I get so annoyed when I am riding the bus to work after a big snow storm and traffic is severely delayed by cars parked and abandoned in the middle of the street due to the enormous snow banks curbside along Delaware Avenue.
But it’s kind of nice after this snow storm to know I won’t have to dig out my truck or do any shoveling, as the landlord will plow the driveway and CDTA will plow out the bus stop. I don’t have to think about icy roads or the cold, I can just stumble out to the bus stop on Tuesday, keeping an eye on the real-time bus info, and just get to work with no real issues, except maybe where the bus lets you on or off in snow.
4½ miles each way, five degrees. Snowing fairly hard by the time I got home. With the cold and because I had no reason to go to Walmart, I was going to go to Price Chopper in Slingerlands but my electric toothbrush stopped working and I wanted to get are replacement as I think it does a better job then a manual toothbrush.
Truth is Market32 aka Price Chopper in Slingerlands really annoys me, both the store itself and the rich people who shop there. It has a nice produce section but I really don’t need 394 different brands of Organic Woke Brand Choco Puffs with Added Protein for $15.99. One thing I like is how they have oatmeal packaged in a lightweight plastic bag rather then the big cardboard tube it comes in at Walmart. Easier to carry and less trash, which I’m so careful about these days without having a truck or regular fires.
My fingers were so numb when I got there but the way back didn’t seem that cold. I could barely move my fingers when I got to Walmart until they warmed up. And they hurt for a while. The roads were fine both ways, though on the way home they were starting to get a bit greasy and snow covered. Took Bender Lane to Walmart, and while you’re not supposed to make a left turn there with a car, I did sneak around the median with my bike. I do like the one stop shopping and low prices of Walmart, but I do always end up spending more then I should there because of the psychological tricks they use there. Price Chopper just seem really over priced so I normally are loathe to buy that “one extra” thing, you know how that goes.
Going shopping wasn’t essential today, but I mostly wanted carrots to use in my pancakes and other meals, like bread, soups,
That and they are promising a dire emergency winter snowstorm super homeland disaster emergency. Or whatever the colored television is calling it these days. Mom got another remote for her television, and I pushed more buttons and it changed the channel on her SmartyPaints television and got to the next channel about ICE burning immigrant babies in Minnesota and how to lard up your dinner menu with more fat, salt and sugar. Or whatever they’re trashing your mind and stomach with these days.
Even with the two plus feet of snow coming, ☃️ it’s actually a nice calm morning. Still cold and in the single digits, but without the breeze it feels much warmer. 🚲 I want to get some carrots 🥕, bananas 🍌 and oatmeal so I might ride out to Price Chopper this morning, mostly because I want the exercise. I doubt I’ll be doing much riding on Monday, and probably Tuesday will be difficult to ride to work. I was looking at my credit card bill, and noticing how much I’m saving not having a vehicle, as I tend to buy less groceries due to needing to haul on bike and not having an easy way to take trash to transfer station. 🗑️ It’s so much easier in the summer when you have a fire every few days or weeks. 🔥 I haven’t bought any Greek yogurt or fake sugar-free syrup since I retired Red, in part because of the problem of getting rid of containers, as we all know especially No 5 plastic doesn’t get recycled even if you toss it in the designated bin. ⛽ And while I don’t drive much in the winter, haven’t had any gas bills since I fueled Red up at the end of year. And got $275 back from my insurance, which brought my bank emergency savings account back up to balance. 💳
Yesterday, Dad picked me up and I went out to visit the folks. 👨👨👦 It was nice to visit for a while, they made up riggis and had a little party for my 43rd birthday. 🎂 It seems like only yesterday, I was doing some camping and skiing up at Rensselearville State Forest for my birthday. How fast time comes and goes. It feels good though at this point, being in much better shape, 🫃🏻 eating healthy food 🍏, riding my bike to work much of the year, 🚲 and watching as my savings and investment grow, as I inch closer – year by year – towards retirement and owning that off-grid homestead. Going past the house next door that I toured a few years ago, the people who moved in had a rip-roaring bonfire 🔥 going yesterday before the snow. It could have been mind, but it was a werid parcel with only 5 acres, no wood stove and limited wood lot, right on the main road with another residential in holding, so not only would I have been careful what I burnt, there would be the road noise, risk of livestock getting on the road, though it did have a nice barn for pigs and goats and outdoor sink for butchering. 🐐 🗡️ But it looks like the new owners are enjoying it, and I still have the cash that would have gone into it. And honestly, I like living in city, especially now without a vehicle. ☃️ No snow to shovel or cars to clean off for me.
This morning, I am heading out to Price Chopper in a bit. 🚴 Not because I have any essentials to pick up, but I want the ride for the exercise before the snow starts to pick up. It’s cold but I want the exercise as once snow comes, it’s going to be deep and likely stick around for a while based on the forecast. 🌨️ Going to be Corning Hill for the bike ride in, and probably delayed buses on Tuesday and maybe Wednesday until the snow emergency and they get Delaware Avenue cleaned to the point where the buses aren’t blocked by cars parked way out in the middle of the road. 📚 Then I need to get some books out of the Libby or Hoopla to read, and most studying up on car buying strageties and Ford SuperDuty trucks. I don’t want to call the truck I’m buying an F-250 or F-350, as for my purposes the difference doesn’t matter much as I’m not planning to buy such a heavy trailer that I need a one-ton truck axle but if that’s what’s available in the package and price I want over the 3/4-ton truck axle, there is no difference besides a stiffer ride, as all other equipment is generally the same.
One of the areas I’ve been watching a lot of is videos of real people negogating 📺 car buys with hidden recorders, and what makes an effective deal 🤝 literally saving thousands of dollars 💵 while getting the vehicle you want. And now I’ve started to study window stickers more, and under what the various trim and features packages really mean. With those HD trucks so you have so many different configurations as people use them for everything from hauling cattle to plowing and towing trailers to the oil fields. What do I really need and want? How much do I care about appearance? How do the various features work on the modern Fords? All questions I am trying to answer. 🙋 Like while I had heard the the hill descent feature is fantastic on extremely icy roads, I had no idea how it worked. The manual lockers and hubs are great, and while I had some idea how they worked on Ford I learned a lot more watching YouTube. What tires do I want? While they’re a consumable item and OEM tires are crap even if they are AT, it’s something to consider as they’ll likely be what I’m driving on for the first four or five years of the truck’s life.
We live in a society that embraces change, especially technological change and the consumeristic possibilities that it makes possible for corporations to dove tail on and sell us things. To be anything but one who embraces change, is often seen as backwards, a luddite of sorts.
Change can be good and bad. We often describe change as progress, but is it not always the case. Sometimes a step forward really is two steps backwards. We should weigh both sides, realize that change has costs but also benefits. Change often involves the unknown. That, can be scary and threatening to one’s position and way of doing things.
Life would be boring if nothing would ever change. There would no opportunity for growth or progress. But I often get caught up in loss aversion, fearing what change means. I often over emphasize the negatives of change while ignoring the benefits. I can be a perfectionist, and when change doesn’t bring only the best be solely down on change. I’ll complain about all change brings and is below my expectations.
I don’t mean to be an eeyore, always complaining about how things are going to hell as the world changes not always for the better. Yet still, I can’t bring myself to always be looking out the happy window, embracing only the good while being blissfully ignorant of all that is lost with the change. But I do need to try to find some more balance in life, overcome my loss aversion while accepting both the good and bad of change.
