The rain stopped so I can ride to work and back, assuming the cassette isn’t acting up like it was on Wednesday night. I should look into that before leaving. I guess worse comes to worse I drive in, as I don’t know what the alternative is the bus really sucks. But I’m hoping I can ride today, as it’s the last day until Valentines Day I’ll be able to do the trip both ways due to the time change.
I made some loafs of bread up, acorn squash and black beans – and then eggs for breakfast. Just another case study on why my electric bill is so high. I haven’t turned on the heat yet for the year, though I concede at some point that will be necessary come November. It’s cold inside but I have the heated blanket, and most nights once I’m done with a hot dinner, I crawl into bed. I turned the electric blanket last night for a while as it was quite damp with the rain.
The black beans will be good for lunch today with tomatoes, onions, and broccoli. Be enjoying those black beans all weekend. I finished up the last of the 16-bean soup on Thursday, really slurped that up too quickly along with the bread and the last batch of acorn squash. So yeah I was up cooking bright and early this morning.
Drove to work yesterday. 🛻🛻 It was fine, I cut through the South End and avoid the traffic. Not sure if it’s faster taking the local streets, and some of those South End streets are complete crap bu then again the suspension in my truck s beat to shit too. I thought about stopping at Wally World yesterday, but I didn’t want to go out in the rain for stupid shit like peanut butter powder and Frank Hot Sauce when I had plenty of alternatives at home.
My truck is getting old. The license plate bulb burned out. But 15 years ago, I had another old truck and the license plate bulb burned out. Guess what I found in my drawer! A brand new 168 license plate bulb as they come in sets. From my old truck 15 years ago. I’m installing this weekend. How fast time goes by, everything is getting old.
Today will be the last night I can ride home from work, assuming there is no issues on my bike. I don’t know what was causing the skipping I noticed in the dark riding back from the Pine Bush Dinner. Hopefully it was just some junk or debris stuck in the chain or cassette. After tonight if I leave work at 5 PM going to need the lights and catch the bus the way from downtown to home. I guess it’s better then driving plus I get exercising riding in and back downtown.
There is a game going on politics that food stamps go to the poor; that they are paid to the poor. But food stamps are not cash – they are a value loaded onto a plastic card given to the exceptionally poor – and spent at retailers. The poor never see the money, and while they do get food as a side-effect of payment to retailers, mostly it is a transfer payment from the government to convenience markets and Walmart.
The people at most risk of losing food stamps are not the poor, but the retailers. The debate should be over these businesses – do they deserve so much government subsidies especially when they sell such unhealthy convenience foods to the poor? Maybe it’s time for society to move away from supporting the food stamp and instead spend that money at improving local food systems such as farmers markets and offering more public education on cooking and food preparation on a budget, that could help not the just poor but the public at large.
I was having a dream last night about the parcel of land I did a drive out in Berne last summer on that dirt road. I was thinking about that hill, and how icy that road was in winter and how unrealistic it would be to live out there and have to commute to city every day. It sure is nice to live in the city.
Still I could have seen that land as my own, my cabin up on that hill, overlooking the valley and my land and livestock. Have that nice woodstove, in a reasonably sized cabin, with simple, minimal lighting powered by solar energy. But still there would be all those state and local codes to comply with, all the laws and regulations of New York.
I have been following this Facebook account of this person who has this neat barndium cabin in Northern Maine. Beautiful dark steel exterior and wood shiplap and a woodstove and heat pump inside. He’s big into healthy eating from his videos, he has a burn barrel for his trash on his acreage and haa a tractor and a Toyota Tacoma truck. Doesn’t have any livestock. Interested in following him further.
Then there is this Facebook account of an off grid homestead in Arkansas I follow, this homesteader who has lots of livestock, goats pigs, cattle. Old house, but it’s obvious it’s all about the land and the animals. I actually like it disorderly but real. Farm equipment, feed sacks and equipment. Pans blackened from the wood smoke and gas stove.
Some day it will happen. I can retire before I know it, time goes by so quickly. If that’s the life I want to live in a small town, I’ll have the money to do it as I’m saving and investing every week.
More thoughts from that rather surreal bus ride home through the city after the Pine Bush Dinner with that hooker, transvesite or whatever that rather large lady who came running out of the homosexual bar without shoes was last night as the bus slowly but surely got me home.
Today is much to wet to ride my bike to work, 🚲 and I don’t feel like taking the local bus and shuttle to work, so I’ll drive my big jacked up truck into the office. I plan to head in around 7:40 and try to be in by 8 AM through 5 PM so I can build up a bit of extra time. Maybe on the way home I’ll pick up some Frank’s Hot Sauce in the big plastic bottle and some more sugar-free peanut butter protein powder. I’m just kind of tired of the whole city thing, I just wish I was up in wilderness 🌲 next to a fire 🔥 smoking grass.
Yesterday was everything what one would expect it to be. 🏢 Office life, work, riding to work and then up Clinton Avenue to Ontario and out Washington Ave to the Pine Bush dinner. The Schenectady County Historian gave an interesting lecture, and the lasagna was good. I had one of the left over brownies 🧁 to start my morning off with some coffee. With the rain and three days until the time change, the skies are very dark this morning. ☔ I noticed I have a license plate bulb 💡 out on my truck, I’ll have to pick up a bulb at the Auto Parts store or maybe Walmart and install it this weekend.
Been debating what my next reads should be, 📚 as the library really has a wealth of books if I know what I find interesting and will spend the hours reading and studying. Right now I have a book about wild foraging I’m reading, been thinking about reading more about elderly parents 👴🏻 and what it means to loose Mom and Dad as I fear those days aren’t that far away. Maybe also some more books about property ownership, building a house, a cabin, a homestead. 🐐 I was surprised how much little new things I learned from reading the book on Managing Manure 💩, I certainly didn’t think I was an expert on poop, but I guess I’ve learned a thing or two on nutrient management over the years. Poop and pee makes the world go round. 🌎 It’s not a just a tangy smell on one’s nose. 👃
This kind of sucks, the local is so slow and such a pain. They were running a bumpy ol’ articulated bus, and it running late and was absolutely packed. I was like, why do I put up with this crap?
Waiting for the bus after riding my bike downtown, there was some kind of drag queen or hooker who stumbled out of Albany’s Homosexual Bar waiting there with me for the bus. She was like I’m tired, I’m not wearing my shoes anymore tonight. And the bus was late. Cities have just gotten so dingy, the people have gotten so crazy, especially in the era of Trump 2.0.
The local bus was like all of the local buses. It was slow, and I had to keep a careful eye on the bike riding home to make sure no one touched it. And I was like, why the hell am I riding this bus? I can’t even keep an eye on the phone and be entertained as I got to keep an eye on the bike.
Next week with the time change, the options for getting home are either drive to work or bus to work and take the local bus home. It just sucks. And I wonder which option is worth it? Biking and busing is the cheapest option, but what is the cheapness for?
So some day I can live out in country, have a burn barrel, not wash out my plastic trash? Have livestock and hogs to feed? Be chopping wood and messing around with a malfunctioning solar and generators when there isn’t enough power in my battery bank? Aren’t I professional? Shouldn’t just drive myself to work? And buy that suburbanite home rather then renting that cheap drafty and dark dump in the suburbs?
Just another case study on why my electric bill is so high. I haven’t turned on the heat yet for the year, though I concede at some point that will be necessary come November. It’s cold inside but I have the heated blanket, and most nights once I’m done with a hot dinner, I crawl into bed. I turned the electric blanket last night for a while as it was quite damp with the rain.
Be enjoying those black beans all weekend. I finished up the last of the 16-bean soup on Thursday, really slurped that up too quickly along with the bread and the last batch of acorn squash. 
So yeah I was up cooking bright and early this morning.
The license plate bulb burned out. But 15 years ago, I had another old truck and the license plate bulb burned out. Guess what I found in my drawer! A brand new 168 license plate bulb as they come in sets. From my old truck 15 years ago. I’m installing this weekend. How fast time goes by, everything is getting old.
assuming there is no issues on my bike. I don’t know what was causing the skipping I noticed in the dark riding back from the Pine Bush Dinner. Hopefully it was just some junk or debris stuck in the chain or cassette. 
After tonight if I leave work at 5 PM going to need the lights and catch the bus the way from downtown to home. 
I guess it’s better then driving plus I get exercising riding in and back downtown.
