Good morning! It’s the first Monday of the New Year. As New Years Day occurred on a Sunday, this would be a holiday. It’s good because it’s a cloudy and I’m bad at getting off my ass, and I did not get out walking at 6:45 AM when it was still pitch black out. But later on it will clear out and we will have weather that will be resembling the first day of spring, until it no longer feels like that later in the week. Temperatures will drop below freezing at Thursday around 11 pm. ☃️ But even after that, it won’t feel like January for a while until eventually it does. I figure it will feel like a deep frozen hell by the time my 40th birthday rolls around, and I’ll once again be trying to stay warm under the heated blanket.

Mostly cloudy and 36 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ Calm wind. One week to Static Electric day, but with warm, damp conditions, I don’t expect much of a need for a static discharge strip around your arm anytime soon. 🤯 I am not prepared to be shocked anytime soon unless I touch a 120 volt line in all the rain we are expected to get mid-week. At least shit won’t dry out, so if I head out for the King’s weekend and have a big ass fire, 🔥 to make up for staying home over New Years Eve like a lame and poor duck, I won’t have to worry about burning down the woods.

Out for the morning walk 🚶 at Elm Ave Park and then I will take a shower 🚿 and then do a quick hike up Bennett Hill and then out to the folks house 🏡 for New Years Fondue 🫕 the wonderful tradition invented by dairymen who raise those Big Brown Swiss 🇨🇭🐄 to sell more cheese 🧀 in the dairy boom of the 1970s while input prices were rising and Americans wanted cheaper food during an era of inflation. But dipping bread and salty cocktail frank’s in melted dairy fat and wine is so good. I haven’t showered since Friday morning before work so I’m do for a good scrub.

Today will be partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 48 degrees at 1pm. 14 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 22nd. I believe that is called spring, which appears for now to be coming early, but I don’t think we can stick a fork in winter yet. ⛄ But who knows about skiing on Martin Luther’s birthday weekend. Always so cold, but maybe not this year. Calm wind becoming west around 5 mph. A year ago, we had mist in the morning with more sun in the afternoon. The high last year was 49 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1890. 7.1 inches of snow fell back in 2014.❄

Today got to boil my muzzles 😷 and then hang them to dry. I find boiling them with soapy water 💦 helps to get them clean and tightens up the fabric to keep the COVID away. I got the latest and greatest COVID boosters and flu shots but I hate doctors 🏥 and have zero interest in getting sick. Now if they could only bring back work from home 🏡 though I’m not sure I’d want to pay for the extra heat and electricity in these inflationary times.

They’re back in town this week 👨🏻‍💼 so I also have to iron my shirt and polish my swanky dress shoes and black steel toe boots. I wear the black boots back and forth to work through the snow, rain and muck and to prolong the life of my increasingly worn out dress shoes which I probably will need to replace later in the year. I mostly keep them for wearing in office at my desk for comfort and those odd times I get summoned over the Capitol or go over there to snag some soggy salmon or chicken dipped in that werid sauce rich people like so I save my packed dinner for a later date. But that doesn’t happen much these now that I’m Deputy in Research, it’s mostly behind a computer reading 📖 backgrounds and running stats. 🔢 But the security guards 💂 say I look swanky and less like a hillbilly when I wear my blazer and tie.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:00 pm with sun having an altitude of 24.5° from the due south horizon (-46.4° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.2 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. See I know a little trigonometry, mainly because I did some shadow analysis of that movie theater for Save the Pine Bush. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:48 pm with the sun in the southwest (231°). 📸 Keep that in mind photographers, especially today with it clearing out. The sunset is in the west-southwest (239°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:34 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 23 seconds with dusk around 5:05 pm, which is 52 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Gibbous 🌔 Moon in the east (97°) at an altitude of 39° from the horizon, 244,259 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:41 pm. At sunset, look for partly sunny skies 🌃 and temperatures around 45 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Tomorrow will have 9 hours and 12 minutes of daytime, an increase of 52 seconds over today.

Tonight will have a slight chance of showers after 4am. Increasing clouds 🌧, with a low of 34 degrees at 12am. 16 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 7th. Calm wind. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2022, we had partly cloudy skies in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 13 degrees. The record low of -14 occurred back in 1970.

A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Well, by January standards, as the winter thaw continues. Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 39. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 37. Typical average high for the weekend is 33 degrees. But we know what is next, it will come, and it will be ducking cold. Yet, for now I’m enjoying the heat being off, and still comfortable in a t-shirt inside, and a vest outside. You can probably guess what t-shirt that is. That said, I probably should buy one of those Palpation Nation shirts with the guy AI-ing a cow on it, so I can be cool like the interwebs, and actually wear that one to work on a casual summer day. But as I’ve been telling myself for two years now, I don’t buy shit like that even if I probably would wear it a lot.

As previously noted, next Monday is Static Electric Shock Day 🧼 when the sun will be setting at 4:41 pm with dusk at 5:11 pm. On that day in 2022, we had mostly cloudy, freezing rain showers and temperatures between 36 and 19 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 33 degrees. We hit a record high of 62 back in 2008.