Good Morning All. Cloudy and 50°. Clouds are not going to go away and we'll only get to 60° today. Yesterday, it was as high as 82° here, and we'll be back into the upper-70's and lower-80's for the rest of the week. Yesterday's high broke a record.
Yesterday's family Christmas get-together went well. My brother had the tent set up on his patio, but for shade rather than warmth, the sides were rolled up. He had his Lionel Christmas display up in the dining room, but I didn't think to bring either the camera or the phone with me. Unlike many, my phone is not tethered to me all of the time, although I do usually carry it in the car. Yesterday it was home on the charger. Yep, 51 people is quite a gathering.
R&R today at the SFW house. Maybe wrap a few Christmas presents. Brought home some sliced ham and turkey, so I'll make the ham into ham salad and freeze the turkey. Left some at brother's house and brought home some leftover shrimp that he had. Other than church, I'm not sure that we have to leave the house again until Thursday...yesterday's traffic was horrible with slowdowns as soon as we got on the Interstate and accidents in several places along the way. Unfortunately the wife's phone app wasn't informing us soon enough about most of them. Road construction on the Interstate in Dallas was also an issue, the express lanes are closed while being re-built.
No time out in the train shed yesterday, but I opened up and inspected an extra freight car Friday for my "Ten Days of Christmas" project. This one however will probably never make it on to the layout. It was a Christmas gift from daughter #1 about 10 years ago. It's a commemorative Athearn Coca Cola tanker with a build date 35 years before my era; if it is even representative of a real car.
Part of my long range plans include making a display case for stuff like this. It's a nice car though, and as you can see, it has metal wheels already.
Mike - Yep, the Hallmark channel this time of year allows me to do pretty much anything that I want except make noise in the living room.
Tom O - Meat managers are generally willing to do anything to sell that much tenderloin in a single sale. The one that I dealt with Thursday was willing to split off ~3# pretty readily. Of course she is also our next door neighbor out here in the boonies, married to the still incarcerated crazy man.
Michael - I learned many years ago between layouts #1 and #2, that reusing rail joiners is not practical, no matter how much effort I used to make them right.
My beer budget is no longer as high as it was in the 90's by a few hundred.
Karl - My wildest dream is to find a BMW driver who isn't going 10 mph under the limit in the left lane.
Late musician/composer Frank Zappa was born on this day in 1940. Sadly, he died in 1993 from cancer. His music was not for everybody. Strangely, he was strongly opposed to drug usage as far back as the early 60's.
Everyone have a great Sunday.