robert.admin – Page 88 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 20, 2020

Start the Presses! (DOG EAR)

t was the weekend of my quarterly chore, putting together the fall issue of the Journal Box, a newsletter I do for our National Model Railroad Association region. This is just an example of what happens when you are a known writer – everyone has resumes, cover letters, and assembly-and-print nightmares for you to do. Because, you know, you write and all. But seriously, if I’d been there and they’d asked someone else, I’d have been writing a “why didn’t they pick me?” blog. So, yes, better to complain from the battlements than from the base of the wall, I […]

August 15, 2020

Trail of McAllister (Review)

an, I used to read these Western things when I was a teen, and Author Matt Chisholm is still pumping them out. But after my last slow thick book, a fast cowboy novel was just what I needed. So in this one, we open with five hard men chatting in their nasty little shanty. Turns out one of them “got him”, meaning he ambushed someone and shot him right off the edge of a canyon, leaving his body to fall into the river. As a reader, our first question is “who did you shoot?” And little by little, it is […]

August 13, 2020

The Robby Awards (DOG EAR)

he heat was sheeting off the three eastbound lanes running towards Bithlo, Florida. I was in the right lane behind a massive pickup truck with all its proudly stickered vulgarities. Suddenly the trunk swerved its massive tires left, cutting into the center lane. In horror, I saw a guy on a hog (with no helmet) making an equally uncleared and unsignaled shift from the far left lane. Both spotted each other and locked up (I had to stop because the wide back end of the pickup was still in my lane). Then, like pitbulls, they screamed at each other, unmasked […]

August 11, 2020

BuildLog – TBL – 8/10/2020

t was a long weekend of work on the Tuscarora Branch Line. After building the layout last week and staining the frame (over the weekend), I got track mounted on it, carefully including my feeder sections. A lot of effort here to get the track flat and make sure the turnouts still worked (my first go, I dislodged one of the wires). So tonight Steve Raiford and I soldered the feeders to a single terminal strip, in preparation for connecting up the booster. We were about done when a routine currency check noted that he had a short somewhere. Steve […]

August 9, 2020

Kara Kush (Review)

art of the reason I desperately had my wife pinch-hit for me last week is the fact that Kara Kush is 575 pages long. But no, it’s not just that. The problem I had was that this book was a very slow read. Sounded like it should be interesting – an American who grew up in Afghanistan finds himself as the de facto leader of the Mujahideen when the Soviets invade in the early ‘80s. Like Batman, he has wealth, connections, and even a secret cave to base. Add to this the discovery of a vast horde of ancient gold […]

August 6, 2020

Lead Time (DOG EAR)

know this is going to happen. Saturday after next is the deadline for the Journal Box, the model train newsletter I put out for the Southeast Region of the National Model Railroad Association. Just like all the ones I’ve done before, I’ll post out calls for articles and nobody will respond. I’ll get one or two, but not enough filler for 16 pages. And then, the day of the 15th, everything will come flooding in. Usually critical information will come in the day after deadline (with stern instructions to me to make room for this late piece). Always the same. […]

August 2, 2020

Anne of Green Gables (Guest Review)

finished reading Anne of Green Gables for the first time yesterday. Even though I have long known of this book, but have not had occasion to read it until it was a selection of my book club, I had no idea how much I would enjoy it. It was not just an interesting read and a very good story, but also very inspiring without being even the least bit preachy. It is a simple but also moving story of a young orphan girl, Anne Shirley, sent by mistake from the orphanage to a brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, […]

July 30, 2020

My Busy Schedule (DOG EAR)

ecently I had a friend leave a message to complain that I wasn’t returning his calls in the evenings (usually we talk once a week, and those calls can run 90 minutes to two hours). Really, since retirement and the C-19 plague, I’ve been more busier than ever. Every evening is packed. So lets see: Monday: This is work night at the model train club. We normally meet on Wednesdays but the guys working on various projects like to meet on an off-night when there is more elbow room (of course, this is a per-plague sentiment, […]

July 26, 2020

Pennsylvania Railroad Facilities – Volume 9 (Review)

his is another picture-heavy volume of Pennsy Railroad memories, collections of snapshots presented in order of location, east to west, Antis, PA to Derry, PA, along the PRR Allegheny Division. A train club friend loaned me this one (as he had Volume 10, which I reviewed HERE). It’s a compilation of images from the early days of railroading to the near-present, showing changes to the railroad, the equipment, and the towns and cities through which this proud railroad ran. For me, the book came at a timely moment – I’m building a microlayout west of this division, out in the […]

July 23, 2020

Evil without a backstory (DOG EAR)

ou’ve seen them. The guy with the souped-up car with nowhere to go. Or the guy with the sinister tattoo that doesn’t seem to mean anything, nothing but skulls and eagles and flames. The guy with the massive gun who is amazingly well informed about a government conspiracy. Or ever the guy with a convict glare who has never even had a library book go overdue. And yes, girls can play too. They are trying to be so evil and so anti-heroic with their poise. Yet, if you sat with them and chatted them out (or, better yet, flipped open […]