Relentless Inquiry

Not quite sure what happened this weekend, but at least it's almost over.

I *think* we accomplished a bunch of stuff, but it's arguable if it was the RIGHT stuff, or useful stuff, or stuff that had priority.

Mike got a bottle of 'goo gone' and a fresh razorblade thingy and made the china cabinet and the sliding patio door insert presentable– both marred for a long time with tape and/or tape adhesive remainder. He also took the china cabinet glass shelves out of their bubble wrap and cleaned and installed them.

I cleaned the catbox, the cat fountain, and the whole rest of the master bath (a *good* cleaning, not just a 'wipe the countertops off'. Took the cat mat outside to wash off.

We unpacked about 8 boxes of books into the new bookcases. We're sorting boxes of cruft, magazines, etc. Some of the stuff that looked like it should be saved when we packed it in (sigh) the winter of 2001 or early spring of 2002, well, let's say we hadn't missed it.

Lined up freecyclers for the boxes we're breaking down, and bubble wrap. Seems almost a shame, the last of the boxes. I bought 40 – 50 boxes in 1995 to move to Santa Cruz, and then we bought another 50 – 70 boxes in Jan 2002 to move stuff into storage.
We're planning on staying put for a long time, so bye-bye boxes. Mike thinks we might trade in this mfr home for a new one in a few years, which would mean moving into storage temporarily. Nuh-uh. We aren't moving again (by choice) until we retire, or unless we win the lottery. I can put up with somewhat dated interior decor, which we can gradually improve, for a dozen years or so. The way time's flying, it will seem like no time at all.

Friday night I finished making chicken soup, and made raisin bread. Well, almost made it: the thing didn't beep and I didn't add the raisins. We also boiled a spaghetti squash, since we had all the water from boiling the matzah balls just ready to use.

Saturday I tossed together a giant set of gluten-free 4-flour mix from Bette Hagman's 'the Gluten Free Gourmet Bakes Bread' book, and fired up a loaf of GF raisin-pecan bread, since I had floured raisins just sitting there. OK, so it's not truly GF since the raisins were pre-floured with regular flour, but it works for me. And despite the hassle of sifting umpteen cups of this n that together, *now* I have a canister full of mix and can just toss 3 cups of it into the breadmaker to do a GF loaf. BTW, this new mix of hers works very well– really firm, springy bread with a texture a lot like wheat bread. One problem– the garbanzo/fava flour can cause, um, methane production. Time to set up a cogeneration facility.

We went to the train shop, looked at stuff, and then went home and dug around on the web to find more FAQs so we could understand what the heck was going on. Let's just say “G scale” is something of a misnomer: there's more than that under the hood, but I won't take the time to write it up here. At least *now* we grok the relationship between Gauge 0 and Gauge 1 track and the various 1:N ratios that make up 'G scale'. We also know how to match a loco to the rest of the rolling stock in a way that makes us happy, and doesn't end up in multi-scale looking dorky, and have identified the desired loco and livery. So that's actually a good set of accomplishments!

We'll be creating an agricultural branch line similar to ones which ran here in Santa Clara in the 1930's – late 1940's. Unfortunately nobody makes an Alco S1 or S2 in G scale (it's all HO or N), so we're going to use a plausible, although not historically verifiable substitute, an early GE 44-ton switcher. It was *very* popular, since it could handle multiple cars but just squeaked in under the 2-man crew limit, so only required 1 engineer as crew. Much more economical for the yard/line. We can't find any documentation on its use in “the Valley of Heart's Delight” in agricultural use, but we'll keep looking, and at least it's of the right period.

So here's our sample consist; clicking goes to the info page.

(and a generic flatcar or two, which we'll pile with 'produce crates', plus a generic stakebed of the type they used to fill with tomatoes).

OK, back to cleaning and other work.