Did you think it would really end this way? Was it how you wanted to end? Years are gambled and lost like summer wagesas Ian Tyson once sung.
It seems like it was just the end of 2015, not the end of a decade later. 🕒 Working a half day today, it’s just me and a single operator out of my team seven people, so it would be a busy day if it wasn’t the end of the year and things likely pretty slow. Then it’s to pick up a few things from the store, pull a few things out of the truck, go for one last drive with Big Red 🛻 and then this chapter of life will be done. Just memories. The plates go back on Monday at lunch time to the DMV at Empire Plaza and I will drop insurance that afternoon.
It seems strange that the year is coming to end in such a definative fashion. Red’s retirement puts a closure on the year, kind of unlike any in my memory. Tomorrow starts the car free life, which will last until at least late March but I’m not so set so in getting another big red (?!) truck right away, even I have been reading and studying up the various models available and scheming on how the best way to approach the buying process in a scientific way, to build the rig I really want. Maybe I’ll buy used, but it can be hard to compare used cars, not buy a lemon and get the vehicle you want. If you want a Honda Civic, then sure buy that 20 year old car, it probably still runs fairly reliable. I’ll start taking a serious look at trucks in Syracuse, Glens Falls, Newburgh, Bennington and Oneonta when March starts and work my way in-bound towards Albany. If I have to get a bus ticket to buy the truck I want at a good price and spend a day in North Syracuse, so be it. But first I want to become an expert at the car buying process, so I can get the out the door price on vehicles I’ve carefully studyed the ins and out, and then once I’m good with what I’m buying cement the deal but not a minute before it. It’s stupid to rush to buy a truck so I can camp in woods in middle of winter to smoke grass and watch some plastic burn. I can at least smoke grass at home or in the park somewheres, at least some things are legal in New York even if you got to pay $2 fucking dollars to the state and wait each time you want to buy ammo. And people are like, don’t you want to plastic house in suburbs with high speed internet?
I let slip in work that I’m retiring Red, oh and did everybody have advice on buying cars, mostly along the lines you should buy a 20-year old Honda Civic, they’re so cheap and frugal. Uses almost no gas you drive back and forth to the mall and suburban office complex. I guess if I was in that part of my career delivering pizzas for $5.15 an hour, and I lived somewhere I had to drive to the suburban office and needed to visit a dozen shops every day to pack full that 96-gallon garbage and woke plastics recycling dumpster every week, I’d go for the Honda. But the truth is I really hate driving in city traffic, though I admit probably those 20-year old Honda Civics everybody say are so amazing are easier to drive through traffic then a ginormous pickup with a Mini-Godzilla engine. Of course these are the people who love their plastic houses and can’t imagine anything worse then having a burn barrel for burnable trash and butchering your own livestock or putting down your sickly dog with a bullet. Man, do I love those cabins with tongue and groove and hate drywall and white walls to no end. Truth is with the amount of capital gains and income I have at this point, spending an extra $10k or $15k on the big pickup I actually want over a little Honda Civic, when spread over 10-14 years really is a pissy amount of money. It’s been a good year with the markets, I thought Trump was going to fuck us over with his buffoonery but ultimately the markets just plugged on, the world spun around 365 times and life went on. Trump is a disaster, but people forget how broken shit was before him, and things did need to be blown up, but maybe with TNT and not a nuclear bomb.
Not having a vehicle I won’t ever have to think about the January weather except on the debate to ride my bike to work. 🚲 I guess in some ways riding to the store and using the bike does involve more consideration of weather, 🌨️ but at least I won’t have think about icy roads or washing my truck after today. 🚿 I can just stumble out of bed, 🛏️ and catch the bus downtown. But today I do have to clean the snow off Red one last time. It just seems funny to be saying that, one more time. It will be kind of nice, even if in some ways getting around will be a bit more challenging though not that much because I drive so little in the winter.
I want to do a lot of reading in January, 📚 and I need to get my monthly borrows out on Hoopla before the clock strikes midnight. ⚡I’ve also been thinking about getting my soldering iron out and doing more electronics projects, maybe some more writing code, and other things to pass the time at home, though work consumes so much time and it goes by so quickly. I can’t believe Big Red is being retired tonight, and that he’s more then 14 years old now. 👴🏻 But then again, I never thought I would be so gray at age 28.
I put John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High on the record player, I mean the Mp3 player and pause a minute.
He was born in the summer of his 27th year Comin’ home to a place he’d never been before Left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again Might say he found a key for every door
When he first came to the mountains, his life was far away On the road and hangin’ by a song But the string’s already broken, and he doesn’t really care It keeps changin’ fast, it don’t last for long
It kind of way a profound thought 🎂 to think that 14 years from now I’ll be 57 years old and quite possibly retired from my state job to focus on my off-grid homestead 🐐. But then again, I was 28 years old when I bought Red, and that seems just like yesterday. Things were different back then, and will be different again in 2040 which is what 14 years from now will be. Maybe I’ll find more direction in life by then, less confusion. I just don’t see myself buying a Honda Civic or a plastic-coated, drywall house with High Speed Internet and weekly garbage and woke plastics recycling service. 🗑️ Even if it smells like cow shit. 🐮
For the good times…
Don’t look so sad, I know it’s over But life goes on and this old world will keep on turning Let’s just be glad we had some time to spend together Don’t say a word about tomorrow or forever There’ll be time enough for sadness when you leave me
in such a definative fashion. Red’s retirement puts a closure on the year, kind of unlike any in my memory. 
Tomorrow starts the car free life, which will last until at least late March but I’m not so set so in getting another big red (?!) truck right away, even I have been reading and studying up the various models available and scheming on how the best way to approach the buying process in a scientific way, to build the rig I really want. Maybe I’ll buy used, but it can be hard to compare used cars, not buy a lemon and get the vehicle you want. If you want a Honda Civic, then sure buy that 20 year old car, it probably still runs fairly reliable. I’ll start taking a serious look at trucks in Syracuse, Glens Falls, Newburgh, Bennington and Oneonta when March starts and work my way in-bound towards Albany. If I have to get a bus ticket to buy the truck I want at a good price and spend a day in North Syracuse, so be it. But first I want to become an expert at the car buying process, so I can get the out the door price on vehicles I’ve carefully studyed the ins and out, and then once I’m good with what I’m buying cement the deal but not a minute before it. 
It’s stupid to rush to buy a truck so I can camp in woods in middle of winter to smoke grass and watch some plastic burn. I can at least smoke grass at home or in the park somewheres, at least some things are legal in New York even if you got to pay $2 fucking dollars to the state and wait each time you want to buy ammo. 
And people are like, don’t you want to plastic house in suburbs with high speed internet?
oh and did everybody have advice on buying cars, mostly along the lines you should buy a 20-year old Honda Civic, they’re so cheap and frugal. Uses almost no gas you drive back and forth to the mall and suburban office complex. I guess if I was in that part of my career delivering pizzas for $5.15 an hour, and I lived somewhere I had to drive to the suburban office and needed to visit a dozen shops every day to pack full that 96-gallon garbage and woke plastics recycling dumpster every week, I’d go for the Honda. 
But the truth is I really hate driving in city traffic, though I admit probably those 20-year old Honda Civics everybody say are so amazing are easier to drive through traffic then a ginormous pickup with a Mini-Godzilla engine. Of course these are the people who love their plastic houses and can’t imagine anything worse then having a burn barrel for burnable trash and butchering your own livestock or putting down your sickly dog with a bullet. 
Man, do I love those cabins with tongue and groove and hate drywall and white walls to no end. Truth is with the amount of capital gains and income I have at this point, spending an extra $10k or $15k on the big pickup I actually want over a little Honda Civic, when spread over 10-14 years really is a pissy amount of money. It’s been a good year with the markets, 
I thought Trump was going to fuck us over with his buffoonery but ultimately the markets just plugged on, the world spun around 365 times and life went on. 
Trump is a disaster, but people forget how broken shit was before him, and things did need to be blown up, but maybe with TNT and not a nuclear bomb. 