The past few days have been one of introspection, maybe as a way to avoid worry and fear – as I really have no reason to fear the future. While things aren’t perfect in my apartment, I have done a fair amount of cleaning, washing and dusting of things and I’m ready to invite my landlord in to get the refrigerator repaired or more likely swapped, as it really isn’t that much fun at 5 AM to be wandering out to your dark truck to rummage around for things in the cooler.

I will put the request in for the repair to the refigerator once get in the office. I am sure they’ll probably just swap out the unit, the compressor most certainly has died after putting in a good thirty plus years of keeping food cold. Things are better then they were, but a lot of deficiencies aren’t my fault – yes I tracked in a lot of mud and grease and oil from the bike and other equipment repairs sometimes dripped on the carpet that is so thread bare it’s worn out in multiple places on stairs – the mold and cracked paint is in part due to leaks I should have gotten fixed sooner. But it’s not my place to maintain, and I don’t want to be a demanding tenant as I enjoy my affordable rent as it means more money to invest and save towards retirement. Not for frilly things, but the homestead I really want. Still actually have some humidity issues in the apartment but they’re not like they once were after I started demanding more repairs with the old landlord in 2021 based on the advice of my psychoanalysist. Certainly if I could go back to my mid-twenties, I would have tried to keep things cleaner and kept on my landlord to keep repairs up, but I was a deer-in-the-headlights recent graduate from college and I wasn’t going to raise my voice, get evicted and charged a bunch more for rent. I’ll be 42 in 16 days.

It’s nice having things a lot cleaner, though every where I look I still find areas I could improve. Then again, cleaning isn’t a one time thing, it’s a process. And it’s good to learn more about cleaning chemicals, as many if not most of the properties that I have even a marginal interest in our clearly in the fixer-upper status. Few real homesteads I’ve seen are in good shape, certainly not the glossy suburban homes that you often see for top dollars. And it ain’t even a money thing in my mind, it’s what available. Yes, you can buy the perfectly clean and maintained place if you want to pay top dollar and live in the suburbs, but if that’s not what you want, the other option is a fixer-upper, assuming you don’t build on “raw land”.

Truth is I probably should have moved out a long time ago, but I enjoy biking and busing it to work. Even though I now work in the suburbs and certainly could drive to work every day, like 99 percent of everyone who works in the suburban office. Transferring between the shuttle and express bus isn’t bad but it does add about 15 minutes each way to commute. But driving is so stressful. You got cops watching your every move (5 mph over the speed limit = $1,000 ticket, see you in court to be strip searched and sit in front of an angry judge next to the rapists and murders), traffic slamming on their brakes as you hit their bumper , back ups and delays. Some point I’m going to have to start driving to work but I’m not looking forward to it, and hopefully by then I’ll have something smaller, more fuel efficient and easier and more comfortable to drive. I’ve been looking at various properties but none really suit me. The places I love and actually want to live are really too far to commute back and forth to work every day practically, without spending half my day in a car, burning up a ton of gas and money, fighting traffic all for what? More poverty in form of lost time and and money to warm the planet?

I was flipping through Facebook or Youtube and remembered what I’m saving for and fighting for my future. There are constant pictures of glossy homesteads, and are the real. Surrounded by pines, you know the pig pens made out pallets, with plywood sheds and shacks, rundown barns and log cabins. With of course a burn barrel somewhere out back, far enough way to keep the smell away but also not so far to be hauling garbage in snow or keeping a careful eye on the fire. Acreage, looking down from the mountain on the gravel road. There are some properties like that on the market, but not many, and certainly not many very close to Albany or work for that matter. I guess that’s part of being rural. The thing is there are a lot of houses out there, and buying one with cash is actually still quite affordable if you take the cost of financing off the table, but so many of them are the B or C-quality suburban houses with no land, and trust me if you brought some some bacon 🥓 to live in your backyard or burned anything the least bit plastic-smelling much less shot anything beyond the pellet gun out back, you’d have the cops right up your ass. Definitely there are so many houses available in the city and the ghetto neighborhoods on the market, and their dirt cheap, but they’re priced that way for a reason. Suburban houses are often quite charming, but none of them have acreage. And do I even want to live in New York with the gun laws when I grow up? Why do I need a permit to own a hand gun with extreme restrictions if you’re not a cop when no such permit in most states?

Made fresh-homemade bread this morning for breakfast. I don’t eat commerical bread — not just because of sugar and preservatives but because baking bread is a process, and it means I eat it less then if it was in a plastic bag ready to eat. I went and got some groceries yesterday, darn are eggs expensive. I like having scrambled eggs with veggies and onions a few times a week but at $6 for a dozen eggs or fifty cents an egg, makes me think twice. I know it’s not a big expense, but I wish I had chickens now, and all that cholesterol and unhealthy fats ain’t great but they do taste good and are a good source of protein that keeps you filled up through the day. Plus I use eggs when making cornmeal pancakes and regular pancakes, as I don’t use any of the prepared mixes as they all have too much sugar and preservatives.

I am excited to be riding my bike to work today. Finally good enough weather for this and brakes are good now. Got to save that buck thirty on the bus. Seems silly but every bit helps in these inflationary times. My budget is pretty lean these days especially with all the taxes I pay. Plus it’s so good for the mental health and I’ve gotten fat with COVID and not riding. I do want to get some brake clean on the front disc and rotator as I got brake fluid on those things, so it sqweaks and isn’t as firm of a stop as I would like, though I think some of the brake fluid was not from my fluid change but I actually lost fluid when the bike was riding around in the back of my truck and the handle and therefore the pads got pushed in with the wheel off, allowing brake fluid to escape past the pistons. Apparently this is a common thing with hydraulic brakes especially on bikes. Main thing going forward is to be prepared to top off the brake fluid from time to time when brakes start getting soft (and not accidentally push the brake pedal with the wheels off), so hopefully I won’t have to do a full bleed in the future and can just top them off. Still a little snow on the bike trail but nothing too major.

I am leading a meeting this morning, to announce and discuss the many new projects I’m undertaking with the new year coming up to enhance the work of Data Services. I am excited with all the commercial and governmental data I’ve been able to acquire and add to our database, along with implementing spatial targeting. One of the big things is language-based targeting, which is a big thing in the city, and is going to be announced to members this week. I literally have over two pages of single-spaced notes on different initiatives I’m undertaking. Some of them may never get used, but I figure generate the data, link it together, and let people know it’s an option and move forward.

I am filibustering my day! Let me get on it.