Good morning! Happy Saturday. A cold weekend ! Next Saturday is Boxing Day 🥊. Mostly sunny and 5 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind.There are 21 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around noontime. 🌡️

Today I’m heading out to Schodack Island to cross country ski 🎿 and watch the birds 🐦. But first I want it to warm up a bit. It’s a cold morning for sure but sunny. 🌅 Then I plan to go to Aldi’s and get some groceries. 🛒

Today will be partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 24 degrees at 3pm. 11 degrees below normal. Calm wind. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with a few breaks of sun the afternoon. The high last year was 18 degrees. The record high of 54 was set in 1895. 7.8 inches of snow fell back in 2008.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:54 am with sun having an altitude of 24° from the due south horizon (-46.9° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:39 pm with the sun in the southwest (230°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (238°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:25 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 26 seconds with dusk around 4:56 pm, which is 24 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the First Quarter 🌓 Moon in the south (187°) at an altitude of 33° from the horizon, 244,168 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:33 pm. At sunset, look for partly cloudy skies 🌃 and temperatures around 23 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 9 hours and 3 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 10 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 18 degrees at 6pm. Two degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 24th. Maximum wind chill around 20 at 7pm; Calm wind. In 2019, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 6 degrees. The record low of -19 occurred back in 1951.

They still haven’t gotten the sidewalks done on Elm Avenue or Delaware Avenue so I ended up walking on Cherry Avenue. 🚶🏻 I am still a bit annoyed it but it was a big snow storm but I don’t like how they prioritize it over the sidewalks. At least I got a good 40 minutes outside tromping through the snow. 👢 No wind and with the thermal underwear it wasn’t too cool.

Working from home and now with the sidewalks full of snow 🌨, I feel so cooped up these days. I even did the days Zoom Meetings from home 📹 using my cellphone. It actually used less data than I expected but next week I’m upgrading to the unlimited mobile data / 20 GB Hotspot so I can make it through the winter when it’s too cold and dark to work at the library or park.

I have to renew my driver’s license again. I can do it online but I’m annoyed it’s $94.50 after just re-registered my truck. I do my eyes 👀 checked in a year but I should probably go to the eye doctor this year because I haven’t in two and a half years now. I ordered my last batch of contacts online and as the price has come down online and my prescription rarely changes I ordered a bigger than normal order. 💵 Do I wait until the pandemic is over to get my eyes checked or do it now when it’s easier when working from home? I’ll have to think about it more.

Today in 1974, Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as Vice President of the United States 👴🏼 under President Gerald Ford under the provisions of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution. America 🇺🇸 didn’t get an errection with Rockefeller unlike Albany when he got elected.

As previously noted, next Saturday is Boxing Day 🥊 when the sun will be setting at 4:28 pm with dusk at 5:00 pm. On that day in 2019, we had mostly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 41 and 27 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 33 degrees. We hit a record high of 59 back in 1895.