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... )

The desecrated burial mound under the Interstate is getting restless again. Four work days in a row there have been fairly significant accidents causing huge traffic problems. And the mound's influence is spreading.... Of course, it may also be a function of increased traffic density--there certainly seem to be more vehicles on the road in the ( Read more... )

Last night's presentation of Steampunk 101 was a big disappointment--especially considering the amount of time I sunk into research and preparing it. There were four of us there: me, the librarian/wife, and two people who seemed to have shown up out of idle curiosity rather than actual interest. While doing the research, I feel like an an ( Read more... )

A failure to communicate resulted in me completing the grocery shopping instead of taking the pickup-load of carpet to the county dump. Our original discussion of the topic that I recall left the job of dealing with carpet disposal to ealdthryth because she had a much bigger window of time to drive over and get back than I do. However, food takes ( Read more... )

Doc McInnis brought me a set of replacement drive wheels for my switcher. The steel wheels that were original to the model do conduct electricity to the motor, at least until the build-up of junk and oxidation from an hour's worth of running time require a thorough cleaning to prevent the switcher from just stopping dead semi-randomly. The nickel ( Read more... )

ealdthryth is obsessing about decluttering. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but it brought up a sidebar conversation about how "nice" the living room feels without all the incidental pieces of furniture in it--the little bookshelves, the coffee table, the DVD shelves, the small file cabinet, the end tables. We're down to the couch, a pair of floor lamps ( Read more... )

On my way to work, I was puzzled to see what I thought was the fuselage of a single-person aircraft rolling down the center lane of my side of the Interstate. It was bright orange, so it was pretty hard to miss. As I pulled closer, my thought was confirmed, the wings had been dismounted and stored along the top of the plane, and the whole thing ( Read more... )

A tanker truck wrecks on the Interstate and backs up traffic for miles during morning rush hour. There was absolutely nothing about it on the local news. Instead, they repeat stories they broadcast about a half-hour earlier. Someone isn't paying attention ( Read more... )

The irony of working on the portable layout is that we are spending days connecting wiring, but one of my jobs on Saturday was cutting apart the track where it crosses from one module to the next. The other job was getting the Company Store inventory prepped for the show. I think we've got all the items priced, so we should be ready ( Read more... )

This was the first year since we've been married that ealdthryth and I have spent Thanksgiving apart. Ignatius's intransigence over traveling has put a crimp in our holiday plans for the foreseeable future. I decided to go a day early and come back on Saturday--which proved to be an excellent choice in terms of severe lack of travel hassles. Since our ( Read more... )