2.3 percent of Americans have heart attacks in any year, which works out to heart attacks being something that occurs 1 in every 43 years of American’s lives. However, the average age of a heart attack in Americans is not at age 43, it actually 65.5 years for men and 72 years for women.
Last night after work I decided to ride out to Five Rivers 🐸 in hope of hearing the spring peepers, to read a bit, listen more to the audio book I was listening to, and get away. It was such a cold early April morning that I knew once I got home, I would most likely just have dinner and go to bed, which is pretty much what I did. Not many spring peepers though because it was so dang cold. The wind died down by evening but the mercury struggled to make it to 40 yesterday and most of day including during the evening commute had a stiff breeze.
Eggs with onions and spinach this morning 🥚 and last night was salmon, onions, beans and peas. Good stuff. And dessert was frozen fruit and oatmeal milled up with some sugar-free maple syrup. I really need to get some of the real stuff, I just am always so resistant to eating anything with too much sugar, due to my dad dying from diabetes. But then again, I do eat a lot of fresh and froze whole fruit so it’s not like I’m not eating a lot of sugar at times, though I avoid most added sugars unless I add them and then I tend to go for the types not early digested.
Need to get bananas but with cold and bumpy ride on the bike, 🍌 I should wait until after work, stopping at the grocery store 🏬 on the evening commute. Also need baking powder. True both are more wants then needs – I have other fruits I can cook with and use baking soda with cider vinger, but it’s nice to have for good cooking. 🧑🍳 Trying to have a glass of water 💧 with breakfast rather then so much coffee ☕ as I find myself dehydrated and peeing a lot from all that coffee I’ve been drinking lately. And I mean, it’s what the doctor recommended I do a few years back.
Going to be shit weather tonight through the first half of weekend ☔ pretty much like usual, but that’s to be expected these days. Even next weekend in long range looks wet for next Saturday, which kind of sucks for Mom and Dad’s anniversary party but also at least I won’t feel like I’m missing much stuck in town. That said, maybe I’ll do something from Thursday evening through Saturday morning, i.e. Good Friday but it depends what is decided if that’s going to be a holiday or not depending on the status of the state budget. 🐰 If not I guess there is always the next week, though soon the black flies will be returning to the woods.
Lately I’ve gotten into watching videos of people building small, simple off-grid cabins in the back country. Not so much because I want to necessarily want to build my own, but I want to understand basic building concepts and how small, simple cabins are constructed and materials used.
The thing is I don’t want to own a modern house ever. I don’t want to have something that requires a dumpster and a charge account at the local big box store to constantly be cycling toxic materials in and out of. I don’t want to spend my whole life working hard and spending money just to literally toss it into a dumpster. It just seems like modern houses are full of flimsy, short-lived material quickly dirtied and discarded.
I have fallen in love with look and feel of tongue-in-groove walls in part due to look of the natural material, but also because I perceive it to be more durable, easier to install and replace. The scraps are wood, so they can be safely turned into heat in a wood-stove or enjoyed in a bonfire. Same is true with wood siding, such as rough cut lumber, log cabins, or other wood siding. Most of that isn’t loaded with toxic chemicals. If you can’t relatively safely burn it or bury it as back fill it on your land, I don’t think it should be part of your homestead.
I love the idea of rain water collection, rather then deep wells that are in many cases literally sucking the ground water dry in great parts of country. Or urban pipes and reservoirs that divert great rivers. Likewise, I’d much rather have gray water either be captured for gardens or returned to ground in a leachfield where it can be reabsorbed back into the ground. Much rather compost poop and urine in humanure or at least put into ground to biodegrade rather then flushing it down a toilet and having the solids stored in a tank to be pumped out by a big diesel truck then hauled to a sewage treatment plant and ultimately a landfill.
Likewise, while I am watching the grid slowly green itself, I am not convinced that much of solar panels and wind turbines being built are mostly window-dressing. While grid tied solar might save you money the idea of building my system myself and having complete control over at least my electrical system seems so attractive – especially to a hobbyist like me.
Is it going to happen this year? Probably not but now is the time to research options and continue to save and invest and work towards making the dream a reality.
You know one of the terms I don’t like is “camping”. I usually prefer to say, “I’m heading out of town for weekend” or whatever the time period that I’m heading up to woods or wilderness to get away from it all.
Camping as a concept has a lot of problematic ideas surrounding it in my mind.
Camping as something you do in a developed facility. In many people’s minds, camping is something you do in an intensively developed facility, with flush-toilet bathrooms and showers, security patrols and often electricity. Camping is seen as something you pay for, not just some place in woods, an old driveway or dirt pad along a dirt road somewheres in the forest or a wilderness.
Camping is something you do in ear-shot, eye-shot of others. Rarely do I camp anywhere I can see or hear anybody else. I don’t want people hearing my music, smelling the smoke from my fires or noise from my guns. I’d rather not keep it down, and a vlaue my privacy.
Camping is primarily about a destination, a camp. True I often hang around camp, but it’s more than sleeping. I ride trail and hike, in the summer months I fish and swim. In the autumn I hunt sometimes. I’ve been known to work remote from camp, and in many ways camp is a home base in remote country and not a destination alone. That said, I do like lazy afternoons in the hammock, doing a bunch of cooking and of course a big ol fire.
