Last weekend my wife and I drove down to Ohio to babysit our great niece while her mom and grandparents were spread across the United States doing other things. Her Bubs (grandfather) was down in Alabama watching her aunt play softball. Meanwhile, her Ra Ra (grandmother) and mother were over in Indiana watching a friend play one of her last university basketball games at senior day.
It gave us a lot of quality time with the little nugget and we loved every minute of it. It wasn't the most glamorous Valentines Day, but it is safe to say our hearts were full by the end of it and what more can you really ask for on Valentines Day. My stomach was full as well. I had a hankering for some decent BBQ, and it just so happens they have a nice chain called City BBQ that fit the bill.
I got the pulled pork nachos that you see in the opening photo and they were delicious. Everything I could ever wish for.
Sadly, the thing I wished for with the BTC price hasn't yet come to fruition. You might remember I was pretty excited when the price dropped because it actually felt like something was happening again with the crypto markets. The one thing I didn't want was for the price to start slogging along at the lower level as we had been at the higher level for a time. Unfortunately, that seems to be what is happening right now.
We did get some news yesterday that they have a firm deadline of March 1st for the new crypto legislation to get passed, but I am not holding my breath. Even if they do stick to the deadline, I have little hope it is going to move the markets in any direction. 2025 showed us that everything we have come to expect from the markets is pretty much out the window. We hit 55,555 miles with our car over the weekend as you can see in the photo above.
Will BTC fall back to that level? At this point anything seems possible!
One of my favorite precious metal stocks Fortuna Mining Corp (FSM) had their Q4 earnings call yesterday. This is a stock I bought at a pretty low price and then sold some off when it went up a bit so I could recoup my investment. I still hold a few shares, so I like to keep an eye on what it is doing.
The company reported strong financial results yesterday with an annual cash flow of $330 million which is a record for them. That also gives them an adjusted net income of $.23 per share. It's not a huge number, but anything positive is kind of nice these days. I have some other stocks I am invested in that have yet to report a positive per share income.
The one thing I didn't realize is that Fortuna actually mines gold as well and they plan on expanding their gold production to over 500,000 ounces per year. Pretty good for a stock that I purchased on a whim back in the day.
I got my monthly energy report from my power company the other day. I was pleased to see that once again we are doing better than energy efficient homes and much better than similar homes in our area. It's actually pretty crazy to see these numbers, because I know our house is very under-insulated, and our windows are pretty old and horrible. For example, when the wind changes direction and starts blowing off the bay from the East, you can actually see the blinds move on the inside of the house. Even with the windows fully shut!
I often wonder how much our numbers would go down if we had better insulation in our attic and walls as well as new windows. Unfortunately, the price of good windows is astronomical and I'm not in the mood to take out a loan to pay for new ones. Plus, as I have said in the past, we do plan on moving eventually, so I am not sure how much I want to put into this house even if I had the cash.
The units figure in this image is a combination of our natural gas and electric use. It flips back and forth between Summer and Winter with our gas use being higher in the Winter (furnace), and electric being higher in the Summer (A/C). Oddly enough, we still have our Christmas lights up on the back deck and those run from 5:30 PM to 10:30 PM each night, so I bet this number will come down even more once I decide to pull those.
I've said this before, but it makes me wonder how much solar we would really need to break even. According to our smart meter statistics, we use about 525 Kwh of electricity per month. Hopefully one of my friends on HIVE that has a solar build can let me know if that is high or low.
I pulled some more of my HBD out of savings the other day. With the price of HIVE being so low, I really felt like I had to buy some more. I have a conversion taking place as we speak. When that is finish, I plan on doing a pretty big power up, and then I am going to move the rest off chain to invest in a couple different projects that I have had my eye on.
I still have a strong commitment to HIVE. It has become like a second home to me and I hope that these moves don't give anyone reason to question my motives or intentions on the chain. At this point, I think my activity should speak for itself. I haven't seen one of those reports lately, but I have to imagine I am still pretty high on the commenting side of things.
I'd also like to mention, I forgot to do the weekly prompt for The Pub this week. I think instead of calling it a weekly prompt it's going to be a bi-weekly prompt or just whenever I remember to do it. Despite not having a fixed schedule, I am hoping it will still drive a lot engagement and posts in the community.
Or Check out my Grilling and Smoking Community on HIVE
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or 
