BR60103

We were 50 or 75 miles from totality today. SWMBO wanted to take no chances so we stayed inside all afternoon. It did get dark outside. We tried watching it on the TV. None of the networks wanted to show the entire process in real time. What we got was pictures of crowds; talking to people who hoped the clouds would go away; pictures of a black disk with a bright outline. Then more pictures of people taking off their glasses to look at the eclipse. It was even worse than the Santa Claus parade.

A note on the Peter Principle. One of the contributing conditions is the reluctance of upper ranks to admit to having made a mistake in promoting someone to a position they can't handle. So they sit there unless they can be shifted sideways to where they can't do harm. When it first came out, everyone at work had candidates for examples of the principle.

We spent most of today waiting. I arranged annual service for the furnace and was given a 10 am to 2 pm window. Tech arrived after 1. He found some moisture under something and decided it was condensation from the exhaust. Tightened all the bolts holding something with a gasket. As he was done well before 3, we went out to the mall for a walk. (Weather was wet and miserable and probably turning to snow soon). SWMBO found a book and This England and I found BRM. (March!) My sister suggests that I should be on Facebook so that I can see what she and her brood are doing. I've passed on it. My social media are two railway sites.

The other half of clean track is clean wheels. If you don't clean wheels when you clean the track, the gunk on the wheel treads goes back on the rails. My track cleaner is from Aero Car Hobby Lubricants in the USofA. (easy for us to get in Canada)

I heard it as: In England, everything is permitted unless it is forbidden. In Germany, everything is forbidden unless it is permitted. In France, everything is forbidden, but they do it anyways.

I had a session on the phone with the Internet supplier today. I've been getting requests to initiate extra authentication for my eMail but I've been putting it off by clicking on "will do it later". Later came today. They wanted to send me an authentication number to my wireless phone. That I don't got. Called service, sat on hold for 10 minutes, then talked to a nice chap who immediately understood the problem, put me on hold for a couple of minutes, and said that I'd never have the problem again. The cargo ship Dali has been reported as having a length matching the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State building. Dayle didn't think it could be both. A bit of search and it's neither but it is less than twice the length of a standard Toronto subway platform.

Ah! Fresh country air!

Our Fire Department recommend changing the batteries in smoke detectors twice a year. The original suggestion was to do it when the clocks changed but then someone fiddled that so it's no longer near 6 months on, 6 months off. I do it no on the equinox. However, our smoke detectors are hard-wired into the mains with a 9V battery backup. I have a large collection of used batteries charged to just over 9V. I need to find some 9V devices.

They may also be available in children's stores or toy stores. In very colourful variations.

It's a hotbox car. When the car is shunted roughly, the ball bearing runs along the inside track, off the end, and contacts something at the end completing a circuit. This turns on the light and indicates that the car has a hotbox. I believe that it was originally created by John Allen of Monterrey, Ca. for his Gorre and Daphetid RR.

For most models you need Plastic Compatible. One of my school friends used oil from his mother's kitchen on his Kitmasters, and after a month none of them ran again.

There are very few flying objects that I can identify. (I've said this before). Canada geese and great blue herons. The Goodyear Blimp and the Fokker triplane from the Brampton flying club. Connie Willis has a new book The Road to Roswell. At the beginning she asks "If they could land anywhere on Earth, why did they pick Roswell?" I think I have a very wide range of musical likes. Excluded are anything with electric guitars and people who can't make the words understood.

but if I could find a word for "foot", I could use it every time SWMBO wants hers rubbed.

David is too modest to mention that this is the Biggest and Best all-British model railway show in North America.

One of our cats had such distinctive sounds that I thought it could be put on a sound chip for a locomotive. It would have really purred down the track.

I classify songs by the mode of transportation Cars means it's rocky roll. Trucks are country. Horses are western. Trains are folk.

I'll dig out my slides but I don't remember any gold plating on it on that tour.

Dayle is trying to figure out if we took the motorhome over the Key bridge once. We drove from New York to Florida. We probably tried to avoid long bridges, but she thinks we had a view of Baltimore. The routes are either through the city or a 24 km diameter ring road. (avoiding the bridge takes you more than 3/4 the way around.) This would shortly have been followed by trying to avoid the Washington ring road.

My brother-in-law considers himself a connoisseur of Looney Toons cartoons. He says he can tell which compilation program he's watching by what is left out. In one, Bugs and his enemy are chasing in a movie theatre. One of them keeps pulling the "Intermission" switch, at which point the whole audience moves to the lobby and smokes. One show deletes all the scenes of smoking, which ruins the joke.

I remember seeing ads for a dual gauge coupling casting for North American locos. It was probably in the 1960s. The device had one coupler centred and two offset below it. I think link and pin couplings. It could be inverted for use on a narrow gauge loco. I spent some time trying to puzzle out how it worked. I don't know how it sorted out when the narrow gauge 3rd rail swished from one side to the other. No buffers were involved.

Our satnav has a habit of giving directions only to the next junction with a motorway. Instead of saying "Stay on Hwy 401 for 325 miles" it tells us to "Keep left on 401 in 20 miles". After the junction it repeats with a similar instruction. There was a story in our paper about the local traffic radar cameras. They have 4 of them and they are set up in the reduced speed zones in front of schools. They are moved around every few months. One person reported having been suddenly sent $4000 (IIRC) in speeding fines at the end of the month. They were not aware of anything until then, and oblivious to the reduced speed limit.

I was pried out of bed early this morning to be at the car shop by 9:30. The snow was not piled deep enough across the driveway to be a problem; by the time I came home it was almost all gone from the roads. SWMBO used to refuse to use self checkouts until Covid came. Then she wanted to avoid human contact. We now occasionally use the staffed lines if there is no major line. We use credit now for most purchases (contactless if possible). If I like a retailer, I may try to pay by cash.

A quick look at my world map shows that Glasgow is level with Belcher Island in Hudson Bay. It is farther north than Flin Flon but level with Dawson Creek. It is north of all of Ontario except a small tip. The Scottish islands are about on a line with the southern border of Yukon territory. (anyone not Canadian will have no idea where these places are. Most Canadians have never been there either.)

I booked our car servicing for tomorrow -- 6 months plus take off snow tires. Today it snowed. Dayle was a little upset at me as she was planning on layout tours for tomorrow. We'll have to squeeze it in after the service. Guelph has unusual pedestrian crossing lights. They look like regular traffic lights, but some are in the middle of the block while others are at one side of a street. These are request lights. Problem is that since they look like traffic lights, drivers think the ordinary rules apply -- that someone from the side street can go through them which is not the case.

We had our internet stop suddenly about 9:00 this morning. The internet also carries our cable TV signals and supplies our better radios. Local paper: https://www.guelphtoday.com/police/wires-crossed-waste-truck-yanks-down-traffic-signals-8488171 Toronto has been suffering major road & utility works the last year plus. Most of last summer none of the E-W street car routes were operating on their customary routes. The longest one (Queen St) was cut into many segments involving changes of vehicle (street car to bus and back). Guelph has 4 1/2 bridges going north across the river. (one is one-way) A few years ago they managed to have construction on two of them at the same time, and so close to the river that alternate routes weren't practical.