Good morning! Happy Saturday, Two Weeks to Christmas. 🎅 Don’t blame me, I’m not the Weather Authority. 🌩

That said, I don’t recommend using your umbrella today despite rain. Going to be real windy, especially later. Instead of complaining to me, why don’t you complain to the state weather authority. I get the whole wearing the muzzle movement and staying home, but this obnoxious to fall on the weekend. But it could be snow.

Rain showers around but mostly stopped for now and 44 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☔ Still a light to moderate breeze, but that’s not expected to last. Nor is the pause in the rain. Eventually it will rain like no tomorrow, then be windy. Maybe the power will go out, but I tend to go bed early, so I don’t care. But still quite mild. I slept in this morning, I was bad, but it was dark. I kind of woke up then went back to bed.

At some point this afternoon, I will walk down to the library, and strap on the muzzle 😷 and work down there for a bit at the library. 👨‍💻 I actually have a fair bit of bandwidth left to use up before the end of the month, so I could use the hotspot but the library is a good walk and it’s good to get out and about. 📚 I don’t get as many steps lately, because I retire to bed so early and often skip my evening walk. 💤 But I sleep so much better and are more rested when I go bed no later then 8 or 9 PM each tonight — and wake up at 5 or 6 AM each morning, sometimes even earlier. 🚶‍♀️ Weekdays I’m usually in the office early then I walk on the Plaza, although sometimes I’m okay with walking inside with the muzzle on, but I don’t like it as I find it’s hard to breathe even through Lynne Jackson’s uber comfortable muzzles.

After parting with another $200 in cash, Big Red is back on the road. 🛻 Not only was the back suspension bushing bad, which made the rear-end floaty as shit, was causing axle-warp, and I ignored it for too long, starting to chew down the carrier bolt, it turns out the reason why the front end was floaty was the suspension link on driver side was mostly gone from rot and the right one was bad, so they wanted to fix that before passing the inspection, so said, why they hell not. I’d rather not chew up those components even more by ignoring it like I did with the carrier bolt in the back. Plus, it’s probably good that the truck frame ride in some direction relative to wheels, and not throw it’s weight around on the new tires wherever it wants to.

Who knows, I’ve spent nearly $2,700 in repairs on Big Red over the past two and a half months — including everything from the alignment, the wheel bearing, the various bushings, and the tires which were about $500 more then budget thanks to Trump tariffs, 🔧 but he is running better and handling better then he has in a while. Hopefully he won’t need a lot more repairs in the coming year, but whatever, new cars are so expensive — the average new car costs over $50,000 these days — and I like Red and want to keep him on the road for a more few years if possible.  He only has about 98.5k on the odometer, although that is off from the big tires causing the odometer to be 7% below true miles. I like my camper rig, and it’s fun to be able to get out of town. I don’t think I’ll ever need more tires for Red at this point — those BFG tires are nice and have real deep tread, so they should be good at least in the deep snow, well until I high center the lifted truck, which I won’t do any more, I promise myself.

But he’s my toy — I don’t have a lot of fancy stuff, no ATVs or snowmobiles yet, 💸 not that many expensive guns, I don’t have Internet or television at home, I keep my heat at 50 degrees in my cheap rundown apartment, make my own lunch every day, and use transit to get to work. Some day, I’ll own more toys though when I have my own land. My vacations all involve traveling in Red. Plus I make more then $80k a year with my swanky new job downtown. I’m investing more then $2,500 a month, so it’s not like I’m stealing that much from my future. 🚜 That said, I’m legitimizing dumping a ton of money in Big Jacked up truck, but I don’t care about your feelings. 🛻

And truth be told, he drives a lot better now. 🛻 It actually is nice to have the steering and body follow along with the road, rather then just kind of winding where it wants to go. It was totally irresponsible for me to ignore the rear shock bushing for so long, but it only got really bad in October. It was going to get fixed before my trip to West Virginia, 🏕 but everything go so dragged out with back ordered tires, the delays getting appointments, and me not wanting to pay the inflationary prices on everything. 💸 But I am afraid inflation is going to get worse, before it gets better, because the boys in Washington are quite happy to ignore inflation, because they know what it will take to solve it, and that’s not politically popular. It’s more fun to hit stuck accelerator harder, then it is slam on the parking brake.

I’m just glad this in behind me for now. 😌 Is it possible other things will break on Red? Yes, but I think most of the most pressing issues are addressed, and I don’t drive that much in the winter. I am now planning on my trips for the next few weeks — I have Monday off, along with the week before Christmas. 🎄