project patience.....

The bride and our girls bought me a train set for Christmas. (That's my new diesel locomotive on the right.) For the past month I've been working on a layout. One weekend I built the frame. The next weekend I cut the plywood and foam for the track base. The following week I put the plywood and foam into the frame. For the past week I've been trying to come up with a good, workable, somewhat realistic layout for the track. Just when I think I've got the right layout, something goes wrong. It's either an electrical issue, an elevation/incline problem, or a concern about track length.

This is a whole new world for me. Yes, I've worked with trains before. But I never got past the stage of setting them up on the kitchen table for a few hours then putting them back into their respective boxes. Plus, I'm a checklist kind of person. The kind who makes a checklist and rushes to get it finished. This is different. This requires something I have very little of - patience.

It's alot like marriage or parenting or any other long-term relationship - you're never finished with your project. It's always evolving, always changing. There's always something more that can be done with it, something else that can be added or taken away. A tweak here or there.

I think I've been tricked. The bride actually bought me an educational toy....