3/27/07

Yesterday (Monday, March 26, 2007) was our first visit to the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA (and the dreaded PT-gym before that) since Sabrina’s passing.

Linda Hughes.

Killian.

Such a trip always involved leaving the dogs alone here at home, made easier in Killian’s case by the fact Sabrina was with him.
Killian is a nervous dog — probably a product of his previous lives. He also is the smallest dog we’ve ever had. Sabrina was the biggest we ever had, and although rather mellow, wasn’t afraid to protect the property.
Killian is also terrified of thunderstorms; a thunderstorm yesterday morning had him trembling in fear and stalking around to find a place to hide.
We don’t like to leave Killian alone, but to work out we must.
And of course he no longer had Sabrina to help him cope.
Thankfully, I don’t think any thunderstorms attacked while we were gone. As in the past, he got to listen to WXXI, the local classical-music radio-station we listen to.
He seemed okay when we returned, but got sent cowering again last night when another thunderstorm rolled through.

Those thunderstorms knocked the power off twice, although not long enough to kick on the standby generator.

The Keed.

The standby generator.

The standby generator has a 30-second delay before kicking on. There also is the possibility a service-guy inadvertently disabled it. Seems the power was off about 30 seconds; yet the standby did not kick on.
The standby also does a self-test on Mondays at 12:30 p.m. E.S.T., but lately we’ve been at the Y. Apparently it wouldn’t self-test when snow blocked the air-intake, but now there’s no snow.

Yesterday Linda wore her black Norfolk-Southern tee-shirt to the Canandaigua Y.
She was accosted by a railfan; an occurrence that has happened to me on occasion. (There is a googly-eyed geek who always attacks me at mighty Weggers. He notices my mighty Curve jacket.)
“Do you know someone that works for a railroad?” he asked.
“No; that’s just my husband,” Linda said. “He’s a railfan.”
“Well, so am I,” the guy said.
“Ever been to Virginia Railroad Museum?” the guy asked.
“I don’t think so,” Linda said; “although I’m not so sure about that (we have). We’ve been so many places, we’ve probably been there.”
“We got this tee-shirt at Horseshoe-Curve,” Linda said.
“Never been there; and I’m from Pennsylvania,” the guy said.
Too bad I wasn’t around: “By far, the best railfan-spot on the entire planet. Gimme an e-mail address and I’ll send ya the web-cam link.”
Apparently more yammering followed, including mention of Cass. “Never been there either,” the guy said.
“Every railfan should be required by law to hear the steam-whistles echo through the hollers,” I would have said.
“Me and my Harley-group are gonna go to Steamtown this year,” the guy said. “Hope to take a picture of ‘iron-meeting-iron’ for publication in the Harley-rag.”
“Steamtown is okay, but the main thing is to ride the excursion if they still have it,” I would have said.
“They had that thing climbin’ a grade at 30 mph. Strasburg by comparison is wussy.”

Yesterday we patronized mighty Weggers after the YMCA.
They’re relocated everything; such that “helping-hands” need to stand around to show you where things are.
“Okay; where’s the tuna-fish? It’s not where the sign says.”
“Aisle 12A” (12A was empty shelves).
“Nope; hasn’t been moved yet. Over here!”
“Okay; where’s the ketchup? You’ve vaporized the ketchup.”
“Over here — aisle 16B.”

Not a Dubya-sticker:
Leaving mighty Weggers a Sube wagon cruised blithely through a stop-sign.
I could see it coming, so I stopped to let the Sube amble through.
We then turned behind it at a traffic-light onto 5&20.
The Sube had a red-white-and-blue political-sticker on the rear hatch, but it wasn’t Dubya-04.
It was Hillary Clinton.

“Linda Hughes” is my wife.

“Mighty Weggers” is our supermarket: Wegmans.

“Cass” is Cass Scenic Railroad, a West Virginia state-park. It mainly runs steam logging trains.

“Steamtown” is a railfan-site in Scranton, Pa. “Strasburg” is another railfan-site in the Pennsylvania-Dutch country — one of the first tourist-lines.

“5&20” is the main east-west drag through our area. It passes through Canandaigua, and past the “mighty Weggers.” It’s about a quarter-mile south of our house; State Route 5 and U.S. Route 20 — two routes on the same highway.