Notes 📍

As Aretha would sing, “looking out at that morning rain…” as part of that 1980s sitcom much mocked and I won’t sing along. Or was it that gay comedy, Natural Women? Can you believe it wasn’t all that long ago that gay marriage was prohibited and in many cases a shameful thing? But then again so was smoking pot.

No big plans for today, 🏡 the library is closed for the holiday weekend, it’s too wet to ride anywhere. I am chewing over in evening firing up the SuperDuty and driving over to Wally World for a big grocery stock up, 🛒 that way I can get anything extra I need in next week or two just stopping by Hannaford on bike back and forth to work. It’s been 7 days since I last fired up the SuperDuty but with the dual batteries and being a pretty new truck, it should start with ease. Or I don’t know if I want to get wet, and I could shopping 🛻 tomorrow after visiting with my parents.

Plan to do some reading today. 📖 I got this book out, My Parents are Dead, Now What by Becky Robertson out of the library on the Libby App. This is a topic I think a lot about these days, ⏳ as I honestly don’t know how much time either of my parents have left but they are definately getting older as I am I. This is good year to get away and do that Michigan trip despite the high gas prices and work obligations as I have no idea if I will be able to get away in the out years, if care responsibilities or taking over their homestead becomes a thing in future years. Maybe 2027 or even 2028 I’ll still be renting and free to travel, but I know those days aren’t that far away. Maybe, I hope, they’ll see 2030, some people live to a ripe old age, but time lasts forever in a life until it doesn’t. Or maybe in the out years if I have the opportunity, it will be one check out Arkansas and Missouri and other places of setting down roots when I retire. 🫚 Places where land is cheap, gun laws and homesteading regulations are laid back 🐐 and you can have fires and burn whatever. 🔥 I still want to retire and move to a small town in around 2040 when I’m 56 or 57, or maybe I’ll stick around for the redistricting cycle into 2041 or 2042, but not past that. You know how I love writing R code an working with maps. 🗺️

Truck cap hopefully will take delivery the week of June 1st, which is one week from now. 🚛 At least that’s what Andy Ruth’s secretary tells me. Of course that could change, but that would allow me to move over the solar panel and wiring and my gear during the week of June 6th and the I could head out of town June 13-14th, although I might want to be around to go to the Gas Up 🚜 with dad if he is up to doing that. And then maybe head up north somewhere around June 19 for the Juneteenth Weekend. Maybe the Potholers or maybe somewhere else. 🏊‍♂️ It would be fun to spend some time floating in the East Canada Creek and Potholers. And camping in the new rig. I should order the relay box I was looking on at EBay in the next few days, and then I’ll just pick up a battery box at Wally Mart after picking up the truck with the cap installed so I have that to install the second accessory battery in. While it’s a Group 27 battery, I’ll get a Group 31 case, so I have extra room in case I decide to get a bigger future LiON battery or want to put wires or other equipment like the low battery monitor mounted in it.

Other then that I keep working on debugging and improving my blog behind the scenes. 🪲 It continues to be challenging but one of things I’ve been doing is really trying to maximize caching and use of things like CDN to reduce page load times. I did lose a lot of revenue in the short term moving away from page-slug.html fromat to one linking directly to the post link. I’ve just been having more and more issues with slower and slower loading pages, downtime due to excess process threads running slowly. A lot has to do with the WordPress database size, I might start removing old blog posts like daily journals from 10 or 15 years ago at this point, and more focusing on up-to-date content. Changing the post slug format, despite the redirect, has really cost me in advertising revenue and to a lesser extent traffic, though I expect it will increase come summer. Still I will have made $130 or maybe closer to $150 on the month, so it’s not been a terrible on revenue side of things. And things are definately in most cases loading much faster.

Blueberry 🫐 pancakes 🥞 today and I made a big bucket of pinto beans 🫘 up last night. More rice 🍚 I’ll cook up for lunch probably. I still don’t know if I will go to store today, I guess honestly it doesn’t matter if I go today or tomorrow to Wally World, won’t save that many miles on the truck to go there after I visit my parents on Memorial Day 🇺🇸 and if anything, it will be late if I go for a sunset hike up Bennett Hill or whoever I decide to go. If anything, if I want to save fuel ⛽ and wear and tear on the truck, I should ride my bike to the work picnic 🧺 after work on Tuesday. Or catch a bus there. Weather looks good. And then I can enjoy a beer or two 🍻 at a picnic and not have to worry about driving home after the event, though I do need to be sober enough ☺️ to ride my bike or put my bike on the bus 🚏 to get home.