Sneak attack of life

So apparently the first came and went and I had not completed a post to share. The best way I can explain this is that I have suffered a sneak attack of life. Now we all know that life is the master of guerrilla warfare and most attacks of life are sneak attacks but others such as birthdays, anniversaries etc... we can see coming.  So in my household the end of May/begining of June is birthday season, well atleast for everone else but me. Throw in Mothers Day and the end of School (yes school is out the last week of May here) and it has been a hectic month. It seems that every other week I am planning something else not train related.

These last 2 weeks alone I have had 1 birthday and 2 "graduations" to attend.  Apparently preschool and kindergarten graduation is a thing now complete with cap and gowns and most of the pomp and circumstance.  My daughters birthday which as I write this was yesterday involved a trip to Phoenix to see a Broadway play. Usually I can weasel my way into visiting An Affair With Trains when I am in that part of Phoenix but there wasnt time and that store recently moved so it was no longer 10 minutes from the theatre  (yes I used the pretentious drama club spelling or the normal spelling if you live anywhere that speaks English other than the US).

So there has been no retail therapy and the closest I have gotten to working on a layout has been building my daughters wooden (Brio knockoff) train table that she got for her birthday.

On the bright side a trip to Phoenix means getting to drive a segment of the line that will be covered in phase 3, and Union Pacific did not disappoint on volume either Yesterday day or today.

  We had planned to come home last night but AZDOT had other plans and when it took us over an hour to travel 3 miles on the way out of Phoenix we decided to stop for the night in Gila Bend.

This trip also gave me a chance to take a short break from thinking about how to model the California desert and think about modeling the Arizona desert. Yes there are differences,  mainly cactus, although as expected there are a lot of similarities.

I mention this because I am nearing a point where I can start thinking about how I am going to accomplish phase 3.  While I wish I could declare Phase 2 complete, it is only about 98 percent complete at this time. The big reason for this was switching to CAD instead of pencil and paper and while I have tried to stay faithful to my paper plan in CAD, there were some changes that had to be made, and some that were made on accident but improved the feel of the track plan. I just have a couple little bits to finish up on phase 2 mostly involving staging, however tweaks to phase 2 have lead to me tweaking phase 1. So when all the tweaking of phase 1 and 2 are done then and only then will I declare them complete and move on to stage 3. 

On the downside, I may have to reign myself in as I have been trying to stick to the 15 minutes a day mantra however I have noticed that I have been spending far more time than that and to the detriment of other facets of my life. Most notably my getting enough sleep.  The problem is that I have found using XtrackCAD for layout design to be so enjoyable that I lose track of time and 15 minutes turns into 5 hours quickly.  So I may have to prohibit myself from layout design except on my days off.  I have also been working on organizing my work areas and on a positive note "Storage Room B" is slowly becoming a livable/workable room with room for a work space. So who knows some actual modeling may occur her soon.

Another interesting development is that the club layout apparently has been progressing along at a fair clip. Evidently the club president was doing a lot of the benchwork construction at his house and we have a work session tenatively set for Monday morning. So we will see how that goes.

On a final note I hope to get back into the swing of things soon however we will see when life will let me. My wife and I were just informed yesterday that her mother is coming in a week for a visit of unknown duration and my daughters birthday party has yet to occur.  Well what can I say its a journey even if we do get held up at the last station on occasion.