Scattered Thoughts . . .

T his year, it seemed like all the grandchildren were really excited to be watching the garden railroad which was nice.  It definitely held their attention for quite a long time!   Lukey enjoys running the trains so he definitely enjoyed himself with this little garden railroad.  Then again, that should come as no surprise since he has always been interested in trains.  I ran one of the trains for a bit but Lukey spent quite a bit of time running both trains. These trains run on battery packs rather than power through the rails.  I made sure both trains were fully charged the night before the barbeque and we had no problem running the trains all day long without a hiccup.  They still had power when I brought them back indoors at the end of the night.  Lukey and I control the locomotive and trolley using apps on two of my tablets so it is all wireless which makes things very easy. This year, the grandchildren got to see a few new structures around ...

W e had some friends and Sheila's dad over yesterday to christen our new grill.  The weather was great and it was nice to catch up with some old friends that we haven't seen since before the pandemic. I started the day by preparing some shish-ka-bob skewers.  Cutting up five filet mignons, red onion, an assortment of peppers and fresh mushrooms was time consuming and a bit painful with my broken cut-off thumb.  Skewering everything took a bit longer and was bit more painful than anticipated too.  I left the potatoes and cherry tomatoes whole on their own skewers.   Usually, people assemble the skewers with all ingredients on each skewer so that each person can simply eat a whole skewer of grilled shish-ka-bob.  I don't like doing that though.  Each of these ingredients requires a different amount of time on the grill so I prefer to separate them by the amount of time required on the grill.  The meat and potatoes require the most time... ...

W e awoke to some snow again this morning.  There was only about six inches out there but it is supposed to warm up today with some mixed precipitation so I needed to clear the driveway and rake the roof before it got wet and heavy.  Wet and heavy isn't good for the roof nor is it good for my extensive spinal injuries.  Then it would all freeze again tonight and that would make it impossible to move so it needed to be done this morning.  While I was on the roof looking down on our little garden railroad in the backyard, I was reminded that I never did get a photo of this garden layout from the roof.   Lukey and I talked about capturing a few photos from the roof one day this summer but that day was far too hot to climb up on an asphalt roof!  As it was, we were chasing the shade with lawn chairs while we ran trains so we could stay as cool as possible.  At one point, I think our chairs were on the other side of the yard from the garden railroad si...

W hen we visited Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie back at Christmastime, we never did tour the new Grand Central Madison part of Grand Central Terminal so we were seeing this new part of Grand Central for the first time just this past weekend.  If we had the time back at Christmastime, we would have spent a little time exploring this new extension to Grand Central.  It just so happens that our Long Island Railroad train arrives in this new extension to Grand Central so we were finally able to experience this new train station ourselves. This part of the station is quite large and extends for six blocks underground...  very much  underground at about 180 feet below street level.  Consequently, we encountered numerous sets of stairs and escalators to get back up to street level.  One of these escalators is noteworthy which I will mention later in this blog entry. When we stepped out of the train, we were on a beautiful, clean and bright station platform! ...