Good Morning All. 70° and partly cloudy. Wind is supposed to start coming out of the NW in the next hour and the temperature will rapidly drop for the rest of the day. Gusts up to 40 mph are predicted. Looks like I'll be cooking a seventeen pound turkey on Thursday, largest one that I personally have cooked. Cleaned out part of the freezer for my "other" turkey. A vendor that I dealt with when I was still working will be deep-frying a bunch of them Tuesday and Wednesday. He sets up 10 deep fryers in an unused part of his plant and generally does 220 turkeys to distribute to his customers, with a few that he sets up in his employee lunchroom for them. As a former longtime customer, there's always one for me, but I have to go and pick mine up. It's quite an operation that I have seen. There's a prep table, a line of propane fired cookers, a draining area and a packing table. There's one guy with a clipboard and a watch timing each of the numbered cookers who signals when each one is done in succession. The initial startup is staggered. It takes 3-55 gallon drums of peanut oil to do all of them. The employees also have an additional deep-fryer that they use to cook the livers and 25 lbs. of fish for themselves. If you have never tried deep-fried turkey, you need to at least once in your life. Despite being immersed in boiling oil for 45 minutes, they are not greasy like you might expect.
Out in the train shed, I continued to straighten things up and vacuumed the floor. Spiderweb remnants collecting dust are my biggest culprits. That and grass clippings and other yard residue that I track in on my shoes. Finished up an under layout support that I had originally run out of lumber for, so I could renew efforts to do landscaping on the topside without drilling screw holes through the scene that would just have to be repaired. Exchanged positions on a number of engine/caboose, on trains in staging so I have some ready-to-run trains for when the grandkids show up Thursday. Cleaned the loco wheels as well.
Garry - If those SD40-2's are anywhere near as powerful as some Genesis units that I have (non SD40-2's) I should be able to pull a 200+ car train. However I only intend to double-head them and pull 22-24 car trains, since that is the average length of my passing sidings and staging tracks. I could try 200 cars, but returning them to where they started would take a lot of time! Your photo of the "way back" era looks awesome. Should turn out nicely.
Chet - If your efforts with the #78 drill it are like mine, I hope that you have a few extra on standby. I average about 40 holes before I break one.
David - Look at the bright side, you didn't have a floor model!
Doctors: I always insist on the first appointment slot usually after lunch or sometimes in the morning. Sometimes there is a delay in the morning slot while the nurse practitioner is still clearing out the walk-ins in the exam rooms that arrive before the doctor, (they open two hours before his first appointment), but I am still the first to see him. It's still a 45-60 minute ordeal, but it is a lot less time than my neighbor has to spend at the VA for the same thing, and he has never seen the same doctor twice. Humana's mail order pharmacy also calls me first before filling any of his prescriptions, so I can choose whether or not to have them filled. He/his office sends them electronically directly to Humana. They are also better at arguing with his staff than I am.
Everybody have a great weekend.
Willie