Today starts the last week of the current month, the third week of living by the almanac I've been crafting. Somewhat coincidentally the first day of the next year falls on the last day of this week. One of the history books I've been reading mentioned that the English Parliament moved the start of the year from 25 March to 1 January beginning in 1752, apparently influenced by other European powers that subsequently rippled into the US. I'm not sure why anybody shifted to January to begin with, but moving back to the equinox has felt like a form of therapy. A week and change after a solstice, January feels arbitrary and stunting. Rebirth in a time of wintering is a restless hibernation no different than scrolling in bed. Now I'll count the days between the winter solstice and the spring equinox as the final quarter of the year, a time to nest and reset, and the equinox to the next solstice as the first quarter, a time to get outside and garden. Moon phases divide weeks, which may have as few as six and as many as nine days, with months beginning at the new moon. Days, months, and years are numbered independently, which allows for situations where a year begins partway through a month. I have been maintaining an identification with the Gregorian day to make it easier to know when I am. That has made it possible to encode civic calendars in iCalendar format and overlay those events on a planner view. For "religious" (cleric?) calendars I'm thinking to implement a bespoke cron-like language to specify events either as a specific day number or as a relative position within weeks, months, quarters, and years. I don't want to live per the Gregorian calendar, but it does help to have as an intermediary for translating dates for exchange.

Regardless of week length, I've shifted to using the last day of the week as a day for chores and cleaning concluding with weed and beer, and the first day as a day for sleeping in and creative indulgence. Somewhere between the two I've been reflecting on the prior week and sketching out priorities for the coming week, which feels like a more frequent, smaller scale version of what I want to achieve with the year transition. So I'll have some sort of feast for Huitzilopochtli in the coming days. I'll make offerings to the thrift shop, cut my hair, rotate the framed pictures around the house, and finish painting the bathroom, then get rowdy in the name of the Hummingbird God.

I volunteered at the Flower Show on Friday. I've only been once before, in 2021 when they first held it at FDR Park. There was a call for volunteers in my Tree Tenders course so I thought I'd go again. I worked the afternoon shift then a friend stopped by to visit the show with me. I had all kinds of thoughts about volunteerism and unpaid labor, but for three hours of my time I got a few hours of his and we both got in for free. He bought us dinner, and I brought an umbrella I held above us on the walk back to the train station. I was so spaced out full of THC and love that I missed my stop. I noticed one of my co-volunteers happened to catch the same train as I did as she was deboarding, and we yelled our farewells across the car.

On Sunday I made it to a middle school production of Shrek the Musical before heading back to the city for an Oscars party then presented with the historical society yesterday, the culmination of work over the last few months. My topic was the Lansdale Music Hall, a theater I didn't get to visit in a town I've never lived in. Still the exercise helped forge my connection to the community and develop my writing, historical research, and communication skills. I wound up on a bit of a deep dive into Albertus Shelley, a violinist who performed at the hall in the late nineteenth century. He was a local celebrity in his time then held prominence in Harlem and El Paso, where he passed away in his 50s. He was moved back to Philly for burial in a cemetery not far from here that I'm thinking to visit in the spring.

I baked dog cookies earlier in the week. I need to tweak the recipe and process, but the first batch came out alright. We hiked a little around the Wissahickon when the weather was nice and otherwise have walked around the boro when we can. The wind hasn't let up much in the last several days and it finally actually snowed. It's a cold end to the year, but it is ending.

Today marks two weeks since my last post, which has been feeling like a long time, though now that I'm finally doing the reflection it doesn't seem like that long at all. I'm blaming decades of guilt programming for that. Everyday I didn't write felt like some failed obligation until I could tune out the internalized nagging and return to the present. I caught myself doing that with Boost as well. Somebody from their corporate office left me a voicemail about my FCC complaint. I left him a voicemail in return and put a reminder on my own mental list to call again. Then I got a fast busy signal and reset the reminder. I felt anxious like I was neglecting some critical life support function before calling again. I looked up the tone and found it can indicate that the number's been blocked so I finally let it go. I thought I should consult a medium with all these ghosts I've encountered this year. I met a guy mid-January who has proved to be more corporeal than the others, and his haunting has been a welcome one. I think I've seen him at least once a week since then, and think about him a little more in the time in between. Last night we smoked and watched SpongeBob then I sent him home with a hunk of bread, which I've been churning out at a regular pace. I found a rhythm and haven't been without decent bread for weeks now. The unrisen loaves seem like a lifetime ago. I still haven't pitched the wort I brewed when I started baking, but the yeast I attempted to harvest have been perking up this week. I started them in small jars with a light wort and moved them to larger jars and fed them a few days ago. I've been shooting from the hip trying to keep them alive but I've been finding some mental clarity and direction in pursuit of that same rhythm.

I brought some foraged mushrooms home from a hike last month then buried them in some compost in a plastic bin. They began forming new mushrooms shortly after so I popped off the lid to take some pictures. I watered them heavily and spritzed them with water before covering them back up, but they shriveled up and died back soon after. I moved the bird feeder and mulched a pile of branches. Most of the chips wound up around the base of the feeder, and I think I'll move the tub of compost out there soon to give the mushrooms one last shot in case there's any life left in them.

The birds have been enjoying the new location. I moved the feeder to a more secluded spot away from the sparrows and stopped buying millet. I love the sparrows, but it was time for us to separate, or at least for me to stop encouraging them. The cardinals, finches, and chickadees have had more food to themselves, and I've had a better view from the windows and hammock. I read about a guy trying to slap away his grief that reminded me of The Ritual, a movie about a guy trying to shout away his grief. If grieving is allowed as much time as it needs, is it ever ethical to say suppression isn't working, that the change being grieved isn't really being grieved? I've been granted the freedom to play with fungus until the bread succeeded, and the hint of awareness that a more experienced baker might have pointed out all the ways I could have arrived there sooner. Who's really being helped in that case, and if I were unwilling to hear it would the advice have the opposite effect? Abiding the right of conscience can be so tricky that it's been helpful to hash this out with the sparrows first as practice.

I went out for a walk around Ft. Washington with the dogs the other day. I packed their extendo leashes, the tether, and a small picnic. We walked out and back about an hour each way with another hour in between to eat. The trees and the creek took up most of what was on my mind, and we washed the rest off in the bath when we got home.

I went to a birthday party this weekend, where we watched rainbow sticks turn the fire blue and green, and to church, where I spoke about my experience so far finding and visiting the fellowship. In all my Cult Your Own Adventure explorations I recently hacked together my own almanac day planner. It's still coming to life with the yeast, but it's been serving its purpose. It's primarily lunar, with a deliberate anticalary design, so really today marks my week end, which turned out to be the perfect time to reflect and write as the moon turns full.

Back in college I read about the first and last cars of trains being the highest risk locations in case of collision and I've tended to avoid those crumple zones since. I read a story recently about a trolley that was hit head on by a freight train in East Norriton in 1942, the latter cutting through the former killing twelve. I wound up in the second row of the first car on the way to the city Friday morning. I watched as we rolled through what was the Gwynedd tunnel, blasted out in the 1850s and daylighted 70 years later to make room for the powerlines. The first Europeans arrived to the area about 150 years before the tunnel was cleared. One of the books I'm reading posits that the indigenous Lenape occupying the land prior would winter there and spend time between hunting and gathering staring at the large rock formations, in which they purportedly found a spiritual resonance. I thought it was true that the carved out layers might act as their own seed crystals, manifesting memory in the minds washed over their surfaces.

I made it to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania around noon thinking they were open until 4:00 only to find they close at 2:00 on Fridays. The two hours turned out to be sufficient to pick through a collection on Albertus Shelley, a violinist I've been researching for my presentation. I might go back to review some details, but a bulk of the material was a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and programs I believe was assembled by his mom. Also included were letters from Viardot and Sousa and an autograph book signed only by Benjamin and Caroline Harrison, J.S. Duss, W.Y. Meschter, and his mother.

It rained all night Thursday and into Friday morning, a blessing for the peach tree that seems to be OK in its new location. I think I will take a shot at growing wheat, corn, beans, and squash this year, for the food and the history lesson. Somebody suggested growing cotton then somebody else suggested dye plants as well. I thought it's a wonder anybody figured this out to begin with while the clock was counting down and the foragers were gawking at the rocks and playing with the birds. Then I thought there must have been a Sumerian Suit who chiseled his own letter to the editors lamenting how nobody wanted to work anymore, a band of academics pointing to their nomadic forebears who made the same argument, and a group of woodworkers arguing over the construction of spindles and looms.

I baked three loaves of bread this weekend. The first was a boule made with the last of the whole wheat flour. The starter was still struggling at that point, but it rose enough that it was edible. The second two I made in the Pullman pan with bread flour. They're the most successful I've baked this month, though the rise and shaping aren't quite right yet. I made a batch of hummus to make a sammich with the first slices on Saturday then headed to the library to do some more research.

I made it to church yesterday morning after a few weeks away. The sermon was about making a life and grappling with labor's relationship to personal identity. It was breezy but the sun was out so I spent the afternoon walking with the dogs and eating bread, then worked on sketching out a script for the presentation. It was even warmer out today so we walked for a good hour and a half down the Wissahickon while the laundry and vacuum ran. I made a pot of rice then fixed a big bowl with leftover chickpeas and lentils.

I cleaned up the witch hazel on Tuesday. The weather forecast called for early summer earlier in the week followed by blustery fall this weekend so we once again got out while we could. The mulch and the flare are looking much better now, and I've been admiring them whenever I walk by.

We started with a walk down the Wissahickon. I was thinking to venture farther upstream, but parking at the trail head was roped off so we kept driving. We passed a man walking the opposite way as us and saw a couple with a dog ahead of us on our way back who must have been behind us and turned around before we did. On our way out we saw another man in a parked truck looking at his phone who hopped out when he saw us.

We also saw trees that bent over and split their bark, a skull with no traces of the rest of the carcass, and a single cluster of mushrooms, one of which I bagged thinking it'd be fun to try propagating at home but which I have left forgotten in the fridge since.

We went to the vet yesterday morning. I called to schedule the appointment for Dany last week and when I saw it'd be warm and sunny out I brought Teemo and the hiking bag with us so we could go trekking afterwards. The visit was to inspect another lump I found on Dany, which turned out to be a scab that the vet plucked off and that Teemo then ate. They had their annual visits scheduled for April but since we were there the vet offered to take care of it all then. The tech took Teemo to the back for blood work and shots and came back wearing as much of his fur as he was. They trimmed his nails while they had him and he put up a fight. He trailed a little blood and ate the rest of the cookies I brought while Dany went for her comparatively uneventful round after crying out loud in the waiting room.

They're usually a little sore and sleepy after the shots so I decided against hiking and took them home. We ate lunch in the backyard then I brought them inside to nap.

While they slept I dug up the peach tree. I got it in my head a few weeks ago that I wanted to move it and have been tossing around if I should or if I'd even find the time or energy. It took about two hours total, which was less than I anticipated, with what I hope was minimal damage to the roots. It's looking better in its new space now, and I think it's better planted than it was before so I'm also hoping the day's stress will pan out long term. I used an old bottling bucket to drip ten gallons of water around the base, and the rain today added a little extra.

I tended the sourdough starter after working on the witch hazel Tuesday. I didn't realize I'd bought whole wheat flour last week, which helped give it a little boost. I read that fresh ground flour can be particularly helpful, which was fortunate for the yeast because I had grains on hand. I've just been eating them like a bowl of cereal and didn't think to grind them. So I did and fed the starter, which has been looking the strongest it has since I started the adventure. I fed it this afternoon and it doubled in about eight hours. I have a backlog of dough waiting to bake once I'm done writing this then I'll feed a little more. I had spare starter earlier so I topped it with water and powdered sugar. I shook it with a solid lid on to dissolve the sugar and aerate the wort then put on an airlock lid to see what happens.

It rained all afternoon so we walked early and I spent the rest of the day reading while the yeast worked and the dogs napped. I almost have enough material for my presentation in March, and almost enough drive to try growing wheat. The effort to grow even a half pound of grain looks like it'd take more energy than the grains themselves could provide, but at 75 grams per feeding that amount would provide three gourmet meals for the yeast, and the experience itself has been its own history lesson to flesh out what I've been reading in these old newspaper clippings.

"The Eagles lost the Super Bowl" is verifiable shorthand that conveys a specific outcome in a boring kind of way. A more flavorful tale of unstoppable heartbreak is one in which the gods rolled 1d10 to determine an entire set of events, with a 9 or higher corresponding to those cases where the Chiefs win. Like a gender reveal party the die would determine the color of Rihanna's halftime outfit as well as the weather. The National Weather Service couldn't have known the result of the roll in advance but it could have surmised its structure to predict a 20% chance of rain for the evening predicated on the Illuminati's activation of the Paris Hilton Weather Machine to send disappointed Eagles fans inside after a loss. The die was cast and defeat was stitched into the fabric.

Less disheartening was our walk around Peace Valley on Saturday. I met a friend there and we wound up walking the entire loop around the lake in about three and a half hours. Somebody at the watch party yesterday was surprised it took so long, but I've only done it once before and couldn't remember how long it took then.

The dogs crashed as soon as we got home. I made rice and beans for all of us and woke them up to eat after I housed a bowl of cannellini curry. Theirs was less spicy with more vegetables. I also made cornbread and baked hummus for the game yesterday, one batch with caramelized onions and mushrooms and a second with sun dried tomatoes and garlic. I brought those and a date, who brought guacamole and chips.

We made it home around 10:30 last night and decompressed with the dogs, then he left around midnight. I fell asleep soon after still worn out from the walk and the game. I wondered if the event was generally more festive this year or if my perception was influenced by hometown pride. I thought that in the old days the kings might announce the occasional weeks-long festival for the peasantry and that now each castle might wait years for a roll of the dice to win one day off work for a parade.

The rain cleared over night and gave way to sun this afternoon. We slept in and went out for a walk after starting the vacuum and laundry. I brought the extendo leashes so the dogs could stretch out. We took the long way home, stopping for a short break on the Wissahickon. I did some pruning around the hammock then climbed in for a short nap before the sky turned overcast and the air cold. I cleaned the kitchen and switched the porch lights back to white.

I napped in the hammock today. I moved it again, too. I want to move a bunch of the plants as well but I've been postponing that work for another month or two waiting for the weather. Then it felt like spring and I wanted to get my hands dirty. I started with excavating the peach and witch hazel root flares. I buried them too deep two years ago and the Tree Tenders training got me worried. They're looking nicer now, though I still have to clean up the rings. The anise hyssop have started popping up, and Huitzilopochtli is on my mind.

We've been walking a lot this week, around the boro and down the Wissahickon. It's been chilly but sunny enough to spend an easy hour and a half wandering. I had my last Tree Tenders class this week and have had plenty to think about.

I've also had plenty of history to think about. I went to a presentation of Vintage Videos to see old film shot around town in the early to mid twentieth century then hung out at the historical society working on my own upcoming presentation, which is still thin but coming together.

I resisted going to the store all week in favor of time at home with the dogs. I had tried making a sort of ambrosia salad that didn't quite work. I macerated strawberries then whipped up some coconut cream in the food processor and tried incorporating the syrup. The mixture broke so I strained it off and used it to make oatmeal instead. I did finally go shopping today. The sourdough starter is still struggling and my mouth is suffering from the bread its producing but I decided not to buy bread or yeast, which made me feel a sort of solidarity with those turning down the heat and shutting off the lights to eat eggs in the cold and dark.

I spent the evening tending to the yeast I do have. I tried harvesting from the little wort and from the bottom of a homebrew and pitched those in even smaller worts. I also mixed some into the sourdough starter in the hopes of energizing that. I'm not sure if I actually got any yeast or if the effort will yield anything but it felt on the right track.

I made pitas on Thursday. The starter wasn't quite ready yet and still isn't, but I've been resisting buying bread and wanted to eat. I rolled out about six loaves with enough dough that probably could have made ten, if not more. They were thick and doughy, barely cooked inside with a crunchy exterior. Half of them did puff up a little while cooking, and I was able to cut one open enough to make a pocket to fill with hummus I'd made earlier in the week. I had to cut two fully across like a bagel, which still worked to make sammiches.

I spent the afternoon at the historical society and the evening reviewing the material I brought home with me. I'm presenting in March and still don't have an angle but I do have this newfound equanimity to lean on in the meantime. Between baking, brewing, tree tending, garden planning, dating, hacking, and researching I worried one night that I might be overwhelmed. Then I thought that trees and bread make great children because they do most of the work themselves, and the pendulum settled into a whelmed position. I do have basil that's been working overtime, growing leggy and trying to flower in a cold window. I took cuttings to propagate the plants and used the stripped leaves to make a red sauce. I added a can of chickpeas and called it Italian curry, which I ate with Japanese style rice from California.

A cold snap rolled in Friday so we spent most of the day inside eating bread and curry. It was still cold on Saturday, but I was able to walk with the dogs and make it out to the opening of an arcade. I stopped at a comic book shop beforehand to offer some old tabletop supplies I wanted to cycle. Leo and I played Dungeons and Dragons together almost a decade ago and he'd bought a starter pack and books to foster the hobby. Rather than donate them blindly I asked the shop owner if he had any gaming groups that could use them, but he didn't. A customer came up to inquire how much I was asking and I told them they could have them if they were interested, which they were. I handed over what I had then turned to leave. I overheard the new player beaming to their friend how eager they'd been to start, and I granted myself an inspiration point.

I met friends in line to get into the arcade and we gamed for about an hour. We remarked about how crowded it was for the opening and that we had more to look forward to later, sentiments I heard from others as well. I played Mr. Do, Galaga, Asteroids, Ms. Pac-Man, and some flying game I cursed for having been designed as a quarter stealing game, though admission was a flat $5 for all we could play, which a friend paid for me. I only saw an issue on one of the consoles, where it seemed somebody nearly managed to open a browser. We went to a brewery later that also just opened an arcade inside their facility where I had a vanilla porter and played The Simpsons.

I made cornbread yesterday and strawberry jam on Friday. I've barely dipped into the jam, which I'm attributing to the current bread situation, though it did come out tasty. I'd bought the berries for last weekend's date but never ate them and wanted to process them before they spoiled. I had another date last night, and we ate the cornbread with guacamole he brought. The jam abides.

Today I baked a loaf of bread. The dough had barely risen and I overcooked it, but it's edible and now the entire loaf is pre-toasted. I cut it into thirds then cut a chunk in half long ways to make two extra thick slices for a hummus sammich. I scooped out the top "slice" and put my jaw to work crunching through the bottom slice. I have another one baking now and another that will go in tomorrow. The starter is building strength, and I'd rather eat the discard and force the learning process. The beer yeast hasn't cultivated at all so I still haven't pitched that, another project pending attention but abiding.

This morning I made oatmeal with coffee for the liquid. I like oat milk in my coffee but ran out of milk on my first cup of the day. So I thought I'd invert the process and add the coffee to the oats with some maple, ground cinnamon and cloves, and vanilla. It tasted alright but was "thin", for lack of a better word, presumably for lack of fat. If I had coconut oil I'd try adding that but I don't so tomorrow morning's breakfast will be another experiment in pantry scrounging.

I drove my friends to the bar Saturday night. I had planned to stop at the dispensary near them on our way out anyway so it made practical sense. I thought that the $30 cash I had wouldn't be enough but I found an eighth for exactly that much. The cashier told me that with points and discounts the price came down to a few bucks so I asked for another of the same thing, and that's how I wound up with a quarter for $22. The friends I picked up switched to green porch lights for the Eagles so after cleaning the house today I vacuumed the leaves and webs out of my lamps and changed my bulbs, too.

I switched my cell service from Tello to Mint a few weeks ago. I first tried switching to Boost, but that didn't work out. I had ordered a SIM kit mid-December that shipped to the wrong address then when it did arrive the activation failed. I wound up using all my minutes on the phone with Boost customer service, half of the time on hold waiting to be told they were resubmitting the port request or waiting for some mysterious backend work for which they couldn't provide any status or notification. After a week of back and forth I finally reached out to Tello, who said they never even received a port request. I gave up trying to get Boost to work and settled on Mint instead, which came out less expensive in the end. The new service is even less expensive than what I had with Tello, with more data. I had been making do with 2GB per month, now I'm allotted 35 and got by comfortably with half of that last month. I was able to get my $25 back from Boost and finally, with a little space from their call center induced trauma, to file complaints with the FCC and FTC. During the ordeal I read an article about a "Karens for Hire" business that offers to call customer service lines on your behalf for $65. That was more expensive than I was spending on the service, and leaving a paper trail of outrage is a legacy building activity, so I chose my own adventure this time.

I called American Express on Friday to downgrade my card before this year's renewal. In these Walden times I couldn't justify the expense. I haven't used travel benefits in a few years, and the agent tried selling me on the streaming service credit but I don't use those anymore, either. I might find something with a local impact like tree and bread delivery worthwhile but I feel a motivation to keep what cash I do have in town. That evening I signed up for a Free Library card and poked around the media I could access there. I watched the Pelosi attack video and caught up on the Tyre Nichols story waiting for that video as well. The Memphis PD website was failing around then returning "502 Bad Gateway" if anything. I thought I'd watch Jeopardy while I waited but there was a Philly Auto Show broadcast playing instead. I checked CBS wondering if there was a news update but they were playing a Golf Tournament. Now that I had some bandwidth available I pulled up the TV Guide listings but they only showed "Local Programming" for those slots. I opened the Jeopardy subreddit and there is where I finally found an explanation that the Auto Show was in fact airing live and that it bumped Jeopardy. I'd worried for a minute about a blackout, exacerbated by the end to the printed guide and a seeming policy of no communication from the networks, and the deferral to Some Guy on the Internet felt like a choose your own truth adventure.

I went out for a walking date the next day. I brought the dogs and we spent an hour wandering a park, colder than I expected. We made it back to my place then smoked while making lentils and watched Zoolander. He spent the night and hung out through the afternoon, leaving before the Eagles game. I watched from the couch where I took a late nap before moving to bed. Monday morning a friend texted to invite us for a walk, which we joined. The sun and geese did, too. Tree Tenders training has had me eager for spring gardening so I spent the rest of the day in the yard thinking about what I want to do this year.

I went to an organ recital at a former church yesterday. It snowed a little on the walk there and back, but nothing stuck. I was running low on bread and thought about going to the store after the performance to buy a loaf and decided to bake one instead. I didn't have any yeast on hand so I started a starter that I used to make dough tonight. I did have a little brewing yeast I harvested from a beer I made months ago but that I haven't yet tried brewing with. I had grains and hops so I brewed while baking, preparing a small wort in addition to bulk up the yeast. I haven't pitched it yet, but it does look like it's coming to life. Fortunately there is refrigeration, so the big wort is chilling while the big and little breads do similarly. I warmed up while the snow fizzled out, then we walked.

I called a local venue to attempt to return a gift card this morning. I'd rather not have received the gift to begin with and imagined there was a frictionless way to undo its presence in the living room. After a brief hold the person I was speaking to said they normally wouldn't refund a card but would make an exception on the condition that the purchaser make the request. I thanked him and returned to a reality where I was subject to the friction of a plastic curse, which held me fixed to the couch searching for a force that might overcome it. I finished my coffee and went walking with the dogs. I found in the paper afterwards that today's advice from Carolyn Hax navigated around gift giving issues, which I could have used hours earlier but still benefited from then.

We were out for a little over two hours, circling around the boro then down the Wissahickon and up towards the Merck compound. I forgot my worries, though the card itself is now the victim of inertial indecision, stuck waiting for action. We napped a little then I snuck out for this week's Tree Tenders class. I ran into one of the boro workers I've only met in passing on my way home, and we had an impromptu introductory chat in the parking lot. I walked by a man walking with a dog and peeked into the windows of three bars.

We ended our walk this afternoon cutting back through the park and we passed a dog on the pickleball court barking to us from the other side of the fence. I thought he was alone until I saw a man hiding behind a sign on the gate that said "For Pickleball Use Only", which reminded me of a story I heard long ago that went like this.

We went out walking on Tuesday. It had been Code Blue the night before but by afternoon it was warm enough for a trail hike. I thought about the recent decreased frequency of walks we drive to, which seemed measurably higher today when I washed the car and had a little extra mud to vacuum out the back seat relative to the last couple months. Tonight Cecily said we've had three inches of rain in the last week, and the creek was showing it on Tuesday even before the downpour yesterday.

We were out for a good hour and a half then hopped in the bath. The dogs napped while I hacked away on the computer. I peeled myself off the couch to make peanut butter and hummus and to attend the boro council meeting. The rain didn't roll in until yesterday afternoon but I set aside entire the day to read on the couch. I left only for this week's Tree Tenders class then read some more.

I slept in this morning and missed the garbage trucks. I thought about putting out the cans yesterday before the rain and said if I don't do it now it's not happening like some kind of psychic. The previous owner had left a note that she didn't have collection service, that she'd drive to the dump herself. Sometimes I think about trying that but I don't know how to navigate it in the suburbs. I found a comment thread discussing the idea and somebody said it's too small a savings compared to the cost of making the trip, especially in places with minimum pricing.

I went out running errands today. I wanted to stop by the historical society anyway so I started there. I was slow leaving the house after our morning walk and was late to arrive. I read for an hour then cleaned the car and stocked up on groceries. Back home I replaced the water filters and made too much food, potato soup and pasta with chickpeas. I caught the news and Jeopardy while I ate and saw a story about a man driving his car into a Grand Junction police station. I checked the Internet for more information and found an article celebrating the town's recent inclusion on a New York Times "List of 52 Places to Go" sandwiched between other stories from the town this month about a man arrested for "child sexual exploitation", a man operating an opioid resale business with his family, a drunk man driving a flaming truck firing a gun at police and a FedEx driver, a bank robbery, a shootout on the streets, and finally about the man who drove his car into the station paranoid he was being targeted and followed and unheard. I finished the soup and took a shower.

As I was preparing to leave work one framing I had for the time off was as a post-college gap year postponed for over a decade after graduation. I probably could have taken the time then, but the ebbs and flows produced it now instead. Given the prospect of a snow day one of my professors remarked about students paying for classes then celebrating not having to attend them. As I travel backwards through time I feel like I've fallen out the other side of the gap, back to school stretched thin pulled in every academic direction and paying to hang around.

I went to church on Tuesday for a discussion group. The topic was "What is my religion?", which was helpful to reflect on because I haven't yet. I was asked to speak about my experience joining the church at a service in March, so I've been processing through that as an exercise in unpacking as well. I stopped at the DMV after, which would have been unremarkable if not for the packed room I zipped through. I thought the number of people waiting would mean I'd be spending the day there, but my number was called as soon as I checked in. I felt a sort of guilt and hoped nobody thought I was cutting in front of them. I could have made a pronouncement in front of them all to assure them I'm a Good Guy, but that seemed tacky so I thought I'd politely whisper the anxiety to the Internet here. I picked up a few groceries on the way home then made peanut butter and hummus. I forgot to price the prepared hummus, but the peanuts were almost half the cost of the peanut butter so we can eat twice as much. Now I have to find somewhere to bulk buy them to avoid the extra plastic packaging the nuts are sold in or pay the premium for convenience and a recyclable glass jar. The freest lunch might be to grow the peanuts and chickpeas myself, but I might have to wait for more climate change before that's practical. Even then I'd still need calories to labor harvesting and processing them so I might also have to wait until chloroplast injections are more readily available, too.

We went walking around the boro Wednesday afternoon then I started a Tree Tenders training that evening. I learned about the course through my Shade Tree work and one night in I'm already excited to plant trees all over town. It rained all day Thursday so I swung by the historical society for reading material. I spent a few hours there glued to old pamphlets and advertisements then moved to the home library to read with the dogs. After dinner I knocked out more work on blog tooling, which is seeing its first action importing the images for this post. On Friday, I think inspired by the fun of blending things earlier in the week, I made carrot and ginger soup, which came out decent but needed more carrots and less curry powder.

Yesterday I read in the paper about how after Shapiro was sworn in as governor his first act was to lift a college degree requirement from various state jobs. I was curious what was available and found environmental science work nearby that piqued my interest. I'm having a friend over for dinner tonight so I spent the day preparing, daydreaming about environmental work, a commute to the county, and packed lunches and food trucks. The dogs and I walked some more then I met friends to watch the Eagles win the first round of the playoffs.