Maybe it was good I cleared off the solar panel on my truck yesterday when there was actual sun to trickle charge things before the clouds and cold of Monday into Tuesday arrive.
Mom is still sick so I won’t be driving anywhere today 🤒, but I do think I will hop on my bike and ride down to Hannaford later this afternoon and get some bananas, frozen fruits and vegetables 🥦 🍌. Other then that, I’ll spend some time cleaning things up in the kitchen, 🧽 read 📖 some more, and just kind of hang out – maybe watch YouTube (in the Brave Tube app) or some kind documentary on Kalopy from the lbrary. 📹 Going to be kind of a cool day without the sun, so I might just want to spend a fair bit of it hanging out under the covers, with the heated blanket on low, rather then crank up the heat.
Most of the way through the book I got from Hoopla on Home Wiring. 🔌 It was pubished in 2004, so nothing in the book discusses solar or batteries, but it’s good to learn about the building code and safe building wiring, as most of that could be applied to solar, batteries, and off-grid homesteads. It’s good to have a good idea about safe practices and what code and building inspectors require, even if most of the book is more about replacing lamp cords and running extra outlets in your kitchen or swapping out a breaker. Also listened to several more hours of Edward Abbey’s The Fool’s Progress, 🎧 riding out to Five Rivers and walking around there yesterday. Only have week and half left on Hoopla borrows I have left, so I want to plunge through them as much as I can, as I can likely renew the Libby books if need be or get them out at a later date without costing the library anymore. 📚 Truth is I am really digging in deep on reading, as I think it’s a much better use of my time then social media and probably better then learning a new programming language or just watching random videos on dairy farms and homesteading that show yuo the livestyle but not the facts on ground of what real farming is about. 🐖
More cranberry and apple pancakes this morning. 🥞 All those shredded carrots 🥕 keep things moving through my system well, 💩 especially combined with the excessive coffee ☕ I drink. And I wonder why teeth have gotten so stained. I cooked the cranberries and apple in the microwave down to basically a sauce this morning, in part because I didn’t have the extra bananas 🍌 to blend into the mix. Last night, I made rice and beans, using the up the last of black beans and most of pinto beans I had in the freezer. I have still about 2 lb of pinto beans to cook up on the stove this week, but first tomorrow I want to make homemade bread, spegatti squash and green pea soup 🥣 🍞 tomorrow morning before I ride my mountain bike.
Tomorrow I hope to ride in. 🚴 Going to be a cold morning, but it saves $1.30 bus fare and it’s good exercise. Walking the Plaza is fine, but riding is more fun. Probably be doing Corning’s Hill but whatever, it beats the bus. Tuesday I’ll probably drive in so I can go to Walmart and the laundromat after work. 👚 Wednesday is going to be snow or rain ☔ – probably slop – so I’ll bus it in and out that day. 🚍 Maybe Thursday I can ride in and Friday is the Holiday 🌲 Party at work, and I’ll need my truck to transport people and food to there. One of the benefits to riding is it gives me time to listen to audio books undistracted. I prefer to read e-books when I’m on the bus. I used to use that for endless scrolling 📜 of Facebook or TikTok but I hate the ads and it’s waste of time when I could be learning by reading.
Today concludes rifle season, 🦌 and while there is still some black powder guys out, there are far fewer of them, so if the weather is decent next weekend, I’ll probably do an overnight or two in the wilderness somewhere. Family holiday party next Saturday, but that usually ends fairly early so I can head up to camp after that assuming there is not too much snow or cold. ❄️ Then the following weekend I another family obligation – my neice is going to preform in the Nutcracker – and the whole family goes to that each year. 🎅 After Christmas Eve, 🎄 I will probably head out to Madison County first thing on Christmas, assuming there isn’t too much snow for three nights. I also thought about Long Pond in Chenango County, but I worry about that road being icy there, and it’s always so picked over for firewood. 🪵
With all apologizes to Allen Ginsberg book of the similar name, that’s how I increasingly feel about Facebook. It’s place to visit, but only occasionally, as it’s become dominated by flame wars, angry minds and commercial advertising for scammy products nobody in their right mind would go out and buy.
At first, I found it hard to quit and stay off, though the ability to set Facebook to limit your use to 30 minutes a day has helped significantly. Rather then spending endless hours just scrolling through the Facebook generated feed with those obnoxious advertising – Buy Solar Today! Buy Metal Roofs Today! – I tend to be more deliberate with Facebook use now, instead going to specific pages or searches which are more free of advertising. Or posting a quick photo or map and then closing it out.
While I’ve noticed it for a number of years, it seems like enshittification of the Internet is well underway at least for all of the commercial advertising-based sites. I get it, you have to create “viral” content for the advertisers, I play that game with my blog too. But in an attempt to engage you, the algorithms tend to only show a very limited selection based what you’ve recently watched and interacted with without taking a more holistic view of what you have been interested in the past and may be still interested in. Along with other content. Maybe it’s just I don’t like to see such a negative reflection of my own image.
Hey Andy, don’t forget you’re always welcome to use our trash bin, we always have room the neighbor told me.
The trash bag was falling apart as I put it in the fire pit. I piled a bunch of kindling and tinder over the garbage bag, poured on some used motor oil and lighter fluid, took the lighter out and lit the discarded Styrofoam egg carton on fire, which quickly caught fire, with its ordinary black styrene laden smoke and tart smell before catching the bag from frozen broccoli on fire and woosh as the tinder and lighter fluid and catches. I pile more wood on the fire, it damp and ice covered but quickly succumbing to the heat produced by the rich mix of hydrocarbons from kitchen garbage, dry as the avidly separate out the organics for composting.
That was the fire, like so many others. The plastic Greek yogurt containers and milk jugs incinerated, turned into flame and warmth on that cold winter day, drying out the wood that eventually caught and produced a night of warmth. Rather being crushed into a garbage truck and hauled to the mound on the outskirts of town for a million years, it became something beautiful in form of warmth and brightness on a cold winter’s night in wilderness. Eating healthier and buying less crap, there is less and less to burn, and indeed when I have my own land, garden, livestock, there will be even less to burn. Maybe I won’t win eco-warrior of the year, but it is easy on my mind.
Fairly early this morning, I cleaned off the solar panel on the truck the best I could though it was still encrusted with ice but the warmth of mid-day sun when it came out plus some warm water and vinger got the rest of the ice off it. Now the accessory batteries are being topped and the starting battery should be awoken from it’s sagging slumber with a nice tickle charge by evening.
Brought the bike out and got tire nice and hard 🚲 using the electric pump on the truck. I should buy – or more likely rig up something – so I can use that pump indoors as I mostly use it for topping off the bike tire then ever the truck tire, as it’s much too slow for such purposes.
Going to go to Five Rivers this afternoon, 🐸 I’ll bring my hunting boots 👢 and put them on once I get out there for hiking in the still fairly deep snow. It’s nice afternoon with the sunshine, ☀️ but it’s still winter with snow and cold, but fortunately no wind.
This morning, I’ve been reading more about home wiring 🔌 and duck farming, 🦆 just because those are interesting topics I should learn more about. Breakfast was cranberry pancakes, 🥞 with all the usual stuff I put in my homemade mix, you know, whole-wheat flour, oatmeal, carrots, etc. 🥕 Lunch was onions with eggs, garlic powder, and frozen corn. Dinner last night, was more of that frozen salmon 🐟 with onions and spinach.
Today It’s winter and a weekend I’m home, so nothing too ambitious. ❄️ At least with the sun and warmer weather I haven’t felt the need to use the space heater or the heating pad, so that saves. I do need to take apart the control module on my electric blanket to see why the switch is requiring multiple clicks to turn on. Maybe I can bypass the switch or fix it.
Mom is still sick 🤒 so no visiting them this week. I should have enough laundry for a few work days, I will go down to Hannaford on Sunday to get bananas and maybe some more frozen fruit and vegetables. My pantry is otherwise in decent shape, Tuesday I might drive in not as much for groceries but so I can drop my laundry off at laundromat after work and do it. Maybe I do the Glenmont Laundromat that kind of sucks 👖 and do Walmart at the same time. I don’t know.
Monday will be cold for riding in 🚲 but I think that’s what I want to do as it will be sunny. Probably be stuck riding Corning’s Hill, which isn’t my favorite, though it’s a blast coming down the hill, and the shoulder is nice and wide on the Delmar bypass. That’s the morning I want to have fresh bread made for, and maybe I’ll also do the pea soup then. Or maybe pea soup tomorrow. Still have a fair amount of beans in the freezer.
It seems like on paper it makes a long day when I leave at 8 AM to get to work at 9 AM, and then leave work at 5 PM to get home at 6:15 PM based on the the time to transfer, the slow speed of the local bus, and differences between the schedules. When it really is in reality at 15 to 20 minute drive to work or a 45 minute bike ride. Time is money, as they say. And it goes both ways.
The daily bus fare both ways is $2.60 with my CDTA Swiper card, the rate it has been since 2009, though they are talking about raising fares in the coming year. The shuttle is free. Gas alone would be far more, especially with my big jacked up truck. And then there would be more maintaince and repair costs, along with the constant risk of tickets and violations driving back and forth to work. Water Street and Erie Boulevard are hardly smooth roads, they revival some of the crap roads I drive in Adirondack Backcountry.
Yet, somehow at least in my mind, it sort of makes sense. I avoided driving in the snow storm on Tuesday, then the rest of the week I didn’t have to dig out my truck much less warm it up each morning before driving back and forth. The slow pace of the bus gave me a lot of time to read the many e-books I have out from the library, and it gave me that 1/2 mile walk inside each way from the Capitol to bus turn around, then a half hour walking laps in the Plaza in the evening before catching the local bus home. It was time that would otherwise be wasted driving back and froth to work, or just spent in my cold apartment with the heat kept at 50 degrees.
6:15 PM wasn’t that much later then the 6 PM is when I ride home from work, figuring that I don’t necessarily leave work right at 5 PM and there is delays due to traffic or peddling slowly up the incline out of the Norman’s Kill Hollow. Back when there express bus was an option, I would get home at 5:45 PM, which admitly is earlier bus no time walking in the Concourse, getting my steps in. And maybe I’d get home at 5:30 or 5:40 PM driving, but often that is delayed with rush hour traffic.
At times, I feel like I am totally out of my mind to take the bus back and forth to work, and transferring to the shuttle to get to suburban office in Menands. Time wise it’s inefficient, local city buses are primarily there for those without an option to drive, such as their too young or elderly, too poor or disabled. Drunks, drug addicts and the colored ride the bus. Not mid-level agency directors, who oversee a data division and can afford to drive their own vehicle to work.
But I hate dealing with traffic, the stop and go, the annoyance of bad drivers and waiting for the light to turn green. When I ride the bus, the driver takes care of that all. The bus and shuttle is warm when I get on it, and with real-time bus tracking I can avoid standing out for any length of time. It’s better for the environment to ride the bus, and better for my health as it forces me to build in time walking in a warm space in the Emperor’s Plaza. The bus ride also is forced time, that used wisely can be used for reading and study, that might otherwise be wasted at home. And it saves money, which I can invest into my future all while I am learning by spending more time on bus reading.
Next week, should the weather be better and with my bike tire patched, I’ll go back at least some times riding my bike to work. Probably take Corning’s Hill as the bike path is snow covered, and still need to take that local bus home as it’s too dark to safely ride all the way home. Maybe I should drive to work, as there is acres at suburban office, and that’s what virtually everybody else does, but I am stubborn. Maybe I will drive in if I need to get groceries. But I’m waiting for nicer weather when I can ride both ways, virtually every day.
