Running Bear's March 2026 Coffee Shop

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John I worked on one of the 3 nuclear reactors turbines at Indian Point. I was working 12 hours a day 7 days a week. I told my union I want out as soon as possible. All over time was double time a $100.00 an hour and that was back in 2000. I told them I still want out. The workers who stayed during the outage for about 3 months made a ton of money. I didn't care you had a zero life for 3 months. You had to have a clean past to work there. That was a problem for a lot of the temporary outage workers. They got me out of there in 2 weeks. Swal

Did you have to have Personnel Reliability Program and Nuclear Surety certifications to work there? We had those certs in the Air Force for working on Minuteman II and other nuclear weapons.
 
Good evening all!

Back from meeting up with my parents. We ate at an Italian restaurant that we haven't been to in years but it was fantastic. By the time
we got done with the soup, salad, fresh bread, and appetizer platter I could barely touch the meal. I knew better then to get the 1/2 fried
chicken and spaghetti. I brought most of it home for lunches this weekend.

Going to be a long night. Storms are expected to hit in a couple of hours and the dog is fully aware and pacing, so I know they
are on the way. We had a couple of rounds blow thru this morning and I had over 1-1/2" in the gauge. I emptied it and we will
see what I get overnight.

Time to head to the basement to run a train. Mot sure how long I will stay down there, I'm pretty beat.

Have a great rest of your night everyone!
 


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Good morning Coffee Shop, it's Saturday!
The temperature is 57°F (19°C) and mostly clear here. :cool:

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Have a great day! ;)
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Correction: a severe thunderstorm watch #21 was just issued for southwestern Illinois until 0600.
I 'm watching for your thunderstorms from central Alabama. I don't see any thunder or hear any lightening.
I went to sleep about 11 pm and got a nice nap until my wife started snoring with her CPAP machine. Now, I am checking out threads on the forum.

The beans on Bill's breakfast plate would keep me puttering along all day!
 
Good morning. It's clear and 68.
Transition to Summer will wrap up this weekend, with long pants and high-power (and heat generating) desktop computer stored until October when it won't be fighting the air conditioner. I'm also putting the reflectix back in the windows on the sun side of the house to help with electric bills.

I'm also considering how much longer I can put up with the PC stuff at work, and if there would be more, less, or the same if I moved.
 
Good morning. It's clear and 68.
Transition to Summer will wrap up this weekend, with long pants and high-power (and heat generating) desktop computer stored until October when it won't be fighting the air conditioner. I'm also putting the reflectix back in the windows on the sun side of the house to help with electric bills.

I'm also considering how much longer I can put up with the PC stuff at work, and if there would be more, less, or the same if I moved.
In the immortal words of St. Pete and St. Roger:

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
 
Good morning all.
A weekend of meeting my family in Allentown.
It will be good to meet them in person.

Dawn is thrilled to be able to meet a girl who is named after her. I mentioned earlier that Dawn has a Greek name as her first name. The name Alethea is now being carried on through our family. :):cool:

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Well, howdy there internet peeps and those who ring a bell.

It's Troy again.

Got a new toy yesterday. Pics will be posted later.

But, for now, I have to go empty the vat and clean up the previous Resin 3D printer.

I purchased it's big brother that was just born.

More on that later.

Here's some fun pics from the cruise that I don't believe I shared earlier:
Yes. We ate a lot of dessert

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Good morning! 64°F here but should begin falling soon. First tornado warning woke me at around 0530 for the two counties south of here. Then, about ten minutes later the second tornado warning sounded for the next county over.

I figured I better get up and look at radar, but we are in the clear for any severe. Poured the coffee water to make coffee and now watching the Talking Heads on CBS.

Nothing happening here today. Y'all have a great weekend.

Servus!
 
Good morning Crew! Went to bed at 11:42pm last night and I could hear the thunder moving in. Right at midnight Mother Nature really decided to wake up the world. The house literally was shaking. The rain seemed heavy but since I didn’t put out the rain gauge and do not trust local weather folks I have no idea how wet it got. It’s 55f degrees now and it’s the high for the day. It’s supposed to be 42 at 3pm.

The time change in the USA is after bedtime tonight at 2am Sunday morning, spring it foward. Shifting to DST, daylight saving time! Wow, excitement…

Heading out to a OPS Session about 70 minutes north and west. Waiting for my ride

Enjoy the day
 
Good morning all!

Still very nice temps this morning but that isn't going to last. They will fall into the 30s by late this afternoon. Had a couple of
rounds of thunderstorms in the overnight hours. Nothing of the severe variety but some pretty good thunder and some heavy
rain. We should be dry till middle of next week when it gets wet again. Got to love the Midwest spring roller coaster.

Usual Saturday stuff on the agenda today. Weekly grocery stock up, laundry etc.....

Not much else going on at the moment.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
Good Morning All. Raining and 49°. Thunderstorms started around 0500, and seem to be mostly over at 0645. Between 0600 and 0630, the temperature dropped by 12°, wind is now out of the east. Strangely, it was out of the NW all night but fairly warm. Tornado watch most of yesterday afternoon, but nothing developed. It is that time of year here. From the porch, it looks like about 1" in the rain gauge, but it is still a bit dark...not as dark as it will be at this time tomorrow! Time change again!

Slept in a bad position Thursday night and my stiff, sore neck gave me fits all day yesterday. Feels better this morning, but it is still stiff. Made homemade Salmon patties for supper last night. Usual tasks and chores the rest of the day, dishwasher, two loads of laundry, etc. Enjoyed my first full day of both hearing aids in two weeks!:) I can hear the Shark vacuum (Rosie) talking to us but I still can't understand what she is saying.

Today won't be an outdoor day, I may even have to wear jeans to visit the train shed, although it's still supposed to be in the mid-60's. Noted that the willow tree has a full set of leaves already, the first tree in the neighborhood to bud out. The Dogwood trees on the trip to town are also blooming.

All of the gloom and doom posts in the last few days remind me that we're ready, as evidenced by the ice storm back in January. No issues with water or electricity which we rely on "companys" to provide. But we were stuck here for 7 days without being able to get out. Propane for cooking, wood for heating and always a fully stocked pantry and freezer. My tiny generator is ample enough to run the freezer and fridge, plus a few lights if needed, but it won't run the tankless water heater. We rarely have power failures.

I must have missed the political posts yesterday! Wasn't me this time. Random thought - not meant to be political; but if all of the leaders are dead, who's in charge of surrendering???

Out in the train shed yesterday, besides running a few trains, I may have started a new and large project. First some background. As you may remember, I have a large area, approximately 1/3 of the entire layout, planned but undeveloped. I have operational track on both levels leading to staging yards stacked over each other on the south wall. Some of that blank space ended up as storage over the years. Recent organizing of under-layout space has allowed me to think about moving forward. Another reason that I haven't developed this space is that I intentionally wanted to complete some blank areas between scenicked areas on the rest of the layout. While that's not totally done yet, I am looking at a U-shaped area on the west end of the lower level. I may not get far with it, but I did want to get a start. I started by installing a light fixture, that's been on standby, over the area yesterday. It's approximately 15 sq ft, 32" x 71" and I had previously painted a rudimentary street on the plywood.
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I removed the boxes to see where I had left off. That's the operational main line leading to the staging yard on the laft.
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On the LH side is the yard lead for the staging yard; and some temporary track that was intended to be a storage area for engines and cabooses. Yard lead has the freight cars parked on it right now.
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On the RH side are some additional temporary storage tracks, that aren't intended to be permanent. Matter of fact, they are mostly empty right now.
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The concrete colored blob and street were originally intended to be a residential street ending in a circle. Who knows what this might become.
Fifteen square feet is a pretty good chunk of area. One thought is to add a second track to connect from one of the ones on the RH side with the yard lead, although I don't quite know if I need any additional versatility; there is room between the main and the backdrop. Also leaning into a 32" deep area under the upper level to install it, might present some unwanted physical strains!o_O Obvious starting point will be to give the backdrop a coat of blue paint first, and then paint the entire layout surface and trackbed a brown color, like everywhere else. I'm leaning to re-working this into the original plan of a residential area since I don't need many more industries. I have room for them in the lead-in area on the right, and I have low-relief structures along the south wall on the left. Stay tuned in.

Louis - Great news from the niece. My prayers are still with Cecilia.
John - Living in the sticks is why we got our first cell phone in the very late-80's. Before then, every call we made was long distance except for ~250 numbers in our exchange. However I did not get my own cell phone until 2018, by choice!
Terry - That's stupid about your three day weekends. When I still worked, I had 28 days vacation and 10 days sick leave, so I took most Friday's off instead of a week at a time. That didn't piss anyone off as much as I never got asked to come in on Saturdays since I wasn't there on Fridays. My actual job didn't require Saturdays anyway, but a little extra management presence made fellow managers more comfortable.
Mike - Every meal at our local Italian place results in another one a couple of days later.
Mikey - How does one snore while wearing a CPAP mask???

Wind has shifted back from the NW again and it has started raining again. I have chosen to not go out and accurately check the rain gauge yet.
Everybody have a super Saturday.
 
Good morning.

Light rain and drizzle all day yesterday, thunder and rain last night. Woke to an inch of snow this morning. And they say God has no sense of humour!

I picked up our granddaughter from daycare at noon yesterday and brought her home. Wifeykins made a big pot roast (5-1/2 lbs) which slow cooked all afternoon as she was able to work from home all day. Oldest daughter and SIL came to dinner, and we all had a blast. Young Silvana was the star of the show, of course. Early dinner, play, bath and she was sound asleep by 7:15. I woke her just before 8 this morning! I made waffles and we take her home soon. First spend-the-night. The kids sent a picture of them eating pizza and watching a movie. Perfect!

I did spend morning time painting the coal trestle a base off brown. Next lots of black wash coal dust, and then will try some dry brush for the first time. But not today.

Cheers all

Steve J
 


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