Running Bear's February 2026 Coffee Shop

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DeaconKC said:
debating about making a pot of [shudder] decaf.
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I buy instant coffee from Aldi; they sometimes run out of the regular, so I often buy decaffeinated instant coffee and drink it! Which goes to show I will drink just about any coffee! 🤪
migalyto said:
🤣 🤣 🤣

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He should have mounted it on the wall.

I knew of a boarding house with the pay phone mounted on the wall of the common bathroom, the only bathroom for 6 or 8 rooms! The hall was too narrow to mount the phone. Not a five-star place, not even a one-star joint!

Long before Amazon I was making deliveries to some shady places.
 
John from Indiana said:
changes more often than you change your underwear
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How go you know how often I change my underwear?

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In other news the daughter made the B Final (also called the consolation Final) in one of her two events yesterday (and not the one she hoped for) plus the B Final in the relay event she swam, so we’re back off to Provo and BYU again for another meet. With half the swimmers of yesterday the meet itself should be faster but they intersperse it with awards ceremonies and a “special needs” mini meet or activity of some sort so it should still be a long morning and part of an afternoon.

(The top 32* swimmers in each discipline go to State and there are 4 heats of 8 of each event. The top 16 in each event go to the B Finals (16-9) or A Finals (8-1). Even if someone in B Finals swims their B Finals heat faster than someone in A Finals their final placement won’t be better than the person who didn’t swim as well in the A Finals. So your overall placement depends on your prelim swim as a B Finals swimmer can never place greater than 9. It’s confusing.

* You can only go to two State events and have to choose if you’re in the top 32 of more than two events so really it’s somewhere in the top 40-50 get to go to State as people ranked faster than you may not go in your event, opening up slots for 33-40 or whatever)
 
Good Morning All. Clear and 42° out there right now. Expecting a stiff north wind for a couple of hours around noonish, which will keep our high today just below 60°. 0% chance of precipitation in the next ten days so the drought continues.

Nothing but household chores and outdoor tasks yesterday. More of the same today. I did grill some homemade Salmon patties last night, haven't done that in a couple of years. I've kinda gotten addicted to the air-fryer. The homemade tarter sauce was interesting. Tasted good, but the chopped Purple Onion that I used "bled" and caused it to all turn red!

Out in the train shed was no different yesterday. I did map out some of the structure lighting in preparation for installing a proper lighting buss. i have lights installed in more structures than I initially realized. I also tested a few power sources for polarity, as I want to wire the buss with multiple power sources. I want to wire them "in parallel" and not "in series"; as the latter will increase the voltage while the former will increase the available current. Don't need to be blowing out light bulbs.

David - Can you really tell the difference if you're on the northern route or the southern route when crossing the North Atlantic ocean??? I mean that the scenery seems to be the same on either!
Patrick - I'm not really a catfish fan either. I'll eat salt-water fish any day rather than the fresh-water variety.
Alan - Too bad about having to pay the taxman. On the rare occasions that I have had to pay, it's generally been less than $100. I also have never gotten a refund of over $100.
I too am old enough to remember a quarter a gallon gas and the rationing days in the 70's.
John - I don't usually have any issues with packages delivered by USPS, except having to go to town to get them, but Thursday we had a Christmas card that my wife mailed December 15, returned to us as undeliverable. According to their tracking, our PO gets packages within 12 hours of when they receive them in Ft Worth.
Hughie - I don't think that the generational change is going too well for Bar Mills. While Len and Jim are still there, I think that they really miss Art a lot.
Troy - Now that really appears to be economy class accommodations compared to David's cargo quarters! What? No pizza?
John - I miss my early Spring garden this year. Health and drought have delayed it. Just two Tomato plants? I cut back last year from 100 to just 60!

Everybody have a super-duper Saturday. Forum has been off-line so I couldn't post this post when it was finished earlier. Got the "An unexpected database error occurred. Please try again later." message over and over.
 


Texas Hobo said:
I called twice and send 3 emails. the third email finally was answered. It isn't the Bar Mills of old. I talked to him on the first call and was told it would out that day or the next. Didn't happen. I guess you need to be the squeaky wheel.
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This is my 3rd negative customer service run-in with them since Len took over. I think this will also be the last direct order unless their sale is better than 15% off.
 
Good morning all!

A mostly cloudy start to the day. Temps currently sitting at 25F with an expected high od around 30F. Pretty typical for this time of
year. The howling winds from yesterday have calmed down considerably. Not sure if we will see the sun today.

Usual Saturday stuff around the house today. Weekly grocery trip later this morning and some laundry. Pretty quiet around here as
of now. Everyone else is still in bed.

Will venture down to the basement tonight for some train time hopefully.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
Good morning again folks, it's 42 here right now and sunny. Might hit 50 today. We've had one of our G'nieces staying with us the last couple nights, between work, Senior Year High School classes in the morning and College class in the afternoon, it's getting a bit much. Found a real rabbit hole last night, a site that has 1,000s of Lego plans for cars, trains, battlemechs, you name it.
On the subject of the site being slow, please pray we never get Cloudflare, it is horrible! Two other of my favorite sites use it and they are now regularly down or so frustratingly horrible to get/stay on it is pathetic.
You folks cruising, be safe, have a great voyage.
 
32°F again this morning, but it's barely going to get out of the 30s today. Might see 40°.

Went to GB this morning and there is no order history for my High Power. I put in a ticket to GB to see what is going on with my order. The dealer is closed on weekends so no help there, but it's looking more and more like they cancelled my order and sold it out from under me.

Not at all happy about this, but I'm not jumping to any conclusions just yet. But the evidence so far though, points to them cancelling my order.
 
Willie The northern route to the U.S. is passing Southern Ireland and heading west.
The southern route is southwards, then south west towards Spain. Then ships head westward to the U.S..
The northern route is quicker, but colder. The Atlantic Ocean can also be rougher than to the south.
Basically it comes down to a slower speed on a shorter crossing versus a faster one on the long way there.

The southern route wins in this case.
Good as it means a warmer voyage. :cool:
 
Another obligatory shot of the pool for the state championship Finals (yesterday was prelims).

Hopefully today goes faster. Daughter only has one individual and one team relay, which is the last event.

We’ll be able to get lunch afterwards. That’ll be nice. image.jpg
 


Good morning from Wisconsin! Tough night trying to sleep but from about 5:30 to 8am this morning I finally slept. Terry woke me at 8 as grandson played a hockey game at 8:30! We made it after maybe a 1 minute shower. I could nap right now.

1pm we will be on campus for women’s hockey, yes the Badgers are still ranked #1. Last 2 games of the regular season. They get the 5 (4 gold) Olympian’s back in time for conference playoffs next weekend!

We are packed for the Virgin Islands. The brother is picking us up between 7 and 9pm tonight so we will after Badger hockey see the grandsons 4:30 game. He had a goal and 2 assists in this mornings 6-0 win. His last regular season game is tomorrow. 76 games since October! Ridiculous but it’s not my call. He has a week off, tryouts in 2 weeks for some Triple A travel team based in Janesville, 50 miles south of here. 21 games over 9 weeks but all over the Midwest. He’s played for them each Spring the last 4 years but still has to try out. His speed in the AAA group is not as noticeable as the regular season. All the players in this league skate as well or better than him. But he’ll score as he just seems to have that touch!

We’ll be back Wednesday or the slight possibility of Tuesday night. All depends on when the little brother says we leave. It’s his plane!

Enjoy the day
 
For those interested, Cloudflare is a nuclear option to stop AI-driven bots from clogging the forums by scraping to train the AIs, and spiking server loads and utility bills from increased load. It is not something any site wants to do, because of the issues that real users experience, but when the options are "slow" or "stop", most site owners will opt for "slow".
 
TLOC said:
Good morning from Wisconsin! Tough night trying to sleep but from about 5:30 to 8am this morning I finally slept. Terry woke me at 8 as grandson played a hockey game at 8:30! We made it after maybe a 1 minute shower. I could nap right now.

1pm we will be on campus for women’s hockey, yes the Badgers are still ranked #1. Last 2 games of the regular season. They get the 5 (4 gold) Olympian’s back in time for conference playoffs next weekend!

We are packed for the Virgin Islands. The brother is picking us up between 7 and 9pm tonight so we will after Badger hockey see the grandsons 4:30 game. He had a goal and 2 assists in this mornings 6-0 win. His last regular season game is tomorrow. 76 games since October! Ridiculous but it’s not my call. He has a week off, tryouts in 2 weeks for some Triple A travel team based in Janesville, 50 miles south of here. 21 games over 9 weeks but all over the Midwest. He’s played for them each Spring the last 4 years but still has to try out. His speed in the AAA group is not as noticeable as the regular season. All the players in this league skate as well or better than him. But he’ll score as he just seems to have that touch!

We’ll be back Wednesday or the slight possibility of Tuesday night. All depends on when the little brother says we leave. It’s his plane!

Enjoy the day
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What aircraft does your brother own?
 


Good afternoon. It's sunny, windy, and 88.

Just out of curiosity, how many here have gotten the "your loan is approved" scam calls or texts over the last couple of months? I've been getting several a day, and finally turned off my phone after I got three calls in 30 minutes. All from different numbers and area codes, but all with the exact same message from the same person about "just need a little more info to finalize the loan". I've let all the calls go to voicemail and blocked and reported, but if anything, I'm getting more calls, not less.
 
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