Personal

Foggy, colorful start to Saturday 🌁

|

I’m heading up to Indian Lake today to check out the Moose Festival and then ride around the Essex Chain Lakes and do some work at the library. In some ways tomorrow’s programs seem more interesting and the weather better tomorrow but I still think today I want to head up there and tomorrow do Little Otter Lake.

Didn’t stay up that late last night as I was tired 😴 and I awake so early. ⏰ I was out of bed around six o’clock this morning and made coffee and eggs. ☕ Watched the beautiful sunrise 🌅 and are getting things tidied up before heading heading up to Indian Lake to ride 🚲 and explore the Great Moose Festival 🦌. Going to be a nice day though ultimately it depends on how clear it is later on in the morning. Yesterday was actually quite warm once the fog burnt off.

Probably walk around the Moose Festival First this morning, 🦌 then go down to the library to do work then ride for the balance of the day. I’ve never been back to Essex Chain Lakes, there is a lot to explore back there. 🐻 Probably will be crowded, but I figure on the bike, I can hopefully avoid the crowds. 👪 We will see how things go.

Not as quite as colorful up north as I hoped, and this morning is a bit cloudy, ☁ but i’m hoping it will improve as the day goes on. Still it’s nice to get away for a bit this weekend, even if it’s a bit of a working weekend as I election day creeps closer and there is always more data jobs to run. But it’s fine, I have my cell service, my laptop and solar power. So things are good.

I got off on one of my rants about retarded individuals being used as useful idiots 🤡 for the plastics industry, as every time you see the meme about an orange packaged in plastic 🍊, I like to point out that it’s retards being useful idiots. I’m sure thats somewhat the case, and I find it hilarious as I think we are way too sensative around the feelings of the disabled ♿. I’m fine with reasonable accommodations but often they go too far and disability is an excuse for not legitimately trying. Sorry, I’m a broken person 😔, I’m mentally ill 🤪 and I’m handicapped 🩼 so I can’t be expected to lift a finger 🖕 to help myself.

Of course the funny thing about mocking all the plastic 🧴 is that I burn most of my garbage up in the woods 🔥, so I haven’t recycled ♻ any plastic or paper all summer, though I did a bucket of burnt out tin cans 🥫 and scrap metal to my parents recycling bin a few weeks back. But burning it works for me and it often makes an excellent fire starter to boot. 👢

I can’t believe how the days have gotten so short and colorful 🍂

|

Already the woods is starting to get the browns and grays start to overtake the remaining green in the Adirondacks. It was only 46 degrees driving north this morning to Speculator. And at 6:30 it’s getting dark fast. And Tuesday is October.

It was an early start to the morning ⏰ though I was running late on my trip up to Speculator because I had trouble getting going this morning and the fog 🌫 at times on the drive up here was pretty intense. It was fine, I stopped at Samdills on the way north, got sweet corn 🌽 and egg plant, 🍆, they’re done with summer squash for the year. Had lot of winter squash and pumpkins 🎃 but I’m not going to cook that up at camp.

The fog was awful driving up especially around Gloversville, 🌫 nobody was using their headlights with their black and silver cars and they were all but invisible. Made it up north safely but it was not a fun drive at times. 🚘 Didn’t get dinged for any braking or speeding events this time.

Got to the Speculator library around 9:30 and plunged into work. 🖥 By then I had over a dozen data jobs to process and 🔢 a campaign plan to review along with a handful of mailers. ✉ I’d get one data job done and start the next. I headed over to Harmon Hill around one o’clock to set up camp 🏕 which I did while data jobs were running or while I was waiting for more info on targets and requests to come in. Surprisingly as most of my work these days is data processing, I really don’t use that much data as text compresses 🗜 really well plus they keep giving me more data for my phone 📱 plan.

I am just shocked 😲 how much of the leaves are gone in the Adirondacks after yesterday’s rain ☔. Autumn is well underway around here, regardless of how green it might be in Albany. But it was in forties driving up 🚘 here this morning and the days have certainly gotten shorter, especially now that there is more night 🌃 then daylight at this point. The day was pretty warm with the sun ☀ but once it set, things cooled down quickly for sure.

Checking Moose Festival in Indian Lake 🦌 out tomorrow and then riding back to the Essex Chain Lakes. 🚲 And maybe Watch Hill if time allows, which it won’t. Sunday riding through Perkins Clearing and hiking back to Little Moose Lake. Going to be a nice day I think.

Good Luck Lake

|

Just a video down by Good Luck Lake, showing one of the campsites and the view across the lake.

Kay Moor – American Byways

|

Kay Moor – American Byways

Kay Moor, West Virginia, is a former company town for the Low Moor Iron Company. At its peak, it included a coal mine and processing plant. The town was named after James Kay, a Low Moor Iron employee who was responsible for its construction at the base of the mountain.

Anxiety 🙄

|

I really know it’s dangerous to label oneself as it pigeon holes oneself. But yesterday was crazy in so many ways, 41 days before Election Day, getting ready to head up to the Adirondacks for a long weekend of color, that is cannabis-enhanced, 12-hour working days into the darkness with my laptop, writing and running R scripts like a crazed monkey, did I mention it’s all so beautiful.

The internet advertisers absolutely love 😍 the fact that I am researching topics like anxiety, paranoia, and schizophrenia. 🧠 Mostly because I fear bad trip, more then anything else. But still, they just see dollar signs. 🤘My gawd the neighbor is smoking 🚬 some of that burnt rubber cannabis today and that shit stinks like a hunk of rubber smoldering in a burning barrel. Why smoke such stuff when there is so much more enjoyable cannabis out there these days? 🤮I guess everybody has their own way. Truth is I’m just curious and interested in ways to enhance my mind and psychoactive substances and what a load of bull crap much of the psychological industry really. Mental health is a lot like smoking pot – it’s all what you put into it. Things have no meaning unless you put meaning into it. 🤪 Giggling is a good thing.

The earlier bus 🚍 downtown was running early and I missed it and the later bus was really late so I missed the shuttle 🚀 over to the Enterprise. Oh well. I don’t have anything super pressing to do in the office and I was there early on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tomorrow and Monday I’ll be remote from the Adirondacks. 🍁 Looking forward to the beautiful weekend up north. I got my hose last night for the heater, actually two five foot sections of hose. ♨️ Going to be cool up north so the heater will be nice on those chilly mornings 🌅 for sure!

Maybe I’m not such a good driver as I like to tell myself. 💥 I actually I rate myself below average, and yesterday was a well below average day at any rate with multiple hard braking incidents. I almost smacked another car, or at least I had to hard brake, trying to make the left turn out of the cannabis dispensary in Menands, and then there was that traffic light I hard braked for on Western Avenue, and I hope I didn’t go too fast through the unfamiliar construction site – school zone 🚸 now with speed cameras along Western. I doubt I was doing 20, though I think you have like a 10 or 12 MPH margin, and I was certainly not going that far, as there is also a red light 🚦 camera there, so I was driving carefully. Then there was that stop sign on Erie Boulevard I almost ran, 🛑 as I was focused on carefully crossing though rough as duck railroad tracks 🚉 and that text message that came in.  It’s not been a good week on my motoring record, no tickets (at least assuming I didn’t blow through that school zone too fast) 🚨 but also not going to save that $50 over 6 months on my insurance based on my current driving score.

Traffic was so bad on Interstate 90 trying to get to the Pine Bush Dinner, and when I ran to the SEFCU bank at the State Office Campus 🏦 it was backed up with tons of people in the Drive-Through ATM trying to get cash out. 🏧 Hell of it is, they didn’t even have $1 and $5s at that ATM, so I got $60 out but the bills are too large, and I’ll have to go to the bank when I’m downtown this afternoon for my meeting to exchange for smaller much more useful bills. Whatever.

Decided to reduce my take home-pay by another $140 a paycheck to pay more in state and federal taxes, 💸 as realizing how much my net worth has increased over the past year, the money paid in interest  and how much I made on the blog, I am concerned I paid way too little in taxes. I could do quarterly tax payments, but they are bitch to estimate and seem more painful compared to just having them deduct more from paycheck. I would have lower tax bills if I had a brain and had put more in stocks but I was so sure this was the year I was going to buy a home or a homestead, or build my off-grid cabin. 🏡 As still one of these days I am getting closer to my eviction notice for my apartment. I worry a lot about homelessness, and I’ve actually been studying what it’s like to live on the street, but it’s kind of silly with that kind of money I have saved and invested, even after capital gains taxes and a pretty deep recession.  But good things come to people who wait, or at least the coffin does. ⚰

Should be a great weekend 🛶 still chewing over if I should bring my kayak. I think the answer is probably no as I need the solar power to work with all the time I’ll be putting in working. It’s going to be another busy weekend 🖥 but I am thinking I’ll probably drive up to the Moose Festival 🦌 on Saturday in Indian Lake and hike Watch Hill and probably Sawyer Mountain ⛰. Of course, I could park my truck in Indian Lake and ride my bike 🚲 back into the Essex Chain of Lakes. 🐸 Never been back there – would be very interesting especially with the autumn colors. 🍂