It’s kind of interesting how local people I have talked into in Maryland and Virginia – especially women – have Southern accents. In West Virginia, at least in the northern part, don’t have much of an accent or if they do its mostly a rural Midwestern accent as is common in much of Rural Upstate NY, especially the western part of the state.
Personal
Little John Wildlife Management Area
I do wish I had a woodstove 🪵
One of the first things I look at when I’ve been looking at property and houses, does the house contain a woodstove and is there wood on the land. I really do not like being dependent on natural gas or oil plus electricity for heat, getting metered and billed through direct withdrawal for every calorie produced as fuel is piped in and the planet warming emissions go out.
It would sure be nice to be able to chop my own wood, have control over how warm I am without thinking of the monetary costs. Where the only real cost would be my sweat equity, where I wouldn’t have to worry about the power going out. Plus, there is something so warm about a wood stove – the dry heat it produces – radiating out into the room. The smell of the smoke, the look of the flame in it’s rawest form producing heat.
Not as cold as I expected to start out the day ❄️
Sometimes I think the weathermen are over dramatic about the cold. If you have frost sensetive plants or crops, your going to want to harvest them or bring them in but for the rest of us I think if anything today is warmer out then yesterday.
It’s mid-October so one would expect it to be colder out, 🍁 indeed I have my heated blanket out and the windows closed. But when I ran to Stewart’s this morning to get milk 🐮 it really didn’t feel that cold on my face. There is no wind this morning, which helps a lot. I was surprised 🤨 how actually cold it felt at the end of day yesterday for the ride home from Menands. Still a fair bit of daylight left for the evening commute home, indeed I took a slightly longer route home, 🚴 but certainly by the time dinner was done it was dark.
After dinner, I crawled into bed 🛏️ and watched a Youtube video and put on a podcast and was asleep by around 8 PM. Cool enough I didn’t feel like staying up plus the heat isn’t on but that heated blanket fell so wonderful though it was quickly too hot and had to be turned off.♨️ It’s not really the cold part of winter yet. Now if I only had a house with a woodstove 🪵I probably would be willing to be up much later. But I also was tired after my first day of in-person work after being sick last week. I tell myself I am fully recovered, but my nose 👃 still runs a lot with the cold outside riding to and from work, and I still have an occasional hoarse voice 🐴 and a crackling cough. It’s not like it was but it’s not perfect either.
After getting to Stewart’s for milk, had my coffee ☕ and oatmeal-whole wheat flour pancakes. 🥞 Topped with lots of frozen strawberries and seasoned with pumpkin spice mix. 🎃 Definitely feels like mid-October this morning, very dark and gray to start out the day, but it’s supposed to clear out as the day is going. That caffine jolt is helping a lot, 😀 I am going to shower and get on my way. 🚴 I see that they are constructing the Dark Horse Cannabis dispensary on the way into the office, though I dout they’ll be open for the ride in, it’s nice to have additional options not that I buy that much cannabis but I do like to have an occassional smoke up at a camp. 🚲️ All week with the chain greased up and everything adjusted, things have been working great on the bike front. Laptop also is working pretty good now that I reset the BIOS with the new charger. 🔌 Holding off replacing the battery in the laptop for now. 🪫
Weekend still looks most excellent, ☀️ Thursday after work and meetings I’ll need to go to store and get propane and whatever other supplies I’m missing for the long weekend. 💼 Maybe I should start packing this evening so there is less to do on Thursday. Abuse some of those Caffine Pills 💊 and be off before sunrise on Friday. 🌄 Then it’s off to the land of chopped corn silage and cow shit now that autumn is underway. 🌽🐮💩 Work all day, then have that rip-roaring Friday campfire 🔥 with the Dire Wolf. 🐺 Fun times. I promise I won’t burn too much plastic or smoke too much pot, or do anything that involves 600 lb of sin. Then ride and kayak on Saturday int Sunday. At least one good adventure in colors of autumn before it’s dun. 📸 Maybe on Monday, I can remote work from Glimmerglass State Park 🏞️. It would likely be a beautiful day before heading home.
Still very troubled about voting for Trump
You know, back in 2016 I thought a lot about potentially voting for Trump. Not as a Republican but on the conservative line. Not because I love or embraced his ideas, but I like how he’s different, he gives the system a much needed kick in balls, he gives knocks liberals down a peg with a dose of reality. You can want to do something, dream about something, but ultimately if you want to do something, you just got to do it.
I think history proves that outside of the acts done by political mastermind Mitch McConnell, President Trump was an abysmal failure. Like a bullied weak child who punches the bully in the knee, Trump ended up with a black eye and a broken nose when the bully responded. As a convicted criminal myself, I like the idea of a convicted felon as President. It really knocks the whole system and it’s fake moral superiority down a notch. It exposes the raw nature of power.
I do cringe a bit thinking about the public policy proposals put forward by Trump, many are not to my liking. I mean, he’s the man who appointed Jeff Sessions, whose most famous remarks are “Good people don’t smoke pot.” I like smoking pot. I think his ideas and publicly proclaimed positions on trade are disasterous and should not be implemented. His ideas on criminal justice, immigration, renewable energy and the cities are equally bad. But he’ll be good on guns and keeping all our public lands from getting locked up as wilderness with roads and campsites closed. A lot of people I respect and admire are embracing the Trumpster.
I don’t think the world is coming to an end regardless of who becomes President. And it’s not like with the Electoral College my vote in New York counts for much at all. It will be discarded. If Trump’s elected, maybe there will be somewhat slower progress on adoption of renewable energy, some tweaks to public policy,. On the ordinary level, I doubt there will be much change to every day life whoever becomes President. He might cause a few years of indigestion to evening TV watchers, but that’s a bout it. It’s only four years, time goes by quickly, before long we will be talking about Election 2026 and 2028.
I don’t worry about America becoming more divided 🐴 🐘
The federal government will just become more and more ineffective with grid lock and states will start to do their own things. States will become more distinct in their policies, with blue states and red states relying more and more on Interstate compacts rather than the federal government. There actually is a lot of incentives for states to encourage people to freely relocate to states of their ideological persuasion, so the incumbent politicians can further cement their power and implement their desired policies.
Drinking olive oil before bed 🫒
Apparently it’s a thing. Like many things.
I guess some Italians and other health buffs like to end their evening with a shot of olive oil, because the fat helps smooth absorption of food in one’s stomach and keeps people full throughout the night. Seems kind of silly to me, but I’m getting fed a lot of targeted ads because I made the mistake of investigating fad-diet-marketers Mr. Gundry’s jacked up price olive oil, that is supposed to be low on lectins, which some people believe are super harmful. Because eating too many tomatoes is like eating too many twinkies.
I am not against olive oil, and indeed it’s my go-to fat for use in frying many things up. But I would hardly call it a health food, even if it’s one of the healthiest fats you can cook with and you need some fats in your diet. But drinking it raw, doesn’t seem all that appealing in the grand scheme of things.