[:'(] You get up on a saturday morning & go up to the train room & you turn on the lights & they dont come on because a storm the day before tripped the breaker, you fix that, then you enter the train room with the intention of just running trains you notice some of the loose bushes have somehow got into the streets on the layout & on the mainline,you then plug the mini vac into the wall and realize your out of bags to put into the vacuum so you go to the nearest store and find out they are out of that particular size so you trek it back to the house and try to pick up what you can from the track. Finally you get the track cleared so you put one of your favorite engines on the track and give it power then nothing no sound ,no lights so you begin to check the engine cause you have not run it in a while. Well it checks out ok so you look for loose wires ,now remember my train room is 14 by 24 ft, about this time my wife informs me its time for lunch so I drop everything and scurry downstairs for lunch. I quickly eat what ever it was I had for lunch and head back to the trainroom. Trying to remember where I left off,I remember I was going to figure out whats causing the train not to run so I goes over to the track and decide I need to clean the track. Now when I clean the track I do it by hand, one inch at the time. While doing this time consuming chore I accidently knocked my parts tray to the floor. Needless to say I had to pick up every single part & their were many & they were all in compartments. Parts like,airhorns,bells,couplers,tracknails,rail joiners,scale apples and oranges I had made for trees, & many items the size of a ho mans foot. I even picked up stuff & until this day I still dont know what it is. After that I noticed a loose rail joiner so I begins to solder that back & burned a pretty big blister on my index finger. I start back to the power pack & stepped on a couple of screws & I had sox on [ouch]. Finally I turn
the old train man:
You have my sympathies.
You make me feel lucky because I haven’t had one of those days in a while, and the last time I had one of those days it was so long ago that it’s not worth resurecting. However, I do still have a scar on my left index finger to remind me of certain safety rules that I broke that day.
Anyhow, look at the bright side - tomorrow has to be better!
Dave
You have my sympathy for your cascading sources of agravation, but it was not truely a “bad day”. You didn’t get a devastating medical diagnosis, no one close to you died unexpectedly, The storm didn’t set fire to your house resulting in a total loss.
One thing life has taught me is that there are no absolutes. No matter how bad it is it can always be worse. No matter how good it is it can always be better. To quote the great Philosopher, Bill Cosby: “Don’t ever challenge worse. Don’t ever say things couldn’t possibly get worse.”
Crosby was great for a lot more than philosophy.
A nameless philosopher authored this wonderful bumper sticker: “A bad day fishing is still better than a good day at work.” Substitute model railroading for fishing and that about sums it up.
On a more serious note, I read an article, perhaps in MR, about the safe use of power tools and it mentioned that many people who were injured using power tools reporting having a “bad feeling” just before the incident. Of course that might be their experience creating a memory out of thin air, but the article did suggest that if somehow you just don’t feel right about using a power tool, don’t use it.
Dave Nelson
Actually, I had to laugh at this, not because of your irritations, but because I can SO relate! Sometimes, it’s one step forward, two steps back.
On a more serious note, as Dave mentioned about power tools, I have a cousin who has what he calls his 50,000 dollar model RR. That for medical expenses from a (skilsaw or tablesaw, I can’t remember) accident. Also lost part of his hand. My bad days come and go, and at least teach easier lessons than that.
I have to admit, I have used this forum to let off a little steam. Better here among us guys than on our wives, huh? Dan
Hello All,
Wow!
That IS a bad day!!!
I hope it got better the next day.
Hope this helps.
Yesterday I went down and my loco wouldent run. Then I thought I would do an airbrushing project and the airbrush broke. Then I decided to make some fence from some wooden dowels and I cut them way to big so it looked like O scale fence on my HO scale layout. After that I just quit and went outside. Didnt get much done that day!
Chris
Modeling transition era Detroit Terminal
Think YOU got it bad?
Unless the OP edited his thread title or post, he didn’t mention having a “Bad Day”. Title states “Did you ever have one of those days when everything seems to go wrong”, with various irritations and fails, some failures cascading like in an old Laurel and Hardy short.
Sounds like the old “Jinx” concept to me: “Don’t tempt faith!”
Follwing on the philsophical debates of whether the various irritations that Alanis Morissette’s character sings of in the song “Ironic” are really just bummers, let’s say the OP had a bummer of a day (I’d be rather more worried myself if I couldn’t remember what I had for lunch that day).
Everyday!!! Or at least every work day. For me it’s a spin on Newtonian law…I hate my job with intensity and so it hates me back with equal intensity.
All joking aside.
I have those days more often than I want to remember, particularly with the layout. If things keep happening and get more and more sour…I take a deep breath, set all the train stuff aside and go do something else for awhile.
Mark H