Notes

Even the cow below agrees today is a beautiful spring Tuesday. 🌸

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Too bad Downtown Albany is blanketed by a thick brown haze of smog. But it was a nice ride in with the sunshine and things greening up. I don’t know if it’s due to a house fire, the asphalt plant or cars and trucks on the highways or just a combination of al those with a good temperature inversion.

Good morning! Sunny and 47 degrees in Albany, NY. 🌞 Calm wind. A bit cool but it’s warming up quickly and going to be another nice day.

Carrot pancakes for breakfast this morning 🥕 with mango. My pancakes are far better then standard fare that most people think of — white pancake mix — type breakfasts. Last night was the usual fried onions and veggies with some soy sauce. 🍲 I wanted a quick dinner, something I could throw together while participating it he Save the Pine Bush dinner.

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 63 degrees at 3pm. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 22nd. Light west wind becoming northwest 13 to 18 mph in the morning. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies. The high last year was 78 degrees. The record high of 91 was set in 2012. 5.3 inches of snow fell back in 1983.❄

Tweaked the derailleur on my bike 🚲 so I’m hoping for a smoother commute on into work today. 🧑‍🔧 I really need to schedule an appointment with my bike mechanic to get my bike derailleur adjusted. I can do some of my own adjustments but by no means am I an expert or a professional.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:55 pm with sun having an altitude of 57.7° from the due south horizon (-13.1° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 3.8 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 7:01 pm with the sun in the west (279°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-northwest (285°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:39 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 59 seconds with dusk around 8:08 pm, which is one minute and 9 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Gibbous 🌔 Moon in the south (178°) at an altitude of 70° from the horizon, 248,336 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:44 pm. At sunset, look for clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 58 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 11 mph. Today will have 13 hours and 30 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 46 seconds over yesterday.

Last night when I got home they were finishing up digging a hole the floor in the unit next to mine. 👷‍♂️ Apparently while I was at work they were busy with a jack hammer banging through the concrete slab, which at least they didn’t do while I was home but there was still a lot of moving of material for a while as I cooked my dinner, clanking and making noise, but then they stopped around 6:30 PM. Not great for the Save the Pine Bush Zoom, 📹️ although at the same time I was participating in the Zoom, I was also eating dinner. 🍲 What can I say, I was hungry after my bike ride home 🚴‍♂️ and tired too. After that I went down to the town park to read and walk for a while. It was a pretty nice evening.

Tonight will be clear 🌃, with a low of 34 degrees at 5am. Four degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 9th. West wind 5 to 8 mph becoming calm in the evening. In 2023, we had partly cloudy skies in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 49 degrees. The record low of 21 occurred back in 1971.

It ended up working out well on the state taxes. 💵 Despite my mistake on the tax form 📄 the state ultimately took out the proper amount of money. I was happy that worked out. I need to adjust my with holdings up further this year to avoid it happening again.

A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 61. Maximum dew point of 44 at 6am. Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 59. Typical average high for the weekend is 62 degrees.

Now I’m definitely thinking about heading out of town 🌲 but where to go is the question. Rensselaerville State Forest is close for just a quick overnight. Or I could do a three day weekend in the Adirondacks. I’ve been considering potentially heading back up to the Vanderwhacker area of the Adirondacks, it’s been a long time since I’ve been up that way. Probably too cold for hammock camping. ⛺

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until 8 PM Sunset 🌇 when the sun will be setting at 8:03 pm with dusk at 8:33 pm. On that day in 2023, we had mostly cloudy and temperatures between 59 and 45 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 69 degrees. We hit a record high of 92 back in 1930.

Fiber Rocks 🍎🥕

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Fiber is so important, you should eat more of it.

Fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans! Doesn’t have to taste bad – you just need to experiment with spices and cooking it appropriately. After a few months, eating things without much fiber becomes so bland and uninteresting as you grow to love food with texture and structure! Chewing is good.

The other day I had a piece of white bread – yuck when you’re not used to eating things like that. I want my food to have flavor and texture!

People talk about smoothies with all that added sugar being good. I guess in fifty years when I’m in the nursing home in my last few hours on a feeding tube they’ll be good but I’ll have an apple or carrot today while I still have teeth.

What Do I Think About Tiny Homes?

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When I own land, I want as simple and small of home possible, as I want to spend my money on the land and not the building. Acreage is more important then square footage, and indeed a small home would be easier to clean and more difficult to accumulate things. If you don’t have room, you can’t buy it. While certainly a hot shower, refrigerator, gas stove and oven, and wood fireplace are essential, I am willing to give up most other things within reason. Obviously I would want room to have a table where I can walk on my laptop, some place to get up and stretch on a rainy or cold snowy day, and a relatively comfortable bed.

A smaller building is easier to heat and maintain order in. Less distance for things to break, and I really don’t want to have utility electric or internet service at my building. I’d rather be a long-ways back from the road, so I have my privacy and not be causing a nuisance with neighbors with my music or fires. I want things as simple as possible, both for low cost and sustainability. I want to make as few trips as possible to the landfill, use as little coal, oil or propane in support of my home. Have some solar power, but not a large set up — just enough to keep a few LED lights on, have fans for cooling or moving heat around, charge my phone, laptop and other USB appliances.

I do think many of the tiny homes you see online are pretty gaudy with stainless steel refrigerators, fancy woodwork and paint jobs. Or they are so tiny, something easily moved on wheels. That’s a bit too small for me, but a nice hunting-cabin style property would be nice, especially way back off a road, only accessible by four wheel drive, quad or snowmobile. I don’t need a lot of space, but I do need something that is decently well insulated and dry to make it through the inevitable rainy and snowy periods. Better insulation is more wood saved, less wood to split and feed into the stove and fewer carbon emissions, after all.

Natural wood is good as is natural materials. I don’t want to pollute my own land and I don’t want to haul much waste to landfill. While natural products can be less efficient and suspect to rot and degradation, they are obviously much preferable to the synthetic plastics that are common on modern houses. I remember years ago when I was a children, when my neighbor got a new double wide delivered — and they burned the scrap vinyl siding. Nasty! There is definitely a balance to be struck, and it all depends on what the property I like ultimately has on it.

But it’s not tomorrow. I have a few years to continue to think about it all. I have time to continue to read and learn, and research into solar and batteries by scientists across the world is only going to produce better, more reliable products that will be cheaper. They’re is a lot of benefit to all this research going on in reducing carbon footprints, as it also means better products will be coming on the market for off-grid homes. Time is on my side.