K-1 is slowly integrating into Ealdercote. We only let him out to roam supervised, and discovered he loves gooshy food. The older cats have been leaving a fair amount of tinned food in the bowls for some reason, and Keiichi will happily finish it off if given a chance ( Read more... )

Dragon*Con was a much more subdued experience for us this year. We stayed at one of the satellite hotels instead of one of the central hotels, but we did not spend a lot of time going through the hotels, so I feel like we missed out on seeing a lot of costumes--though some costumes we did manage to see seemed to be missing a lot (usually, taste). ( Read more... )

The upgrade for my venerable "rescued" steam engine was pretty easy, but I am not done with it yet. I love that decoders are pretty much modular now. All I had to do was unplug the old decoder and plug the new one in--no additional soldering or rewiring was required. However, now that there is a speaker, a capacitor, and more wires, the tender's ( Read more... )

This month's railroad club newsletter is a struggle for me to produce fresh content. Six months in, and I am already out of ideas? Bleh Luckily, there was some hobby industry news to cover--Testors paint is discontinuing 4 of its paint lines, two of which are extensively used by model railroaders. How disappointing. The ongoing saga of the ( Read more... )

We got a late start Saturday thanks to staying up late until an absurd hour plus my sweetie had a headache. Most of the museum folk had wandered to Charlotte for a train show. If I had remembered, I *might* have gone, but I didn't have any sort of plan for what to buy or be alert for. shrug Considering recent discussions about our expenditures ( Read more... )

What was the epic death-during-battle scene got turned into farce. Instead of shooting the hero full of arrows, the hero was shot full of an arrow, a push broom, and finally, a banana. Said banana remained in place through out the remainder of the battle sequence. Of course it looked ridiculous!

The combination of LEGO and video games amuses me ( Read more... )

I found a message on my phone Friday indicating that the gasoline-powered mower was ready for pick up and that the shop had no more room, so they needed me to get it RIGHT AWAY. Too bad I didn't notice that the message was delivered Thursday. Ugh. Alas, the place is only open until 5pm, so I had to take off from work a little early ( Read more... )

The mower battery still has not arrived and the shop hasn't called to let me know whether the gasoline mower is ready. I'm gonna get annoyed if I am unable to get the lawn mowed during the extended weekend. However, regardless of whether I have a working mower, I might not feel up to the job. The last couple of evenings have been marred by some ( Read more... )

Whatever desecrated shrine or burial mound is under the Interstate demanded its due this week. I'm not sure it has been sated. Yesterday, I had to make a major detour to go around an accident that had all three lanes closed down. Apparently a Winnebago took out a Mini Cooper. The annoying part is that I would have been at the office right on ( Read more... )

...bales of pine straw covered our extended "natural" area. Instead of the 50+ that it took to get the thing started. I spread out the few remaining bales last night because the weather report called for rain all week. Still no energy in the batteries even after attempting another recharge, so I declare them dead. I shoved the reel mower around ( Read more... )