Dog Ear
November 9, 2023
was starting to gear up to assemble the winter issue of The Journal Box. This is a model train newsletter for the local region of the National Model Railroad Association. Years back, a friend of mine needed an editor (the entire publication had fallen off the face of the earth). So I agreed to step in and do it, even though I didn’t know anything about Microsoft Publisher. Slowly learned it and started assembling these quarterly, adding a bit of a whimsical touch and some jokes here and there as I filled the pages with layouts, news, and coverage of […]
November 2, 2023
ad a waking dream today. Woke up remembering a small game store in Cincinnati I went to in the mid-seventies. Small little shop on a twisty downtown street. My friends would pile into my old VW and rattle down there. In the packed shop with its game-stuffed shelves, little Marilyn (how we all had crushes on her) would talk about the latest games (and old favorites still in circulation). I’d nearly forgotten all about that. It’s strange, these little shops that the internet has rolled over. I remember when there were three hobby shops within two miles of my Orlando […]
October 19, 2023
his is a sad story. Recently I was at the La Mesa Club housed in the San Diego Model Railroad museum. I was there for one of their operations events, where they run their massive layout under 1950s methods, with written orders and manned stations. It’s not for the faint of heart or the impatient of mind – you can wait for hours and hours for a train, or even find yourself standing in a siding for an eternity. Also, I get cell phones and why they are so cool and convenient to have. My friend I went out there […]
October 5, 2023
uddenly Curbside Libraries are popping up all over the place. Since I tend to walk a lot, I’ll pass them often and nose in, seeing if there is anything interesting. I hate to say it, but judging America’s reading levels, it is pretty bleak. Most of the time, it is grim. Generally there are two things in these boxes – children’s books (not beloved classics, but just general teach-a-lesson books) and utility books (cookbooks, self-help books, etc). Really, this is what you people read? A few years back, I was riding my bike and came across a stack of books […]
September 21, 2023
ne of my guilty pleasure are Webtoons, specifically found on the site of that name (search for it). This is an avenue for artists to easily post up their comic strips so the reader can follow them and enjoy them. Some of them occasionally get turned into low-budget movies. If I were an artist (and not a writer) I might consider it. I have subscribed to a dozen of these which post on different days. My little guilty pleasure was to ride my bike into work, have a shower, get a cup of coffee and since I was the first […]
September 14, 2023
‘m a student of media. I love all sorts of storytelling, from writing to joke-telling to chats with the barista at the local coffee house. My robot question is infamous. Stories aren’t only books or movies or shows. You can see stories everywhere. Even model railroading. On my own Tuscarora Branch Lines model railroad, I filled up a small siding area (a tiny triangle in something like a diagonal 5″ x 5″) with a junk yard. Specifically, Levine’s Iron and Metal, which exists in my locale (I drove by it but didn’t see it from the road, but I know […]
September 7, 2023
his is one of those strange things that occur, noticeable if you keep your eyes open. So yeah, I busted my shoulder. And yeah, I needed physical therapy. I had to go three times a week for months. Usually the appointments were either at 7:30 am or 9:00 am (I preferred the latter since I could hang out at the coffee shop and gas-bag with the baristas). Today was my finial session. As usual, I start on this thing very much like a stationary bike, but you pedal with your arms instead of your legs. It’s a six-minute warmup, three […]
August 30, 2023
like paper books. Kindles are nice and all but give me a nice solid book to put on the coffee house table and I’m set. Even today, the woman collecting the dishes asked me if I was enjoying my book. I don’t think she’d ask if I faced the glow of a kindle screen. However, today was a bit of a quandary. I was in the death throes of The Hero of Ages, a nearly 600 page phone book that rounds out the MistBorn trilogy. I was close to having that mother done. And next up, another hardback (more modest at 300 pages […]
August 11, 2023
nteresting thing happened to me today. I finally got signed up (I hope) for Medicare. It took four hours (and two help calls) to get this done. I was dragging by the time I finished. To celebrate, I grabbed the wife and our books and we headed over to our favorite Orlando coffee house, Framework. When we came in, there is one barista guy I always chat with for a bit. Today when we came in, he said, “It’s my favorite customers”. When I tried to downplay it, he responded that I always have something interesting to chat about, and […]