Good Morning All. Clear and 34° on this fine morning. Mid-60's is the forecast for today and tomorrow. Another Norther comes through Sunday with wintry mix possible from Monday through Thursday. Weather people are already getting excited.
Yesterday's grocery trek went well, my Kroger store is almost done remodeling and I am beginning to learn the new locations for everything. Mainly, they made all of the center aisles wider by making the frozen food aisles more narrow. Center aisles have gone from 8' to 12', while the frozen food aisles and a few other outer ones have gone from 22' to 16'. One result is that everything but meat, produce, deli and beer/wine has moved. They do have new store directories hanging from a board every so often, that you can take to navigate. I for one appreciate the wider aisles, since the normal shopping time for me has a high number of slower folks and those motorized cart users. Prices are not coming down. It seems that the only stuff on sale is stuff that I don't buy anyway like pet food, bottled water and diapers/baby products.
Gasoline prices are continuing to rise, I noticed that everyone was now above $3/gal; most places were near $3.19.
I did some electrical upgrades in the house yesterday. I replaced two outlets that were no longer working, and replaced several 40 year old breakers that were not always functioning correctly, kept tripping off for no apparent reason. I have to do that kind of stuff when my wife isn't home because she hates me working on electricity when I don't turn the main house breaker off. I did OK, no sparks or shocks encountered, and all works as planned afterward. I do still need to replace an outlet on the front porch...I don't have a clue which breaker that one is on, so it will be a live adventure. Right now it's just three wires sticking out of the outlet box, the black one (hot) has a wire nut on it. It can be done if I am careful!
Thanks for the comments and reactions to the hopper build yesterday.
Out in the train shed yesterday, I finished the covered hopper kit. Started with the top.
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Then these straps and tiny locks for the hatches.
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Just to show how old this kit is, here are the supplied couplers. The ones on the right are early Proto couplers, not Kadees. They have a plastic knuckle spring like a McHenry, so needless to say, they were trashed along with the horn-hooks in favor of Kadee #148's.
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That's 40 more parts making 86 total for the project all together. It looks great in person.
I'll be going back to cleaning structures today as I get closer to finishing up the quarterly cleaning project, which I was 10 days late in starting.
Troy - Good luck with the new book.
Tom O - Continued wishes for success with the Ozempic. Seems like it's working for you in conjunction with the exercise and weight loss. All of that and the carb counting. I've been slipping a bit on the carb counting, but glucose levels are staying in the 115-125 range. I do need to gradually lengthen my walks back to 1.5 miles/day and resume losing weight. According to the doctor, I gained one pound over the holidays!
Karl - I guess that if Wayne Gretzky can make a slap shot, he can hit a golf ball!
Sherrel - When we were cleaning out my late brothers house, we were able to pile the 65 year old furniture by the curb for the City of Dallas bulk pickup on certain Mondays. We put it out on Saturday morning. By Sunday evening,
all of it was gone. The migrant community in Dallas knows the schedule of the bulk pick-up and scours the particular scheduled neighborhood all weekend. Very little actually goes in the city truck. It's a sight to see all of these pickup trucks, vans and make-shift trailers working their way up and down streets in the upper middle class and middle class neighborhoods. Folks in Jerry Jones, Mark Cuban and Ken Fisher neighborhoods pay someone to haul off their stuff.
David - Our weather can get colder even at our elevation. The Rocky Mountains act as a funnel for the cold air that comes south from Canada. Our air here is also mostly low humidity and dry air cools off more rapidly than moist coastal air.
I have found that my electric oil radiator does better at maintaining temperature than it does raising temperature.
Chris -
I noticed that the listing claimed a horsepower rating of 28! My lawn mower has more than that!
Everybody have a great day and an awesome weekend.