Honey, why did you order dirt thru the mail?

friscobob Dec 4, 2011

  1. friscobob

    friscobob Staff Member

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    Thus spake my wife as I arrived home from work the other night. The boys were amused that I got a box of dirt on the mail, but I stilled them as I opened the USPS box, and extracted a ZipLoc bag filled with 5 pounds or so of finely-ground limestone that I got from a certain auction site. This stuff is fine enough to be N scale ballast, so I know it'll look good on my HO layout when the ballast gangs arrive in town.

    "If you get excited about getting a bag of rocks in the mail, you might be a model railroader"
    (with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy)
     
  2. Tracy McKibben

    Tracy McKibben TrainBoard Member

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    Try explaining to someone why you bake dirt in the oven... That's even more fun!
     
  3. jeffrey-wimberly

    jeffrey-wimberly TrainBoard Member

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    AMEN TO THAT!!
     
  4. phantom

    phantom TrainBoard Member

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    My favorite quote from Iron Man seems to fit here: “ Face it this is not the worst thing you ever caught me doing!”
     
  5. friscobob

    friscobob Staff Member

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    Strange you should mention that- My wife would understand why, as long as I used an old, worn-out or disposable pan. I'm in clinical lab science, so explaining bacteria to her is no big thing- and she's been around me long enough to understand.

    She's even understood why, when we moved from western Colorado back to Texas, I brought along a sack full of Western Colorado North Fork low-sulphur, low-moisture coal (what else am I supposed to put in those Frisco coal hoppers?).

    Now, as to civilians...........best I bang my head against the wall- same result. ;)
     
  6. RailMix

    RailMix TrainBoard Member

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    My family has a long history of baking things- My dad did a lot of aluminum casting, so it wasn't unusual to find sand cores baking in the oven. My mother seemed to take it pretty much in stride. Personally, I cook my dirt in a cake pan on top of the wood stove, which works just as well and seems to meet with less resistance.
     
  7. katmaan100

    katmaan100 TrainBoard Member

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    So with these baking problems, Doesn't anyone BBQ?
    I use the grill, especially since that is MY domain, and no questions asked about the dirt in the old pie pan.
     
  8. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Remember when we were all kids, and had great fun making mud pies... Was that just training for doing this stuff?
     
  9. porkypine52

    porkypine52 TrainBoard Member

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    Wife Training??????

    It all depends on how you have trained the wife to react about certain things. "Honey I'm going to dry out some dirt for ground cover. It'll be in the over for a little while" REPLY "OK, just make sure it out before I fix dinner" And sometimes she will even take stuff out of said oven, place it down in the shop, and go on about her business.

    Most of our wives accept our hobby, they know we will always stop and look at the trains. If we say we are going to run by the HOBBY SHOP, that could kill a good hour there alone. Almost any male visitors will be taken down to the basement, and shown the layout (maybe even spend most of the visit in the basement). As the layout grows the basement visit can include ALL members of visiting family and last for the entire visit!

    But the wife has also learned that you cannot meet a much better group of people than Model Railroaders. And now she participates in the hobby and is active in our local NMRA Division.
     
  10. YoHo

    YoHo TrainBoard Supporter

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    My wife just let me buy a $24 food processor for the express purpose of putting cut up bits of carpet pad and paint in it to make my own ground foam.

    She's been well trained.
     
  11. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Well, some day she'll decide it is her turn and... :D Been there... :eek:
     

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