Boy, oh, boy I can’t wait until the machine learning algorithms eat up that blog headline and serve me up a constant stream of advertising for mattresses and depression treatment. See what you need is Better Help!
I don’t know why I find targeted advertisements to be so triggering, they get so much wrong about my by drawing often poorly interpreted internet activity into conclusions that ignore the complexity of how I view things and my natural curiousity to click on links that interest me. Plus I sure like trolling advertisers and confusing algorithms. And I’m not into modernity, I rather like that old music as I don’t want to spend all my pleasure time dwelling on the problems of today. Take me to a far away place, a distant land in my recreational persuits.
I survived today at work by consuming fewer cups of coffee this morning, no caffeine pills and only one cup of coffee in the house office not two!, instead drinking more water. The bike trail with all that rough ice on it was miserable to ride, I really should have taken in Corning Hill but I don’t like riding the road with all the traffic compared to the bike trail. The rough bike trail ride made me about twenty minutes late again, despite leaving earlier then I do in normal conditions. I wiped out on the very slippery ice under the Livingston Avenue Railroad bridge – that part was so slick with the ice – but didn’t rip my jeans or skin my knee but my legs and arms were a sore throughout the day. The rough ride meant my frozen vegetables and tofu was spilled out all over my bag and the bananas I packed were pretty pulverized. At least it was not real cold. Took the express bus home.
I continue to watch with intrigue and horror with the shit show going down in Washington DC and even Albany, noting it’s all one big ball of wax and power brokers playing a million different angles I can’t see. Don’t think for a minute the Congestion Pricing, Mayor Adams, Immigration Raids, State Budget 30 days Admendments, Prison Strikes aren’t all kind of twisted together. Not that all cards are shown, I’m sure the power brokers gave many secret thingd up their sleeves – and many more things they don’t know about the other parties. The world is changing for good or bad, but I’m kind of glad to be further removed from it all, looking at it from the data department up in Menands. I’m concerned but not as horrified as many liberals as the old way of doing things was broken and somebody had to try something new to get the world out of its terrible rut it’s in as we flail towards climate catastrophy as costs are passed along to all by inflation and higher insurance premiums. I’m sure there’s is so much deal making going on behind the scenes that we may never know about unless the next Robert Caro is in the making.
I plan to get to sleep fairly tonight. No sleeping pills tonight. No reading that library book on Off Grid Living at 3 AM. No watching a homesteader on YouTube at 4 AM wide awake but still dreaming. Not busting up my knee tomorrow! Busing it in tomorrow. Going to be cold and snowy! I just need some time in the mountains, some time in the wilderness next to a fire, breathing in that fresh air all night long. I really miss spending time in the mountains, really the last time I got anywhere beyond a quick Sunday trip out to my parents house was mid January over Martin Luther King Day. Sleep will come easier in a month or two, once I get my windows back open again and I can spend more time in the wilderness once again. Riding to work helps, especially time spent down in the gorge but I need more, once it’s warm out, can really enjoy the evenings and listen to the crickets and the sounds of the wilderness once again. It might be different if I had land now, but I don’t think the typical suburbanite home even in a little hick town that smells like cow shit would make me any bit happier than my dumpy old apartment. But as I said many times, deep rural places like below with mountains are too far from work and it’s still all New York. I will get there, I keep saving and investing both money and in my self, doing the best I can to constantly be learning, building skills and getting thee.
My mind is so fried. I need mountains and a fire, so far away from it all. Away from Albany, far away. Nights in the wilderness. Those days will happen but it’s so far away. I need a vacation but not to Europe or Asia but to some little roadside site up in the woods. Those cute goat pictures on the homesteading pages though on Facebook are cute but I know it’s never that way in real life – it’s all manure, parasites and breaking the ice in frozen water troughs as the hogs at 3 am break out for the ninety-nineth time.
after all that coffee and pills I took yesterday. I quit the coffee early yesterday but I still think I had over a gram or so caffeine so while I did doze off around 10:15 PM I was awake by about two and on and off through a little before 6 AM when I finally got up and drank more coffee. 
I just get tired of doing the same laps around the Concourse each evening then catching the local bus home. I might do the express this evening or maybe I’ll ride home, it depends how shit the rail trail is when I head in. Certainly it maximizes my exercise riding out of the hollow, but the 8 3/4 mile slog through the snow plus 2 miles back to the express bus stop downown is decent exercise. Then once I’m home, I can have dinner and go to bed without having to think about an evening walk or anything exercise. Plus it saves at least a $1.30 or $2.60 if I ride both ways. Not going to make me rich but that will buy at least two to four basic white eggs in those Styrofoam containers that burn so black up in wilderness. 
I do hope to get away this weekend so badly. 
I don’t know, though there is a lot of snow and it’s going to be fairly cold.
pancakes 
this morning for breakfast with frozen blueberries. Not a bad breakfast, filling with oatmeal and whole wheat flower, and one of those all so expensive eggs. 
I feel sorry for all those bakeries. 
My mom says she has a friend who wouldn’t bake their kid a cake because of the two eggs, that cost about a buck, in the batter. And my mom was hesitant to have olive oil with bread, 
as apparently it’s been a while since she last bought olive oil and got sticker shock. It’s silly, eggs and olive oil are a relatively small part of any shopping bill, especially if your filling your cart 
with unhealthy and expensive ultra processed foods. 
which should be fun to analyze and upload into the system. I always find ways to keep busy at wok, developing new products and analysis of the data. It makes the days go by quickly and it’s always fun to be finding ways to link new records together. DuckDB is such an awesome tool, and with most of state voter file geocoded at this point 
it’s pretty easy to overlay whatever using a few lines of R and create whatever tagging I need to create. Then I have more data to link from the Comptroller’s office and Education Department. Plus some Zillow data. 
as not only do I not like paying the heat bills, I really don’t love all the ice and snow on the bike trail or riding in on such a cold morning. 
probably next to a fire 
. While inevitably the black flies lie in waiting, it is still good to think of those days floating down the East Canada Creek.
That and rental cars, which granted, if I were to take a plane somewhere 
I’d probably have to rent a car, as they’re best way to escape the cities. 
But I’d be loathed to stay at any campground or motel. Staying at motels reminds me too much of work, even if there have been some fun times with colleagues in past drinking too much beer 
and smoking grass, and pretending I’m passed out on the floor when county sheriff 
is knocking on the motel door. Those were the days, I think the statue of limitations have passed at this point, but I can’t imagine surving such a hang over at my advanced age of 42. 
Though not as old as advertisers think I am with all those ads for Travel for the Decript Individuals. And so many promises of cabin vacations. But I don’t want to rent a cabin or stay on a farm, 
I want to own one. 
is doing a good job 
and I guess it was worth it. Wasn’t a lot of money 
but I hate buying more crap like that you know is going to wear out in a relatively short period of time. Still it’s probably worth it to avoid losing my teeth at relatively young age. 
I don’t care if my teeth are straight, a bit yellow or even had black tar on them last summer from the marijuana and the coffee 
