It’s kind of werid to be back home again, exploring my dirty falling apart apartment, sleeping in my own bed after what seemed like two short weeks in National Forest. Yesterday, I drove in but today I should be able to bike to work. Saves money and good exercise, I need to do more after all that ice cream, beer, clams, sweet corn and weed and hours studying COWS and WILDFLOWERS on vacation.
Should be another nice day, ☀️ though Thursday and Friday look more dicey, and Saturday looks like rain. 🌧️ I know people around here want rain because it’s been so dry, but why on a Saturday? Sunday looks good though if I want to change the oil on Big Red 🔧 so I might go to Wally World on Saturday to get oil and a filter and a few more groceries I forgot to get last night after work. 🛒 I also have all those books I got from Libby. People say, don’t you know they have grease pits and mechanics that you can pay to change your oil, but most of the grease pits won’t service my big jacked up truck, plus I like keeping the used oil as it’s good to perk up a good fire up in woods. 🔥 Of course don’t tell a greenie. 🍀 The greenies not only recycle plastics and don’t burn them, they also probably drive electrics which don’t burn much less use oil for lubrication in the crankcase. No free Thacher Park Nature Bus this weekend and sit in read into pavilion or ride in the rain, so I can’t go up there in the rain, unless of course I drive my big jacked up truck to the park. 🏞️ And if I’m going to go somewhere in the rain in my big jacked up truck, it’s not going to be some super woke park.
The bike should be good to ride in today. 🚲 Apparently the correct way to replace a spoke bike is to pull both the brake disk and the gears ⚙️ but I only did the later by bending the spoke enough to fit. Whatever I think the wheel is true enough I can ride in. Later in the week I’ll have to decide if it rains if I’ll take the local yokel bus 🚍 or drive in. Driving is fine but it’s expensive and I don’t necessarily really enjoy doing it even if going through the south end the traffic isn’t bad but Albany roads are so rough with my beat to shit suspension. 💥 I need from fresh air and a few minutes away from suburbia already as that tangy manure smell fades away from my camp gear. I will be good and stay in town this weekend, but next weekend maybe I can go up to Rensselearville State Forest or somewhere fun like the Green Mountains. Already miss the Finger Lakes! 🐄
Mom and Dad’s washer was broke so I was at the laundromat doing my clothes. 👚 It’s fine, I haven’t done wash in over two weeks. Normally I just drop my wash off but tonight I decided to stay. I could have dropped it off and gone to the store or the library but I figured I could bring my bike wheel here and bolt the brake disk back on after replacing the spoke myself. It’s done. I finished drying my clothes on line at my apartment. But they say if you owned one of those plastic suburbanite houses you could wash all the clothes you want at home. But I honestly don’t mind the laundromat plus then you don’t have to pay for the electricity or water. 💵 Especially in the summer with shorts it’s not like I wear that much clothes and I often don’t change every day when I’m not working. If I do that off-grid cabin thing eventually, I probably won’t have a washing machine regardless. I mean I have to go to city sometimes to buy shit, and get rid of those tin cans 🥫 unless I plan to bury them.
Did I mention I despise all things suburbia, 🏘️ including so-called rural houses that are just more of those plastic houses that smell like cow shit and come with a long commute. 🚲 I am glad I’m biking it in today, because I know schools 🚸 are opening so not only are going to be mad cops 👮 on every road, there will be epic amounts of traffic, because all cars do all summer is jam their bumper penises into each other, and then September comes around and millions appear on the road out of nowhere. 🚙 🚙 🚗 🚗 🚚 🚗 🏎️ 🚙 Probably a lot of them are Tesla Electrics, which they still throw their organic whiskey bottles out of while driving, but don’t tell anybody about their sins.
Making progress on getting R working on my phone. 📱 It would be so awesome if I could run many of my work scripts on my phone, so I could do data processing jobs on my phone rather then lugging my laptop up into the woods when I’m working remote. Some of the packages didn’t want to compile at first but now they’re working. It would be nice to get an X11 server working, but even just the text interface with Openxlsx and Duckdb should be quite useful. 🖥️ There are so many things I can automate and process using R, which I’ve traditionally done with my computer but if I can do on my phone, all that better.
Last time I was in the office was Tuesday, August 19th. Seems like forever ago, but then again vacation seems like it was a long time to be gone, but such a short time to be here. Like anything, it had to come and go, as otherwise it wouldn’t be vacation. 
I can’t believe summer is dun at this point though. It disappeared quicker then that that styrofoam egg container soaked in lighter fluid.
Still don’t know why the landlord replaced the old ones, maybe it was moss growing in the window sill and concerns about rot. The ripped one of screens when installing it. I’ll have to let the landlord know. Kind of roughed in, he removed the wood flashing, and didn’t paint the window sills he installed, but I don’t care if it’s not perfect or beautiful. I just don’t want to get sued when I move out over his crap. I’ve wrecked enough shit in my apartment over the 18 years I’ve lived there. Maybe he’s planning to fixing it later in the week.
just gives it a bit more character along with the roughed in window sills. But you make good money, why don’t you buy a suburban house with trash pickup and vinyl siding. Nobody needs a cabin in the woods with cows and a burn barrel out back. Don’t you know, burning all that plastic is bad for the environment? Got to make money, so I can save and invest, have that off-grid cabin, and maybe someday some of my own cows! 
They were so much fun to watch up in the National Forest the 13 days I was up there. It was nice hear cows mooing and belowing over the city traffic.
The plan is to drive to work today, then go to Walmart for some supplies, head home, cook a quick dinner, then go the laundrymat. I am not sure where I put my Torx Driver set so I might swing by Lowes and just get another one, pull the brake off my bike, swap out the broken spoke from one on the old wheel, and hopefully I can ride to work on Wednesday. 
It sucks there is no more express bus downtown. I could do the local, but the option kind of sucks – I get out of work at 5 PM but with the transfer and delay between the shuttle and local bus, 
it means I wouldn’t get home until 6:15 PM mst nights. That said, I don’t love driving and it is a chance to get some steps in between the transfer. And I can read books on the bus. But if I drive in, I can be home by 5:25-5:30 PM depending on the traffic, though I usually avoid the worse of it by taking the back streets through Albany’s South End. 
But I really hate driving, especially my big jacked up truck through the city, especially with all the midget cars all around that are so hard to see.
My oil life indicator says I’m at 40% oil life on my truck, and I last changed the oil in my truck in October 2024 so yeah I probably should think about doing that or at least making sure I have some oil in the crankcase. It probably could use half a quart now that vacation is over. And maybe a bit more coolant, though it’s not gone down much since the initial drop. What can I say, besides the suspension being basically shot on Red, the head gasket is starting to go or maybe it’s just the normal oil consumption and a leak in the heater core. I don’t want to think too much about it, as long as you put in it in “D” and it goes forward for the most part. I only really have big trip left for Red now – St. Regis Canoe Area 
in October but other then that maybe just some smaller trips around town.
though I fully admit it would be good to stay home for at least one weekend. The last weekend I was home was July 26-27th. That seems like it was two weeks ago? Where did the time go? 
I struggle to accept that it’s already September and that Big Red is soon to be 14 years old. But I figure travel while the weather is nice and I still can. Certainly that last week of September I won’t be able to head out of town as I’ll be half blind or recovering from the big snip of my eyes. 
Not that I can ee that well anymore these days with my contacts.
