Personal

So the DMV so urgently reminded me in the email, yeah, you’ll get Big Red‘s plates on Monday when I’m back downtown for work. I would unsubscribe to the DMV emails but they don’t make easy, requiring them to give you you’re drivers license number, social security number, the last sixty-two state elections you voted in including primaries and other things you have to dig through your wallet. No one click to opt-out! With the DMV, we’re the government, we don’t have to follow the opt-out law.

Yesterday was cold and windy, 🌬️ so I just stayed home and mostly slept though did a bit of reading and thumbing through social media and watching videos. It was warm under the covers, and I didn’t want to sit up in the cold. 🥶 I could totally turn up the heat, but I didn’t really want to and I didn’t sleep all that well on my parents couch 🛋️ on New Years Eve. They were up late and I just got up early instinctively yesterday. Today does look better weather wise with no wind and slightly warmer temperatures assuming it’s not super cloudy. 🌥️ Honestly I hate these long winter weekends with the holidays away from work, they drag on so slowly. Give me extra long weekends in wilderness, hell yeah, but not when it’s 20 degrees and windy and dark 16 hours of the day.

Truth is I am just kind of processing through all of it after losing Big Red. 🛻 I know it’s just a truck and I shouldn’t care as they made millions of them in the past, and I’ll buy myself a nicer, bigger truck in a few months, but there will never be another Big Red. It seems weirdly odd to look out at the driveway and see no Big Red, though he’s still sitting there perched on the hill next to barn until spring when I unpack him and get tired of inquiries from every bro with a welder and bondo that see a cheap nice lifted truck for sale without a shit ton of miles. 🥽 Honestly, the angle iron and tube steel probably isn’t that expensive for an experienced welder who has the skills to make the repairs on the truck.

All you could hear was the wind yesterday, 🌬️ and I wasn’t inspired to head out anywhere on my bike and the library was closed for New Years Day. Today though I will probably ride out to Five Rivers mid-morning,  🐦 just for scenery and some exercise, and to check out the birdies. I have my laptop home this weekend, 🖥️ which is unusual but I wasn’t sure if I would need it on Wednesday evening to get on the VPN, so I’ll go to the library which is open 9-9 today. But first maybe some weed and giggles with coffee. ☕ I realized I should have gotten more coffee when I was Walmart on Wednesday, but I will ride down to Hannaford on Saturday or Sunday and get coffee and few other supplies. Also cookies for a birthday in the office. 🍪 I realized while I did get a ton of flour, cornmeal, beans and rice, before taking the plates off Red, I didn’t think a lot of other things I will need. One of my hopes is not having a vehicle I will end up eating less groceries and spending less, as it will become more difficult to get them.

Monday I’ll return my plates to DMV, 🪪 if they can hold them that’s great or if they destroy them, it’s not that much work to change over the license plate with the EZ-Pass, as I’m going to have to update the Make & Model regardless on the website. Six more digits to type on keyboard. Even I do get a new rig at the end of March or early April, it still will mean I’ll get a few hundred dollars back from my auto insurance, when plate re-registration fees are going to be a few hundred less then that, and regardless that’s something the dealer pays out of his part of the “deal” when I buy a new truck. 💰 I just don’t want to get another vehicle until salt season is done, it’s just not worth it, especially as winter camping kind of sucks and there are other ways to get rid of trash and get my laundry done. I fucking hate landfills, washing garbage for fake recycling, and all this stupid plastic in general even if it does make bright flames. 🔥 I must have clicked on an ad for Bunkee Houses and now I’m getting a ton of ads for prefab cabins and timber frame buildings, and I like those options but maybe not in New York State where I make my money and get harassed by aggreviated harassers known as the Department of Motor Vehicles. Are you sure you don’t want to get that 20-year old Honda Civic now?

Honestly, I just need time even though everybody is pressuring me to go buy that 20-year old Honda Civic now. 🚘 Dad was asking, yet another time, when I planned to go car shopping? That and buy the plastic house. Plastic houses after all are appreciating assets, in theory, assuming the market and your local neighborhood is going the right way and you spend enough time and money throwing away and replacing shit. 🔨 I am not so opposed to buying used, but it sure seems to be risky to be laying down $50,000 or $60,000 on somebody else’s clunker or a dealers’ lemon. And then having to spend a day negogating an uncertain price, and then having to get permission to have the truck for a day to drive to my shop for them to look over and tell me how badly I’m getting ripped off. 🧑‍🔧 Maybe the exception I would consider is a dealer loaner car – 3/4 ton and 1 ton well optioned pickups are all very over priced and not selling well these days – and a surpising number of them end up rotting on the lot for six months until the dealer uses them as loaner vehicles for a year leased from Ford one or two years before selling them used. But do I want a ginormous crew-cab with a 8-foot bed behind it even if it milks your cows as you drive down the road that is still a sensor gets dirty and fills the dash board with dire emergency flashing lights?

Apparently, I was reading, the manufacturers allow the dealers to rent unsold inventory for a year or two before transitioning them to the used market as a way to get rid of unsellable pickups. 🤔People don’t want big gassers these days, as if you have SuperDuty money, most people want the diesel for the towing, diesel for fuel economy and diesel sound. Especially the up trim models. But diesels are so sluggish on hills, heavy pigs to drive when you aren’t hauling hogs, hard to start in cold, and have so much emissions crap these days. The thing is pricing is confusing, to sell more new models, often dealers mark up used prices to new levels or slightly below it but I just need to ask about the actual out the door price. Also, it seems like dealers still have a lot of 2025s left – again for regular cab long beds – because they don’t sell well. Regardless, I have time to look and think as winter progresses. As I like to say, time is on my side. Just need to keep studying the auto industry, buying strageties and the ins and outs of SuperDuty pickups. I’ve pretty much crossed GM off the list, and definately not Dodge these days, so that basically only leaves Ford unless I get one of those tiny crew crap Toyota Taco with the six-foot bed that is only 4″ shorter then a long-bed regular cab F-350. 🤷‍♂️

My dentist canceled the cleaning appointment for next Thursday, 🦷 Which ain’t the worst thing ever, because it was at 7 AM when it’s still dark out so my choices were either to take a 6:35 AM bus there in the darkness and wait 15 minutes in the cold and dark until they opened or ride my bike there in cold and dark of January morning before sunrise.🚍 Neither seemed like good options but I said to myself I’d make it work, bundle up, get off a few stops early and do it. On my list to do today. Probably mornings are better, as then I can ride or hop a bus to work after that, even if I do end up transferring to another city bus when the shuttle ain’t running mid-afternoon.

Also had a minor freak out 🤯 when I thought I one of my investment accounts was being hacked into yesterday, after getting notification that an old email alias was expired then getting notification of a pending change to one of my investment accounts – turned out to be just a change reflecting the 2026 IRA limits. When I was dealing with that, I figured out how to use a mobile deposit to finish off my 401k rollover conversion to an IRA as that was something to get off my list before the end of the year. A few years back I left state payroll to work for the campaign committee, and did a 401k there to avoid paying so much in taxes, 💵 but you now company 401k plans are garbage compared to what you can do independently but they have definate tax advantages.