That 15 bean or probably 16 bean soup with the added pinto beans was good last night as was the fresh bread and acorn squash. This morning was apple-banana pancakes topped with frozen Maine blueberries. Finished reading that book about Managing Manure from Libby library, started looking through Hoopla my remaining nine October borrows. Soon it will be off to work in the old Menands next to sewage treatment plant on my mountain bike.Where they burn the shit and PFOAs and stuff.
Slowly but surely the sun is rising this morning. Things are so dark this year. Slept a lot last night, been drinking and peeing a lot of water, and I noticed a tick on my belly I pulled off myself yesterday. Do I need to make an appointment for the doctor to vax up on Doxycline? I don’t have a fever yet and don’t feel that shitty but only time will tell. If I feel like crap later on then I won’t hesitate to call the doctor, though I’m hoping they let me take my doxy after breakfast each day, as eating it on a raw stomach makes me sick. I’ll keep an eye on the spot were I pulled the tick for the classic bulls-eye, I saw some irritation around it and I bet I got it on Saturday but didn’t pull until Tuesday so I have a good chance of being infected.
That soup was good as was breakfast. Always nice having a well stocked pantry. I don’t like having to go to the store mid-week, especially when I would have to drive, though even picking up stuff after work on my bike often means there is stuff that is more pricey or not on my list as I would get at Walmart. I’d rather just have what I need to eat a healthy, well balanced and varied diet. Truth is it’s just nice to have a well stocked pantry of miminally packaged raw ingredients, especially when I’m so dependent on grocery stores for food. Some day I’ll a garden and livestock, though it certainly won’t be this year. Someways I wish I had bought that homestead next to my parents, it was certainly cheap but not the property for me, and I wasn’t ready to give up biking to work or living in the city, and being so car dependent especially with my old, fuel drinking big jacked up truck.
Tonight is the Pine Bush Dinner and it will certainly be dark by the time that is done, so I’ll be riding my bike downtown after that so I made sure my lights are fully charged. Turns out another one of the twist ties that holds the milk crate on the quick release for my bike broke, but fortunately I carry bungie cords for emergencies. That milk crate is also cracking after two years, I knew this would eventually be a problem – as it lacks good support and I tend to overload – I will swap out the crate I use for carrying camp supplies (and currently storing paper trash) for the one on my bike but not until the weekend as I want to move over the lights and reflective switches. I should order some additional rear lights as I always want to have several charged for the evening commute in the darkness downtown. I guess I’ll be taking the local bus home now after work come next week. I am actually surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Next weekend I plan to head out to Madison County or maybe down to Long Pond State Forest outside of Greene. Some depends on the weather, if it will be cold or snowy. This weekend though I’ll probably stay closer to home, as I have things to do but the following weekend through Veterans Day I want to get out one last time before Thanskgiving. Not sure, I am still thinking about doing that section of the Erie Canalway between Utica and Rome, as much to say that I’ve done it. After Thanksgiving will still be big game season but it will be winding down in the North Country, so I’ll probably do the East Sacanadaga River or maybe Piseco-Powley depending on the chances of snow or how much is on the ground. Then who knows – probably Rensselaerville State Forest in December or maybe Burnt-Rossman along one of the asphalt roads.
Truth is I spend too much time watching cabin porn videos, dreaming of a life that could be as I watch drip-by-drip as my investments and experience grow, and the years go by much too quickly it seems.
Or something like that said the dairy farmer page I follow said. Silage and cow shit. I’m continuing to read Mark Kopecky’s Managing Manure, learning more about the micro and macro-nutrients in manure, testing, storing and spreading shit. It’s actually quite interesting, despite all the books I’ve read about livestock, farming and homesteading over the years as I’venever read a full book on manure, as I chew down my breakfast.
Starting at 4:50 AM this morning I was up, putting the beans on the stove and bread and acorn squash in the oven. 🍞 Just basic whole-wheat, water, and yeast bread, the beans are the 15-bean soup mix, so that’s a bit processed though I the nutritional facts don’t seem to contain anything too alarming. I added the remaining pinto beans I had in another bag, to extend them. 🫘 Had some of the bread this morning dipped in the balsmatic vinger and it was pretty darn good, along with an omelet, 🍳 first fried up then covered with veggies I ground up in the food processor and then made crisp in the oven by using the broiler. Good stuff, especially as it’s kind of a cold morning and I refuse to turn my heat until the nights are well below freezing and the days aren’t much warmer. It’s not like heat is particularly effective or cost-efficent with my apartment becoming so drafty and diaploated. I find it hard to believe it’s been 18 years here, and the maintaince the landlord has done over the years has been pretty minimal. 👷
I’ve also been listening to Peter Wolhileben’s The Secret Life of Nature🐸 about the interconnections of natural systems and ecology between species, and before I finished that book, I stumbled upon Kim Phillips-Fein’s Fear City, about the New York City Fiscal Crisis of the 1970s. I find modern history to be quite fascinating, especially when it’s close to home and helps explain why things are the way they are. Why is tution no longer free at CUNY and SUNY? Well, the fiscal crisis is a big part of the story. 📚 There are just so many interesting e-books and audio-books that I can read and listen to from the library. I also find myself reading the NY Times each morning and sometimes the Times Union now that the library provides them for free over the internet. Not that the Times Union is worth the paper it’s printed on – it’s mostly a paper of crime portrayed as pornography and random liberal whines about how bad the Trump administration. 🗞️ Trump is bad on many levels, but the liberals are so obnoxious. I read about all the new gun control laws and I get so angry. Or look at Google Maps and see all those rural homes and farms with burn barrels in Pennsylvania and nobody really gives a damn out in country. 🔫 🛢️ Truth is the liberals want to close to all off the woods, declare all public lands wilderness and ban all public use except for gawking at it out of the windows from SUVs on expressway. 🌲 You mean you shoot deer 🦌 and fish 🐠 and have fires 🔥 up in wilderness, you awful people.
It looks like the neighbor had their junked car hauled off 🚙 after crashing into the tree and their fire place. Already got a loaner car as their car is rebuilt. That lady was quite elderly, she probably put into the wrong gear, and hit gas when she meant to hit the gas. Still it’s kind of sad that most people are so dependent on motoring everywhere even when they really shouldn’t be due to declining vision and health.
Discovered a thumb tack in my front bike tire on way out. Pulled it and air started to leak, put it back in and the leak stopped. I probably should pull that later, and hopefully the fix-a-flat will do the magic or otherwise I’ll need to patch that. All while that was happening, I watch as one of my elderly neighbors crashed her car into an old brick fireplace and tree at her place. She looked dazed but okay, maybe I should have gotten involved, but I was running late and she looked okay. Cold ride into the office with the wind and freezing temperatures but other then that fairly quiet. As of the lunch hour, my bike tire is still holding air, I should be able to get home. I kind of want to pull the tack and patch the hole but I’m okay leaving it in if I can make commute through the rest of the week.
I mean it’s a logical thing for the library to suggest Mark Kopecky’s Managing Manure book when I was looking for a read about homesteading as well hogs, cattle and goats produce a lot of poop. Manure produces hogs, cattle and goats or at least the stuff that feeds them. Seems timely read with the month of November coming right up around the corner. And yes, adding MSG to your homemade pancake mix goes give them the taste of a Fritos Lays corn chips.
Looking out on the brightening skies 🔅 ➡️ 🔆 as the sun is rising over the land. It will be somewhat dark for the morning commute, though lately I’ve not been getting in the office much before 9 am even when I get up with the tea strippers, though this morning wasn’t an earlier one as I wanted to make sure I fully caught up on sleep and took a while to cook down the pancakes 🥞 though they were good with the apples. 🍏 Wally World has a special on Gala apples this week, and being out of farmers markets apples I couldn’t resist getting two bags of 3 lbs of apples each. So I’m using them for a lot of purposes, and they are very sweet, including as a snack in office. I eat a lot of apples, along with bananas 🍌 throughout the day in the office to ward off hunger. I haven’t had MSG in a long time, but I saw it in Walmart and thought it would be fun to add to food. Gives food an interesting flavor, and can give a lot of zang especially to boring vegetables and even fruit, though I don’t necessarily love the after taste. I’m not convinced it’s bad for you, though it’s often used in processed food to cover up the crap bland flavors of processed crap. But on broccoli 🥦 it’s rather healthy. 😋 And yummy.
Ended up sending $175 at the grocery store, 🛒 well Walmart but admitly my pantry was pretty bare, and I needed more coffee ☕ and another pair of jeans 👖. Lately I’ve been buying the cheapest containers of coffee, which I don’t like because it comes in that mixed-film packaging, which is fine as I burn the paper and plastic, but I don’t like having to deal with the aluminum bottom even though I do recycle that. But I don’t like encouraging production of such materials, and the all plastic coffee containers are more recyclable and definately more reusable. That said, they did have balsamic vinegar in plastic, so I figured I’d try that. Got whole wheat flour, so I’ll be making bread later in the week 🥪 and lots of bean soups. Oatmeal for use in my homemade pancakes, and for grinding and using with frozen fruit and sugar-free syrup. So much for being frugal, but granted my pantry was kind of depleted after vacation despite spending $50 bucks lats week on groceries. But now it’s pretty full though in retrospect I wish I had gotten one of those half gallon bottles of Frank’s Hot Sauce and sugar-free peanut butter powder. Maybe the next time I’m at all Wally World but do I need more sugar and fat?
Bringing in a bottle of apple cider vinegar into my office. 🥛 Usually I drink water 💦 in the office plain or with ice but I do like apple cider vinegar – just a little – to flavor my water. While I know the health benefits are pretty dubious I like the flavor and that gets me drinking more water and hopefully less coffee ☕. I was getting into a very intense discussion on a frugal living group on Facebook about eating brown rice 🍚 – I was arguing it is quite healthy especially with beans but others disagree, 👎🏽 especially carb haters. I guess you can’t make every one but I like things simple and tangy. And I use lots of turmeric with my arsenic loaded brown rice which people say is healthy as long as the turmeric itself lacks much lead. Rather get lead poisoning then live a life of processed food and garbage and morbid obesity. Even if I do burn trash I try to reduce the amount I must illegaly pitch into the flames 🔥 while giggling 🤭 with my now legal smile. ☺️
It turned out to be much nicer weekend then expected, ☀️ and I should have headed out of town to Schoharie, but I didn’t. I just was tired of camping 🏕️ in cold and wind, with gray skies 🌥️ and I feared that’s what Schoharie would have been like. While I got two acorn squash and a spaghetti squash at Wally World, I would have much l read, there is a lot to be learned about poop. I was on my best behavior this weekend and being that I didn’t camp, I didn’t burn a lot of gasoline or plastic or used motor oil and pallets nor did I drink 🍻 or smoke weed. The colors 🍁 in the woods were good without being super stoned.
I say that facing another harsh winter ahead – the darkness, the cold, the ice and road salt – makes me glad to see the days come and go too quickly. Still, I can fathom at one level that I am staring down the barrel of winter so soon. It’s not that we haven’t had snow earlier in the year some years, or that we haven”t had colder late October days, but I’m just not ready for it all.
One week from now will be the time change. 4:48 PM will be the sunset. Then it will be too dark to ride all the way home, and I’ll need to catch the local bus home. And who knows how soon the cold and snow will make it impossible to ride in, though when I can I will still ride. It’s going to be harder now to do the express bus option eliminated and the local bus schedule not closely corresponding with the transfer from the shuttle.
Mom and Dad keep dropping hints of the time once they are gone. What is going to happen to the dog? The home, the 5-acre homestead? It’s pretty obvious my sister doesn’t want to move out to Westerlo and I do need some place to live after my apartment and I don’t think the off-grid cabin is going to happen right away while I’m still working in New York. And with my job, I am tied to Albany if I want to maximize pension and now decades of experience.
Still, it seems like time goes by too quickly. It seems hard to imagine a world without my parents, even though it is proably not that far away. But first to make it through the winter in my cold drafty apartment and enjoy whatever time remains …
Things are so dark this year. Slept a lot last night, been drinking and peeing a lot of water, and I noticed a tick on my belly 
I pulled off myself yesterday. Do I need to make an appointment for the doctor 
to vax up on Doxycline? I don’t have a fever yet and don’t feel that shitty but only time will tell. If I feel like crap later on then I won’t hesitate to call the doctor, though I’m hoping they let me take my doxy after breakfast each day, as eating it on a raw stomach makes me sick. 
I’ll keep an eye on the spot were I pulled the tick for the classic bulls-eye, I saw some irritation around it and I bet I got it on Saturday but didn’t pull until Tuesday so I have a good chance of being infected. 
Always nice having a well stocked pantry. I don’t like having to go to the store mid-week, especially when I would have to drive, though even picking up stuff after work on my bike often means there is stuff that is more pricey or not on my list as I would get at Walmart. I’d rather just have what I need to eat a healthy, well balanced and varied diet. 
Truth is it’s just nice to have a well stocked pantry of miminally packaged raw ingredients, especially when I’m so dependent on grocery stores for food. Some day I’ll a garden and livestock, though it certainly won’t be this year. Someways I wish I had bought that homestead next to my parents, it was certainly cheap but not the property for me, and I wasn’t ready to give up biking to work or living in the city, and being so car dependent especially with my old, fuel drinking big jacked up truck.
Dinner 
and it will certainly be dark by the time that is done, so I’ll be riding my bike downtown after that so I made sure my lights are fully charged. 
Turns out another one of the twist ties that holds the milk crate on the quick release for my bike broke, but fortunately I carry bungie cords for emergencies. That milk crate is also cracking after two years, I knew this would eventually be a problem – as it lacks good support and I tend to overload – I will swap out the crate I use for carrying camp supplies (and currently storing paper trash) for the one on my bike but not until the weekend 
as I want to move over the lights and reflective switches. I should order some additional rear lights as I always want to have several charged for the evening commute in the darkness downtown. I guess I’ll be taking the local bus home now after work come next week. I am actually surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Some depends on the weather, if it will be cold or snowy. 
This weekend though I’ll probably stay closer to home, as I have things to do but the following weekend through Veterans Day I want to get out one last time before Thanskgiving. Not sure, I am still thinking about doing that section of the Erie Canalway between Utica and Rome, as much to say that I’ve done it. After Thanksgiving will still be big game season but it will be winding down in the North Country, so I’ll probably do the East Sacanadaga River or maybe Piseco-Powley depending on the chances of snow or how much is on the ground. Then who knows – probably Rensselaerville State Forest in December or maybe Burnt-Rossman along one of the asphalt roads.
