Good morning! Happy Thursday. Back to work today after my five days away from work and some nice camping too. ⛺ It’s the New Year, full of hope and working for a better tomorrow. 🎇 Next Thursday is Static Electric Shock Day 🧼. How shocking. Never have much problem with static in my apartment as the air is never real dry. Partly cloudy and 30 degrees at the Elm Ave Park & Ride – CDTA. ⛅ There is a south breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. Things will start to thaw out at around 9 am. 🌡️

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 45 degrees at 3pm. 14 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 17th. It will feel almost like a spring day in January. 🌸 No flowers yet but we can look forward to nicer days in about three months. Not seeing much cold in the forecast in the near future. South wind 8 to 10 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 34 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1890. 7.1 inches of snow fell back in 2014.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:00 pm with sun having an altitude of 24.4° from the due south horizon (-46.4° vs. 6/21). It’s starting to climb a bit more as summer approaches. Not 70.8 yet! The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:48 pm with the sun in the southwest (231°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (239°) starting at 4:30 pm and lasts for 3 minutes and 24 seconds with dusk around 5:04 pm, which is 52 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:41 pm. At sunset, look for partly sunny skies 🌃 and temperatures around 44 degrees. There will be a south breeze at 9 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 7 minutes of daytime, an increase of 48 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have increasing clouds ☁, with a low of 34 degrees at 1am. 18 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 6th. South wind 7 to 9 mph. In 2019, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 32 degrees. The record low of -14 occurred back in 1970.

I saw one of the CDTA all electric battery 🔋 buses 🚍 running the 233 Schodack Run today. I’m glad, electric buses are the future. They bought the buses last summer but now they are live. I am hopeful the technology works out well, as it could have a lot of emissions reductions. A lot of public transit authorities are adopting electric buses, and it could have a significant impact on local air quality — and possibly noise reduction too. Morever, the all electric buses will be cleaner and nicer neighbors — the low sulfur diesel fuel and pollution traps help a lot — but emissions controls aren’t always perfect. Also, the ANSWERS smoke stack is totally gone now — they finished tearing it down last week. It’s a commitment towards a cleaner air quality for all.🏭

Not a particularly nice weekend on tap. 🙁 Saturday, rain, possibly mixed with snow, becoming all rain after 7am. High near 40. Calm wind becoming northeast around 6 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. Sunday, a chance of snow before 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 34. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Typical average high for the weekend is 31 degrees.

Staying in town this weekend. 🏡 I heard Saturday may be very wet. Maybe that’s when I’ll wash my truck. 🚙 I can probably come up with enough groceries around town in the mean time. 🍴 It’s good to use up the food 🍲 I have at home. Not sure if I will do it this weekend but I want to go over to John Wolcott house and work on scanning in the index 📇 for his files 📂 and use it to make labels and a type set index to keep them better organized. It will have to be a Saturday so I can drive into the city with the big heavy Save the Pine Bush scanner.

I am continuing to research mental health services with my insurance provider and start to call around. 📞 I am thinking a little bit of counseling and self reflection with a neutral party could really boost my productivity at work 💼 and open up new career opportunities. Maybe I’ll have more courage and confidence to do more job interviews or see a promotion and make more money 💵 after some counseling. If I could turn 8 counseling sessions at $25 co-pay a piece over four months into a future $10,000 raise over a decade of investing that could be well over $100k and plug that gap in my future plans for the off-grid property out west. I have a lot of important decisions to make, especially as 2021 gets underway, and I want to make them as well as possible.

🌹🌻🌼Only 77 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼

As previously noted, next Thursday is Static Electric Shock Day 🧼 when the sun will be setting at 4:40 pm with dusk at 5:11 pm. On that day in 2019, we had rain and temperatures between 40 and 32 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 30 degrees. We hit a record high of 62 back in 2008.