I'll be the first to admit that I do not have a green thumb. If anything, I have a black thumb. Sure, I have been able to pull some tomatoes out of my garden from time to time, but it seems like anytime 
Ignoring the fact that we need new windows, I am about at my wits end with this aloe plant that was given to us a while ago. The fact that it is still alive is a small miracle in itself, but although it isn't dead yet, I wouldn't necessarily say it is thriving.
Yes, it does seem to have a some new growth sprouting out of the center, but the rest of the plant just confounds me. Where I would expect it to be lush and green, it is instead just kind of droopy and brown in spots. I did a kick Google search about the flattening bends that you see on the left hand side, but I wasn't really in the mood to understand the information I was reading at the time.
In any event, this small plant has some important parallels to the current crypto markets right now and my position within them. I wouldn't say my investments are dying, but I don't feel they are thriving right now either. On the traditional side of things, the opposite is true. I definitely think my investments are thriving and that gives me some small hope that my personal future might not be as bleak as I sometimes fear.
Despite mostly mainstream adoption, there still seems to be a large amount of FUD out there, especially when it comes to altcoins. There are a couple that I have a decent holding in, and while I knew from the start they were a moonshot, it still depresses me a little bit when I see some of the negativity surrounding a few of them on legacy social media. Specifically "X", which I know should be my first warning right there, but it's hard not to doom scroll from time to time.
It's nice to see BTC reaching for $100k again, but I just hope that eventually we see some sort of alt season. I'm not one of those folks who think HIVE is going to run up to $3 again (even though it should give the use cases), but I wouldn't complain about $.25. I might even move some of my liquid HIVE back into HBD at that price.
It's been just about a week that I made some big moves with my Splinterlands land. I removed all of my cards from my seven land plots, waited the three days for the cooldown to end, and then reapplied them in a more favorable configuration. You can read my post last week to see how this changed my production stats, but this was the first time I have actually collected since then.
Unfortunately my plot in Trauton or whatever it is called has become deficient in grain, so I had to send some grain over from Briarwood to that region. I sent 200,000 grain over and received 180,000 grain in return after all the taxes and fees. That honestly seems a bit steep to me, but it's all tertiary tokens anyway, so does it really matter?
I also sold the wood I had collected for something like 2,000 DEC which was just enough to get me into the latest Wild Season. I also used some of my glint to buy some stuff off the shop. I picked up some reward card draws, 30 ultimate chests, and some merits. I also turned in my merits to buy 44 Gladius packs. I actually pulled a decent number of Gold Foil cards in my Gladius packs which is good since I participate exclusively in GF Guild Brawl battles.
After the recent hardfork I was having a bit of trouble normalizing my voting power. I was finally able to keep it right around the 80% mark, but lately things have dropped back down to 70% and below. In turn, I have started to adjust my manual curation amounts a little bit. I say this as an apology to those who maybe used to get a bigger vote from me. My hope is that eventually things will normalize again. I know that it doesn't matter as much now after the hardfork what you voting power is, but I am a creature of habit (and kind of anal), so I like to keep it around that 80% mark.
As I mentioned before, a while ago I made a deal with 
This is a pretty cool piece and I am glad I added it to my collection. Especially given the recent price of silver!
My 
My GoMining Farm is humming along pretty well. I recently made an upgrade to my miner that bumped it up to 52.55 TH at 15W/TH. Which is a good thing since my bonus miner I got for signing up and completing some tasks finally expired the other day.
This is still a very long term investment, I don't expect to see an ROI for three to four years unless the price of BTC suddenly hops on a rocket ship. Despite that, it has been fun to have another passive investment. I like the idea of my money working for me even if it is a slow drip. Many thanks to Marky for helping me get started in this. If you are interested, feel free to use my referral link above, or head over to 
He even has a clan started for Miner Wars that is gathering a really strong group of people. We should see some good returns over the next year (I hope).
That's all I've got for this week. Have an awesome weekend and do your best to thrive!
Or Check out my Grilling and Smoking Community on HIVE
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
