Feel your way, feel your way like the day before
Maybe you’ll find direction
Around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet

It’s like the fog 🌫 of war, I tell myself as I pull solid twelve hours ⏳ keeping it all together the best I can, keeping it all together, keeping the data flowing mostly smoothly down the pipelines like any good plumber. Lists 📃 keep flowing to Mailworks and other requesters with only a few hiccups here and there. While I joke 🃏 about being the head of janitorial services at times with the crap data I sometimes get, once the code is written and field names don’t change, things flow down the pipelines assuming I remember to feed them into the queue, inspect said send the outputs along without too many mistakes. That’s why you use lots of assertions and sanity checks ☑ in your code to save your ass. 🐴

Traffic is really backed up on Southern Boulevard today 🚦but the express was a bit early and the early shuttle 🚀 to Menands doesn’t leave until 8:25. I wish I had my bike 🚲 back but the shop isn’t open until Wednesday but hopefully I’ll get it back tomorrow. I’m leaning towards heading to Vermont after work on Thursday and working remote from camp on Friday and maybe Monday. 🏕 It’s tough as I have so much work and those 12 hour days are tough on the solar to keep things charged up and working. Noontime I have to take the shuttle back downtown for my lunch time meeting. 🔀 It’s going to be another busy day.

Heading home I got a call from an old friend. He saw I was out in Rensselearville and was thinking about potentially buying land out that way to build my off-grid cabin. He’s been giving me a lot of ideas, as a homesteader outside of Greenville. He’s been working on getting his pistol permit, 🔫 and regretting buying in Albany County because the judge has up to 6 months to consider it, and it’s not easy to get all the paperwork together, and county doesn’t make the process easy to do. He really wishes he bought land in a more conservative-leaning county, which at least they would review his permit quicker, especially after all the time and money he’s gotten the paperwork together. Plus the class doesn’t really focus on markmanship or using a firearm for hunting purpose, 🦌 just the law and very limited self-protection allowed under New York law. I kind of get the idea he really regrets buying in Albany County.

We got talking about homesteading and growing cannabis. 🐐 🪴 I had no idea he smoked or that he raised it in his garden. A lot more good people enjoy a little toke here and there, then the politicians want to admit. He’s a big time bowhunter and a homesteader, we got talking about goats and livestock. And what bull shit New York is to live in with the gun laws. Truth is I really don’t want to buy land in New York and I really don’t want to live here any longer then necessary, but I make such good money and love my work, 💰️ relatively speaking, but it ain’t what it once was with inflation and I sure work some long hours. I do wish I lived his life and he’s a bit jealous of me too, with all my travel. It’s just so many long days, him with his small business and me with my directorship of a state agency unit.

I guess after all that I got a few minutes asleep. 🛏 Sleep didn’t come easy after that phone call 📞 and working late into the evening working on more data jobs and finishing my edits on a campaign plan. 🖥 I’m so bothered by so many things these days, trapped in my indecision. I ended up watching a video on Love Canal 🛢️☠️ and then the former Hooker Chemical office tower in downtown Niagara Falls tha was part of the big state-funded urban renewal project back when Senator Earl Brydges was the long-time majority leader, followed by Senator George Martinez, another power broker that brought home plenty of bacon. 🥓