Rest Day

Layed around the house all day today, reading A Better Part Of Valor, by Tanya Huff. This is the second book in A Confederation Of Valor. Military Science Fiction, pretty good stuff.

A Quote I liked (Paraphrased, from memory): He looked pretty depressed, for a species that invented flavored massage oil before the wheel.

Got the roof on the Fallberg Station over the last week. Getting short of Tenax plastic glue, so had some adventures getting enough glue on the rafters to secure them. Also, had a MAJOR PANIC when I thought I had used the wrong material for the rafters. Thankfully, it turned out I was mistaken.

There's another angle of the station on my zooomr page, somewhere.

I also oiled the chain on the Schwinn.

Flower Power

We visited the Birmingham Botanical Gardens on the trip to Alabama.

The pics are posted at zooomr, just click on the picture below to go there.

This is probably the best pic of the lot. My pics don't do it justice, it's really a beautiful place.
I also made a SmartSet of the pics, but it may or may not work, according to the vageries of zooomr.

Odometer Reading

I just turned of 3,000 miles on the vehicle the other day, that's in a year and an half of driving.

And it already had 500 on it when I bought it.

I need a serious discount on my insurance, I'm thinking!

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The ten pictures of our visit to Oak Mountain State Park a couple weeks ago are up.

Please click on the image to visit my zooomr page, wander around, try the SmartSets and see if they work for you.

More pictures

As I mentioned before, we visited Vulcan Park in Birmingham on a Sunday a couple weeks ago. I finally posted the pictures! Visit my zooomr page, if you dare, wander around and see the pics in all their glory!

I made a "set" for them, but Zooomr sets don't seem to work too well, so often other people's pics get in there, even though I limited the set to my own pics. And sometimes MY pics don't get in there!! Wierdness! I hope they can fix it, or explain to me what I'm doing wrong.

Stationary

Not much going on with the station, but before the trip I glued on the roof.

20007Mar25station Hosted on Zooomr

I got some grey pastels, I'm going to try to "individualize" the rocks a little. We shall see...

Motorbikes!

We visited the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Alabama last Sunday.

Tons of bikes! Really an amazing place, if you like motorcycles, I highly recommend it!

Click on the picture to visit my zooomr photos. Wander around, there are 17 more pictures from the museum.

Dining Out

CAUTION, THIS POST IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AS MY COMPANIONS CORRECT MY INDCREDIBLY HIDEOUS MEMORY!!

So, where did we eat on the trip? Let us see:

Thursday

T.G.I Fridays in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport -- I had a Caesar salad, and we shared an order of potato skins. Very good!

Taqueria Valencia in Pelham -- I had a "Quesadilla Chica", which for some reason I thought meant "Chicken Quesadilla", so when the guy asked me what kind of meat I wanted I kept saying "Chica", so I'm sure he thought I was California Wierd!

Friday

Moe's Southwest Grill in Alabaster -- I enjoyed a Sherman Klump quesadilla. Very messy! A fun place, check out their website.

Cracker Barrel in Calera -- After the wedding rehersal we all went here for a late dinner. I've heard about this restaurant, but never been here, as they don't have any locations in California. I ordered a Half Pound Bacon Cheeseburger, low-carb style, with a side of sweet whole baby carrots. Afterwards we decided to have separate checks, so it took longer to pay than to eat, almost! The cashier was overjoyed, I'm sure, as she had to call for assistance to figure out the bills.

Saturday

I had a granola bar for brunch. Yikes!

At the wedding reception we had a marinated meat that was really good, with some homemade salsa. Really good stuff! I also had a piece of wedding cake.

Sunday

Ruby Tuesday in Pelham -- We were too late for the breakfast menu, so I had a Smokehouse Burger with cheese, bacon and barbeque sauce. Pretty good stuff.

Ted's Montana Grill on the Riverchase Galleria perimeter road in Hoover-- We wandered around the town trying to find a place we all could live with, and ended up here. I'm glad we did! Our server, Krystal, was very attentive and the manager checked several times to see how we were doing. The food was really good, and the price was very reasonable, I thought, and I'm pretty cheap! We were offered a free appetizer, pickled cucumber. It was very tasty. I had my usual diet cola to drink, and ordered a New Mexico Chicken Grill with a side of onion rings.

Monday

Waffle House in Pelham -- I had an omelet, hash browns, and grits. The omelet was not as good as here, but the hash browns and grits were pretty good.

Villa Fresh Italian Kitchen in the Atlanta airport
I had a slice of pizza. It was big and bready, not bad for airport pizza!

Delta Airlines snacks -- I had some cheese and crackers, shortbread cookies, and trail mix, washed down with Diet Coke. I don't want to think about my glucose level!

We're Back!

As you know, I traveled to Alabama this last weekend. My primary concern was to avoid unpleasant accidents, so I didn't drink any coffee for five days. It was tough. Here is what I discovered during the trip:

Bathroom Report:

Aircraft: Didn't have to use. Wow!
Dallas/Fort Worth airport: Semi-nasty!
Travelodge--Pelham: OK, odd flushing, no spare roll of paper first day.
Peavine Falls porta-potty: Very nasty!
Moe's Southwest Grill--Alabaster: Very clean.
Walmart-Pelham: Very clean.
Birmingham airport--Ok, but those automatic flushers scare me!

We stayed at the Travelodge in Pelham, Alabama. There was a big window looking out the back towards the trees, which in turn concealed a river my scout reported.

One odd feature of the room were the pictures on the wall. Two of the same picture!

On Friday we went shopping at the Wall Mart. I noticed that front license plates are not required in Alabama.

I also noted that women call you "hon" and "baby" a lot, and that men say "ma'am".

Later we drove to the site of the reception to help set up. We stopped at Moe's Southwest Grill for lunch. It was a pretty fun place. Along the way we saw some trains.

There are a lot of train tracks going every which-a-way, probably hauling the products of the many quarries in the area. I learned that "Calera" means limestone in Spanish.

After the wedding on Saturday we headed to the reception, going through said town of Calera. More train tracks!

I saw this old drug store. I remember when we had Rexall in San Diego, but haven't seen one in years.

The traffic lights are strung on wires across the streets and their positioning seems odd to me. I noticed they don't have a traffic light at the side of the street like we do in San Diego. Several times I didn't even notice there was a light at an intersection! Good thing I wasn't driving!

On Monday we had breakfast at the Waffle House in Pelham.

I had an omelet and hash browns, and of course GRITS! The omelet was rather different than ones out here, not that wonderful, but the hash browns were excellent. I enjoyed the grits, too, haven't had those in a long time. My companions had pecan waffles. Those looked pretty good. I wish I could have had some coffee, but sadly I've been avoiding it for the last week. Did I mention that already?

After that we visited the Vulcan statue in Birmingham, then turned in the car and flew away.

I've lots of pictures of the statue area, views of Birmingham from up high, and of Sunday when we went to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark (bought a miniature bar of pig iron!), and the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. But we shall save that for another day, when I get around to posting the pics.

Leavin', On A Jet Plane

Kinda hate that song. MY song is more "Sister Ray".

Went to radiation, per usual, today. Parked in the parking garage (LOVE the free parking pass!!). Ran down the hill after treatment to pick up a prescription. Observed guy running the stop sign. Ran (well, walked briskly) back up the hill, including the stairs. My Stairmaster! JUST missed seeing a guy coming in the "In" gate in a truck, not clearing the gate and BREAKING IT OFF! How cool that would have been! After watching and waiting for the attendant to pick up the pieces, made a right turn out the "Out" gate and stopped. Watched a guy back up about a hundred feet on the road, in what seemed to me to an unsafe manner. I mean, some people run stop signs!

That's about the high points of today! If I think of anything else, I'll add it later!

Can't Think Of A Title!

Not too much going on. Buying clothes, shoes, going to radiation, getting ready for the BIG TRIP. No, not THAT big trip, the one to Alabama! You kidder, you!!

The Fallberg Station project is coming along slowly but shirley.

It getting pert near roof time. Before that I need to install the door and windows frames, which have been painted an odd shade of green that I mixed.

That's all for this week!

What's Up

Instead of using my spare time in some useful manner increasing my wealth, or bicycling, I'm spending a few moment here and there building yet-another-building for the model railroad. This one is the Fallberg Station from Downtown Deco. I bought it last year. It took me a year to work up the gumption to put it together. Step one is to glue the four Hydrocal castings together. I already messed THAT up!

Apparently, according the directions, there are not only left and right sides, there are front and back sides.

Huh.

Apparently, also, I can't read, because I missed that little bit of information.

I don't think it will make a lot of difference to the untrained eyes that will view my finished product, but it's kind of an insult to the craftsman who meticulously designed the kit, don't yah think?

I just ran spell check on this, there were seven errors. Can you guess which seven words were wrong? Hint: three of them were the same word.

I just finished spraying the castings with flat white paint, prior to putting some color on them. (By the way, as I type, my fingers are sticking to the keyboard because, also apparently, I have white paint on them. Huh.)

Well, other than that, things are going ok. The radiation doctor said she was cool with the trip, that I was experiencing side effects in accord with expectations, so everything is good. In case you wanted to know, my "nether regions" are feeling much better today, thank you very much!