robert.admin – Page 138 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 21, 2017

“Almost” Total Eclipse (8/21/2017)

e were supposed to go up to North Carolina where we’d rented a block of hotel rooms for my mom, my sister and us. That was the plan. But then the cat’s kidneys eclipsed about two months ago. As she got sicker, we decided to cancel our plans. And as it always goes in astronomy (and life), she passed away between that decision point and the event. That left us stuck in Orlando with an 85% coverage. Better than nothing. We watched it through pretty dark glasses (no aftereffects while I type this (and I’m not blind) so it must […]

August 20, 2017

The Girl on the Train (Review)

et’s get this right out in the open. This is a protagonist you aren’t going to like at all. Rachel is a pathetic drunk. Her drinking and violent tendencies cost her a marriage. Now abiding in an apartment from an over-enabling friend, she rides in to London every day, not to work but to pretend to work. Because she drank at a work lunch, lost control and got the sack. One of Rachel’s little “games” is when the train stops every day at the same signal, she looks at the back of one of the suburban houses (apparently a few […]

August 20, 2017

OpsLog – SD&EA – 8/20/2017

his was going to be a difficult session – first off, it’s in the back of the clinic where I had my cat put to sleep less than a week ago. And second, we hadn’t run there in forever. But Doc’s been thinking about things. Fortunately his track plan is pretty much the same so there were only minor corrections to the panel program. We had an odd assortment of operators show up – some ex-club members (hey, I don’t care if you are a Nazi, as long as you run a train)(well, maybe I do). And we had some […]

August 17, 2017

Book Acquaintances (DOG EAR)

’ve mentioned this topic in the past but recently a bout of serendipity has brought it to the fore again. Once more, we discover the solidarity of readers. Event 1 – at the weekly get together at Juniors (not the place my wife and I go to lunch and read at on weekends but the pizza parlor the model train buddies meet at). Was sitting there talking to a couple of guys about Razor Girl, a crime novel I’d just finished. Suddenly Steve, an older guy (practical, levelheaded) tells me that he’s currently reading it too. That surprised me – […]

August 16, 2017

Eulogy

don’t know why I sang it. I hardly remembered the lyrics. But the shelter told us that when you get a cat home you should sit in the bathroom with her and her litterbox until she used it to calibrate her domain. And this new visitor/family member of ours, this little black and white darling with her tiny white nose and vastly curious eyes, she prowled the bathroom and sniffed at the box while I lay in the bathtub waiting for her to christen her abode with a poo. At one point she jumped into the tub with me (how […]

August 13, 2017

Razor Girl (Review)

arl Hiaasen – what can you say? If you haven’t read any of his South Florida Crime Novels, you’ve got a treat. While his writing can be a bit formulaic (good guys are gruff and honest, bad guys are unremitting shit-weasels (one of my favorite phrases of his) who tend fated to end his tales in horribly fitting ways). It’s not high art, that’s for sure, but it’s fun. So, the title character, the Razor Girl, is a young woman with a suspicious name (Merry Mansfield) who makes a living of sorts by crashing into cars. She’s got rear-ending to […]

August 10, 2017

Lower than Whale Shit (DOG EAR)

eah, the cat. She’s hanging in there but it’s a heart-ripper all the same. Years back, I wrote every day at work. I actually wrote Indigoin my lunch breaks, and a lot of the half-way Tubitz and Mergenstein, as well. I’ve knocked out a number of erotic collections (yeah, for sale, and dollars legitimizes anything in America) – how strange to write about heaving sweaty bodies, her fingers reaching down to play him and coax him until he was as hard as a ram, while at the next table over a woman grinds at her kids on her cell for […]

August 6, 2017

ConvLog – Convention Show – 8/4-6/2016

ell, that’s done. The convention is history. I gotta say I’m totally beat, having be involved in every minute of every event over the last week. I opened the gate for Saturday club cleaning, and closed it for the module drop off. And I did everything in between. So think of this – over the last three days, twenty-four hours of it was convention center activity. For each of those hours, and the minutes and seconds contained within, two to five trains were in motion around our 30×40 layout. At one point we were up to nine. And for each […]

August 3, 2017

ConvLog – LM&O Ops – 8/4/2017

can’t speak for everyone else, but after Monday’s convention op session at the club, I wanted to do better. While it wasn’t baaaaad (in that condescending tone) we’ve had better. I wanted our guests to see what a good session is like, when a club which operates using the more difficult N-gauge really takes advantages of longer trains and high mountains, really giving the engineer a feel of place and scale, without leaving them sitting and waiting while six people yabble on the phone. At dinner, that seemed to be the touch-n-go discussion, how we wanted to run well but, […]

August 1, 2017

ConvLog – Open House 2 – 8/1/2017

o how do you get ready for a visit from a busload of modelers at your club? In this case, John L. and I were up a ladder, replacing that troublesome light in the afternoon heat. Bunch of the regulars showed up at DQ, where we had a chucklefest talking about the session the night before. Then we went over, set up trains and got ready for action. This time, the bus driver evidently had not checked his route. First he missed the entrance and went touring down the street. Then he tried to hook a fifty-foot bus around a […]