Good morning! An icy Monday’s come back around again. ⛸

Pretty much anything that didn’t get well cleaned up yesterday is a skating rink with the cold this morning, which will only get colder as the day progresses. We will making a run for a zero later. I don’t think I will turn down the heat before leaving for work today.

Mostly cloudy and 24 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌥 There is a northwest breeze at 14 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is 12. There is a inch of snow and ice on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at Thursday around 11 am. 🌡️

Everything is kind of a skating rink ⛸ outside, it was a careful walk down to the local bus 🚍 after making sure to leave the kitchen cabinets open, heat turned up and the door securely closed. I’m hoping that they get the sidewalks cleaned up before I get home. I could have salted at home but I figured the landlord may do it later so why duplicate efforts? I don’t have that much salt, it’s more reserved for camping and emergency. Maybe I should have worn my black boots and carried my dress shoes into the office. 👟 Maybe tomorrow. That’s how I ended up my dress shoes being in the office for 13 months last year during the pandemic.

Yesterday was a pretty quiet day. 🤫 Spent some time unplugging the vacuum, doing some cleaning in the kitchen and bathroom and some vacuuming. Had a nice breakfast. 🥞 More pancakes. Also been studying how to time series analysis in R for some projects I want to do go forward, including looking at seasonality and other trends.

Session Day Today, 👩‍💼 so I have to dress up with my suit and tie. 👔 Going to be a cold one, and probably a late night, but that’s fine, it will be warm in the office. That said, I left the heat turned up in my apartment last night and it was plenty warm this morning – and that heated blanket is always nice. Uses about a 1/3rd of a kilowatt a night according to the Kill-a-Watt meter, which isn’t free but only works out to be a buck or two a month, assuming I use it every night, which I won’t because it’s much too warm on nights when it’s well above freezing. 🛌

But tomorrow it will be nice, especially if it’s as cold as predicted, 🌬 ❄️ as I expect the gas heat will fall behind. Certainly a lot cheaper then baseboard electric heat or even the little space heater I only use very occasionally, mostly when I first come in from the cold and want some hot air blown in my face without turning up the heat. ♨️ Got to leave the cabinets open before going to work tonight, so the pipes under the sink don’t freeze, not that I’ve ever had trouble with that, although the hot water is mighty cold in the shower at first when it’s negative 15 out, as was the case a few years back. But the landlord always texts me asking to leave the cabinets open.

This used to the coldest week of the year, 🌨 but lately winter has been trending later and later, with the real cold blasts usually coming in February, although the climate normals show the coldest weeks of the year on average are now the third and forth weeks of January. It used to be this week back in the day, but things have changed with the changing climate. And real cold days aren’t nearly what they once were.

There has been a mouse in the roof that has been annoying lately. 🐭 I’ll have to leave a mouse trap out in the kitchen at some point, but honestly I don’t care that much. Mice are just part of living, nothing to be freaked out about. I haven’t seen many mouse droppings in the kitchen lately or mouse damage, but I see a mouse the other night under the oven. I need to get some peanut butter for that, but I don’t know if I will be by a store until the weekend. The cold has driven them inside. There not like the big grain-fattened rats I used to find climbing up the rafter in the barn as a kid. 🐀

I cleaned off the truck, 🛻 yesterday when it was warmer in the afternoon chipping the ice off the windshield and solar panel. 🔋 With the cold I want to trickle charge both the accessory and starting batteries on my truck to keep them healthy in the cold. It’s so nice being able to leave the truck parked for a week 🅿 and then in the cold have it start easily with a full charge.