Come on back to the caboose and get a cup of coffee [or sweet ice tea] Part V

[John Baker]

0500BST and Stockport still slumbers, suns coming up, the birds are coughing, forecast 25C high, little wind. It's going to be a hot-un.
Been up since 0130, couldn't sleep, dreaming about Lionel. Me and the management are going to look at yet another house just outside the original York.
Haven't posted for a month, it appears. Nothing much going on over here apart from the UK Lionel collectors annual get together in Ilkley in three weeks, be nice to see some of the clan again.
I have a good throughput of funnies from Jim and the other humourists around the pond.
Happy thingy Chuck. Chuck is sort of Scouse slang for Howdy.
I hope every ones health and demeanour are as sunny as our weather is.

 

[Brutus]

Happy birthday, Blueberry Chuck - hope you enjoy many more, too! Sorry I was late - big storms chased me away from the computer for a long time tonight.

Hi guys - John B, long time no hear from!

Great pic and story John F! Great pic of your train, Jeffrey. Sounds like you did a good job on the pool pump.

Hope things have settled down in Chicago. Hope Kurt and kids had a great time with Diego, too. Hope Sir James left a piece of apple pie for me (yummy)!

CSX - that picture is worth a 1000 words indeed - I'm glad to hear that your diet has gone so well, that is a lot of hard work. Good luck on the job.

Well, Chief is already gone to bed and I think that sounds like a great idea too, so TTFN!

 

[spankybird]

Good Morning All from NE Ohio

Happy Birthday Chuck ! ! aussie balloon6 bday1

Did you have a party? :band1:

Today the museum is closed so we can take care of Mom's.

 

[jeffrey-wimberl]

Good morning.

We had a thunderstorm blow through here about 3 am that the weather guessers didn't know about. No real surprise there.

It's currently 68 and partly cloudy and is expected to climb to the mid 80's with still partly cloudy conditions.

Today's Weather for:
Sundown, LA 71446-6114 5/11/2008

Wind Chill: 67°F
Humidity: 83%
Dew Point: 62°F

So Far Today
High: 76°F
Low: 67°F
Rain: 0.07"
Rain Rate: 0.00"/h
Gust: 17mph N

Today High: 85 Mostly sunny. Highs in the mid 80s. North winds 10 to 15 mph.

Tonight Low: 50 Partly cloudy. Cooler. Lows around 50. North winds around 10 mph in the evening becoming light and variable.

 

[dbaker48]

Happy Mothers Day !!!

Wow, sure is a lot to comment on!

John F, that is a fantastic photo, one you would see in magazines. Sure would have enjoyed doing that type of job. But, OH the responsibility, no room for mistakes!!

CSxct - That loss is fabulous! Your family has got to be proud of your accomplishment. My hat's off to you!!

Jim - The jokes continue to be great, when do you find time for trains and stuff?

Jeffrey - Who did the grafetti for you, or did you just leave it sit out overnight somewhere? Really look cool, just be careful cause usually someone will want to write over it.

Doug M - Hope the situation takes care of itself quickly, could be the opportunity could end up in an even closer relationship.

Chuck - Another day older, eh. Just try to keep the after parties reasonable.

Chief - Sounds like a major feast. You should have made a video and it would have probably ended up on the Food Chanel.

Spent yesterday wiring up buildings, got 29 establishments connected. Sure makes it easier with 2 people! Chris was under the layout connecting the wires, I was on top drilling holes, stripping, wires, and connecting. Worked well. May attempt some accessories next.

Going to have a Bar B Que, with some friends, and MIL/FIL, then see a movie. Wife wants to go see Iron Man. Chris and I went to see a movie the other night, "88 Minutes, critics had rated it an F, we thought it was pretty good.

Hope everyone has a great day !!

 

[BlueberryhillRR]

Good Morning.........
Cool and rainy today. Got all the mowing done yesterday. Today is a relaxing day. Running trains this afternoon.
Don & Tom.....No Birthday parties. Just quiet day. And I enjoyed it.
Be back later,
Chuck

 

[Brutus]

Good question, Don - mostly for the past couple months all I do is teach a class all day then come home and get on the internet and zone out I guess. I am going to make a pledge (soon) to just get on for like 2 hours max a day.

Nice pics, guys! Jeffrey, we had high winds and thunderstorm here in the St. Louis area. In SW MO they had a killer tornado, though!

 

[sir james]

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to the brides.
Brutus I'm happy to hear your household is ok, after the storms. My wife is still at church and so I'm not sure what she would like to do today I will just wait and see. We have heavy overcast with rain expected so it will be an indoor day for whatever she decideds. Not much else going on so I will just say goodbye, and read the new post from time to time...S.J.

 

[cnw1995]

Happy Mother's Day - hope you are helping your mom or bride-who-is-a-mom enjoy it. Zealot doesn't like my version of IE so I haven't been able to visit lately. Had a good time outside Phoenix - what a different place - so desert-y. Daughter is grounded for a month or two or three. Glad you are OK, Brutus. Terrible weather here - cold, raining. Like March. Going to take the family out later.

 

[sir james]

EVENING ALL
Doug- kids can drive parents crazy, but I know you will do fine.
Ours showed up today to do the visit with mom thing, so all is well here. It started raining about noon and expected to last till tomorrow. Lite, just right for the grass and plants. Ice cream and cookies if you come this way. I put the KFC in the garage fridge so they won't find it. S.J

 

[Brutus]

SJ - too tired today, will just lay here and pray for peace and quiet, ahhhhh.....

Got to visit with my brother tonight at Mom and Dad's house. I had Achilles' tendinitis and finally went to doc and now it's like 90 percent healed. Bro, Johnny, did not go to doc and his BLEW OUT while playing some sports. He had surgery and is in a boot thing for another couple months - ouch! I told him he is too competitive, always has to one-up me, LOL

Doug, for a girl that age, grounded without hope will be worse than death - bwahahaha....

 

[jeffrey-wimberl]

Good morning.

It's 52 degrees and will be partly cloudy all day. Expecting a high in the mid 80's.

Today's Weather for:
Sundown, LA 71446-6114 5/12/2008

Wind Chill: 51°F
Humidity: 77%
Dew Point: 45°F

So Far Today
High: 58°F
Low: 52°F
Rain: 0.00"
Rain Rate: 0.00"/h
Gust: 5mph NNE

Today High: 82 Mostly sunny. Highs in the lower 80s. Light and variable winds becoming southeast around 10 mph in the afternoon.

Tonight Low: 60 Mostly cloudy. Lows around 60. Southeast winds around 10 mph.

 

[TomPM]

Good morning folks

It was a wild weather ride into work this morning. Temperature was 45 F with rain and wind. There were downed branches and other debris all the place this morning due to the 60 MPH wind gusts overnight. The traffic reports were filled with down trees and downed wires. Traffic lights were out on several on my routes to work. We are expecting more rain and wind gusting to 30 to 40 MPH with a high of 51 F. We are under a Flood Watch and a Coastal Flood Warning.

We had a good Mother’s Day. My wife got some new gardening tools and one those garden hoppers she can roll around the yard and use as a seat. She was happy with the gifts since gardening is her major hobby. Dinner was the only problem or should I say getting seated. We went out early and found several of the places overcrowded. One place had an hour and a half wait. We finally went to Hibachi which is a Japanese Restaurant that we all enjoy.

No modeling over this weekend. There is a possibility I could get some done tonight.

I hope everybody has a good day.

 

[Chief Eagles]

Morning. TomPM, we never try to go out on Mother's Day. Dare say that is the busiest day of the year. Also, telphone records show that is the heavest calling day of the year.

Off to Frankie's old house to do some things so he can close to buyer this week.

Had great rains yesterday.

God bless.

 

[cnw1995]

Good morning from a sunny Chicago where it is only 38 but I have a cuppa hot joe. So glad you took care of that, Brutus. Great photo this morning, Jeffrey - like how well the backdrop fits. Sign of our local economy: not many out for dinner yesterday.

 

[jeffrey-wimberl]

Thanks CNW. About signs of our economy, a political cartoon I saw in the paper yesterday sums it up pretty well. There's a man carrying a small gas can. He's asked by another man 'How were you able to afford all that gas?'. Man with can replies 'I sold my car'.

 

[Jonadel]

Needed to go back several pages just to catch up. Busy time of the year for me and now we will have company beginning tomorrow until Saturday. Another 50 of America's finest return home tomorrow afternoon after being in Afghanistan for over a year, I'll be part of the final escort the last 50 miles, bringing them home in style :thumb: Thanks Soldiers!

Doug -- our furnace came on last night but today and tonight look better, good grief. Hopefully you will warm up also. Watched the Cubbies yesterday and had to laugh at the crowd pics, no thanks.

 

[jefelectric]

Cold, windy and rainy here, Doug must have sent some Chicago weather East to us. wall1

Have spent hours, last evening and this morning downloading new software and maps for the wifes new GPS, the first update is free. Can't believe how slow this is, plus I had to perform some wierd manuvers. On my main computer the hard drive is not C and the Garmin software does not contain any method of redirecting the software to load on another drive. I had to uninstall the card reader that was C and map a folder on my home server as C. That seems to be working. It takes over 3 GB of disk space.

I finally got my camera connected to that I can see the train operation in the other room from my main layout. Handy.

 

[cnw1995]

It's Iowa weather, John - Wow, 3 GB!

Jon, I too laughed at the Cubs fans all bunded up - bet they didn't expect this sort of weather in mid-May.

 

[jeffrey-wimberl]

I've been out watching me nephew working on his car. He couldn't figure out why it wouldn't run right. It was back firing and sounding like an old artillery piece. I looked at the plug wires and they didn't look right. I was thinking the two middle wires were wrong. I looked up the firing order in a Haynes Manuel. It's listed as 1-4-3-2. I looked at the wire arrangement on the distributor and guess what? It was wrong! It was 1-4-2-3. I told him but he wouldn't listen. He's a mechanic of four years experience and he knows it all. When he went in the house for a bit I, a mechanic of some twenty plus years experience, switched the wires around to what they should be right in front of one of his friends so I'd have a witness. When he came back I told him one thing an old mechanic told me once, and it's always worked for me, if something isn't working right give it a good whack. He figures he didn't have anything to lose so he gave it a good swift kick on the front bumper. He then told his friend to try starting it (we already had it cranked while he has in the house so we knew it would start) and he almost almost fell over when it fired right up. Then his friend let the cat out of the bag and told him what I had done. What could he do? He admitted that he was wrong and that was that. I just looked at him and told him 'And here you were saying uncle doesn't know anything'. I know enough to know that when something isn't working right, read the instructions! I may have teethed on breaker points and solid wire plug cables but the firing order on a four cylinder is no different than it was forty years ago.