Good Morning All. It's once again cloudy and it's 69°, headed into the 90's if the sun comes out. Next 10 days look boring, with clouds in the morning and clearing off in the afternoon with a temperature range from the low-70's to the low-90's. It might or might not rain according to the NWS. Due to the recent cloudy days, the pool water temperature has dropped down to 80°.
Yep! It's Friday the 13th. I'm not the superstitious type, but I have no plans to leave the estate today except to get the mail; and that's a maybe if I forget and make the trip to the mailbox (1.25 miles away) tomorrow instead. I haven't gotten the incoming mail notification yet today so there may not be anything important anyway.
Plans for yesterday changed a bit, as my wife felt ill Wednesday night and opted out of the grocery trek yesterday. That made it longer as I had to do the wine shopping. This week is Kroger's 35% off if you buy 6 bottles, which we always take advantage of. She usually does that part while I am in the produce department and the deli. Since I am not as familiar with the layout of those shelves, I had to do a lot of searching. Otherwise the trip went well. Didn't take the Accura to the shop, so we'll do that next week. Price update: Eggs which seem to be everyone's inflation gauge lately, were $3.49 for an 18 carton. Gasoline is still hovering between $2.49 and $2.69/gal at most places.
The rest of the day went close to the plan, which was none really. I made a major picking of Early Girl Tomatoes from the garden to go with all of the Fourth of July variety that we have gotten. I have had a small smattering of Early Girl in the last week, but yesterday's harvest was considerable for my small garden, over 2 dozen, with many many more to come. Next up looks like it might be the Black Krill variety to go with the others.
Last night I went to the NE window to open it for the night and I saw this in the sky.
As best as I can surmise, it was holograms projected on the clouds by the Winstar Casino about 25 miles north of me. Before I got the phone to take these pictures, I saw outlines of Oklahoma and many other images. Don't know how long they were being projected before I got to the window. These are the better pictures, taken through the window screen which obscured them somewhat.
Out in the train shed yesterday, all I did was continue to attach grabirons to the P2K covered hopper. I'm ready for final assembly next.
I did call Walther's Customer Service to inquire about replacement parts for those that were missing from this kit, and was told that they no longer had any inventory left for the covered hoppers. It was a long shot to begin with, since the car was produced around 1999-2000. I am gluing pennies together to replace the missing weight, 8 all together to make 21g. I'll follow up in the next day or so regarding the roofwalk support. I also learned what a new Exacto #11 knife can do if accidentally knocked off the workbench,
into the plywood floor.
Yep! It's sticking straight up. Glad that it wasn't my leg!
Kusojiji - You may have identified the offending animal. The Texas Banded Gecko pictured in that link that you provided looks like it.
John - The wind farm near me was quite controversial when it was first discussed. It's about 7 miles away and part of it extends up to the back of the local school. There's 54 turbines spread out over 18,000 acres, which isn't really too dense. Some early supporters switched sides when they learned that their land wasn't included so no money to them for right of way. Some were quite influential and convinced the county people to withdraw the tax abatement's for the project. But they went ahead and built it anyway without the abatement. Profitable enough! Then another land owner's heirs reneged on the power line easement, so they just moved it over to an adjoining property and now someone else is getting paid for the easement. It was put up on the property line so the other folks could see what they turned down. They had reneged because they were holding out for more money. The county itself got some benefits, as the wind company paid for and did the work improving (paving) three different county roads so they could get their equipment in and out without hassle.
Dave - My oldest locomotives are Blue Boxers from the late 80's. Those which I have upgraded still run well, but I never detailed them as well as the newer offerings from Athearn Genesis or ScaleTrains. I also use many Kato and P2K in my fleet that are over 20 years old.
Karl - Glad to read that the recovery is going well. And that you are already able to travel to the train room.
Mike - The reason that the cars had Kadee couplers on them is because it's ExactRail's tooling that ScaleTrains acquired a few years ago. I don't know for sure, but I don't think that they made any upgrades to most of it; ExactRail's tooling was pretty detailed to begin with. It's great though that they kept the products going.
Everyone have a fabulous Friday.
Eating healthy will greatly improve your chances of staying healthy. If you have Netflix watch "The Blue Zones". It will get you motivated.
