Almost halfway through the month though I ran the mid month label job last week so it’s already at the print shop. I figure it doesn’t hurt to get it done early and then schedule the email to send delayed.
Sunny ☀️ morning, busing it in as I await parts for the bike 🚲. Due to rubber necking at the construction 🏗️ next door at Stewart’s I almost missed the bus with the slow turning traffic signal. More rain for the second half of the week. Banana pancakes 🥞 this morning though they weren’t real fluffy due to being out of eggs 🥚. I should have gotten eggs last week when I shopped. 🛒 I need some fruit too do I might run to the store this evening.
Heading in early to walk a bit on the Plaza 👣 but also as it’s good to get in the office 🏢 early as there is work to do and I like building up comp time. I could walk up to Menands but I don’t feel like doing that with the blister on my foot. Plus being Tuesday you never know how much lobby day traffic delay you’re going to hit. At least I’m not driving!
Been starting to think about getting LASIK eye 👁️ surgery so I can permanently fix my eye sight without glasses 👓 or contacts. I’ve wore contacts for so many years now most people don’t realize I’m practically blind without glasses or contacts. But I hate the eye irration at times especially when I don’t have my hands perfectly clean or I have tears in the contacts. Plus contacts keep getting more expensive your supposed to do yearly eye doctors visits with them though I never do.
Weekend continues to look fairly wet again 🌦️so it might be good to work on the bike 🚲 then. Hopefully the wheel will be in by then. The following week is Memorial Day and the very long range says it might be very cold and wet ❄️ but that could certainly change. That weekend is usually so darn buggy. 🐜 I have the screen tent and the hammock net but it still sucks sweating in the heat avoiding the thousands of black flies.
It sometimes is good to break away from the ordinary, go some place new. I think it was the first time I ever went to Connecticut even if I didn’t spend much time there except for in the ever so woke country around Salisbury.
Driving home you could really smell the pungent honeysuckle along the road. Some cow manure and farm smells but not so much as manuring season has passed by in favor of planting as it’s already mid May. Ancram, Historic Farming Community the sign read. I was actually surprised how agricultural that part of Dutchess County really is – not all gentlemen farms and suburban sprawl unlike the part of Connecticut I explored. And winding along NY 82 in Ancram I smelled somebody burning garbage, lol! What burn ban? Hell yeah. No trash fires though when I drove past that homestead on NY 9W that years ago always had something burning back in the day – you know the folks who got in trouble with the town for having too many pigs and cows on their small acerage, even though it was pretty rural, but it just takes that one neighbor to cause trouble. Part of living rural is about freedom, and if that means a bit of stinky smoke or manure, then so be it.
Busing it to work as my bike is down for the week. With all the rain and the current going out, the Hudson River looks to have a very stiff current heading south. Glad I’m not on a kayak on the river today. I’ve kayaked the Hudson many times before, but today would not be day to do it, probably will still some shit mats floating on the river from all the rain. I was actually surprised how dry most of the trails I hiked after all the rain we’ve been having lately. It really was good hiking conditions. I think the breeze, the deep blue skies and the rock terrain of the Berkshires and Taconics meant things drained quickly.
I have all but one bolt off that disc brake on my bike. Struggling to get that one off, it is soaking in WD-40 and I will work on getting it off, hopefully not bugger it up any more. This was one of the things I was worried about, but I think I will free it up. If not, I will drill it out. Worse comes to worse, I’ll order another brake disc – they’re not expensive and the current one is worn. Not the first bolt I’ve ever stripped, but I’m getting better with shit like this. Maybe I’ll work on it tonight, but it’s a fairly nice evening, so I may want to instead lead the oil soak in another night, and be careful trying to pull it. Certainly not the first I might need some more drill bits – I’ll need them for widening the tire stem hole to the size of the Shrader valve, but then once the wheel comes in I should be able to get it installed over the weekend, and hopefully be back on road come next week.
I think I’ll go to the park after dinner, and read books on my phone until dusk. Enjoy the nice weather, closer to home, as I can’t ride anywhere. Walking isn’t a bad thing, though I do have a bit of a blister on my toe so I got to be careful how much I walk tonight. I do miss having the bike, and look forward to having it back on the road in the next week or so. Really the main issue is just waiting for the wheel to come in. I am actually kind of enjoying the change of pace, having a bike is nice but it seems like you feel like you constantly have to be riding places and that with it, walking is slow and pointless, even though walking is much more leisurely and works different parts of the body.
Looks like more rain for the coming weekend, so getting out of town doesn’t look that promising. The following weekend is Memorial Day Weekend, which is always horrific with the black flies, and my perception that all the good campsites go quickly, though I’m not sure that is true. Sure been a lot of rainy, buggy awful Memorial Day Weekends I’ve camped and pretended it was fun, but it kind of sucked. I am not so sold on it this year, indeed some years in more recent years, I’ve just skipped on it. Can always just take another long weekend in the summer.
You know one of the best ways to trigger a mental health professional is to start talking about TDS, the Trump Derangement Syndrome or it’s related condition the Woke Mind Virus. Because at least as far as the scientific litature and research is concerned, they don’t really exist – they are just considered to be reasonable viewpoints to have based on one’s own values.
In my experience, mental health professionals really recoil when you say a person is mentally ill because of a political belief or ideology. They generally want to see actual demostratable harm to a person’s own life or how they are negatively impacting others. If anything, they will argue if a belief has a beneficial impact on a person’s life or his or her community, it’s adaptive and useful even if it’s bizzare. That said, I’ve always thought the mental health profession is one of most dangerous industries, as labels are powerful tools for justifying bigotry and punishment of the other. Mental health professionals have enormous power granted by the state and others, which since the era of Goldwater-rule prohibiting diagnosing people not under immediate care.
It’s not to say that Trump Derangement System does not exist or is not harmful for those afflicted by it. The paranoid, as Richard Hoffsteader once wrote, as not only afflicted by all problems we all face in world, but also their own delusions. They are, as he writes, a double sufferer. Trump in many ways is a problematic character, but it would be good to be fully grounded on real impact he has on people’s ordinary lives, beyond what the news is reporting. Delusions are problematic but having real concerns about the direction of society is important – as is speaking up for those who can’t – but not to necessarily die for what is right.
I often think of myself as mentally ill, because I’m unwilling to subscribe to Amazon, choose to live in city, take my bike or bus to work, and do not have home internet. And I’m saving towards buying land and building that off-grid cabin. I mean who her right mind does such things these days? Why don’t you want that suburban home, with the weekly garbage pickup? Are you some kind of terribly sick individual hoarding cash? But alas, it’s a matter of choice – I am not a fan of consumer culture, the full dumpsters and money wasted. But a mental health professional would argue that’s my choice – if you don’t want to participate in consumer culture and save and invest your money, then that’s good for you.
Still, I am concerned that mental health can be abused to stimigitize and punish minorities and those without conventional views. Those who take a look at the evidence and come to different conclusions based their values. I often find myself carefully studying articles about depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia with a careful eye to see how such so-called disorders can be used as a tool as social oppression. While I have my ups and downs, I realize I am far from any of those descriptions, which are much more suited for the man who yells at your about CIA monitoring his thoughts, as you do your evening walk in Empire Plaza. Still, I do see the danger of such definations being used casually and without rigger to oppress those who have unconventional views and are agents of change whether in their own life or in society in general.
No, I’m not talking about the lifters on 5.3 l engine in my big jacked up Chevy.
Almost drove off the road last night, when a car was coming at me on the other direction on the rural part of Elm Avenue East out by Creble Road and I was digging at my neck to pull an adult deer tick I could feel on my neck. I keep finding ticks in my truck, I am not sure how they are getting there but it’s where I find them the most.
All I can say is that Great Barrington through Salisbury is super woke and wealthy. Some farms along the way but most of them are a bit too prestine to look much like working farms, kind of the gentlemen farms where a handful of farm hands take care of beef cattle while the owners are gone Monday through Friday to work on Wall Street. New England is always kind of a woke and old fashioned compared to what you’d find in New York much less Pennsylvania or West Virginia. Definitely far from the Ward Brothers of Madison County. No burn barrels or run down trailers with a hog pen out back there to see. Just big mansions.
Earlier in the day I hiked Flag Rock overlooking Hossactonic Mass and then later Peeskawso Rock overlooking Agawam and Stockbridge. I was a bit nervous about the rock ledge on Peeskawso so I kept my distance from the ledge and didn’t go all the way to the top. Now I’m at Taconic State Park at the Harlem Valley Overlook. Checking out Rudd Pond next then heading to Rip Van Winkle bridge and if time allows will walk out on that. Then head home after stopping for toothpaste. I am glad I got away. Maybe I should have hiked some in Connecticut but nothing struck my fancy and time on All Trails compared to the Harlem Valley Overlook back in New York State.
As I push into my forties, I have this fear that I’m increasingly addicted to the ordinary, unwilling to try new things in favor of long established ways of doing things. I’ve stopped visiting new places, closing off my mind stuck in routine and the ordinary life.
the pungent honeysuckle 
along the road. Some cow manure and farm smells but not so much as manuring season has passed by in favor of planting 
as it’s already mid May. Ancram, Historic Farming Community the sign read. I was actually surprised how agricultural that part of Dutchess County really is – not all gentlemen farms and suburban sprawl unlike the part of Connecticut I explored. 
And winding along NY 82 in Ancram I smelled somebody burning garbage, lol! 
What burn ban? Hell yeah. No trash fires though when I drove past that homestead on NY 9W that years ago always had something burning back in the day – you know the folks who got in trouble with the town for having too many pigs and cows on their small acerage, even though it was pretty rural, but it just takes that one neighbor to cause trouble. 
Part of living rural is about freedom, and if that means a bit of stinky smoke or manure, then so be it.
as my bike 
is down for the week. With all the rain and the current going out, the Hudson River looks to have a very stiff current heading south. 
Glad I’m not on a kayak on the river today. I’ve kayaked the Hudson many times before, but today would not be day to do it, probably will still some shit mats floating on the river 
from all the rain. I was actually surprised how dry most of the trails I hiked 
after all the rain we’ve been having lately. It really was good hiking conditions. I think the breeze, the deep blue skies and the rock terrain of the Berkshires and Taconics meant things drained quickly.
off that disc brake on my bike. Struggling to get that one off, it is soaking in WD-40 and I will work on getting it off, hopefully not bugger it up any more. This was one of the things I was worried about, but I think I will free it up. If not, I will drill it out. Worse comes to worse, I’ll order another brake disc – they’re not expensive and the current one is worn. Not the first bolt I’ve ever stripped, but I’m getting better with shit like this. Maybe I’ll work on it tonight, but it’s a fairly nice evening, so I may want to instead lead the oil soak in another night, and be careful trying to pull it. Certainly not the first I might need some more drill bits – I’ll need them for widening the tire stem hole to the size of the Shrader valve, but then once the wheel comes in I should be able to get it installed over the weekend, and hopefully be back on road come next week. 
and read books on my phone until dusk. Enjoy the nice weather, closer to home, as I can’t ride anywhere. 
Walking isn’t a bad thing, though I do have a bit of a blister on my toe 
so I got to be careful how much I walk tonight. I do miss having the bike, and look forward to having it back on the road in the next week or so. Really the main issue is just waiting for the wheel to come in. I am actually kind of enjoying the change of pace, having a bike is nice but it seems like you feel like you constantly have to be riding places and that with it, walking is slow and pointless, even though walking is much more leisurely and works different parts of the body.
so getting out of town doesn’t look that promising. The following weekend is Memorial Day Weekend, which is always horrific with the black flies, 
and my perception that all the good campsites go quickly, though I’m not sure that is true. Sure been a lot of rainy, buggy awful Memorial Day Weekends I’ve camped and pretended it was fun, 
but it kind of sucked. I am not so sold on it this year, indeed some years in more recent years, I’ve just skipped on it. Can always just take another long weekend in the summer.
