Running Bear's May 2026 Coffee Shop

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Good morning, 74 here and sunny, supposed to get to 82 today. Heading to Searcy in a bit to ship some stuff back at the UPS store. Gonna hit a couple more places and maybe get some dinner if the Missus spots a place she can eat. Worked on my liftout section last night, gluing down roadways after figuring out where the buildings will fit. This morning went to put it in place and discovered I had glued the roads down with the front and rear reversed! Even worse, I have it clearly marked which side was the front! So it will need a bit of trimming, but it will fit again.
You guys have a good day.
 
Another reason that it usually sits on a shelf is because it looks awkward even on my 32"-34" curves.
Joe - Our fiber-optic was installed underground to begin with, so there wasn't any of those issues. However pole replacement is coming up. While the one actually servicing our house was replaced about 20 years ago, there's 1.5 miles of 50 year old poles between ours and a line of them that was replaced 3 years ago.
First Energy has come under criticism because rural phone and electric poles which now handle multiple electric wires, landline phone wires, Copper TV Cable, two separate Fiber Optic cable systems and a system of Eruv, have bent and are prone to domino effect collapse. So they are going with thicker,stronger and taller poles for their pole lines. Meanwhile the cables themselves hang so low, that standard box trucks and semis don't always clear the hanging cables. Oops!

Another reason that it usually sits on a shelf is because it looks awkward even on my 32"-34" curves.
Well, you should have seen them being spotted at GM Linden. Talk about overhang....
Awkwardness and trouble coupling are a very good reason why TTX cars usually didn't run on my RR either. Shorter 60' TTX and 72 ' passenger cars look better.
 


This is turning out to be a fantastic growing season. Strawberries are ripening, asparagus needs to be picked 2x week, and I planted second rows of lettuce, carrots, & spinach. My English Peas are climbing, Italian peppers are slowing growing, and my Japanese cucumbers have popped up.

My Golden and Red beets.

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Buttercrunch and some weird named lettuce I can't remember is ready to be thinned out. I just planted another row of buttercrunch down the middle today.


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Good Afternoon All!
68F @ 41% severe clear

Maria decided to give the Vet a call - can bring in a
SackOshit.JPG

instead of the whole dog if he wants for testing.

Also, Maria got a new addition to the family.
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Not the Aussie - thought is that the dogs have never been around Goats and she decided to use this free one for testing. Kinda gross, but she decided it would be better to loose a free Goat than those upwards of $300.

Mom had quads; is this one is named 'Lil'; short for little; other kids would not let her suck, Mom was also pushing her away. Even with 3 kids - it is the standard: Fun in the breeding, but hell in the feeding when she found no tit for tat. Goats only have 2.... Anyway, bottle baby for a few weeks until she gets big enough to eat on her own. Been here for over an hour and is not scared at all and can suck a Coke bottle full of 'Milk Replacement' dry in short order. Dogs are curious and smell everywhere/everything but looks like they may be OkieDokie.

L8r
 
Good Afternoon All!
68F @ 41% severe clear

Maria decided to give the Vet a call - can bring in a
View attachment 265552
instead of the whole dog if he wants for testing.

Also, Maria got a new addition to the family.
View attachment 265553
Not the Aussie - thought is that the dogs have never been around Goats and she decided to use this free one for testing. Kinda gross, but she decided it would be better to loose a free Goat than those upwards of $300.

Mom had quads; is this one is named 'Lil'; short for little; other kids would not let her suck, Mom was also pushing her away. Even with 3 kids - it is the standard: Fun in the breeding, but hell in the feeding when she found no tit for tat. Goats only have 2.... Anyway, bottle baby for a few weeks until she gets big enough to eat on her own. Been here for over an hour and is not scared at all and can suck a Coke bottle full of 'Milk Replacement' dry in short order. Dogs are curious and smell everywhere/everything but looks like they may be OkieDokie.

L8r
Genetics at work. Our GP would be the same way. "My job is to guard you, not play with you".

 
Good evening.
A replacement screen for the iMac is enroute, though I'm still debating whether it was a good idea to spend $175 for a screen to a machine that's very close to EOL. I love the big UHD screen, but its days of usefulness are drawing to a close. Of course, with the way computer-related pricing has been heading, the amount I spent is probably a bargain to be able to use it for another year or two--or whenever something fails internally.
 
This is turning out to be a fantastic growing season. Strawberries are ripening, asparagus needs to be picked 2x week, and I planted second rows of lettuce, carrots, & spinach. My English Peas are climbing, Italian peppers are slowing growing, and my Japanese cucumbers have popped up.

My Golden and Red beets.

View attachment 265548


Buttercrunch and some weird named lettuce I can't remember is ready to be thinned out. I just planted another row of buttercrunch down the middle today.


View attachment 265549
That's a nice bunch of lettuce! I missed my opportunity as bug season is right around the corner. Nice, deep planters.

Nice looking onions
Thanks! Wife did an awesome job. We were worried at first when the rains were wiping them out, but she planted nearly 100 and we have sizes ranging from golf ball to soft ball. She pulled around 10 of them this morning as their leaves had fallen over. They're just basking in the dirt, drying out a bit.

This one is around 3 1/2 inches across.
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Good morning Coffee Shop! It's Wednesday, 61°F (16°C) and partly cloudy. :cool:
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Weather:
Mostly cloudy then becoming mostly sunny toward daybreak then becoming mostly cloudy then becoming partly cloudy late this afternoon. A chance of showers early this morning. Much cooler with highs in the lower 60s. West winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph becoming northwest 15 to 20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph.
Have a great day!;)
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Well howdy there internet peeps and those with weather, whether or not you weather the upcoming storms.

It's Troy again

The sciatica is flaring this morning - hurts to sit in the recliner. Hurts in general, but the recliner put pressure on the wrong parts. So I've adjourned to the desk, after doing the morning stretches.

Got up for the 3 am pee run and never dozed off again, so up at 4a

Tried to make coffee and wondered when I'd opened the bag of "Crystal Pepsi" inspired coffee.
Screenshot 2026-05-13 at 4.46.46 AM.png


Ah.... I remember last night...

Sitting in the basement at 6:30p and my watch buzzed with a reminder of the HO-train club meeting... OH CRAP!

Ran upstairs, grabbed the wallet, brushed the teeth, put the shoes on. Maybe not in that order. Headed out.
Fortunately they meet in the main branch of the library. Well located in the center of everyone.

It was a business meeting and saw a lot of faces from the NMRA group, the N-scale group, and probably a few others. The area is replete with groups, but share too many members between them, so it's a core group always meeting, just in different locations, with different agendas.

I'll probably pay my $20 to join. They participate in the local History Center's big shindig 10 day long affair that used to coincide with the city's main summer festival. Well the festival went bankrupt, and died, but they still take their modules to the History Center, set up in the big upstairs "conference" room that could host a small wedding reception. Ten evenings of running trains? Sure.

The problem is I don't have any HO equipment. One gent in the club has several refurbished HO engines up for sale, and I asked which came in blue or green (BN or Conrail). He showed me a Bachman in BN Green and Black with DCC (Digitrax decoder) no sound. Asking a C-note. I might take him up on that. But then I'll want to build an HO shelf layout so I can run the loco.

They want modules to fit the theme of their layout, obviously, but I wonder if I could get approval for a Ghostbusters theme from the 2023 "Afterlife" movie. The rural small town would fit their theme.
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PS: After sitting through the meeting and reconnecting with some of the local NMRA members I decided to go ahead and Re-Up with the NMRA. However I sent an email to the Prez, Gordy, about his message of fighting negativity in the ranks needs to be addressed within the organization upper echelons as well.

I even had the AI knock the grumps out of my letter and make it more professional.

I didn't want my "only one cup of coffee" Troy persona to be apparent in the letter.
 
Good morning all!

Happy Hump Day!

Kind of a dreary cloudy morning. Weather guessers say that should all burn off later this morning and we will see the sun. Currently
its 53F with the high expected to be around 67F. Not too shabby, but cant wait till we are consistently in the 70s. Getting tired of the
Midwest roller coaster.

Took my daughter for her second drive last night. She is slowly improving. We worked for close to an hour. We have been practicing
at the Fairgrounds in town. Its a huge area and there are lots of gravel roads that go in all sorts of directions. Not sure how to gauge
when they are ready to actually go out on the roads.

Usual stuff around the house today. Nothing planned for tonight.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
Morning all,

58° and clear, high of 83° later.

No phone call emergencies on my way to the office this morning. Of course today will be slower, my computer tech will be back. Yesterday, I had the PD phone system keep rebooting itself every 5 minutes, which was caused by something other than the phone system. Turned out that we had a small residence grade Wi-Fi router used at PD and it decided to start spamming the network at PD, which the phone system perceived as a denial of service attack (it is very similar) and was rebooting itself to clear the logs. It will need to be replaced, and not with a residential grade one.

Not running a garden this year. I don't seem to have time. Work seems to be getting busier all the time and the other demands at home seem to keep getting busier as well.

Willie: Sorry for the Monday confusion. I had 2 "Mondays" in a row do to speak, a Monday Monday and a Tuesday Monday. Hopefully today remains a Wednesday.

Troy: Funny you should mention Ghostbusters: Afterlife. I watched it on Sunday, although I had seen it before.


Try to BBL
 
Good morning. It’s beautiful looking but not seasonal temperatures. Low 60’s with winds in the high teens and gusts into the 40’s. Wind advisory ended 42 minutes ago at 7. Mother Nature doesn’t follow the NWS though

Maybe the 1st outdoor Farmers Market of the season today. That’s a Terry decision as I’ll go anywhere she wants!
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A few pieces of UPS equipment are in for light weathering. Because UPS trucks are so clean I first killed the super shine these guys had. Xf86 clear in the airbrush with the windows masked. Not the best pictures. These are for the Barstow UPS hub and are 2 of 20 tractors. Pictures of dirty UPS units are few so I winged it based on seeing a few Amazon prime units on the road. They also keep their stuff fairly clean. I told my client, these have been working all day and will get cleaned on the overnight shift! The trailers are a mixed bag of light to medium weathering. Maybe just coming off a priority train from CACH outside of Chicago. Not sure on those yet

Maybe I do miss my continuous thread…

Be well
 
Good morning all. 66°F here and we missed the showers overnight to the southeast of us. Possibly more rain this weekend. High of 75°F today. Yesterday was wonderful at 83°F and I was able to open the windows for the breeze.

Radio is working out well after figuring out a few quirks not mentioned in the manual or on-line. I expected a few strange anomalies as this is a Chinese radio and not made in Japan. One is that you cannot have the NOAA WX Alert function on while in a VFO or channel scan mode. It randomly stops the search or scan for an indeterminate amount of seconds on a channel without any traffic. The search or scan may or may not start again. I turned this off and it worked normally. I'm sure there will be other quirks I'll discover in the coming days.

I received a bit of unsettling news from my neighbor across the street (the lady whose Boxer I'll be taking when she moves).

Monday night, the town council had an emergency meeting and voted to fire a 25+ year veteran Seargent on the police department. This was the K9 officer that lived across the street from me and helped me with Lisl from time to time with her training. This guy has more time with the department than any other member of the PD, and was a great K9 officer.

Seems that he has been accused of sleeping with one of his informants. He was connected with the DEA and worked a lot of drug busts. His task force along with the DEA have really cleaned up a lot of this town and the surrounding area. Meth is a huge problem in this part of the country and the majority of court cases I read about in the local police blotter are all drug related charges, many times in combination with a theft, robbery, or assault. He has been married for several years to his second wife. No telling what she thinks of all this.

When he moved to the other side of town, he sold his home across the street from me to his son who works as a corrections officer at Menard Penitentiary in Chester, Illinois. I haven't seen him in a few days so I don't know what he thinks either. I'll stay out of it since it's none of my business except that it happened to someone I would consider a friend even though I only see him occasionally. His dad owned the house next door to me when I moved here until he passed away three years ago, where the loud Ford turbo-Diesel now lives and wakes me five days a week at 0300.

All of this came as quite a surprise to me.

Hope you all have a great Wednesday, or Mittwoch. Servus!
 


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