Today is President’s day and the market is closed so I have the day off from work, more or less. My idea was that today would be a pretty big model railroading day. I have been looking for a chance to really sit down and get some modeling done.
We slept in a lot this morning. It was after eleven when I finally got up! Dominica was heading out the door right as I got up to go do the grocery shopping. Liesl had just been put down for a nap and Dominica thought that this would be her window of opportunity. It ended up that Liesl never actually fell asleep so, as usual, with Dominica gone it was a mad scramble to keep Liesl and Oreo both happy.
Dominica was gone for almost two hours doing the grocery shopping. While she was gone we got the call from the Treat Station in Peekskill that the model railroad layout kits that we had ordered had arrived and that we could pick them up at any time.
Dominica got home in the early afternoon and we had a late lunch, relaxed for what little but we could as we tried to watch some Netflix on demand in between me attempting to work on stuff for the office. I ended up being busy enough that Dominica decided to make a second trip out and to go to Treat Station on her own to pick up the supplies that we needed. We had also discovered that we needed food for Oreo so that we could cook for him today as he is going to run out of his dog food (chicken stew) tonight. So she went to the grocery store as well. Then, while she was out, she made a run to Home Depot to grab a few other little modeling items of which we were in need.
Altogether today I was in charge of Liesl and Oreo alone for a bit more than three hours. Possibly as many as four but that is unlikely.
Dominica cooked Oreo food this afternoon and also got a little bit of work done on her second course in her UNIX Administration program at UofI.
It was not really until fairly late in the evening before we really had any free time in which to get to do some model railroad modeling. We did get to do some, though, and today we got to take our first stab at applying actual plaster which is a first for both of us. Today I did the plaster and Dominica just watched. Working with plaster is much more fun and enjoyable than I had guessed that it would be. I always thought that this aspect of model railroading seemed really boring and intimidating, but it is not at all. It is really cool.
I also laid the railbed and the track, built the tunnel and did the beginning of the ballast tonight. After the work tonight the layout diorama is really looking like a real model railroad like nothing I have ever done before. Very encouraging. Seeing this take shape is really making us excited about being able to do model railroading together. This is a lot of fun and we are seeing real results very quickly which we had never imagined would happen.
Overall today was really busy and we ended up staying up incredibly late just so that we would have a chance to work on the model. It was around two in the morning when we finally got to head off to bed.
Tomorrow I am back to work as usual – at least it is only a four day work week – and Dominica is going to attempt to drive down to Totowa, New Jersey to take her laptop back to work and to take Liesl down to introduce her to all of her coworkers. No one has seen her since she took maternity leave in mid-November so they are all anxious to see how she has been and to meet our daughter. So tomorrow will be a pretty busy day.
We failed to be able to ship out the email server today as we did not receive the necessary information to do so. I have spoken to everyone involved and the hope is that we will be able to deal with this tomorrow. It is getting down to the wire and we are going to need to do something pretty quickly if nothing happens in the morning. I can’t wait until this server is shipped and no longer something that I need to keep working on on a regular basis.