Good morning! Happy Sunday. ⛪⛪⛪Next Sunday is the Average High is 40.😎 Two weeks until Daylight Savings Time.🌄 If that’s not a sign that spring is coming, I don’t know what is. A very cold rain and 37 degrees in Delmar, NY. 💦There is a southeast breeze at 14 mph. Going to be a wet one today but at least it will be above freezing. The skies will clear around 9 pm.

🌻Only 23 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌻

Today will be a cold and rainy day. ☔High of 39 degrees at 2pm. Two degrees above normal. Southeast wind 8 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total daytime sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. The high last year was 70 degrees.🌞 The record high was set in 2017. 16.8 inches of snow fell back in 1966.❄

The sun will set at 5:40 pm with dusk around 6:09 pm, which is one minute and 15 seconds later than yesterday. 🌅At sunset, look for mostly cloudy conditions and 38 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 5 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 50 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy, with a low of 31 degrees at 6am. ☁☁11 degrees above normal. Southeast wind around 6 mph becoming light and variable. In 2017, we had thunderstorm rain in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 24 degrees. The record low of -11 occurred back in 1950.

Yesterday was the Save the Pine Bush Hike at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve. 🌲🌲🌲🐉🐝🐞It was a nice hike, we explored the Truax Barriens trail, which was similiar to what we did the previous month, but a bit shorter because I and some other people had things to do in the afternoon.

After the hike, I met Mom and my sister and neice for lunch at the Yonder Farms in Karner. 🍔🍪Lynne Jackson and Hugh Jonhson were also having lunch there after the hike. It also is my dad’s birthday so happy birthday to him. 🎂🎂

After lunch, I took mom to the grocery store in Greenville to help her with her weekly shop. 👜👜It was nice seeing the old town where I grew up but much has changed over the past twenty years.🗻🗻🏦🏫 I tell you I love those 🐷🐮🐂🐃mountains and the small town life, maybe doing some hobby farming like people out there do, but not in NY with the all the stupid gun laws🔫 and the burn ban. 🔥🚫

I thought about going hiking up Bennett Hill in the afternoon,◻🏃 but I shelved that plan when I discovered the battery on my phone was almost dead. 🐮📱🔋I also was tired as I got up early for the hike and I didn’t sleep well the previous night.

When I got home I ended up working on building a small board for my GPS tracker,🔬📺🌠🌎 connecting most of the wires just using dupont cables, and putting the whole unit in a small sandwitch box. Doesn’t need to be pretty, as it’s just going to get tucked in a box under the seat in my truck. I added and improved some of the recording functions, including adding a recording function for the grade I was climbing, distance traveled in the trip, distance from home, and acceleration. Neat stuff for graphing and other purposes. Should be great for looking back on my trips.

I also spend a bunch of time working with the 24LC256 chip 💻that I bought for adding memory storage to some of my projects. It works well, although I need to prefect the code relating to storing data structures on the device. But I will do that in my free time in the coming weeks, as winter really isn’t over yet.

Cleaned out the bathtub, which was getting super gross once again from the from the mildew, 🛀🛀🙊and then the kitchen counters and stove top. Swept the floor. Need to take the recycable paper to the recycling dumpers at the transfer station today🚮💠, and maybe start loading bottles and cans in the back of my pickup for eventual haul to the transfer station, as my trash cans are getting pretty full. Usually make one big trip each March or early April, as in the summer, I have much less trash when I’m camping.⛺

I’m hopeful now that next weekend is March, that soon I’ll be able to get out camping again.⛺ It will depend a lot on the weather and my work schedule. Sometimes I have to go into the office on weekends during March, because that’s one of the busiest times of the year.  🌃Long nigths in the wilderness are great, next to a roaring fire, of course assuming that winter finally comes to an end with warmer spring temperatures, not too much of a wildfire risk, but not so soggy either.

Well folks, I should get going as soon I need to head to the store, 🍉🍎🌽🍟🍄🍲before I go to my parents house for the afternoon. I have to get there a bit earlier then some weeks, but that’s fine as hopefully I will get home relatively early this evening.

As previously noted, next Sunday is Average High is 40 😎when the sun will be setting at 5:49 pm with dusk at 6:17 pm. On that day in 2017, we had partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 23 and 8 degrees. We hit a record high of 59 back in 1919.