Depending on how you count it, basically four weekends left if even that before we start the 2024 year. Going to be a busy year, but I am looking forward to the next chapter of my life working out in the suburbs, really putting my data science knowledge and experience to work in my new job. But first a rainy but mild weekend to get through and the holidays.
Good morning! Happy Saturday. Finally the weekend! Not such a drag as I had Monday off and the rest of week was pretty busy, although Friday morning dragged a bit waiting for the next project to come in. Mostly cloudy and 37 degrees at the Delmar, NY. ☁ Calm wind.Temperatures will drop below freezing at Tuesday around 4 am. ☃️
Started out my morning a little after 5 o’clock as I always do. ⏰ I’m not one to set an alarm but I wake up at that hour as I’m usually asleep before 9 PM and around then I have to get up and do the bathroom thing, 💩 so it’s best to get up and going and get a bright and early start on the morning. Decided to bake a breakfast cake this morning 🍰 — this time I started with food-processor milled oatmeal, whole wheat flour, stevia, two bananas, baking powder, canned pumpkin an egg, and some water and baking it. Topped it with lots of pumpkin pie spice. 🎃 It was pretty darn good, the egg and gluten from the whole-wheat flour made it very cake like and not so dry as often comes out when cooking with milled oatmeal. Plus some stomach-filling protein from the egg, and two types of fiber — insoluble fiber from the whole-wheat flour and pumpkin plus soluble fiber from oatmeal. ☕ I had to go to Stewart’s to get milk for the coffee but now this morning is a go.
Today will have a slight chance of showers between 10am and 1pm. Mostly cloudy 🌦, with a high of 47 degrees at 1pm. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 22nd. South wind 3 to 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 41 degrees. The record high of 66 was set in 1998. 6.8 inches of snow fell back in 2019.❄
I am going to take a wait and see approach to today 🌧 but if it looks like it’s going to remain just cloudy I might head up to the Albany Pine Bush for a bike / hike on some of the trails, 🚲 🚶♀️ and then head up to the Salvation Army to look at clothes, especially dressier things for work. 👔 I am though most likely going to have to just buy some dress shirts and pants for work 👨💼 as nothing I have really fits well anymore after loosing so much weight. Then I need to get spices and probably some other groceries at Walmart, though truth be told my pantry isn’t bad currently but I need more frozen fruit and vegetables, 🍓 🥦 along with the spices. Turmeric and ginger in particular but also some cinnamon and Chipotle would be good as I’m low on all those things. I don’t really have to go shopping, but at some point I do want to replenish my pantry and I hate to stay home all day. 🛒
Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:46 am with sun having an altitude of 25.5° from the due south horizon (-45.4° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 12.6 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:39 pm with the sun in the southwest (233°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (241°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:24 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 21 seconds with dusk around 4:54 pm, which is 18 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:31 pm. At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies ☁ and temperatures around 46 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Tomorrow will have 9 hours and 18 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one minute and 18 seconds over today.
I haven’t decided to make bread or pea soup today. 🍞 That was originally the plan but I kind of forgot or was tired and cold after last night so after my salmon 🐟 for dinner, I had some Greek yogurt and pumpkin, 🎃 then settled down to bed 🛌 doing some more of the Udemy course 🎓 on machine learning and went to sleep. I might wait until Sunday evening to kneed and make more bread, and enjoy it fresh come Monday. Maybe the same thing with the pea soup. I do have kidney beans cooking down on the stove, so I could do beans and rice later, and I took both some previously cooked and frozen chickpeas and butternut squash out of the freezer. Also still have spaghetti squash in the fridge from earlier in the week I should eat before it goes bad. Maybe it’s best to save the bread until Monday. Pea soup is good but it can make me gassy, 😤 which is why I was thinking maybe better to have it during the weekend. Helps though if I make sure to drink plenty of water with it and avoid the shredded carrots 🥕 in the bread I’m serving with it.
Tonight will have a chance of showers, mainly after 5am. Cloudy 🌧, with a low of 39 degrees at 5am. 13 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 23rd. Light north wind. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2022, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became rain by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 38 degrees. The record low of -1 occurred back in 1976.
The blog advertising pulled in $165 since September 23, 🤑 which isn’t too bad and will help me recoup at least some of the costs of the web hosting come a few weeks when finally the money is deposited in my bank. It looks like I will be earning roughly $75 a month going forward, getting paid every other month. By April, I should have recouped the hosting and domain costs from advertising, though some depends on ad rates which decline after the Christmas season and web traffic, 🕸 which always picks up during the summer months when people are looking for trails and places for camping. 🏕 I probably wouldn’t have done the advertising thing but I didn’t like the sting of the rising hosting bills a few months back, of which my bank account still hasn’t fully recovered.
I put in a FOIL request for the Recreation Unit Management Plan Shapefile with the DEC. 🏕 This would be nice for making maps, somebody asked for it a while back and I never was able to get them the file. Basically this shapefile includes the area covered unit plans, and I can’t find it online on an ArcGIS REST/Service or the DEC website. I don’t like doing too many FOIL requests 🏣 these days, as I don’t like my name all over government documents, but this would be useful to have, and could create many good maps and analysis for the blog 🗺 which could further drive traffic here. Come February 2024, I am also going to get the update voter file for the full state rather than just the county that I have now, 🗳 so I can use it for analysis, especially machine learning purposes to see if I can figure out new ways of targeting 🎯 voters.
As previously noted, next Saturday is Average High is 40 🌨 when the sun will be setting at 4:23 pm with dusk at 4:53 pm. On that day in 2022, we had sunny and temperatures between 39 and 25 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 40 degrees. We hit a record high of 62 back in 1966.
I also baked carrot bread and also a loaf of onion bread and sweet potatoes in the oven this morning. The onion bread is saved in the freezer 
for later in the week. Last night I took some well freezer-burnt pork roast, cooked up with a lot of chunks of apples, vegetables, mushrooms and onions in a frying pan, added it bunch of spices and called it a delicious dinner. 
I am continuing to work on cleaning out my freezer one meal at a time, while developing well balanced, nutritious fiber and vitamin-rich meals. 
Made a second pot of coffee up as I was running late, though I’ve been cutting back on the amount of coffee I’ve been drinking at home as I can get it a work too.
but my hope is to ride down to the old train station — Peter Kiernan Plaza — and catch the express bus home from there. 
I think after President’s Day, assuming the rail trail is free of snow, 
I’ll be able to ride both ways to work on nice days. We’ll see how often that happens in February, though so far the first half of the month looks fairly mild.
and then kneading bread for the morning. Then I went to bed a little after 8 PM, so I could enjoy the heated blanket. 
I wasn’t going to turn on/up the heat if it’s going to be above freezing. I have lots of good things to eat going forward the next few days, probably including more of the fabled pea soup that contains that old stewing beef. Hoping to finish much of that off tonight, and will freeze whatever remains. Then tomorrow night I’ll break out some old lasagna I had in the freezer, and fry that up with vegetables and seasoning. Probably use up the rest of the sweet potatoes 
that I baked up the other day. It comes out much better then reheated nasty, calorie dense mush from the microwave. 
Saturday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 41. Northwest wind around 6 mph. Sunday, a chance of snow before 7am, then rain and snow likely. Cloudy, with a high near 37. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Typical average high for the weekend is 33 degrees.
