Good morning! Well we made it to Thursday.

Sometimes the best laid plans don’t go plan especially if you intentionally sabotage them. I should have dealt with the truck issues weeks ago, but I didn’t and now it’s too late for West Virginia, although I guess I had never really seriously planned to go there this autumn. But I now am working on alternative plans, including a three or four day weekend this weekend.

Partly cloudy and 64 degrees at the Delmar, NY. There is a north breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 60 degrees. The skies will clear around 10 am.

Yesterday, I made call to Watkins Spring and they told me they couldn’t schedule an appointment until mid-October, as their machine is down. So it looks like am scheduled for October 14th, which was the week I was planning to go to West Virginia. I really need to get new tires on my truck, especially before such a long trip, but I waited and waited on the alignment. It was stupid on my part, but I just wasn’t sure what I really wanted to do. It was just a phone call I should have made weeks ago, but I really hate to spend the money. Not on the alignment, but all the certain to be found other broken parts and then those big 35 inch tires, which I like. Needs to get done though. I am not going to bother to order the tires until the alignment is done, because that would be silly. So I’m looking at November.

But in the mean time, I’ll probably plan some smaller weekend trips around town. I am thinking about a four day weekend up to Piseco-Powley this weekend as it looks warm, or maybe start a few nights up at Stewart Landing to paddle and float around there in the tube, while we still have warmish weather. Then maybe another trip somewhere later in September or early October. The tires are still legal, but they are getting increasingly dry rotted, and they are cupped and loud. I think I can get through November, but I need better tires come winter and state inspection late in November. I shouldn’t have delayed forever — but hopefully the snow will hold off until later this year, so I can plan other trips come November. If I stay in New York, I have my hunting license — maybe the Finger Lakes National Forest would be a nice spring board off to other nearby forests. I actually am a big fan of November camping.

I could still go down to West Virginia come November, but I don’t know. I am kind of bored with it, although I still want to explore Dolly Sods more. Maybe this year in November or next. I do need to a bit careful with vacation time — I didn’t accumulate as many credited hours this year working from home, and next year maybe quite busy. Honestly though, I don’t if I really wanted to go down there — I procrastinated and procrastinated — suggesting it wasn’t something I cared about that much. Plus money is always so god-damn tight all of the time. I’m just so focused on the future, that it’s hard to justify more spending today, especially for a meaningless vacation that would be over in a week. West Virginia was fun the first few times, but now it’s kind of all the same. Some point I want to get farther south in that state, and check out the New River Gorge, but I just don’t see that happening this year.

It really is the fault of my damn anxiety 🙄 especially when it comes to all things money 💵 and repairs. 🛠 If I were to bite the bullet sooner things would be better 🙈 but it’s so easy to put off until tomorrow. I just keep thinking about the future 🔮 and the better life of tomorrow, knowing that time ⌚ and constant saving will get me there eventually.

Other than that I installed a new app on my phone 📱 to track my steps but with the rain last night I only got in around 8,000 for the day. 🚶 I was surprised that my morning walk is only about 4,000 steps. I always thought that it was more. It certainly rained hard last night.

I got watching a series of videos about programing in Qt. 🖥 Lately I’ve just become really interested in computers and how they work. I know the Qt GUI API from my years writing little plugins to automate mapping in QGIS. The C++ API and signal are slots method is almost the same as with Python which I normally use for writing plugins. I’m almost 40, I don’t care if people think I’m a computer geek 🤓 but I like being able to automate processes and learn more about computers. But still I refuse to get internet at home 📶 and I have relatively little technology besides my smartphone and my five years old laptop.