Afternoon, everyone.
Sandy, glad to hear your brother made it back OK. Those ankle cages are not a lot of fun but, if he has enough happy pills, he really won't care. I always liked to work during the holidays. No one around to bother and I could get some work done...or goof off, depending on my mood.
Matt, sounds like Sally had a tough life, so we'll make an exception on doggie clothes for her. I'm glad you're taking care of her now.
Tom, I never have figured out that Mummer's Day thing except I think it's Philly's excuse of Mardi Gras.
Corey, it's always fun having your pipes break if it gets
really cold too. Of course, those tornado's up there can tear up a house pretty good.
Ken, sounds like you're making slow but sure progress on the renovation. How are switches held to the layout? If it's something like latex caulk, just soak the living heck out of them with water and they'll peel right up. I'm pretty sick of holiday parties too, and going to one the day after New Years sounds like even less fun. Just smile for an hour, scarf down some food, make up some kind of excuse why you have to leave...like your house is on fire. That one always works.
Karl, restoring guitars sounds like much too exacting work for me. I don't think I'd end up with all the strings in the right place. I love that Meatloaf album art. Remember when he was big rebel type that scared your parents? Seems weird to see him as a fat old guy playing golf now.
Jeffrey, should be clear as bell there. I don't think we have any chance of snow until Wednesday or Thursday, if we can scare up enough moisture to go with the cold. Hope you get that hard drive enclosure you want. It always makes me nervous using a hard drive that's just sitting there naked.
David, adding another switch to the station track back to the main and a runaround track to the yard are two things on my list of projects for this year. Those were two big errors I made when I built the layout. The worst was not having a siding in the rear. I had room and it would have been easy to add one when it was still under construction. Now, I'd have to tear up a bunch of scenery and re-do almost the entire rear of the layout to add it. That's one of the reasons I always urge new modelers to let us look at their track plans. Any of the guys here would have caught those mistakes if I had known about this site when I was first planning the layout.
Rex, it tis a bit nippy here. There was ice on the puddles this morning, so my daughter was sure her car would flip over on the way to work. Any ice anywhere seems to lead people here to the idea your car will immediately flip over if you hit the smallest patch.

Looks like Cincy picked a bad time to try to move up in the big leagues. Florida was obviously really up for this game after getting beat by us and they took it out on Cincy. Their team is really not as bad as they looked last night but they tried too many of the plays Bama used to beat the Gators and Florida was ready for that. I'm glad to see Tebow go out on a winning note. I don't know if he has a pro career ahead of him, but he seems like a nice, moral guy with a lot of other talents, so I'm sure he'll make a success of himself. He's kind of a relief compared to all the thugs that currently play college ball.
I was danged cold for us overnight, with a low of 27. I know, some of you won't make it to 27 as a high, but that's still life-threatening cold for us down here.

It's a rip-roaring 43 now, with 20 mph north winds, making the wind chill about 33. The humidity is only 21% so there's a red flag fire warning, something we don't often see in winter. My forecasts for snow sucked last week, but I'll see if I can get it right this week. Snow for almost everywhere Wednesday night through Friday morning. It will be plenty cold enough, just depends on if any of these shortwave troughs can drag some moisture with them.