The Friday before Memorial Day Weekend 🇺🇸

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And I’m so not rushing around to make sure I have everything packed so I can be eaten alive by the black flies while I struggle to find cell service so I can work. Or rolling out of Mayfield watching traffic queue three miles in the distance as people crawl towards Northville and I’m openly wondering if all the good campsites are taken. I’m sure there is a lot of summer and autumn left.

Good morning! Yeah, it’s Friday before Memorial Day Weekend! 🇺🇸 Sunny and 42 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌞 Calm wind. An absolutely beautiful morning, although a bit cool for the morning walk.

These days with the early sunrise 🌅 I find it difficult to sleep much past five o’clock which is bad for the sleep 😴 as it’s also hard to get to bed before 9:30 or so after the evening walk 🚶. But I’m moving forward and I’m thinking eggs, tofu spinach and feta for breakfast this morning. 🍳 I’ve really been overdoing the sugar lately and eggs have an amazing staying power for the full day. 💪

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 72 degrees at 5pm. Two degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around May 19th. Calm wind becoming north 5 to 7 mph in the morning. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 74 degrees. The record high of 94 was set in 2010. There was a dusting of snow in 1953.❄

Should be a pretty nice day. ☺ Yesterday wasn’t half bad, walked 11 ½ miles had a good dinner with salmon, peppers, tomatoes and a lemon juice 🍋 topping. Work was busy but it’s exciting getting that new Census Housing Data for sure. 🖥 That said, I had most depressing project to review yesterday 📝 but not everything can always be happy and fun when you are paid to review it.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:53 pm with sun having an altitude of 68.5° from the due south horizon (-2.3° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 2.4 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 7:40 pm with the sun in the west-northwest (293°). 📸

Going to catch the earlier express bus 🚏🚌 in this morning so I can bring the Lupine Festival 🦋 display to my office 🏢 and hopefully bring it back to Lynne this afternoon. Then do some more walking 🚶 before getting down to work for the day. As I won’t be leaving right from work today to the Adirondacks I figure I won’t be guilty of such clock 🕒 watching today but it should still go by quickly as I expect to be quite busy.

The sunset is in the west-northwest (300°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 8:22 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 20 seconds with dusk around 8:54 pm, which is 55 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the First Quarter 🌓 Moon in the southwest (234°) at an altitude of 52° from the horizon, 251,804 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 9:38 pm. At sunset, look for mostly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 65 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 15 hours of daytime, an increase of one minute and 37 seconds over yesterday.

After work tonight I want to go to the library 📚 and get a book to read for the holiday weekend then run to Walmart after 8 pm after they restocked followed by Market32 for anything they don’t have. 🫑🍎🌶️🥚 Want to make sure to have lots of fresh fruits and vegetables for camping 🏕.

Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 45 degrees at 5am. Seven degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 7th. Light and variable wind. In 2022, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It became humid as the night progressed. It got down to 63 degrees. The record low of 30 occurred back in 1969.

The plan for tomorrow 🚲 is to work on the bicycle in the morning 💻 along with any other work that comes in tonight into the morning then go out and primatively hammock camp ⛺ in the back country as simply as possible doing all my cooking 🍳 over a fire with hiking 🚶, reading and nature observation during the day. Use a candle 🕯 and the fire 🔥 for light at night 🌃.

Tomorrow will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 79 degrees at 5pm. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around June 12th. Calm wind. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 77 degrees. The record high of 94 was set in 1914.

Looking ahead to Sunday, sunny, with a high near 85. ☀ Calm wind becoming west around 6 mph in the afternoon. Maximum dew point of 55 at 8pm. That will feel like summer. Typical average high for the weekend is 74 degrees.

And Memorial Day 🇺🇸 will be sunny ☀ with a high of 87 degrees as the heat wave strengthens heading into the work week, even if Monday is a holiday. I’m sure it will be a long and busy work week next week, though maybe not so bad as Tuesday is the Assembly Majority picnic and Thursday is a get away day. Then that final hellish week and they will be gone. And then the recovery weekend for me spent with dad at the Gas Up. 🚜

The truth is I’m more focused on the following weekend, June 3-4 for more of a get out of town adventure ⛺🛶🌳🌲 just because I know the woods will be quieter that weekend, the black flies less bad 🐜, water warmer, less traffic and likely less work for me. All a win – win assuming the warm weather doesn’t crap out by then. And of course, Juneteenth long weekend extended by a few extra days at the Potholers. 🏊‍♂️

Looking ahead, there are 7 weeks until National Nude Day 👱 when the sun will be setting at 8:33 pm with dusk at 9:06 pm. On that day in 2022, we had partly cloudy and temperatures between 85 and 65 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 84 degrees. We hit a record high of 99 back in 1995.

Brief Rainshower On A Hot Day

Eat more beans 🍘

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Every few weeks I try to find a new food to expand in my diet while reducing others out. It provides variety, a chance to improve on certain nutrients and vitamins and learn what makes sense for me to cook and eat.

Beans are the latest thing I’ve been experimenting with boosting in my diet. Beans are nitrogen fixing legumes, they are healthy both for the soil and humans that eat them. They do have kind of a bad reputation for making people gassy, though some of that is due to people’s digestion tract trying to adjust to a more fiber rich diet.

The process of cooking dried beans at first was a bit off putting with my busy schedule. Who has time these days to spend hours sitting around waiting for beans to simmer on the stove? But it turns out it’s easy to soak beans in the refrigerator a day in advance – not a lot of work – then if I start the beans early, go back to bed, then turn off the stove while walking then turn it back on when I eat breakfast and shower they’re done before I head to work. And then I put them in the refrigerator or freezer for the week to come. It’s a one shot deal for a week full of the goodness of beans.

For the past few months I’ve been consuming a half pound of beans a week. Different types every other week – black beans, white beans, pinto beans and cranberry beans. Red beans are next on my list to add to my diet. They are supposedly more flavorful and nutritious. Variety is important.

Beans often are somewhat calorie heavy due to the carbohydrates and to a lesser extent fats. But the flip side is the same things in beans that make you fart can make them quite filling with smaller portion sizes. If you aren’t hungry, you won’t be stuffing as much food in your mouth.

That said, with all the health benefits of eating beans, I’m thinking of boosting up to one pound in the coming week, use whole package and refrigerate or freeze the remaining. If I have too many, I can always freeze and save for next week.