Lycorne With an I instead of the Y it's French for Unicorn. I just like this spelling better.

Because Shane’s diet was so poor Sunday evening, he wasn’t feeling well Monday. His hypoglycemia really can’t take not eating regular meals. Therefore he ended up taking a long nap on Monday as well as going to bed early both Sunday and Monday before he felt normal again.

Tuesday, we received word that Karen’s aunt Sonja A Peterson died in her sleep the night before. She was 69 years of age. Karen made many phone calls letting family know.

Wednesday, Shane and I went to her visitation in Viroqua. We rode with Karen who also picked up her daughter, Shawna, from work. With the visitation starting at 4 pm, we left home at little after 2 to pick up Shawna.

We ended up not getting back home until after 8 pm, and Karen has three overnight guests in the from of grandchildren which will be riding to the funeral with us tomorrow.

Not only was it after 8 when we returned home, we still hadn’t had supper yet. And we are planning to go to the funeral tomorrow. This is taking time out of Shane’s normal work schedule as one can easily see. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult for him to catch up.

Bright and early this morning Dennis arrived to take us to Day’s Inn.  Because the information we had said the Sunday session was to start at 8 am. Dennis picked us up at 7 so we would get to the hotel in plenty of time.  After we arrived, we later found out that the session was to start at 9 rather than 8.

Once the session started, things went fairly smoothly.  We did have a few people that ended up leaving early.  Once set because someone’s spouse was picking them up and couldn’t be persuaded to push back the time.  But all in all things ran smoothly.

It was evening before we arrived back home.  Shane really didn’t feel much like cooking dinner so instead we ended up foraging around the house.  (Ok, that means mainly having ice cream and popcorn.  Yeah, I know it’s not a great supper nor is it balanced.)

Saturday.

We start the morning by going to Marge’s Lakeview Restaurant for breakfast. It was a good breakfast and was served quickly. Good thing since time seemed to run away from us this morning.

After breakfast, we went to the Days Inn hotel to meet up with the out of town guests. Bob was going to lead those interested up to Dave’s in Trempealeau where we was helping out on Saturday. Shane and I wrote with an operator going to Dennis’ layout.

The morning session went fairly well, except for when Shane had a computer problem. He had started building the train for the South Flats job, and then was called away from the computer. Somehow when he came back to the computer he either forgot what he had started working on, or someone else had done something and the South Flats job was run and terminated.

Because other trains were depending on the cars that it was to take to Gateway Yard, we had to find those cars and get them there. While Shane was not able to recover a switchlist from terminated train, he did find out where the cars were suppose to go, and he recalled the one local move so he handwrote a switch list. One of the out-of-towners really likes hand written switch lists so he immediately signed up for that position.

After the session was over, Dennis, Shane and I verified the position of every car on the layout. With the three of us each taking an area it really didn’t take us long at all. Afterwards Dennis dropped Shane and myself of at Ed’s.

Shortly into the morning session at Dennis’, Ed called asking Shane to dispatch his evening session. While Shane dispatched I ended up talking to Mary and her and I were playing spider on the computer. After the evening session, Ed had reservations at Schmidty’s Bar and Restaurant.

They have a side room which is used for large parties or overflow generally. Last time I had there was about a year ago, and the food was still good. I should mention that Schmidty’s is close enough to Ed’s house that we all walked there and back. After returning to Ed’s, he and his wife drove us home.

I’m sure that I’ve mentioned RiverRail before, if not it’s the invitational event for the RiverRail group of local operational modelers of trains.

Earlier this week we stopped at Dennis’ Peoria Western layout to assist with some last minute preparations there, and at Dave’s BNSF Idaho Falls Sub. So things were as ready as we could help make them.

Today the first session started at 1 pm, so after a lunch at Bucky’s Burger Barn we arrived at Dennis’ a few minutes after noon. Naturally there were a few day of things to be done, but before long the out of town operators were arriving.

The session ran smoothly, and a lot of freight and trains moved.

For the opening night of RiverRail, a dinner was arranged at the Freight House for the locals and the out of town guests. There was about 100 of us in one of their banquet rooms. The conversation was terrific.

As usual their food was fabulous, I had their sirloin teriyaki which was great. Unfortunately though, I didn’t have enough room left to have one of their tasty deserts.

Shane and I are on the LCPC Board, and we had a board meeting today at 5 pm at Perkins. That shouldn’t be difficult one would think. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as expected.

Shane had asked his mother about driving us down and dropping us off for the meeting. She agreed. He reminded her at 3:30 this afternoon, and at 4:30 when he went upstairs to get things ready to go, she was gone. Apparently she had forgotten. She returned at 4:50 as we managed to make it to the meeting and only be minorly late. Apparently the original plan which had managed to completely slip her mind, was that she was to take us down when she was going to run some errands. Instead after her appointment with her nurse, she decided to run her errands then.

When we arrived almost everyone was already there. We placed our order with the waitress and waited for our food while talking. I had requested their BBQ burger, with no tomato and Swiss cheese instead of American. Someone else had a salad with her Swiss Mushroom burger. The waitress gave me her burger which I didn’t realize until I was almost half way through the burger. I did manage to get the right burger, but the other person had to wait until everyone else was almost finished with their meal before she received her burger.

The meeting itself went well enough, it’s just that everything else was throwing monkey wrenches into the works.

For all that I dislike Monday’s, I must say that this one has been fairly quiet. Actually it’s been quite quiet, which could be either good or bad. Then again perhaps it’s both.

Not overtaxing and free to let the mind wander as it will. Occasionally you have to take the time to just let your mind wander. Sometimes what comes to mind are the strangest things. It comical how the thoughts will move on from one to the next, often in a strange twisted route that makes no sense if one to try and truly follow it logically. Then again logic and the ramblings of a mind are rarely related in any way.

But now it’s back from it’s ramblings and is concerned. Why am I concerned, one might ask. Well I’m concerned about Shane. Why? Well I hope he’s not coming down with anything. It was feeling well after we returned yesterday. And laid down for several hours shortly have returning home at 5:30.

While he suggested ordering pizza he didn’t really even get up for that. Oh, he came out to select his slices as well as the drumsticks and cheese bread he wanted, but then he went back into the bedroom to lay down while watching a movie. He ended up going to bed early as well.

Ok, just over-tired and perhaps taxed from the heat yesterday one might think. But a good night sleep should have him fit as a fiddle in no time. Not so on this occasion. He ended up getting up around 3:30 in the morning, saying that he had been laying in bed too long and couldn’t sleep any more.

Well he’d been laying in bed for almost 10 hours so I guess it makes sense that he’d need to get up. But then about 3 this afternoon he laid down again. He told me to get him up about 5, so shortly after 5 I go to awaken him. But he doesn’t want to get up, he’s resentful of being awakened when he was sleeping so well.

Finally about 6:30 he gets up. After making super he watches part the end of a movie. Around 9 pm, he heads back to watch movie in the bedroom and once that’s finished he headed to bed. I guess part of what is worrying me is the hope that it’s not creating a pattern. Not one of those up mixed up sleep patterns where one is up way TOO early, and then have erratic sleep on top of it.

In my family we are great at procrastinating things, in fact we managed to this quite well for Father’s Day. One could think that arranging time for 7 adults and 3 children to get together wouldn’t be that hard, but somehow we frequently manage to throw a monkey wrench into that thinking

We had most of the details figured out by Friday evening, with only a few last items to pin down. Those last few details were finally ironed out about 9:30 pm on Saturday.

Shane and I still are without a vehicle, so we had arranged for my sister, Andrea to pick us up around 10:30, then we could go to the grocery store to pick up the Burgundy Spoon Roast which was cut into steaks. After the trip to the grocery store, we went to Dad’s. My brother wasn’t there yet, but he arrived shortly after we did. Unfortunately he had forgotten to bring Dad’s secondary tank for the grill with him. Dad had requested that he do so yesterday when he saw him.

Since Kathy had already left their home, this meant that Dad ended up leaving his home, and driving to my brother’s to pick up the tank which was empty, and then having to go and get it filled so that there would be gas on hand to do the grilling. While I don’t know if they ended up using the new tank, I know Shane was leery of the gas left in the tank the last time he grilled on it. We have run out of gas a couple of times while grilling and Shane absolutely, positively hates it. That’s why we have 2 tanks here.

It was Father’s Day and dad ended up running the errand. I never was able to find out what my siblings gave our dad for Father’s Day. Before my brother arrived, I gave him the card we had picked up for him. Since dad has often been difficult to buy for, this time we opted for a simpler option. We gave him a Office Depot Gift Card. I know it’s a location he does his computer shopping at typically so it seemed a reasonable spot.

For dinner we had Burgundy Spoon Roast cut into steaks, Kathy’s Potato Salad, Fish Eye Salad, Kathy’s Gooey Chocolate Cake, White Snack Cake, and ice cream. It was a great meal, and shortly after it was over, dad laid down for a nap. It’s his day so naturally he should be able to choose what he wanted to do.

While dad was napping, Kathy, her sister, and the boys left. My brother was getting ready to dig a grave, our nephew was expressing an interest to go with him so that he could do some fishing nearby. I don’t recall if they had left or not by the time we did, but I believe so. At 1:30, we were picked up from Dad’s by Kudrun for our SCA meeting which was being held in Copeland Park. So I never did get a chance to learn what my siblings gave our father for his big day.

Our SCA meeting went well and we were back home around 5:30, so the day wasn’t nearly as busy as the day before. And to keep the evening easy, we ended up ordering pizza from Pizza Corral. I love their Lenny’s Round Up pan style.

We survived another family holiday since mom’s death. They’re right when they say one day at a time or even one holiday at a time.. Father’s Day was definitely a LOT easier than Mother’s Day was. I certainly didn’t want to do anything that day, and I hated the advertising before the holiday more than I can possibly put into words. She is no longer with us, but that does not mean she has disappeared from our thoughts or hearts. Having Aunt Mary Ann at these things helps. Dad isn’t alone, she helps him with so many things from cleaning to yard work and gardening, and everything in between. We have always been close to mom’s side of the family and Mary Ann is (or was) mom’s sister. She understands most of what dad has been through since her husband also died (although it was 23 years ago) and with her on disability now, she has the time to be there for him when he needs it.

We had a very busy Saturday. We left home by 7:15 in the morning, and didn’t return until after 9 at night. A full day of railroad things.

We started the morning by going to Mr. D’s for breakfast. I had hashbrowns with onions and cheese, and a custard filled donut. The cake donut was huge, but I barely managed one full bite of custard they were so extremely skimpy on the filling. I am not sure what they fry their hashbrowns in, but I know it’s not butter. The restaurant wasn’t that full, but the apparently the cook was busier than one would expect since my hashbrowns were on the edge of being burnt. Shane enjoyed his blueberry pancakes (the special of the day) and loved the fact that they are one of the few restaurants that actually warm up the syrup the bring to the table. Bob said his apple fritter was good but that they made his hashbrowns too close to mine because they had onion flavor which he hadn’t requested.

After breakfast we went to operate on the Peoria Western. Shane and I will be assisting Dennis this coming weekend for the RiverRail Invitational. Shane is handling RailOps and I am doing the staging for the sessions. We have handled these together for several sessions to work out the bugs, and things have been running so smoothly we don’t foresee any problems.

Dennis had requested that Shane fix something for the session lunch break and Shane made one of his kielbasa and fettucini dishes. The dish was a hit with everyone there.

The session ended after 2 and from there we went to see Paul’s N scale layout. It seems to be coming along nicely. And from there we went to a session on the Lake Erie & Southern. Ron recently switched to Digitax for operating because of problems with his previous DCC system. He wanted to have a good shakedown before the Invitational. The evening went wonderfully.

As I said we didn’t return home until after 9 pm. After which I needed to make a few calls to finalize the arrangements of what we were planning for Father’s Day. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, but then again, better late than never. While I had mentioned that we needed to make a few plans at my brother’s birthday celebration in May, no one had really started to organize it until earlier this week. By then the family had other commitments for this weekend. We did manage to arrange things so that everyone would be able to have a grilled lunch at Dad’s. We had Burgundy Spoon Roast Steaks, Kathy’s Potato Salad, Fish Eye Salad, a gooey chocolate cake, snack cake, and ice cream.

While I was going to try and post daily or on a near daily basis, I have found it is often hard to find a starting point. I am finding that once I get started I can find things to say, but that getting started can be a hurdle.

There are also days that I had enough other things occurring that I wasn’t taking the time to just sit down with blogger open to start. I would spend the time doing something more active than sitting there and thinking out a starting point.

While what I was doing was usually not overtly active, it didn’t start the introspection needed to start a decent thought or even a ramble to base something on.

While I will not promise to post something daily, I will endeavor to make more of an effort towards posting, if not daily at least every other or few days.

I have been asked why I don’t use names in all of my posts. I do this to give the individuals involved some privacy. Some will know who I am referring to by what I do say, but others won’t. The use of names doesn’t make what I say any more or less relevant to what is happening in my life.

I feel very strongly about not posting the last name of the people I talk about. I will often use first names, I might occasionally use nicknames, sometimes relationship indicators (like MIL, SIL), but I will not use the last name.

The web is a very public place, and while I choose to put my words available for all to read, I do not feel I have the right to completely compromise the privacy of another.

What I ask of others is the same type of courtesy. I prefer if you would not use my last name in your blog or on your website. If you feel it is necessary to do so, please at least let me know.