See the Mouseachu! Oh, and his flunkie. You know, that pinto guy

Teleconverter came in.

Okay, it came in like a week prior, but still. It's in. Reviews have said it's not officially supported for the 3-to-6 (300-600 f/4) so use at risk. I did a test with it at home in manual focus in case of any glass impact and it cleared without a problem. Other photographers said something very similar. Image quality is really solid despite the extra elements. Viltrox has found ways to turn me into more of a fanboy.

Speaking of which, dinged my fucking 35mm during a lens change, I'm so mad at myself for even letting that happen. It was in sand at least so a lot of the impact was reduced but fuck me I am going to bubble wrap my gear if I can't figure out a smarter technique when juggling my gear around.

On Friday, Michelle has been tracking the Sandy Hook Facebook group to better gauge when the seals pop in and determined that the seals do not come in right before low tide but a time before that. She said it was a risk, but if we try to get there two hours prior, we might see a seal.

So here's the catch: low tide is at 5pm and rain was scheduled to come... at 6pm.

So under Michelle's calculations, there is a chance we'd see some seals if we pop in around 3-4, right before sunset.

So, one 30 minute drive later and we were the only ones standing around their favorite spot looking for the seals.

And we saw them! We saw them at 4:45pm, finally making landfall right as it was becoming near-impossible to see them, lol.

I did get to field test the 3-to-6 teleconverter combo at least. It works, though the focus range takes some getting used to, but it's very promising.

But also any images we have of these seals is at unusable ISOs, so not much in the way of our progress lmao

Aside from this,

My head is still in holiday mode, meaning I am having a hard time getting myself back into workaholic mode. I'm not saying this as a way to say "I hate my job" (this is still the best place I've worked at so far), but I am saying I'm annoyed at myself for taking this long to getting myself to wind up. At least I had a meeting with the boss and gave her a laugh when I talked about that Niagara trip.

Yesterday was relentless rain in cold weather which, seen it, done that, so spent it at home and did some chores, worked on a model kit. Not much to write about.

I'm chronologically parsing through photos and made it to Niagara Falls. There's a lot here, obviously, and a fair share of it not that good; mostly tourist shots but snapshot stuff so fairly boring by my standards. There's good stuff in here though, just... ironically not too many in the places where I paid for it lol

I'll set up a photo post before I step out.

I am typing on a train bound for Niagara Falls.

Slowly.

The train is around an hour late, halfway up and fresh out of Albany station

I have had three hours of sleep since staying in a hotel before taking the train, not for discomfort nor noise but because of another train trip that had a three hour delay.

We initially put some thought into this trip to Niagara by thinking ahead a little more. The Maple Leaf starts at 7am so we'd leave a day earlier to get a room somewhere further up that would pick us up at a later time. We would pack for the winter in a way simolar to Montreal but lighter by wearing a lot of our heavier clothes. We would leave the car in a station that was fairly accessible. Etcetera.

So when you play D&D you know what it's like when you roll a nat 1? This trip has started off with a load of them.

Firstly, we managed to time our departure from home right at the peak of the ice storm that was chilling and slipping up the roads. This made a normally safe drive to the station a lot more treacherous.

The train arrived a bit late and we slipped around a bit desperately trying to clamber our way to finding our seats.

Then came the delays. Holy shit.

So we arrived at Moynihan at 8pm for a 8:45 departure. Easy, right? Well how about when the delay gets to 9:10? 9:30? 9:33? 9:50? 10:20? 10:50? 11:40?

So we waited as the delay extended continuously and it kept getting more and more ridiculous. It tookcuntil an hour and a half of delays before an announcer said the problem was getting the train from the railyard. I will also add by the way that we were the only people going this same destination that had delays. Seriously, all other trains going to Albany had come and passed.

At this point, Michelle was looking up options and we found a Metro North line in Grand Central that could get us there, so instead of perform the eternal wait, we rushed through the subway lines and the notoriously maze-like Times Square to finally get to Grand Central and a much more prompt commuter line that was moving at a snail's pace but was moving in general. At close to midnight we were surrounded by MTA guys on their way home and we watched as the Amtrak schedule get longer and longer, finally leaving that damn station at 12:57.

In the end, if we stuck along we would have gotten to Poughkeepsie by 2:48, which with foot high snow banks on the sidewalks, would have meant we could not get our room that we booked to relax more (wegot in the hotel by 2:30 and was told we could not get in after 3am).

So yeah, three hours of sleep. Got some sandwiches and trying to relax while not falling asleep since it would lower my body temperature in this cold train and give me a cold

This train was also delayed btw but like by 40 minutes.

Will post about Christmas next time, maybe while in Canada if I can get over typing with a touchscreen that can't handle my fat fingers.

The lens didn't take too long: little more than a week (during a Thanksgiving week at that) and they returned the lens to me. I checked the form with anticipation as I had spent months--MONTHS--testing this lens to figure out what was wrong with it.

They confirmed that there was something wrong with the lens and had it fixed. I FEEL SO VALIDATED. Michelle felt like it was fine and I wasn't entirely sure so this was something I needed to confirm it.

TBF I don't think what was wrong with it was anything too big: it was very likely an element was out of place and that was screwing with the focus, but I gave it a test at the problem range and it looks so much better now. Thank god. Though to be honest, I was fine if they took a few months for parts, too.

Michelle wanted to celebrate by spending a night in Northern MD and going to the dam where the bald eagles go to give it a proper field test but we're waiting on some gifts for Secret Santa and some of the items just happened to be scheduled to come in on that weekend, so yeah, we canceled it.

By the way, I visited my parents this Thanksgiving and I saw a bald eagle flying around. Holy shit. The Hackey has really cleaned up if we're at this point imo.

Speaking of gifts, the stuff for the nephews mostly came in without a hassle and I have my usual batch of stuff prepped for Michelle. I must have been spending generously because I got my paycheck, prepped to do my usual credit card bills, and watched the entire paycheck go to those bills plus a little bit of the savings. I am a savior of the economy, thank me for my service! Christmas necessities are already taken care of so that's all that matters to me atm.

But yeah, Thanksgiving was fine; I made vegan dishes in case the SIL's GF came around and although she wasn't really around everyone seemed good with the dishes. Whew. Now to figure out what to do with all these cashews and this vegan parm... By the way, the in-laws went crazy with the food.

I'm now playing Battletech again because I missed it but also I want to goof off.

Work is still piling up though so maybe I need to knock it off.

I've got a lot of photos to work through because I've been going to the zoo more training my tracking but also getting Michelle more used to tracking which I think she really should get used to if she wants to take full advantage of that telephoto she has. I think that's the other reason she wants to see the bald eagles and get some practice sorting the process better. To be honest, different types of photography require different types of settings and I think she also understands that as well.

I probably should be using my time working on photos though, My system can't really handle juggling more than one resource-intensive task anyway. I'm probably being slower because my portfolio's been getting bigger these days. It's starting to feel like more of a job and I guess I wanted some time to step away from it, especially as a job where I'm making nothing from it lol

That's all I can really think of for this week, so gonna call it here. Hope everyone's good.

Heeeeeeeey

Weather is finally cooling off, so...

I did more tests with the Sony 400-800 super telephoto in cooler weather at Sandy Hook and my images are still not sharp. I can't chalk this off to heat haze anymore. Am I measurebating? Am I hoping for too much to get sharper telephoto images? Either way, I sent a message to Sony and they're going to take a look at it (with warnings that it may take over a month to fix it). As long as I get it before August I'll be good. They did feel a bit confused since they thought I should send this to the East Coast of Sony, but I was recommended from a third party authorized repair facility and they immediately recognized the facility I checked with (lol).

I can walk around more! Well without looking like as much of a sweaty mess.

Out of curiosity I looked up all my shedding and it reminded me that my scalp has been drier and itchier these days and wouldn't you know: hair thinning and itchy scalps are a correlation. I might need to look into a physician about this. I'm going to do a terrible thing in the meantime and probably rub baby oil on my scalp in the meantime and enjoy greasy hair that I shampoo my hair to stop happening and does any of this make sense anymore I don't know but I'm shedding way too much and I'm not a fan of scratching myself as I sleep so.

I've got a LOT of photos and I finally sorted through Boston. It was a great time, no further notes needed. I want to go back and force my body to suffer for the art, but also I still feel like I'm fairly vigorous from it all.

This weekend might as well have been "people try to bug me as a tourist" day as I swear I kept getting pandhandlers on me which, okay, fair, you want money you gotta ask but also I am one of the worst dressed people on the street so have fun bleeding a stone I guess. Maybe it's the camera or my willingness to talk openly--which doesn't make sense as well because you're also trying to interrupt me--don't expect interrupting people to get them to like you for it!

Anyway, Michelle is asking me to help with her photos too. I'm getting more practice as a result but I don't think she's aware of the process yet. All good, she's learning things in a month things I self-taught myself in more or less a year. The resources are so much better now and it's more favorable to watch now that TV is getting hard to access.

My newest training is learning to see what I can focus stack to get away with. This unfortunately means that my limited SD cards are now becoming more limited which is not helpful. Regardless, if I can find a way to make it work while avoiding too much noise, that would be ideal. More to learn.

There's more stuff going on too but nothing of too much concern.

"But zesty_pinto," you may ask "isn't everything politics?"

Yeah, it is, so I guess this is also me being hypocritical.

So like I said prior, I spent a week in Boston. Island camping! How was it? Glorious. Actually, hot as well but I generally prefer cooler weather so yeah: good for some, not as good for me.

BUT

-Yurts are awesome
-Yurts with power magnify this awesomeness exponentially
-Running toilets and water let you focus more on activities
-I burnt 1k calories a day on top of my normal runtime
-I saw so much beach life
-Astrophotography? I now have a bunch of shots to experiment with once I get to them (details to follow)
-Got a bunch of macro that, with the extension tubes, got me some great shots of the tiny things living in tidal pools
-I got a bunker shot. Got a few of them, low exposure and everything
--At one point while I was prepping a shot, some guy started to approach and I think he was dramatizing it, but he was looking around, pulled out a light from his cellphone and, right as I was moving (just finished the exposure), he immediately bolted away like a cat that saw a cucumber. He said he was okay but I got a good laugh at it. Sorry guy!
-Saw a community of off-gridders that live on the remnants of a Portuguese community that live on the island-turned-park. They are grandfathered to live there, but they are literally THE LAST. The community has been shrinking and I remember there being many more houses here so I think they've been shrinking more and more. I literally was around living monuments that will be gone in the next ten years or so.
-I got to test the 400-800 that I was having quality concerns with and it actually turns out to be much more competent than I expected, I just need to use the proper settings to maximize it.
-Endlessly high humidity means I woke up never feeling dry
-There are some wild apple trees here and I ate a few. Yes they were good.
-Low tide is not only a great time to beachcomb, but there's part of the island that are not accessible because of it, giving even more awesome things to see.
-I only got one mosquito bite
-Didn't even need to take the ferry to go back for supplies, but we could have if we wanted to and that's pretty awesome!

Cons?
-The toilets were a half mile walk
-The shore is mostly stones which means walks along the beach take a lot of effort
-THE SUN GOOD GOD THE RELENTLESS HEAT OF THE SUN
-Burning 1k additional calories a day on top of my normal burn rate meant I was literally calorie counting but for the exact opposite reason I normally do. At one point we made pancakes and I was eating them every few hours to supplement nutrition since the snacks were not enough.
-Dehydration was very common and we did dehydration checks a lot
-Lemon eucalyptus works because it makes your skin disgusting for mosquitoes and it also applies to yourself: beware of finger food
-Birds, not unlike people, can get very antsy when you point a camera at them making it harder to camp a spot to bird watch
-It rained A LOT around the end of our stay which made it difficult to do things (but the night after when we saw lightning in the sky was awesome so a bit of a wash)
-We still were unable to see all of the island despite having 3.5 days (partially because of the rain but also because-)
-We walked so much that our feet were really hurting
-Also my shoes reek now I have bathed them (and the poor The Rat) in Fabreze

So the camping was awesome. And Boston? Still pretty damn cool!

It's such a difference from NYC, in that I feel like NYC is always changing every few years, while in Boston a lot of places we remember have held out pretty well!

We did the Freedom Trail and I finally saw Bunker Hill for the first time. I never mentioned in on LJ, but I had an impossible time finding Bunker Hill back when I lived there so this felt like an achievement for me.

The following day was a trip to the Boston Aquarium which, I'm sorry but I have to say it: it's a superior aquarium to NY Aquarium and Adventure.

"But zesty_pinto," you may say (again) "Adventure Aquarium is one of the biggest on the East Coast while the NY Aquarium has sharks"

To which I say, "eh."

Adventure Aquarium *is* nice, but it's kind of organized like a theme park and that always threw me off. I don't feel like they present what they do there as much for the scientific endeavor and more like you're there to pretend to be a pirate or something.

NY Aquarium is fine, but it feels so small in comparison despite having some really big saltwater tanks. It also always irks me the wrong way that their freshwater tanks are overloaded with beard algae. C'mon guys, you can't get someone in there to scrub the rock? Also, the freshwater tanks are much fewer in comparison and I'm always big on the freshwater aquahobby (this might be why I'm in love with the Bronx Zoo's Jungleworld full of giant couramis and tinfoil barbs).

Boston's architectural design is more my style: I like a main tank that is centered around the area and that you are allowed to see it from any angle. I like that they did a similar design idea with penguins and even though you're smelling fish everywhere you get to see penguins from everywhere. I even got to see them hump. It's awesome.

I also found out the Prudential Center has an observation deck and got some skyline shots, which I did not expect. It ended up leading to me dropping a lens and of course it's one of my favorite lenses but it only physically damaged the filter. I think the lens is still in trouble though because the focus motor is off. SIGH.

Anyway, after that was a trip back. Found some awesome muffins that were just breakfast cupcakes, followed by awesome bagels run by two ladies who are very obvious ex-New Yorkers.

The rest of the week isn't worth talking about unless you want to hear me complain about work lol

I DID HOWEVER GET THE COVID VACCINE BECAUSE NEW JERSEY FUCK YEAH

I also however feel like shit because I got to covid vaccine so yeah fuck

I'm on the better end of it but the weekend plans were mostly reduced as a result, save a trip to the Bronx Zoo which is always a treat.

So yeah, I've got A LOT of photos and ironically, I've got a month of shots I'm processing first.

I'm still halfway through the trip to Ellis Island and I got to tell you the images from it are amazing, some real art piece stuff I was able to get while I was there.


These aren't even my favorite pieces! There's so much good stuff, guys!

I think I am getting close to the end though, and in which case I probably will share some later on because there's definitely a couple that are going to the photo site and then after that is a bunch of stuff I'm less enthused over. Also, been taking advice from other photographers on rules about photography (and what traditional ones I honestly should stop following if I want to identify my own style) and I think that's also influencing my decisions these days so hopefully the images will get better along the way.

That's it from me.


Okay, just one more from Ellis Island. Now I'm done.

YUP! The breach still isn't contained!

Two more flies in a week. I took the option to consider covering the parts of the sink stand that I can more actively cover and it is now covered in vinyl siding. Taped the breaches too which look ugly but to be honest there's a lot around here at this point that is not super pretty--I really wish I could have been able to simply caulk it all. Will it work? Will I find more flies? Will I go insane when a new fly finds its way out suggesting yet another breach? Find out in the next exciting episode!

So! ( Last weekend! )

Spent most of the week doing the "recover from the vacation" while doing work. Some progress was made but I also begin the troubleshooting of "why the hell can't I figure out a permanent way for me to sleep well"

Here's the results of two nights of trial and error and many rewatches on postprod: the first photostitching I've ever done combined with many ways to attempt to clean all that light pollution.

It's a kind of image best seen in full details so here's a link to the image.
Big work in progress, but at least this helped me understand what I'm looking for. With a better opportunity to comp and figure out what I should be doing, I think this will be even better. I'll look forward to trying more often when the days grow shorter.

If I get a better result, I'm tossing this one immediately because honestly it's ugly as sin but it does emphasize a lot of what I'm trying to learn so hopefully I can only do better from here.

God help me was this a trial but at least I'm back on my normal shit. Still, not a total loss as I found out about the train museum and we got to see a steam locomotive in action; we have some shots of that. There was also a really nice bakery we hit on the way back that I felt too underdressed for but at least nobody gave a shit about what I looked like while I was there.

Anyway, that's that, off to do something real aside from bitching about this.

The flies have increased to maybe two a day now. One of the light switches is also *really* smelly now and I'm tempted to think that whatever died in the walls has its liquid essence leaking over it. We've replenished the candle supply as all our old candles are now almost gone. Kirkland (not the Costco brand) has some really strong smells with really bad wicks, so we're slowly escaping the Yankee Candle conglomerate but also need a way to work around this.

The worst was maybe two days ago when I found a fly and a large white tic tac wriggling on the floor of the bathroom. That's right, one of the corpse fly maggots found a way through the wall. I'm more confused than ever because the placement makes me think it might have found a way in from a bathroom vent but I'm not entirely sure either because it's a vertical drop and maggots suck at moving--seriously, I watched that thing for five minutes while I was on the toilet trying to move around and it was just me staring at something try its best to go absolutely nowhere.

I've been trying to solve the mystery of this victim and I'm somewhere between thinking a squirrel died up there or it was a rat that climbed up, only because the smell has mostly relegated to the second floor. I'm hoping it's a rat because a squirrel means that the hole opened up again also I am inclined to believe a squirrel is just more nimble and capable of getting out of a hole more easily.

I am now putting filters over vents aside from the HVAC since I think all the flies are creating more activity with the ecosystem here. I would not be surprised if we start seeing a ton of spiders and centipedes in here soon from the feast. I'm cool with both, but I'd really prefer they do their exterminator duties within the walls instead of outside. In more concerning news, it means that I still have a potential breach for roaches to sneak into and that's what frustrates me more. There's still some locations I haven't considered only because it means reaching into nooks that I am physically unable to so will have to do something like wrap down an entire section.

I used to save the flies but their presence frustrates me so I've been flushing them now. The fly-to-be received the same treatment. If you can't leave the breach the intruder came from then that's just how it goes. It didn't help that I woke up and found one drowning in the cup of water I brought with me to bed.

So yeah, the filters over vents isn't doing anything either, there's another breach I'm not accounting for.
Ugh.

Michelle has a theory that the body is breaking down and the flies might be coming from microbreaches formed from those parts falling, which, maybe? I don't know though. TBF a lot of this I have no secure idea. This does make me want to check the attic to look at the structure of the vents, but it's a Pandora's box I don't think we're ready to open yet for another week or two at least. Still, the more I check, the harder it gets to believe that there is a breach.

UPDATE: Found another hole and it really was under our noses; whoever flipped this place installed a new sink without any breach fixes to the holes around the corners. We used foamboard I filled with caulk to stick to a side and I sprayed some loctite on the corners because the installation job was uneven and I can't tell if it is covering the entire breach. I can't reach all the sides though which is going to make this even more annoying but it should at least placate some of the problem. I will say though that the smells that were coming out while I was doing this was goddamn rank. The smell is now lessened in the bed bathroom, but the adjacent bath is starting to reek. I'm probably going to use caulk to seal seams from the side side at this rate. I'm tempted to see if I can do a feel test on the fixed loctite and trim it accordingly, maybe I can wrap a swiffer around a stick and then soak it in acetone to clean up any glue smears.

This weekend was a trip to Ellis Island. I would never go to tourist trap central, but then I found out they have "hard hat tours" of the other half of the island that is still a WIP and for the low price of $75 (I know I know, it's going to the preservation/restoration of the site so not really a rip), you can wander around some of the most haunted looking spots of the hospital in all its ruin porn glory and wouldn't you know it that's just too tempting for me to see.

If you are unfamiliar with this ritual (aka you never went to school in the tristate), it was practically a requirement that you take at least one trip to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. It's as entertaining to a kid as you'd expect any old place that resembles their ancient school to be but some great photo ops can be had as adults and oddly enough I found more details about ocean liners here which is adjacent to the whole Queen Mary 2 trip. Anyway, if you want an idea why it's not a great thing to do, I recommend using Google Maps to look at Battery Park, and then the ferry route to the Statue of Liberty. Be sure to use satellite view so you can see the large line of dots all along a sinister trail and I will tell you that this does not include the many hawkers you have to encounter along the way to get there. It's honestly the closest I've felt to Times Square at times but with half the density. For the sake of seeing a half of a building that I never thought I'd see? Potentially worth the risk. At least the security screening was quicker than TSA.

So for the hard hat tour there were only 12 of us (the guide even mentioned this was a big group) so it's mostly for enthusiasts. Expect dust, overgrowth, goose poop, asbestos roof tiles. If you like visiting places like Eastern State Penitentiary, then you'll find this pretty cool regardless but if it feels a bit much then maybe wear a mask (it's actually cleaner than the prison though) and expect a few interesting places to get photos of the Statue.

Was also told that you can book photo tours for three hours there. Very interesting, but given what we have planned I think it's best to wait on it.

This aside, we did a ridiculous amount of walking and the feet are beat up. Michelle has a weigh in and despite sweating over two days of consistent strain and minimal food she's annoyed that she's gaining weight. TBH her weigh ins are timed around her periods and she's been stressing over work so I mean come on it's kind of expected.

Saw a lot of cops around the tour group hawkers around Battery Park btw. No idea why, but it struck me as curious. Formal complaints?

Oh, here's a weird observation: I felt like 80% of the West coast was 20 somethings that were influencers or models. I joked with Michelle that the Standard hotel, once a hotel that felt home to exhibitionists, was now laden with people we could see flaunting for their socmeds.

The more popular places also felt frequented by youth which made it so damn weird. Like the weirdest part for me was seeing a Cybertruck along Hudson Yards driven by a college age teen girl to drop off her grandma. Like what the fuck is going on? Did I stumble through an alternative reality? Is NYC officially AI?

Anyway dumb rant over, back to work.

There's a new smell in town.

A week ago there was a sound of scurrying around my room and I thought another squirrel got inside but when I checked the roof it turned out the sound was not from up there (it's too damn hot to be up there anyway), so I figured it was something in the walls. Well I was proven right because now we've got a smell and flies are finding a way inside.

I've used up a tube and a half of sealing caulk and while it's been a great way to figure out where to where the breaches in the walls are, it's been a neverending fight as I fill in door frames, screw holes, and light panels with caulk and then wiping out excess and plastering my hand to mummy status. There is caulk on a bunch of things that I did not want to have caulk on thanks to a faster curing one we just switched to (Michelle wanted it to be quicker) while I am trying my best to figure out why the lower floor is starting to smell like corpse.

Sure I'm learning a shitload about how to caulk effectively but also learning that I could not handle living next to a abattoir, to the surprise of no one but also this goddamn smell.

The flies that find a way in here are also annoying as hell as I don't know where they're coming from. There's some holes that I realized are big enough for them to squeeze out of but also I thought I sealed them well enough but maybe not now and the frustration continues.

If this is a rodent of some kind, I'm told this will be a week or two.

It's been awhile since I posted and there's obviously a lot more but this has been my current fixation and I guess since I took a day off (woke up with a nasty headache and all this), I figured I might as well post this.

Watch on YouTube

It's a time sink but I'm learning more and enjoying it. Also trying methods to make it quicker to keep the nephew's attention.

I don't think he's watching them but still doing this because.

Okay, so I have been producing a video a week of Minecraft with The Rat ("Ratcraft") and it's been an amazing learning experience because I am at a fourth video released and it's been a lot but I can now repeat 80% of the techniques I have seen my regular YouTubers use via Premiere. Combined with my Photoshop knowledge, I am feeling very "one stop shop" though I know I can learn even more from a program that is used to edit films. Ratcraft was initially just me playing with narration and then recording a second track with The Rat. Ironically that was the easy part. The harder part included figuring out how to clip, then audio equalize, then speed set, and now how to set keyframes.

To be fair? I know half these things because I tried to be a believer in Cyberlink Powerdirector. Unfortunately, Powerdirector had a tendency to crash super easily. Maybe it was my rig being not top end I dunno. Either way, compared to now, it's like I'm applying old knowledge and it's incredibly much more intuitive.

So yeah if anyone's interested: I think I'm okay with sharing Ratcraft now since it feels a lot less amateur and more typical let's player.

Watch on YouTube

It's still Adobe though and Adobe is an asshole factory, even upcharging by forcing AI on its users so yeah, would love to find an alternative to PDF since Acrobat is as essential to white collar as MS Office.

This work has been obstructing my photography postproduction. I found a photo I took of the Luigi plane among other things. That was like 11 days ago lol



Michelle's photo btw? If you saw twitter posts about the plane, chances are you saw her photo.

I also messed with my camera settings and it's eating more memory than ever but it's fine tuned for wildlife and my hit vs miss rate is much better now.

Michelle got into Minecraft thanks to my videos and the nephew so she's also playing.

I can't believe I'm getting this much brain growing knowledge while keeping up with work and my physical activity. Maybe all the shit going on that is out of my control is just keeping me that much more in need to keep myself stable. At least I haven't picked up bushcraft again. The birthday and these many last minute purchases though are still screwing over my wallet though.

Memorial Day is approaching. Appropriate. Weather looks to be pretty miserable though. Maybe some outside but I'm debating how we keep fit despite that.

I'd add photos here too but there's a lot of content. Just cleared a lot so will add that in another post.