t was a day today. Started at 7am, early at work, when I had to deal with the fallout of a backstabbing and kowtow to someone who lorded over me. Ugh. And when I went jogging at lunch, the fly button on my shorts popped off, leaving me to jog while holding my pants up. I mean, FerChristSakes, how bad could this day go?

At the restaurant tonight, I had a bourbon. I’m just burned out. And it’s ops night. And I already knew a lot of my operators were out of town.

Got in and found that it was bad, that we could only just manage a session. Man, we even shed a member or two before we began. Then we were rolling, and the first half went okay. I was dispatching and everything felt fine. Then Matthew took over and it went to hell (and oddly, this time it wasn’t his fault). Was going to run a local with a guest. Between my engines sputtering and running away (I’ll never use them again until I get them rechipped), and some bad turnouts, I was having a hard time.  And one of our young (loud) members had returned and made it difficult to focus on the business of railroading.

Finally my guest drifted off and I got a chance to just settle in and operate (which was nice). Still, three freights didn’t run – maybe we’ll have a followup session next time, just to pick things up. I don’t know. All I know was that what should have been an enjoyable evening became a death slog.

Thanks to Bruce for helping me get in. Nice to have someone confident on the paperwork so we could team the train home.

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