Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

It's highly unusual to see racoons during the day. However, here we are just after lunch, and we have visitors in the back yard. When we opened the patio door, this one quickly climbed into one of our conifer trees that has served as racoon hangout in the past. I was just about to turn away, when I saw movement in the far corner of the backyard. "Hey, there's another one!" He was nice enough to demonstrate the most convenient route for travel through the neighborhood. The rear fencing connects the backyards of two dozen homes.

The gas-fired kiln at Blossom Hill Crafts is running tonight. Nice and warm here with all the rain outside.

I noticed this morning that one of the caves in the terrarium was completely closed up with sand and wondered whether Hera had indeed laid eggs. She had been test digging for the last couple weeks, so it was about time. ... And I was right! Pascal and I carefully dug out 13 eggs. A new record. They also look much healthier than last year's production. It's unlikely that all of them will survive. Zeus managed to steal one when I wasn't paying attention, so we now have 12 eggs left. They have now moved to damp beds of Vermiculite in the Incubator. Let's see how this works out...

This weekend's "winter storm" is not quite as strong as expected, but nevertheless it's a major event and we love the sound of rain on the roof and wind howling around the house.

While the pink foam sheet yield a very lightweight surface cover, it's also perfectly flat, which doesn't look particularly natural, unless your layout is set in the far North of Germany. I dressed up the sides of the track board with more pink foam and shaped it into an embankment with a basket rasp. While at it, I also carved the drainage ditch. Next I hit one side of the module with the jigsaw, cut a light depression into the side, and used the basket rasp to even it out again. I applied Scuptamold tinted with brown paint to tie it all together. The cutoff from the one side was glued to the other side and backfilled with more pink foam cutoffs. More terraforming and shaping will happen once the glue is dry.

This looked just weird enough that I had to put it here.

You might have heard about Google shutting down it's attempt at social networking, Google+. I know there are several readers that follow this blog through the automatic posts Blogger creates in my Google+ account. After April 2nd, and possibly earlier, that will no longer work. All content on my Google+ page will become inaccessible and be deleted eventually. I invite you to follow my blog at http://blog.lostentry.org/ instead, or point your favorite RSS reader (such as Feedly ) to that URL. Thank you for visiting.