Good morning! Happy Saturday. It’s the weekend! Two weeks to Boxing Day 🥊. Yes, the day after Christmas 🎄 when you set all those boxes and colorful wrapping paper 🎁 on fire. 🔥 Those big blocks of Styrofoam the toys come in burn real black. 🖤 It’s overcast and 31 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ Calm wind. The skies will clear Monday around 4 pm.

Last night when I got home from my evening walk 🚶🏻 I munched on some frozen fruit and think I might have an extra sleeping pill 💊 after forgetting I took one earlier leading myself to wake in a haze with a very dry nose 👃🏻 and a bit achy. I’ll be fine when it wears off and indeed I did sleep very well. Silly 😋 me. That frozen fruit though was good. 🍓

Got to Wally World yesterday 🏪 and stocked up on groceries. 🥦 A lot more crowded than expected 👥 but I was in an out. Bought more hand sanitizer so I now have a big bottle for at home and in the truck 🖐🏻 so at least I can play hygiene theater 🎭 and get greasy shit all over my steering wheel. Went down to the library and worked there for a while and downloaded a bunch more YouTube videos to watch. 📺 They didn’t have any wireless headphones so I got a wired pair for now. I really prefer the wireless ones now, especially as I can use them with the laptop when watching videos at home.

One of my old friends from Boy Scouts 🧒🏻 called the other night. It was kind of interesting to hear what he was up to these days. We keep saying we’ll get together some time soon. 🔜 Maybe after the pandemic. 🐓 He’s lucky that he now owns a house out in the country. Some day I’ll own my own land out in the BFE.

Today will have a slight chance of drizzle between noon and 2pm, then a chance of rain after 2pm. Patchy fog between 1pm and 2pm. Otherwise, cloudy 🌧, with a high of 42 degrees at 2pm. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 30th. Light and variable wind. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 31 degrees. The record high of 62 was set in 1979. 6.6 inches of snow fell back in 1970.❄

I am watching the radar 🕸 trying to decide if I should walk to Five Rivers in a bit. ☔ It looks like it might be good for a few hours but I’d rather not get soaked in the rain walking home. Maybe I should pack a rain coat in my bag. But I also still feel kind of drousey. I guess I could drive out there but I’d rather walk. I’m just waiting for the landlord to move his truck but once he does I’ll go out and get my binoculars and head out.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:50 am with sun having an altitude of 24.3° from the due south horizon (-46.6° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.3 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:38 pm with the sun in the southwest (231°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (239°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:23 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 24 seconds with dusk around 4:54 pm, which is 8 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:31 pm. At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and temperatures around 41 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 9 hours and 5 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 40 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of showers, mainly before 2am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 41 degrees at 8pm. 19 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 12th. South wind 3 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2019, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 30 degrees. The record low of -6 occurred back in 1988.

Today Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, 📜 five days after Delaware became the first on this day in 1787. Honestly I think people think too highly of the constitution but it does give courts and the police at least some restrictions 🚨 especially if you aren’t colored or poor. But it’s only as good as the people who enforce it and not all government workers are best folks out there, as witnessed by the tweeting incumbent in the White House.

It looks like this week is going to be cold ❄. I am watching that snow storm 🌨 but with remote work I’m not that concerned about it. I do hope that we don’t get so much snow up north that I can’t get away on the Christmas 🎄 it New Years 🎇 holiday weekends which are both four days long for me. Finding parking in the deep snow is a real issue in winter even off of NY 8, and the snow banks often get hard packed in the winter.

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until Boxing Day 🥊 when the sun will be setting at 4:28 pm with dusk at 5:00 pm. On that day in 2019, we had mostly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 41 and 27 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 33 degrees. We hit a record high of 59 back in 1895.