Birthday review

I had a nice birthday, and thanks again to all those who sent greetings via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and snail mail. Serendipitously, Tom found a great dragon-related card while we were at Kohl's:

What do you give a fire-breathing dragon for its birthday? Whatever it wants!

Also, the mail brought payment for some books from nuns out in Oregon, and they used a Happy Birthday stamp on the envelope. I doubt they knew it was my birthday, but it was a nice coincidence.



We ran two trains yesterday for a bank group -- apparently all retired women. I am not sure if they are all retired bank employees or all customers of the bank. Lots of banks are throwing little parties and events for favorite customers these days, and our train ride is a fun and relatively inexpensive way to entertain people for half a morning or afternoon.

The weather is so summery -- mid-80's (28 C) -- that Dave decided to open for business a day early, which means Tom and I will be at work Friday morning. For the rest of the season -- through Labor Day -- we will both be working five days a week, with Thursday and Friday off. (I, of course, am getting paid, but Tom will be putting in 40 hours or more as a volunteer. Yay, Tom!) We hope to make a lot of day-trips around the state on our days off, partly to visit other railroad museum shops so I can get ideas to improve ours.

Peggy joined us for a nice meal at R Place last night. She baked me a rhubarb pie as a birthday gift. I say she baked it for me because Tom is not a rhubarb pie fan. I admit that rhubarb may be an acquired taste, and many people seem to cut the taste a bit by making the pies with rhubarb and strawberry. I don't know where I acquired the taste, but I do like the tartness. Peggy noticed that I ate my lime slice from my club soda last night. I got that from Mama who ate the lemon from her iced tea.

Tom is mkaing fun of me because Sunday night, while I was ironing all those railroad patches onto the engineer caps, Sundance spotted a ginormous raccoon climbing the wild cherry in the back yard. Well, I guess technically he is making fun of the way I described it on Facebook:

"I have been ironing railroad patches on pink engineer caps while giant raccoons cavorted in the back yard. No, seriously."

After all, in my defense, Texans never lie. We do, however, sometimes tell more truth than there is.