Running Bear’s June 2025 Coffee Shop

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Good morning, all! Happy June as well. While ogling Marilyn' photo, (she doesn't look 99), I realized hurricane season begins today. I hope something was left of NOAA after the efficency crew finished. Many of us depend on accurate and up to date info to make decisions when hurricanes are about.
No great plans for today. Excedrin #3 and husband will drop by sometime today. Other than that, maybe some trains.

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STAY SAFE
LATER
 
OK Hive Mind, I have an issue.

Looks like we've had some insects move in, and I'm finding detritus on my 3D printer workbench.

Here's what I see dropping down from the ceiling:

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It's coming from a gap in the drywall ceiling above. Note this is an outside corner, where the concrete "stoop" or stairs up to the back door reside on the other side of that wall.

I'll be reporting it to the condo maintenance guy and have him get a bug expert out here.

Here's the hole in the ceiling. Remember, this is in the basement. It's concrete in an L shape (other wall is 90° bend off the right, away from camera). The square hole I made to fish internet cable back to the wife's office.

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I fear that's signs of termite, but I'm hoping for ants. Either one needs to be addressed ASAP. The joy of living in condos, I get to go bug the maintenance guy.
 


Well, taking the plunge into the wading pool of diorama/layout building. Ordered one of Kato's mini-diorama kits as a first attempt. Only 12 bucks. Needed to add stuff to my order to make the 25 bucks shipping charge worth it as I really just needed 2 light boards for my GP35 dcc-ification. The old GP35s came with incandescent lamps on a plastic doohicky. The dcc capable boards just screw on and require the wires from the trucks to be lengthened.

edit: can't spell for beans

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Good Monday morning in Otaru. 7:20am. Phone apps say mid 50s with high in the low 60s. Cloudy.

We saw our son at church yesterday and will be spending some time with him for lunch and various afternoon activities today. For that I’ve rented a car for one day. I get to figure out their right hand drive / left side of the road driving. After breakfast I’ll walk to the rental place (12-15 walk by the train station) and pick it up and practice driving around a little while. Our son and his companion (missionaries go in pairs) will walk to our hotel and meet us for lunch at a place they’ve picked out. Then we’ll drive to some stores further away they don’t usually get to.

Tomorrow evening we fly back to Kobe, where we’ll be based for our last week.

I’ll report back on the success of my driving. We were wondering where to park during lunch. The hotel has a parking lot we can use after 12noon but they charge more than a “public” place across the street. There is a convenience store called family mart and except for the places right in front of the store, limited to 20 minutes store use , the other slots are a paid parking after 20 minutes. There is no gate controlling entry and no immobilizers in the spots (one of those two is usual here). There is a payment machine but it wasn’t clear how the system works. Despite English instructions and the wife reading the Japanese instructions (sometimes the translations are a little off). It appears you just park and they use cameras to charge you when you leave based on the parking spot number you enter into the machine. If you just drive off they send you the bill, courtesy of the cameras and your plate I assume.

I’ll be back later.
 


I think that happened in the mid-1990s. My stepson lives in Roy, and he mentioned it about that time.
I think it was a little after that. In the 90s there was a store called Fred Meyer and sometime in the 90s the Fred Meyer stores merged with Smiths. (At the Smiths that are also small dept stores, like the Walmart super centers, and not just grocery they still call the jewelry Fred Meyer Jewelers).

However, that’s close as I just looked it up on the fountain of all knowledge , Wikipedia, and they say 1998.
 
We have Smith’s in Utah. A long time ago it was a local or regional chain. At some point in the last decade or two it was bought by Kroger. So now it’s just what Kroger is called in that “Intermountain” area.
Thanks! Read some reviews on it this afternoon while Terry was driving. Mixed, some love them and then there are the haters! Very similar to Wisconsin based Pick & Save that Kroger purchased after Covid. They had some nice steaks and good deli meats. I’m happy and the foodie snobbish brother enjoyed them. The shrimp were very good and supposedly fresh.

Be well in Japan, when do u head home…
 
Good evening everyone!

A great day weather wise. Got a few nagging tasks done that were outdoor type chores. It never did get to the
promised 80F. It ended up being a very pleasant 78F, so a beautiful evening to sit out in back with the dog and
enjoy.

Got my chlorine floater getting stuck problem resolved pretty easily. I added about an inch of water to the pool
and took 1 chlorine tablet out. It raised the level of the floater up enough that the fat pare is now just above the
skimmer mouth and doesn't go inside and get stuck. I normally don't fill it past the "sweet spot" since now the kids
will probably splash it out, but we will see.

Time to go downstairs and play with trains.

Hope everyone had a great day!
 
ohayoogozaimasu. It is another beautiful overcast day. 2 of 3 guess sites show cloudy all day, one showing sunny. Sensor reporting 21 degrees C at 77% humidity. I like this temp.

Printing out some boxcars. Have Kato trucks coming in from Iron Planet. They seem to have ESP as they know I didn't complete my order. They delay shipping until I place my next order and then combine them. All without me knowing about my second order. 5% discount was offered so I ordered a bunch of decoders and the trucks. I'm going to have to give adding decals a try later.
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Good evening gang!

Spent the day in the basement, playing with trains, cleaning up the basement and putting stuff away since I may not see the basement in a few weeks after Thursday.
Went to the local VFD carnival last night. Wife loves the dime pitch, I like the gun pull tabs. She won some glass ware, I didn't win a gun but I did win $100.00. Not bad for a $20.00 investment! Some sodas and pit beef sandwiches later we headed home. Fun little "date night" 10 minutes from home.
Tomorrow night will be the wife's 1st attempt at cutting the lawn. I tried teaching her a few weeks ago, and it turned out badly. Somebody got her feelings hurt. So we made a deal. I will give her 5 minutes of instruction, then I am going down the basement. I'm not going to watch, make faces, or cringe. I will be out of sight. Hopefully left to her own devices she can at least keep the grass controlled to a reasonable level til I heal back up.

Recent discovery. A few weeks back I ordered an Atlas "Silver Series" DC locomotive. Why not DCC? those that know me might ask. Because Atlas is only offering this scheme in DC. So I purchased the correct decoder from Soundtraxx and to my joy, when I went to install it this loco already had a speaker wired to the motherboard, all I had to do was to remove 1 small section of the board and install the 21 pin decoder. Easy Peasy! Now all I have to do is figure out what cv to change to get the ditchlights to flash with the horn!
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And yes, this is not a fantasy scheme. The prototype for this engine is actually running on the western Maryland scenic railway. It is a former N&W unit recently acquired by the scenic railway. Frankly, I think it looks great in fireball.
 


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