I think that’s what the occasional clicking noise I am hearing downstairs, especially now that I’m noticing it with what sounds like the slowing of the refrigerator compressor. I noticed things weren’t as frozen solid this morning in the freezer.

Out for the morning walk in the cold ❄️. Still very much winter outside. But I really like the morning walk 🚶 and today wasn’t quite as bitterly cold. First day of the legislative session, traffic is backed up going through the Plaza. 🏫

Last night I walked around the plaza until 6:15 PM, as I participated in the Save the Pine Bush Zoom meeting. 📹 Came home and had dinner, investigated the clicking noise, started to clean out around the refrigerator. After listening 👂 a while to the refrigerator, noting the compressor slowed after that occasional click, I am sure that is what it is. The refrigerator was manufactured in April 1994, so it’s 31 years old and it’s a no name Roper brand, so I’m sure it’s tired and old. Back in 1994 was I was in fifth or sixth grade and that was a long time ago.

Going to email the landlord and request refrigerator service on Monday. 🔧  I don’t like the fact that the new landlord isn’t reachable by phone in emergency, but the flip side is I can submit service requests in writing, which means no uncomfortable conversations and protects my rights. ✍️ This weekend I’ll use it to scrub down the kitchen and clean out the refrigerator. I don’t have that much stuff in the refrigerator right now, and if it’s not keeping it’s cool, it’s certainly cold out enough this time of year, I can load up a cooler and stick the frozen goods in my truck, and use the freezer with ice blocks. I’ve been needing to do some good cleaning, 🧼 as that did not get done while I was so sick 🤒 over the Christmas holiday. I turned the temperature lower on the fridge before work and put some of the freezer stuff in the cooler but I’m not hopeful about the refrigerator.

One advantage to renting is that I won’t be immediately out of $1,000 plus bucks for the refrigerator, though I’m sure rent will probably be going up in June when I get notice next month. As much as don’t like how my rent went up to $800 last June, I’m paying well below market rate at this point for the Albany area, but that’s in part because I’ve lived here so long and things are diapolated. 💰 Of course this means the landlord will discover how dumpy this apartment is and how I haven’t always taken perfectly good care of it or kept it clean, but the worse that can happen is I have to move to some place less dumpy after 17 1/2 years. That said, I doubt they’ll kick me out, as I’ve always paid my rent on time. And the last service call to the landlord 📞 was four years ago.

That said, I was much too upset about the refrigerator calling it quits after 31 years, 🍏 as I never like the landlord over to see how much I’ve trashed the building over the years but the truth is it’s not all my fault that I should have been more proactive about the mold issue and the leaky sink traps a decade and a half ago. Things would be a lot rusty and dirty but regardless the unit is due for renovation as everything in there is probably three decades old and it’s not like I ask for every little thing to be perfect 👌. Plus I make good money and have been saving and investing for a decade now and my net worth is fairly good for my age, and I could go out and buy a house with cash tomorrow if I sold some stock and that’s  what I really wanted. 🏡

I just suffer from a sort of imposter syndrome at times. 😯 While I don’t watch the news 📰 every day, I’m well aware of all the risks out there from scammers, criminals, tax men and the cops. 👮 There are a lot of people out there who want to tear you down and whack you over in the head. 🥊 It’s tough taking over an agency, supervising employees many of whom have decades more experience. Plus everybody is lobbying you for their pet projects and I have my own. 🐶 Most of my supervisors and colleagues work five miles away downtown. 🏢I try to protect myself however I can but there is so much scary things out there in the world. 👻 And the spector of homelessness always crosses my mind.

I was excited that one of the big commercial vendor contracts came through at work, 💾 and we got a big data dump to upload into our database and link to the content. I am envisioning making our agency a big data powerhouse that empowers the Assemblymembers to do relevant, targeted communications in all forms, based on a wide variety of information on the constituencies that they represent. So much data to link together and tag. 🔖I actually really like that part of the job as it’s interesting linking 🔗 data together, cleaning and processing it. Far more interesting than address corrections and running district wide lists. 📃

Yesterday, I was actually processing Plattsburgh State Students data 🎓 and noticing how many of the current year students were born in 2005 and 2006 the years when I attended Plattsburgh State. It’s hard to think it was that long ago. Yesterday was mom’s 76th birthday and dad is turning 78 this year. 👴 I was thinking that 31 year old fridge represents a time period between now and my 73rd birthday 🎂. My god time goes by quickly. 18 years ago today, I was an intern with than Assemblymember Joe Morelle, that Rochester polymath and power broker. Doesn’t seem that long ago these days. That short guy with his Italian 🇮🇹 mouth scared the shit out of my little intern eyes. Come the 29th I’ll be only 13 years from my 55th birthday and if I want to hang my hat 🎩 up from the state at that point I certainly can. But first I really want to expand the targeting capacity of my agency.