Maybe I’ll ride in today after all 🚲

Charging the lights on my bike as I’ll need them tonight riding from the very dark road from the office in the suburbs back downtown to catch the slow, and honestly quiet depressing local bus home.

I wasn’t going to ride in this morning but instead drive in but it was such a nice ride downtown yesterday, 🚲 despite the cold, I think I’ll continue to ride in at least when I can for the exercise and fresh air. I thought about driving in so I could get some supplies for making a pie for Friday’s pie contest at work, but I am going to take a different approach – I’m going to make a quiche with healthy ingredients, as I think people get tired of having too much traditional pies in a pie making contest – especially at lunch time – and I think I can do that without buying anything I dont have in my pantry. I don’t have to enter my pie into the contest, just provide something to eat. ❄️ I really like to avoid driving, though tomorrow with the pie 🥧 event I’ll need my truck to bring in the queche and probably move people between the suburban and downtown office. 📚 Library books are all due back tomorrow, getting through that book on vegetable growing that I have and trying to finish up that book I have on goat farming. 🥕 My fingers are cold with the heat kept so low in my apartment. It was fine when I was under the heated blanket or drinking hot coffee this morning, but blogging, I now feel cold.

Riding the local bus home, as it creaks past every stop, 🚌 is just so slow and tiresome, espeically now that I have to catch the later local bus, and the stupid bus message keeps repeating, “Pay Your Fare or Else” in the Authority’s desperate attempt to get a bit more revenue, 🪙 as they continue to cut buses left and right as the budget deficit grows for the bus company as Trump cuts and cuts funding for everything including local bus service. I really miss the express bus but I do like riding my bike, and it’s still the cheapest way to get back and forth from work. It was a cold night, I set the heat at 48 degrees to keep it from getting too cold but I don’t think the heater ever came on. It was plenty warm under my blankets, and while the morning wasn’t pleasant, ❄️ when I first got up the coffee heated well on the stove and with apple pancakes 🥞 with lots of cinnamon, cranberries, carrots and other ingredients filled me up well. The way I look at it is after starting out cold, it won’t feel so frigid riding my bike to work. I have my bike lights charging right now so they’ll be ready for the evening commute.

I was reading the New York Times this afternoon and was so bummed out about the down beat news about the potential economic storm clouds out there.  📊 Both Google and NIVIDA were report their corporate profits today, and there is a lot of warning signs about how the AI bubble is about to bust. 🤖 I pretty much believe AI is a scam, and soon all these proposed and much hyped data centers will close and not be built. Honestly, I still think AI is a parlor trick, sure it does some neat stuff, I use it for help writing map descriptions, or with coming up with ideas for code and scripting, but honestly I don’t think it’s that revolutionary. But I was so releaved when NIVIDA profit report came out later in the evening, and it wasn’t too bad. Plus some of the worrying news in the housing market, sounds bad but it’s small potatoes compared to what things were like in 2008. Buy now, pay later is alarming and there is a lot of other rumbles in the economy from inflation and cost of living, but things aren’t as bad as I had first thought.

I worry a lot about the next recession,  💸 for the psychological impact on my own mind, even though I know my assets are decently well diversified, I can’t prevent short-term on paper losses, though my gains from investing over the past two decades far will exceed any loses, and the down period means I can buy more stocks and bonds cheap in my peak earning years. Still that homestead in the hills just seems farther away, as does retirement when I see a big drop in the market. Not that the paper value was ever mind, or existed unless I had sold it and then I would have missed the gains. 💰 I do hoard too much cash, but I need the money to replace my truck and protect myself should things go really bad. It’s been a hell of a ride in the market the past 15 plus years, ever since the recession, so it would have to go down a lot to loose all of the gains, even if no reasonable person doesn’t think at some point the fun must come to an end, especially with the rodeo cowboy 🤡 pretending to running  Washington into the ground.

Got booted off of Facebook, or at least de-montized and de-prioritized after trolling 🍄🧌 too many advertisers. Facebook didn’t really like me suggesting on advertiser that “Cops eat judges for breakfast and lawyers shoot heroin.” Maybe it was all the non-sense and clicking to run up people’s ad spend but it’s gets me so annoyed to see constant advertising for homeowners, especially gutter filters, siding and roofing companies. I live in a shit apartment, ain’t going to buy any of that shit any time soon. I do see value in having gutters for rainwater collection, and an aluminum roof for my off-grid cabin 🏡 some day into he future but that’s not today. I know that’s why I see all these ads for roofs – I was reading and talking about why I would only consider a metal roof for my cabin – as I think asphalt is the ultimate in disposablity. Just like vinyl. No maintance, use then throw away. 🗑️ But then Facebook while they’ve booted me off from monetization seems to be rubbing it in my face, by encouraging me to sign up for monetization for my posts – the same day I was de-platformed. 📺 Maybe because I don’t own a TV or stream or have internet at home, but those targeted ads drive me looney. 🤪 I can’t help but mock them.

I realize I’ve gotten too ramped up with social media, and too much arguing with Alexandra Fasulo, that anti-solar activist from Washington County. ☀️ Truth is I kind of want to like her, following her off-grid adventures;. Hell of it is I used to agree with a loft she used to say, but I’ve been learning a lot about solar lately, and after listening to Bill McKibbean’s Here Comes the Sun, on the benefits of these industrial solar facilities, my views have changed. Yes, solar is one use of the land, but it keeps the land in the hands of one owner, and their is money bonded to deconstruct the facilities at the end of life. I’m only going to get angry 😡 and probably in trouble fighting her, but I have such a nasty bare knuckle-dragging hillbilly in me that wants to fight her. Not worth it. It’s better to share my evolving views on solar on my blog, and maybe just block her page. I started to see aen ugly reflection in my eyes of my younger years. I need to stay off social media, and spend more time reading 📖 and learning. YouTube is fine to watch as long as I”m doing it away from the ads on the Newpipe app or yt-dlp, and aren’t getting all wrapped up by the algorithm that is only designed to make me angry and fight.

Spend a few hours last night scrubbing in the bathroom. The mold was bad, and it stunk especially after I first closed upt he windows when things got cold in late October. 🧽 It wasn’t a pleasant job, as I listened to more of the audio book on Raising Goats for Beginners and learning in and outs of kidding, all the werid goat sicknesses and all about those stinky buck goats. .🐐I can smell the book from here. And it’s not the ammonia and the mold that made me want to gag as I got my bathroom a lot cleaner.🪣 I really should have cleaned there weeks ago, but I was busy, and it was a quiet night. I probably will work on it some more tonight, though I want to also bake the crust for the queche I’m making for the pie 🥧 event tomorrow at work.

Looking forward to heading north a week from Friday, 🦃 after Thanksgiving, you know Black Friday. Some forecasts suggest we might have some snow on Thanksgiving but it’s the GFS model and it’s a week out, so color me skeptical. 🌨️ If anything, I more believe the 8-14 day outlook which shows above normal temperatures likely, ☀️ though I’ll believe it when it happens. They’re giving us off Christmas Eve through December 28th, so I am thinking maybe if there isn’t too much snow to head out to Madison County ☃️ for some winter camping at a Horse Camp 🐴 but a lot depends on how much snow there is. It was fun camping Christmas 2023, though I’m hoping both myself and my parents aren’t sick like the past two years, and I can do at least one more Christmas with them, 🎄 as who knows how many Christmases are left with them.