Wednesday 8/19/2020
When I stepped into the living room at 6:10 I immediately could smell smoke. There are numerous fires burning to the west, across the Coast Range. The air looking East was thick; I couldn’t see any hills. At that point I scratched the idea of taking my usual Wednesday run. No need to inhale a lot of smoke. (Setting aside that for a couple of decades in my middle years I was smoking over a pack a day of Pall Malls. Ah, good times. Which brings to mind that when we quit smoking — I’m sorry to say I don’t remember the exact year, sometime in the 1980s — I promised myself that when I turned 80, I would take it up again, smoking cigars. Not allowed at Channing House. Still, come the end of 2022, I might go out to a park and smoke one cigar, just for the heck of it. But I digress.)
All I did of a practical nature was to move everything back into my new closets, which about half filled them. Lots of open shelf space. The rest of the day I alternated between reading (a fun little SF book, book one of the Murderbot Diaries series) and working on the 1953 Ford model. That was quite frustrating.
The model suffered an irreparable loss, I’m afraid: the passenger side door handle. The door handles were chrome bits. Each one was about, well, when you next clip your fingernails, look at the paring from your little finger. That’s the size of the little chrome-plated plastic door handle. There were two, left and right, and while I was applying the driver’s side one, the passenger side one… took a walk. I have no bleepin’ idea where. I spent half an hour carefully taking everything off the work area, shaking out my clothing, down on the carpet with a flashlight. Just not to be found. I seriously thought about chucking the whole project; even more so when a few minutes later I found that the tiny little chrome spotlight doesn’t fit where it’s supposed to go. Well, spotlights were an option, along with the continental kit. I definitely won’t install the parts for the continental kit; I disdained those when they were a real thing and I wouldn’t tart up a model with one now.
I managed to fit one of the side mirrors, which comes as two tiny chrome pieces, and put the thing away for the day.
I’m giving many side-long glances at the tractor model Laurel sent. It’s on the media stand by the TV. It’s quite large, as models go, roughly 1/16 scale. I spent some time at online hobby shops trying to see if there were materials to make a trailer for it to tow, like the one that I, Dennis and Laurel remember so clearly. However it requires the rear axle of a dual-tire truck. So, buy a truck model and take the rear axle? Well, problem is, all the truck models are 1/25th scale, too small. So maybe no trailer. I can see my way to scratch-building the bed of the trailer, which was just 1×10 planks laid crosswise and bolted to a couple of squared-off tree trunks. I can remember how there was a pair of rusty carriage bolt heads at each end of each plank. Well, such things are available, scale model lumber and rivet heads and so forth, from the model railway suppliers. But I don’t see much chance of getting proper size wheels.
For entertainment I tried watching the movie La La Land, which is a cheerful musical set in Hollywood. I bailed on it in about 8 minutes. Just did not resonate with me at all. Very glad I did not pay to see it in a theater, which I seem to remember thinking of doing, back when it was in first release and being highly praised by critics.
So I watched the first episode of The Expanse and then one of Travels in a Narrowboat.
Tomorrow, something completely different!
Codgerville 