Good Morning All. Clear and a very chilly (to us) 25°. Last night of freezing or below temperatures in the 10 day forecast. Today will be just 50°, but into the 70's on some of the next few days.
Recovery continues. I made it through the grocery store without any ill effects yesterday, so I guess that the healing is proceeding well. I put the ten pound limit to a test with a 12 pack of beer in bottles, and pushed the cart through the whole store. Whole different crowd there on Sunday morning than I see on my usual Thursday morning trip. Mainly a much younger crowd that didn't linger in the center of the aisles blocking the flow. Our checker person locked up his cash register which held us up while Abdul came over to help him out! That didn't work either, but he was able to print out a receipt with the QR code on it and went over to his register and scanned it successfully. Better than running everything through again. No baggers on duty, so I had already bagged everything myself...the way I wanted it. Got the car gassed up with the $1/gal gas points. BTW, gas all over is at $2.24/gal for regular. Haven't seen that price in a while. Wife had a hankering for a Jersey Mike's sub, so we went there for to go sandwiches.
Did some light indoor chores the rest of the day. We've made the difficult decision not to put up a Christmas tree this year, given the uncertainty of me being able to get into the attic to get the lights/decorations. I have to use a ladder. The actual fake tree and a smaller ceramic one is stored in the back unused bedroom, so I may put up the ceramic one alone. December 15, today, is the usual day that I put it up.
I had to get out to the train shed yesterday to get away from the constant barrage of Christmas music whenever my wife was in the kitchen. Breaks in the football games in the living room were filled with the Hallmark channel. I did do some more figure painting and made a decision to do something just for me for Christmas. I am calling it the "Ten Days of Christmas". Starting yesterday, I am going to introduce a new freight car on to the layout for the next ten days. It's a way to clear up some shelf space under the east side staging yard. Not going to be a difficult task, as most are RTR cars anyway. I started yesterday with an Atlas Master Series boxcar, in the Railbox scheme. But forgetful me left the camera outside and I am not venturing out in my bathrobe to get it. I'm not sure if I have ever had an Atlas Master Series car before, because the first thing that I discovered is that the axles are just .925" long. I wasn't able to use my "truck tuner" because it's too long for the truck. Even with new cars, I use the tuner as part of my pre-deployment procedure. Truck tuner is 1.025" in length which matches standard axle length used on Kadee or Intermountain axles. But the metal wheelsets seem to spin without any issue, so I'll leave it alone. Update later today when I venture outside.
Mac - Nice pictures. The weathering on that Alco truck is perfect!
Jim - You're not alone. I constantly find myself running trains when I started out doing scenery, wiring or something else.
Louis - I'll second you on the Utz Pretzels. I keep a container of their pretzel rods handy by the workbench.
Chet - You're correct that many people around here cannot deal with snow on the roads. Part of it is that most places don't have snow removal equipment, so it stays on the roads until melted...re-freezes overnight making it worse. Secondly is all of these transplanted Kalifornians who never see the stuff to begin with.
And yes. Amazon delivers on Sunday all of the time here. Matter of fact, I see a package on the back porch right now that was delivered after dark yesterday, but I ain't getting it until the sun warms things up a bit. I'm surprised that my wife didn't get it when it arrived since she gets a notification on her Fitbit watch as soon as it's scanned as delivered!
My phone is getting barraged by requests from a certain deranged Congresswoman from Dallas for funds for her recently announced Senate campaign. It goes back to the person who had my cell number before I did, a number that she gave up in 2013 according to ATT. She apparently donated to causes in the past which is why my number is on their lists. I have resisted responding with crude messages and just text "STOP" instead, but they seem to be getting more frequent; up to five times a day now; from different phone numbers after I have blocked the original numbers.
Everybody have a great Monday.