Brains, Trains, and Automobiles

This Sunday was the day we split up the kids.  No, no everything's fine on the family front. We decided to have one-on-one days with the kids.   My wife took our two year old, Millie.  We spent have our cruise to the Bahamas chasing her around the ship, but my wife had a somewhat embarrassing accident on Friday and was laid up with a nice swollen knee.  Since Millie can't work the door knobs, yet, they were homebound.

That meant I had the day with our four year old, Maja, and I immediately decided to kill four birds with one stone.

First, was taking her out for breakfast at the local diner.  I normally do this with the girls once or twice a month when my wife works weekends, but without the scrambling Millie, Maja got to sit up and the counter and eat.  She's been asking to do this for over a year and was so excited she actually sat perfectly on her stool, munched on her breakfast, and even paid the bill (with Daddy's money).  For me, I have fond memories of going down to the Palmer Diner after my Dad helped me out with my newspaper route on the weekend, sitting up on the counter, so I'm happy to instill that type of memories into my daughter.

After breakfast, the morning involved a drive down to Allentown for the ATKM Allentown Spring Thaw Train Meet.  I'm pretty certain that I hadn't been to one in almost thirty years, but the great thing about a hobby full of old men and little kids is nothing changes... except the prices.  Lionel train cars that I bought as a kid for $2-3 were in a "sale" box for $20.  If they were in good shape, it was closer to $40.  We walked around as much as a four year old can, went over all the detail on the layouts, watched heats of the train races (yes, train races), and did a little shopping.  With a little girl alternating between impatient and distracted it was difficult to go through everything, but I did snag two old  O-Scale Plasticville homes cheap (perfect for gnomes).  Maja ended up with a bunch of antique-style metal figures, mostly moms with babies and an odd nurse.  They're heavily painted so if they somehow are lead, I'm not worried.  They're already on a shelf in the house.

My little train loving Maja, with her shopping bag.

From there, we went to my Mom's for a visit.  In fact, I can be accused on pawning Maja off on her for the rest of the day, because I went down the street to my friend Brian's place for the latest installment of Call of Cthulhu.  Yes, this was pre-planned and approved by all parties involved.  Maja hasn't seen her Nanny since just after Christmas, and my mom definitely needs human interaction outside of her job.    By all reports, the afternoon went perfectly, and I took Maja home.  She fell asleep twenty minutes into the hour drive and slept through the night. 

The CoC game was properly attended with five players.  We did have two players bail out at the last minute (ebola, I think), but one of the non-RSVP players strolled in an hour late, but with perfect timing.  Despite some missteps getting the group organized and coordinating efforts, they managed to successfully investigate an unusual disappearance of an acquaintance, and acquire they're first decent collection of Mythos artifacts.  Of course,  Professor O'Hara may be accused of attempted murder and escaping from police custody, but we'll work that out between sessions.

The Brains portion of the post title?  The group had broken into apartment of a shady individual. Expecting that person inside in a different room, they had unlocked the locks, took off the chains on the door, to expedite a potential escape.  When the cleaning lady tried to get in, Steve dashed across the room to try to put a chain back up, tripped and slammed head first into the door as she opened it up.   Of course, as the whole group found out, that was not a normal cleaning lady, and that is when things got FUN, but first I must get the remainder of the Pennywell Hangmen typed up.

I think I might look for 15mm versions of these.