out all of the undergrowth around the abandoned hog sheds there.
I am particularly fond of city scenes on my layout. I have everything from hamlets to towns to full blown downtown scenes.
Christian - You're not the first to ask; I am presently working on a rough track plan with pencil and paper. For whatever reason, I haven't had any luck with any track planning software. I downloaded Anyrail and I can't even get benchwork or a room diagram drawn. I tried SCARM and got a rectangle for the room, but no luck with the benchwork! I am normally somewhat computer literate, but I never had any training or experience with CAD. I am sure that I will have an "ah ha" moment with one of them at some time.
Chad - That's pretty much what the UPS Store manager explained to me. Makes sense but it was an extra hassle for me. Especially nice photo of the "hole" yesterday.
Patrick - I think that it is a real shame about the resurgence of the Covid virus and how it is crimping the lives of those of us who cared enough to get the vaccine. I keep reading that most of the new cases and deaths are people who haven't gotten vaccinated. The vaccinated people who are getting it (a vary small percentage), most likely would not have gotten it if more of the unvaccinated folks were responsible enough to get the damn vaccine. The whole situation really pisses me off. Some well respected person (if we could find one), needs to come out and put a heavy public shame on those who haven't gotten vaccinated.

Everybody have a great day. Today is National Hot Dog Day as well as National Junk Food Day. Seems like a unhealthy choice. Oh! My blood sugar count this morning is 123, a very slight bit above normal, but well below the 150 that my doctor wants it to be.
 
Christian - You're not the first to ask; I am presently working on a rough track plan with pencil and paper. For whatever reason, I haven't had any luck with any track planning software. I downloaded Anyrail and I can't even get benchwork or a room diagram drawn. I tried SCARM and got a rectangle for the room, but no luck with the benchwork! I am normally somewhat computer literate, but I never had any training or experience with CAD. I am sure that I will have an "ah ha" moment with one of them at some time.
Thank you very much for your answer. My last question: maybe a bird's eye view or something like that? Thanks.
 
Points taken…gulp I shall got look into it do you think a 17 HMR will be too big?

I assume this was for the bee?

As a kid there was a huge bumble bee flying around out in the woods in our backyard where I was out shooting my Daisy BB gun. I started taking pot shots at it. I kept thinking I was missing, but eventually he was dead and I went and looked and the big fluffy body part was full of holes... (Not something I am proud of, but typical for early teenage boys)
 
I assume this was for the bee?

As a kid there was a huge bumble bee flying around out in the woods in our backyard where I was out shooting my Daisy BB gun. I started taking pot shots at it. I kept thinking I was missing, but eventually he was dead I went and looked and the big fluffy body part was full of holes... (Not something I am proud of, but typical for early teenage boys)
In the 1990's I was walking with a friend to get the mail, we had one of those mailboxes in a row. As I was walking I accidently hit a bumblbee with my left hand. Of course he stung me several times. My hand swelled up so much that I couldn't work for several nights. I was a musician and left hand was needed to play my bass.
 
In the 1990's I was walking with a friend to get the mail, we had one of those mailboxes in a row. As I was walking I accidently hit a bumblbee with my left hand. Of course he stung me several times. My hand swelled up so much that I couldn't work for several nights. I was a musician and left hand was needed to play my bass.

+100 for bass. Yes, if you are right handed, the left hand is super important there unless you can tap everything :)

I can sympathize.

I've never been stung by a bumble bee or any other bee, but have had a few wasp or hornet stings. They hurt like h*ll. When I was a kid, we used a wood furnace for the house (parallel to the oil furnace) and we used to be able to cut dead wood at the local army base on their wooded land where they did various practice stuff at the rate of $10 a chord and a few times walking there in the woods, or at a local state forest that also allowed us to cut dead wood, I would run into the wasp/hornet nests in dead trees or wherever. I got a little gun shy after that.
 
Howdy .....

Garry, great picture of the moon. We went to the airport last night and while our moon wasn’t as big it still had the orange coloring. Hit the pillow at 2am. I just never think of taking moon pictures, well done.

Tom O .... Thanks for commenting, but it was the sun. I was told the unusual hazy sky results from smoke from the major wild fires in the Western States which is now affecting air quality in Eastern States. The smoke is moving thousands of miles in the upper atmosphere.

Speaking of wildfires, I am wondering how CA David is doing. I hope his area is not affected. Has anybody heard from him ?

Tom ( Cambria ) ..... That's a lot of rain.

Willie ..... Nice work on the John Deere distributor. I had contemplated having a similar industry on my layout, but I ran out of room. Instead, I deliver flatcars with tractor loads to a crude team track. Like you, I failed with efforts to use track planning software. I sketched my track plan on paper. My main line follows it, but side tracks , branch lines, and yards are all different than the original plan. The planned area for a roundhouse and turntable became the area where I put downtown buildings. So, I have no roundhouse and turntable. There is never enough room for everything no matter how big the layout.

Everybody ........ Happy Model Railroading !
 
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