Notes

Thursday it would seem😀

I had forgotten how nice the bike ride is into the office, bar the glass spilled all over the road. If I had only picked my bike up on Tuesday, I could have ridden in yesterday but today was beautiful but smokey with the wildlfire smoke. Not as bad as a few years, but there was a brown haze around riding into the valley and the sun looked hazy, almost like during a partial solar eclipse. Almost a bit eerie.

Busy day today 👨‍💼 and I have meetings downtown so I am in early. I try to be in each day by 8 AM, for one it makes for a better bike ride as there is less traffic on the highway and bike trail at this hour. I am just so glad that my bike is back on the road. A good morning with onion and cornmeal pancakes, topped off with greek yogurt. 🥞 It’s been a while since I’ve done that. Been doing too much eggs lately, 🥚 which are a good source of protein but also have a lot of saturated fat, despite all the vegetables and onions I like to put in them. 🧅

The new hire for Data Services accepted the position, ✊ and I’m hoping it will finally work out. The other operators seemed to like my choice, and I have feeling this person won’t back out. 🤞 Maybe I was trying to change the agency too quickly, advancing new ideas and new people, trying to ram a round peg in a square hole. It happens. I’ve continue to develop new IOI Codes for the system, and for the most point after announcing the new codes, have gotten primarily just radio silence. 🔇 I know people are busy, and they’re not as interested in my project and my hard work as I am in. Maybe I’ve just tried to keep myself artificially busy at work, so to make the time go past quicker and not think about all the other problems in my life. It was fustrating those days that my bike was down and out with that broken spoke. 🚴 I wish I had driven to work on Tuesday and picked up my repaired bike wheel then.

Meetings today downtown, 🏢 but one of them is a lunch meeting with free food. 🍗 Maybe not healthy but delicious and I’ll primarily pile the green stuff on my plate. 🥗 Then it’s out to the folks house to walk the dog, 🐶 and do a quick overnight there house sitting. Maybe stroll around the yard for a bit, down by the creek, and think more about my housing decisions. 🏘 That property next door to there’s is still up for sale on the market, largely sitting abandoned, and continue to crumble. I cut a check for $150k it could be mine, and I’d only have to pay for the upkeep and taxes. And cost of commuting. 🛻 But regardless of what people tell me, I would have to give up so much of my freedom, especially if I got livestock. 🐔🐐🐷 But it would be fun to grow my own grass, and not the kind you mow.

I need to read more, 📚 as all the e-books I got out at the end of July will quickly be coming to expiration. But maybe the reason I haven’t been reading more is the books don’t really excite me. But it’s also been summer, I’ve been out riding my bike, camping, hiking and exploring. 🚶 🏕 🚵 Come winter, I’ll do a lot better with reading. Used to be in the summer, I’d go down to the park and read, 📖 but since getting the bike, I usually like to ride in the evening. And last night I spent adjusting the bike, 🔧 and reseting the wheel, before going down to Elm Avenue Park for a bit, when I ended up just writing a blog post about what I’ve been thinking a bout lately. 💭 So many things have been on my mind lately.

Blackie Rides Again 🚲

It could have been yesterday but I didn’t feel like driving to work. It’s three days off the road not the end of the world. Gave me an excuse to get in a bunch of walking yesterday, and those days are over now. Riding to work tomorrow, got meetings all afternoon downtown.

Rode out to Five Rivers 🐸 and read for a while before heading back home with darkness coming earlier and earlier. 📖 Didn’t take the fastest route back home but it’s pitch black by 8:45 at this point. Autumn is rapidly approaching. 🌃 It’s nice to be back on the road. I drove in today and it wasn’t bad except for that OGS Employee at the pump station who I wasn’t sure if he was going to back into me.  💥 I forget when you don’t drive regularly that near misses and blushes with death ☠ are a normal part of motoring. Maybe I should get that recalled passenger air bag inflator replaced. 🎈

Nice moon lit evening for sitting out back 🎑 though it’s getting late and I should head into bed 🛏 soon. Fried egg plant 🍆 with onions and tofu for dinner. Then after the ride, banana 🍌 and shredded oatmeal with some sugar free maple 🍁 syrup. Good enough of a dinner and snack. It’s really getting late and I said I would be in the office 🏢 by eight tomorrow ⏰ and damn sure I’m riding in. Once this track is done on the Peter, Paul and Mary album. 💿

I was happy as a pig 🐽 in shit 💩 that I could get baking powder in an all plastic container at Price Chopper. Not only did I need baking powder, I hate the aluminum and paper containers that after you burn 🔥 them you have to pick the aluminum out of the fire. I can also in theory recycle ♻ such things but we all known it’s a scam and in the fire it fully disappears down to nothing. Don’t tell a liberal that. I also got grapes 🍇 and bananas 🍌 so I can continue to rot out my teeth. 🦷 Smoking all that grass – all $40 of it this summer – makes me think a lot about what is right and wrong and the bull shit we all live in especially after my trip to BFE Pennsyltucky a few weeks back. 😂

I want to get out camping this weekend again 🌧️, but I don’t think the weather will cooperate though the forecast seems to be improving. I guess I don’t need that much gear for Schoharie but also I see summer fading away so quickly. 🏖 👉 🍂 And I don’t know if it will be the last summer of my youth. I’m still looking at finding a home 🏡 but then that will be it and days of travel and enjoying summer will be replaced with fixing the plaster and hauling buckets of grain out to hogs 🐽 and caring for the grass, yes the kind you smoke. That’s the only kind I approve of besides the kind out in pasture for the cattle to graze on. 🐮 One of my elementary school 🚸 colleagues is selling a batch of feeder pigs 🐖 if your interested. Never fried zucchini in bacon 🥓 fat and cannabis but I’ve heard it’s good. Next week are taking us out to 677 Prime, that hundred 💯 dollar a plate 🍽 steakhouse 🥩 and they wanted to know if I still eat meat. Housekeeping is paying. Not regularly, but there is an exception for everything. 🤷‍♂️

I have been thinking more about finding Zen. 🪷 At one time I used to think Zen was just another excuse for crass commercialism and not caring about tomorrow. But after reading 📖 and crying over the Art and Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance, 🏍 smoking some grass 🦗 and listening to the Grateful Dead 🎸, I’m starting to realize it’s something different. You can care about today while being responsible for tomorrow. I’m really hoping that a week from Friday I can get off from work and be fully off the grid and spend the day studying the clouds ⭕ all day from the tube on the East Canada Creek. It might be the last time of the year. I do plan to get to Speculator for Labor Day Weekend but I’m sure that will be a remote work trip as will be most of the autumn trips. 🍂 Now if they can only get the internet working on the snazzy work laptop. 🖥

I need a song, but the spring is for sowing
A word to the wise that the Earth must provide
A tomb to untangle the riddle of growing
First things first when you get to the land

Time Marches on into Autumn 🍂

Upcoming Sunsets:

7:45 pm sunset – Friday, August 23
7:30 pm sunset – Sunday, September 1
7:15 pm sunset – Monday, September 9
7:00 pm sunset – Wednesday, September 18
6:45 pm sunset – Thursday, September 26
6:30 pm sunset – Saturday, October 5
6:15 pm sunset – Monday, October 14
6:00 pm sunset – Thursday, October 24
Standard Time Begins – Sunset on Sunday, November 3 is at 4:46 pm
4:45 pm sunset – Monday, November 4
4:30 pm sunset – Tuesday, November 19
Earliest Sunset – Monday, December 9 at 4:23 pm
4:30 pm sunset – Thursday, December 26

Pine Creek Gorge

Durable Yes

The picnic pavlion at Seneca Mills has some rather brutalist looking picnic facilities, which I am sure is vandal resistant but probably is not real comfortable and eventually will be destroyed as the concrete ages and rebar gets exposed.

Taken on Thursday August 13, 2020 at Notes.

Delaying the inevitable ⏳

Fine, I’ll drive in today so I can pick up my bike wheel after work today. I don’t love driving into work with the shit rough city streets and traffic but I need to get the bike wheel and I can hit up the bike place on the drive home and maybe get some more bananas to enjoy at home.

Then tomorrow, I’ll ride in 🚲 as I have my downtown meeting and from there ride or bus it home. That’s probably the easiest option by far.. 🅿 It’s not like there isn’t acres of parking where I work, and it’s not like I’m more then about 8  miles away from work, and if I take the city streets to Steiner’s after work, I’ll avoid the city traffic. I’ll head in early again 🌅, try to be in the office by 8 AM so I get my legislative hours in and I can continue to work on developing new IOI Codes for targeting purposes in 2025.

I will get my bike wheel this afternoon after work, 🚲 and then get it re-installed and depending on the time maybe go out to Five Rivers Environmental Education Center or maybe just the town park. 🏞 Ride in tomorrow. That is good as I have that meeting downtown, and if it rains by evening, I’ll take the bus home. 🚌 Really looking forward to getting the bike back on the road again this afternoon.

Been studying my car insurance policy, 🔎 to understand why my rates went up so much over the past six months – – nearly 25%. A lot of it’s inflation, how expensive cars have become with all the mandated safety gadgets and electrification, how crowded the roads have become in big cities, and climate change. 🌎 People don’t want to believe this climate change shit is real, but between the wildfires and floods, a lot of cars are getting prematurely junked and insurance is paying out. I need to reconsider my $200 deducatable comphrensive and $500 collision, those deductibles are much too low for such an old vehicle, and with inflation that ain’t much money.

The thing about monkeying 🙊 with comprehensive deducatable, is it doesn’t save much as that is a relatively small part of the bill, and there are always so many deer 🦌 out there on the highway I’ve come close to hitting in the past. Maybe I should adjust collision up to $1,000 but with car prices these days, I am not sure I want to drop it all together, as my truck still has some trade in value unless it’s wrecked — even if I know inevitably I have to replace it in the next year or so..