Good Morning All. Clear and 37°, warming up to 61° later on. Then another norther comes in around 10 tonight and it will only be in the mid-40's tomorrow. It's supposed to be a one day event and should warm back up on Friday. Still no snow here!
Yesterday was "refuse" day, meaning I took care of trash to the dumpster from the house and train shed, moved more dead vegetation to the compost, did a load of burn trash and moved aluminum cans to the "crushing center". Managed to do a load of laundry and stacked a bit of stray firewood. Lots of other small tasks kept me occupied as well.
I'm letting the fire go out in the wood stove so I can remove ashes today, it's overflowing. I usually fill a 10 gallon metal pail, but today it looks like maybe 1 2/3 pails! Got to find a safe space in the garden for them, because the embedded embers will start a fire if I put them directly in the compost pile. Don't ask how I know this! Working on tomorrow's grocery list which already is half full since we skipped last week. Wife already has a list of other places that she/we are going to stop at including the UPS store to send back clothes that she bought from Amazon.
I forgot to mention the other day, that the Lexus continues to amaze me. I drove a stripped down Honda Civic for 45 years and I am not used to many of the more modern conveniences built into this SUV. It was near freezing when I got in to go to jury duty on Monday and much to my surprise, the heated seat and steering wheel came on automatically! I know how to do it manually, but not ever having a car with them, I don't think to turn them on. Guess that I don't have to. It's similar to the automatic high/low beam headlights which have been getting spooked by some Christmas displays. I have never turned the high beams on myself, but they come on automatically when driving on our dark country roads. They automatically dim when the car detects a turn signal just in case there's someone coming on the cross street that you're turning on to. Of course they also dim themselves if the detectors sense either headlights or taillights ahead of you. I do still miss my manual transmission though. I find myself resting my hand on the shift lever in stop and go traffic every once in a while!
Nothing significant out in the train shed yesterday. I resumed figure painting and ran some laps with a few different train combinations. I also looked for the missing package of sanding sticks that's out there somewhere. I don't plan on spending a lot of time looking further, as I will just stop by Michael's or Hobby Lobby tomorrow and just get some more.
How about a few remaining pictures from that transplanted Minnesota layout that's now set up at Traintastic in Gulfport; which I visited while on vacation.
Whoops! Missing a roof here!
That black pipe in the upper right corner of the picture above is connected to a plastic sheet collecting/draining water from a leak in the roof.
In the background here is one of the many display cases for models in the museum. That Ferris wheel in some of the other pictures is made from something called K'Nex. They had a lot more of them in the old museum that are not set up here.
One thing that I consider a real shame, is that the club that runs this place does not have operating sessions on this or any of the other excellent layouts. Some are definitely just display layouts, but this one was built by the original owner to be an operating layout.
Troy - It seems to me that defendant chatting with a potential juror is grounds for a mistrial? I'm surprised that that didn't come up! RE the metal detector: We had to go through one the first time we entered the courtroom. But we were sent back out into the hallway several times after that, and we did not go through the detector again??? Any juror could have easily gone to their vehicle during those breaks and gotten a bomb or firearm and brought it back in.
BTW The judge in the case we went in for was a spittin' image of Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
Karl - Your metabolism may be different than mine, but even after 10 years of retirement, I still can't sleep late! I never really counted down the days, I just made the decision when I was ready. I was 63 at the time. And as
Tom O posted "
Don't count your days. You’ll go nuts as the days will really drag"!
John - I heard that excuse from one gentleman on Monday. While he ultimately wasn't picked since they got 12 people before they came to him, he wasn't allowed to leave until all of us were dismissed.
This one for
Louis, today would have been Ozzy Osbourne's 77th birthday. It's also the 76th birthday of singer Mickey Thomas of Jefferson Starship and also sang lead for Elvin Bishop, ("
Fooled Around And Fell In Love").
Everyone have a wonderful Wednesday. Sorry for the extra long-winded post this morning.
