Good evening! Clear and 53 degrees at the Delmar. 🌟 Calm wind. Going to be a cold night. I thought about closing my windows but the heat is off and it’s not expected to get below freezing in Albany. I’ll just enjoy the hot coffee ☕ come morning.

Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 42 degrees at 5am. Eight degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 8th. Calm wind. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It was somewhat humid. It got down to 60 degrees. The record low of 32 occurred back in 1959.

Tonight will have a Waning Gibbous Moon 🌖 with 70% illuminated. The moon will set at 11:46 am. The Last Quarter Moon is on Friday night. The Hunter Moon 🌝 is on Saturday, October 12th. The sun will rise at 6:38 am with the first light at 6:09 am, which is one minute and 5 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 11 hours and 38 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 51 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have patchy fog before 8am. Otherwise, sunny 🌞, with a high of 71 degrees at 3pm. Typical for tomorrow. Calm wind. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. It was sticky. The high last year was 75 degrees. The record high of 90 was set in 1946.

Doug Bullock’s Speech to Save the Pine Bush was quite good. 📢 No bull horn this time. He will be missed in the county legislature – he’s still on the Working Families line but I think most people know it’s time to move on. He can continue his activism in new ways. I helped him out on his first campaign 12 years ago but the democrats in his district apparently wanted a change – and his progressive advocacy never won him much in the way of corporate contributions.🌲I don’t agree with Doug on every issue but he’s a good guy in politics, for all the right reasons. ✊

So it looks like the proposal to re-power the ANSWERS plant and generate electricity is officially dead. 🏭 They’re going to tear it down instead build more solar on the plaza and in Oneida County and replace more of the lighting with solid state fixtures. It was so weird that they announced it during the Save the Pine Bush Dinner 📢 while Doug Bullock was speaking a two days before the climate march. Doug has been very vocal about opposing the plans as has the folks in PAUSE and the No Fracked Gas pipeline people. 🌎 At this point, we really shouldn’t be investing in more fossil infrastructure and the truth is that they didn’t really need the co-generation plant – it was wish list type thing 📃. Can they build the hundreds of acres of solar needed to go 100% solar for the Plaza? Only time will tell. A hundred million dollars once allocated to build the co-generation plant 💵 can buy a lot of panels. I do wonder though about outsourcing the panels to Oneida County.

I probably would have been involved with Doug’s campaign but I don’t get involved in politics much any more. 🏤 Some of its my work takes a lot of my time but also I’m less interested in politics than in years past. I’m more interested in self improvement and investing in my own future. 💰 Those who fight the good fight are doing God’s work but I don’t want to be part of the messy nature of politics. I just want to buffer myself from the harm of climate change and eventually own my own land out in the country in a freer state. 🐷

In four weeks on October 16 the sun will be setting at 6:12 pm,🌄 which is 48 minutes and 27 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had partly sunny and temperatures between 56 and 36 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 60 and 39 degrees. The record high of 88 degrees was set back in 1947.

Tomorrow evening I’ll run to the store and get a camp chair, and maybe boots 👢 and get packed up for the weekend. I plan to head north as soon as the Pine Bush hike is over on Saturday. Should be a really nice evening.

I’ve gotten a few maps and done some more research 🗾 on the New River Gorge. Most of the other places in West Virginia I’m quite familiar with so I don’t expect to need much research but I did also get a map for hiking Dolly Sods. I got to get out my big West Virginia Monongahela National Forest map – I think I know where it is in the crawl space – and do some more planning. I have one of those free maps from AAA of West Virginia Roads outside of the National Forest but I’m thinking about getting a better quality Rand McNally map too for better details. This year’s trip I want better planned then in 2017 which was kind of a mess as I was dealing with my mom being in the hospital 🏥.

Looking ahead, More Night then Day 🌌 is in 1 weeks, Average High is 65 🍂 is in 2 weeks, Day After Election Day 🛀 is in 7 weeks, Average Night Below Freezing 🌌 is in 8 weeks, Average High is 40 🌨 is in 11 weeks, Christmas 🎅 is in 14 weeks, New Years Day 2019 🎉 is in 15 weeks, National Bird Day 🐦 is in 17 weeks, Winnie the Pooh Day 🍯 is in 4 months, 37th Birthday 🎉 is in 19 weeks and Inauguration Day 2021 👴🏻 is in 70 weeks.