Good evening! Cloudy and 39 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a south breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. Temperatures will drop below freezing at Thursday around 4 pm. ☃️

I walked down to the library for a while to return my books 📚. I was going to work on the John Wolcott project but I’ve had little ambition to do that much data entry after a busy day at work. 📇 He’s out of the hospital and feeling better, I’ll be back over on Friday. I really think I want to spend time cleaning up the existing sorted files 📂 and getting better labels 🔖 on the folders. Rode the exercise bike 🚲 for a few minutes but stopped as my neighbor came home and lately it’s been quite squeaky. I’m hoping I can lubricate and tighten it up and get rid of the noise. It is pretty old and hardly a quiet machine at this point.

Neighbors have a candle burning in their window as I go to bed. 🕯️ I sure hope they’re keeping an eye on it 👀 and not falling asleep with it at still burning 🔥. I actually am going to make sure that I know where my wallet is and laptop bag before bed in case my neighbor’s place catches fire. 🛋️ Its not directly connected to my building but if it caught fire, there is a risk of fire brands hitting my building so I would have to evacuate. I am all for using fire in a controlled way – its great for restoring habitats, heating buildings, cooking food and disposing of waste in rural areas – but it’s such a menace especially in the cities. 🌇 I’m sure it will be fine or so I hope.

Tonight will have a chance of drizzle or light rain before 11pm, then a slight chance of drizzle between 11pm and 2am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 35 degrees at 6am. 21 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 8th. South wind 7 to 13 mph becoming west after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2019, we had partly cloudy skies in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 10 degrees. The record low of -20 occurred back in 1957.

Tonight will have a Waning Gibbous 🌖 Moon. The darkest hour is at 12:05 am, followed by dawn at 6:53 am, and sun starting to rise at 7:24 am in the east-southeast (119°) and last for 3 minutes and 19 seconds. Sunrise is 24 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 8:08 am with sun in the southeast (127°) at an altitude of 6°. Tonight will have 14 hours and 37 minutes of darkness, a decrease of one minute and 35 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 43 degrees at 1pm. 13 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 12th. Northwest wind 6 to 10 mph. Should be a very pleasant day. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 33 degrees. The record high of 65 was set in 1995. 13.4 inches of snow fell back in 1983.❄

It wasn’t a bad day at work, meeting went well. 💼 Busy today but I got another report finalized on my end of things. Making good progress. I got a nice complement from my boss to a client. Busy but so drab in that windowless office 🏢 with those cool white florescent bulbs. But I’m getting stuff done, getting results for clients.

I got bumped by a car 🚙 in a crosswalk today 💥but I wasn’t injured. I thought I made eye contact 👀 with the driver but I was kind of day dreaming and neither of us were looking. I bumped my hand into the hood of his truck but I never hit the bumper and didn’t do any damage. Got to be more careful crossing the streets. I haven’t had a close call like that in years – once before something similar happened in college – but I know it’s definitely possible to get in a much worse accident then getting brushed by a car. 🚶 Drivers just don’t pay attention. Neither do I at times when I say dream. 💭 Pine Busher Lynne Jackson and bicycle activist Burt Shou has been warning ⚠ me about this for years.

In my suit 👔I do see myself getting old and gray in parts and with only a little over 3 years until I’m forty years old I really should try to understand myself and my future better. 👴 Still researching counseling services. I should just make an appointment and its only $25. I don’t like it, I don’t have to go back. But I could become a better person. 👪 It’s great to save for my future but I really should figure out if I should be looking to do other things in the meantime. Old age creeps up suddenly and I don’t want to be at a place where I can no longer do the things I want to do, like moving out west to rural town, my off grid property or hobby farm. 🚜 Watching YouTube videos has me constantly thinking about all the other way people live and put food on their table. Some options will never be open to me, but if I have a better plan and more confidence I can open new doors for my future. 🚪I wish I could walk into a room, have a firm hand shake and be more charismatic and not a reserved somewhat crude hillbilly in a suit.

As I mentioned earlier, Iowa always seems like a fun state but not a lot of public land and land there can be super expensive due to amazing soils. 🌽 I follow Iowa Dairy Boys and a few other farm channels on the YouTube 🐮 and while some of the farming isn’t that different than here in New York with old tie stall barns, they also have some really big and very fertile fields that are uncommon except for a few deep valleys in New York like the Genesee Valley of Western NY. But those are tiny in comparison to the vast fertile Iowa prarie. They also get quite a bit of snow and cold in Iowa – they’re winters are cooler than New York but hotter on summer due to the lack of moderating Atlantic Ocean. I also follow an off gridder in a shed to home 🏡 in Iowa, as you might guess in a rural state like that many of rural areas are reasonably laid back on zoning and codes. I do love 😍 learning about how those farm families fight the forces of nature and the market to scratch together a living often on the margins. They might have a lot of investment in their land and operations but even in Iowa are often struggling to make ends meet.

In four weeks on February 11 the sun will be setting in the west-southwest (251°) at 5:21 pm,🌄 which is 35 minutes and 47 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had partly cloudy, snow showers and temperatures between 33 and 18 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 34 and 17 degrees. The record high of 59 degrees was set back in 1981.

Looking ahead, Don’t Cry over Spilled Milk Day 🥛 is in 4 weeks, Valentines Day ❤️ is a month away, National Drink Wine Day 🍷 is in 5 weeks, St. Patrick’s Day 🍀 is in 9 weeks, 7:30 PM Sunset 🌇 is in 12 weeks, Cinco de Mayo 🤠 is in 16 weeks, Fathers Day 👨 is in 5 months, Primary Day 🗳️ is in 23 weeks and Election Day 2020 🗳️ is in 42 weeks.