Landscaping drew me in for a number of reasons, but I had completely forgotten about one until digging it up recently: on February 3, 2020, I got an estimate back from a landscaper that seemed so astronomically high, I decided I just had to start doing the work myself. I hired a tree service company to do what I couldn’t, and they showed up the very next day. You know how people say “Oh, you must be saving a ton of money doin’ that yourself”? My reaction is usually, “I dunno, I’m at Home Depot like every other day,” because it feels like I’m actually spending a ton, but at least I’m learning a ton, and I think I’m getting a better product in the end.

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The dough recipe I return to, over and over again, is from a video by Mark Bittman in the New York Times for Potato Pizza (potato is the topping). In our household, we refer to it affectionately as glug glug glug glug glug—after the sound Mark makes as he “measures” the olive oil. Recently, I’ve also been incorporating some of the techniques from Adam Ragusea’s video, Making New York-style pizza at home, and his followup a year later, New York-style pizza at home, v2.0.

While I was working in the front yard this afternoon, a dove stopped by for several hours.

It started with a spreadsheet. For his northbound thru-hike of the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) in 2016, Dad cataloged the towns where he planned to resupply, i.e., buy food, mail food to himself, and/or pick up food he’d mailed previously. Sometimes the trail would meander right through the center of town, but most of the time he’d have to roadwalk or hitch, often a great distance from the trail. Generally he’d aim to resupply every 80–120 miles (or every 4–6 days at a 20 mile-per-day pace).

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