Good Morning All. It's partly cloudy and 51° to start our day here. While it's expected to be cloudy all day, it will be 72°, so another relatively nice day. Rain expected tomorrow and Sunday with temperatures only in the 50's.
Yesterday was a good day, made the weekly grocery trek successfully, prices seemed to have stabilized a bit; at least on the stuff that I buy. Wife backed out at the last minute, so I had to buy the wine for her! I can never remember which ones that she likes, so I bought bottles that look familiar.
They had the red (purple) onion plants that I needed at Home Depot plus a few other bedding plants. I paid bills and mailed Valentines cards to the grandkids, picked up a prescription and also had a video doctor appointment that was, in my opinion, not needed. He originally scheduled it to discuss the steroid shot that I took for sciatica, and then didn't remember it until I bought it up!
Later in the afternoon after doing laundry and filling up the trash dumpster, today is pickup day, I planted the onion sets. The onion rows are now completed and awaiting tomorrow's rain. That's 188-yellow, 56-white and 72-red ones. I plant many more yellow because they grow best and last the longest in storage. They are sweet onions. They are a variety called Texas (A&M) 1015 Sweet, basically a Vidalia Onion bred by Texas A&M University. They cannot be called Vidalia since the state of Georgia has the exclusive rights to that name.
Today I need to devote to reducing the tree pile into firewood. Remember that the neighboring farmer cut down a bunch of trees growing alongside the easement road since the branch tips were scratching his sparkling John Deere equipment when his crew drove by. By my request, the crew piled them up over on my property for me. While I have made a dent into the pile, I have a lot more to go. It will add to the longevity of my own woodlot. I also need to prune some remaining trees of mine that have branches hanging too low to mow under. Sap will start flowing in about another 3-4 weeks.
Not a particularly noteworthy day out in the train shed yesterday, but I was out there for a while. At this point, I have completed the freight car inspection and cleaning of all cars on the lower level, probably 450. I won't start on the upper level for a while, while I work out the backlog of other projects. I did glue down a bit more ground foam in the cemetery project and I'll start on trees maybe this afternoon.
Rather than return to the archives yet, I will share some pictures from a railfanning trip taken in 2002 with an out of town bankruptcy consultant that my company hired back in the day. Whenever he was in a meeting, he sat in a particular chair in the conference room where he could look out the window and observe the trains going by on the BNSF main line (ex-SLSF/BN) that ran next to our building. The meetings actually stopped when one went by! We met up after work and I took him along a different BNSF main line (ex-ATSF) near where I live,, and down to the Alliance Yard before it got too dark. The pictures aren't all great, as he had his camera settings a bit off.
First it's me 22 years ago.
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We caught an older ATSF GP40X in Alliance Yard.
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Here's a couple of 8 axle freight cars coupled together in the yard.
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He was excited to catch the Heartland Flyer on it's way back to Oklahoma City.
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A highlight for him was to find this TFM loco in a lash-up also headed north. TFM was a joint venture between KCS and TMM in Mexico.
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A few more engines seen that day.
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Tom O - I was initially wondering whether we had the real
Jaz back as well. A few posts later I knew for sure.
Best wishes with the knee. I'm sure that you will miss the golf. I am surprised at the no swimming edict.
Swal - My guess for the number one rock song on the program that you watched was "
Stairway to Heaven". It seems to top all lists and has for at least 30 years.
Hughie - I like the looks of J. Baum Tobacco. It wouldn't fit in well on my layout. It does look like it came directly from George Sellios's Franklin & South Manchester.
Joe - New car bug? Get it before it goes electric.
Ray - Best wishes on the medical front.
Mike - Good luck to your daughter in her tournament. Careful driving home.
National Pizza Day today. I wonder which chains are giving out free slices?
Everyone have a great day and a fabulous weekend.