Running Bear’s June 2025 Coffee Shop

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Willie is picking the garden and I'm just planting the garden. Cool temps and cold ground has pushed things back 2 weeks.
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Good Morning All. Mostly cloudy and a warmish 75°. Went up to 92° yesterday, but the clouds will keep it around 85° today. Supposed to rain overnight and get to only 78° tomorrow.

Mixed day yesterday. Cut some limbs into firewood size but haven't stacked anything yet. Worked a bit on vacuuming the pool, picked onions/did general garden cleanup, and kept a watchful eye on the two granddogs. Unable to get the battery operated mower to stay powered on for more than a few seconds, so another purchase that I don't wish to make. I knew that this was liable to happen sooner or later, as the mower took a 100' trip through the landscape during last year's tornado. It was upside down when I found it, and there was evidence that it tumbled over to that position with a part on the ground about halfway from it's starting position.
More of the same today; at least I'm not mowing again, yet! The onions laying on the ground drying, which won't actually be hurt if it rains, will be moved nonetheless under the train shed porch overhang.

Out in the train shed yesterday, I pulled out a project that I recently uncovered, a potential cardstock structure. This was a free download from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency that I downloaded quite a while ago. This one is Jensen Drug Store. I have some similar structures already on the layout. The theme of this series of 20 or so structures is Abraham Lincoln. Not sure of his connection to Jensen's, but there must be one. Here's the first two pages:
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I have a place reserved for it in downtown Gainesville on the layout, so I'll see how it goes. Initially, I'm not thrilled with the difference in the brickwork from front to side; but that might be the way it actually is. I'll see. Maybe if the contrast is too great, I can lighten the picture in the computer and print the front again. These structures are actually pretty nice, but I only use them in the backgrounds.

Gasoline prices - Another reason that gas is so low here, besides being close to refineries, is the state gasoline tax here is among the lowest in the country. Ours is just 20¢/gallon, compared to the highest in Kalifornia at 70¢/gal.

You MD residents get screwed for more than twice that of TX, at 47¢/gal.

Dave - I guess that the smoke from the Canadian fires is like our dust storms from West Texas, except the dust storms only last about 4-6 hours. However they do leave a coating of red dirt on everything.
Todd - Throwing the dogs in the shower only gets them clean. They don't seem to learn what brings that on!
Troy - Looking at the picture of the planting boxes on wheels, made me wonder how the indoor Carrots are doing? I expect the Radishes and Lettuce to be harvested soon.
Terry - Is management aware of the issues that the salespeople are causing? It would seem that after getting the quote for the batteries that they would take notice and do something.
Joe -

I can relate as my best stand of Bermuda grass in in my gravel driveway!

Everyone have a terrific Tuesday.
I just looked for the buildings, they have shut down the site with them. Do you still have the pdfs?
 
I just looked for the buildings, they have shut down the site with them. Do you still have the pdfs?
There were several sites with the buildings on them, some did indeed shut down, but this one is still active. Build Your Own Main Street
If that doesn't work for you, I still have many of the PDF's. They range from 2 pages to 41 pages for the most complex ones. I believe that I already have 7 on my layout. They are all actual scale size of real (and in some cases still existing structures), no compression, but for far background structures, your printer should be able to reduce them proportionally.
I recommend printing them on 65# paper, rather than plain paper glued to cereal boxes. I got my package of paper from Office Depot or Staples many years ago, although I am sure that it's available at Walmart. I'll be offering tips in the Coffee Shop as I build it, but if you choose to do some, I can always answer questions for you.
Here's an example of one that I have in the background at full size.
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Ignore the structure in front, it's a Hydrocal model from Downtown Deco.
 


Well howdy there internet peeps and those who are considering hiring Louis to cater your Independence Day cookouts!

It's Troy again.

I blew my streak of sleeping in to 5am or later. Made a pee run at 3:30sih, and only dozed until about 4:30. So I got up and read an NScale magazine I had on the TBR stack.

While I was waiting on the coffee to brew, I realized something related to my Civil War gaming. A couple of years ago, I purchased an Epic scale set (about 13.5mm - just little bigger than Nscale's 10mm equivalent in gaming scales) Gettysburg set. That set has a lot of plastic strips of figures I should sell off. But it also has some Sarissa brand laser-cut buildings. Specifically, it has a couple of Farm buildings and snake fences, as well as the Cemetery gate house (Union HQ once Mead arrived), as well as the Lutheran seminary.

You might remember that as where Sam Elliot climbs to the cupola to survey the battlefield.

Here's my wife doing her best Sam Elliot impersonation:
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BTW: the parking lot in the photo wasn't there when they filmed the movie in the early 1990s.

Here's the Seminary building.
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And I get to build it in MDF 1:100 scale. If only TT Scale for MRR were bigger in the US, I could switch to that scale...
 
Morning all,

55° under clearing skies, 75° later.

I dumped .6" of rain out of the gauge yesterday morning and when I got home I dumped another 4" out of it. The city to the Northeast of my town had some massive flooding, which many think shouldn't have happened as they built a large reservoir in the 70's. Problem is the dammed up the east branch but the west branch still runs free. They had as much as 9" in the watershed that the west branch drains. They acted surprised that it still floods. River I need to cross was nearing the road surface and hadn't crested yet, however a creek a couple miles down the road had left a ton of debris from the fields it was still flooding, but there was no water under it as I crossed. Water level at that point below the road level.

House behind us must have had a lightning strike. Wife recalled hearing the boom a little after 5:00p and at about 6:00p 3 firetrucks run through the neighborhood. Firemen go inside the house, and after a couple of minutes 2 run out and start prying open the meter box, one yells clear and whacks the meter out. We never saw any smoke or flames, house still looks intact. We figure it must have been a smoldering type of short they got put out quick. They left a little over an hour later. Looked funny to see the dark house behind us.

Otherwise not much happening.
 
I’ll post more of what I did today (and when I have time catch up the travelogue) later. Short: we took the train to Osaka Umeda. It’s where Osaka Station is though we took Hankyu railway so it’s a station across the street. We were going to Yodobashi Camera and I took a side trip to Joshin Denki Super Kids Land. Anyway when I got back the wife left to go meet some HS friends and my daughter and I did some shopping and looking around. We got hungry. This was on the menu.

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It’s the Whopper DX Maxi 1 pound whopper. It had a really good diameter and 4 patties. It came with a drink (Coke Zero) and I chose chili cheese fries. I think the chili container was almost out as it had almost no chili on it. The chili flavor was good though for fast food chili. I also added onion rings to try out onion rings.

Daughters had some creamy Mexican whopper with avocado.
 
Good thing you had the coke zero. Cancels out all that food! Going to have to give it a try on Friday. There's a BK outside the base gate.
My exact line of thinking. Even allowed the extra onion rings.

They give you a sticker with it (seen in the photo above).

Once was enough. Though in reality a 16 oz steak meal with potato, salad, bread, etc is more food and approximately the same meat.
 


Good morning all!

Happy Hump Day to the working folks.

Currently a rainy 61F with a high temp of 68F, A stark contrast from the previous 2 days of mid to upper 80s. Had a
couple of thunderstorms move thru the area last night. Not real severe, but enough to prompt phone warnings. looks
like the rain will be out of the area by late morning.

Worked for a little while yesterday on the layout. added another rock casting and did some blending. Think its moving along
fairly well.

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Not too much planned for today, all laundry was done yesterday. It will be too wet to mow till tomorrow.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
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