!New --- agk's diary 2 January 2025 @ 03:20 UTC --- written on GPD Win 1 in daughter's room while she sleeps upstairs --- This palmtop has a new battery I put in during a Kentucky Party work session. It was easy and cheap! The old one bulged. We celebrated the new year in a cave. A big room, the size of an auditorium, throwing a frisbee, then a toast and kiss at midnight. At the end of the year I took daughter and a family we love (adult, 6-year-old, infant) in a short 100 meter long cave. The kids stomped gaily ahead through water. Mom and infant stopped, sat, breast fed. Baby slept, periodically sucking. Over mom's shoulder a tricolor bat hibernated. Friends: I decided to offer take the mom's kids some days so she can go back to work, help her get bad debt sorted, and build a friendship with one of three older women or one of two families with kids in my church. Stop pretending I'm friends with a couple people who don't ever really think of me. Travel: I hope to travel with daughter and see my girlfriend Cassie in Missouri and Spring Time in Indiana without daughter. Cave and camp with the mom, Evy's best friend, my best friend's family. Family: I want to spend regular time with my best friend helping each other be better spouses. Cheer Evy through nursing school, keep the house nice, her fed, her stress down, give her regular study time alone in the house, support her having fun. The world: Rest from saving it. Let my ego simmer down. Put family first for now. The first day of this year Evy, daughter, and I woke under a mound of blankets in the tent in 0C air. Water from the creek swollen by heavy rain roared over the road out. Rain boots on, I piggy- backed them across. We explored a mazy dry cave for hours with Evy's best friend and a friend from Cincinnati. Daughter was engaged and into it pretty much every minute of climbing, sliding, crawling, squeezing, discovering. I'm sore, covered in scratches from sharp speleothems. When we emerged from the hole into the cold, two indigo buntings flitted gloriously about the bare branches around us for a few minutes, then flew off into the forest.