Good evening! Mostly cloudy and 40 degrees in Delmar for the evening walk. ☁ Calm wind. ️It’s quarter to eight and not pitch black out which is nice for a change.
I am a fan of the time change 🕒 even if I didn’t get out walking 🚶 early enough tonight to do it in the daylight after Sunday dinner with the folks house. 🍲 Homemade beef stew which was good but heavier than I eat recently. As much as I like dairy and meat I’ve been cutting way back for health and financial reasons.
After dinner I went to Walmart and stocked up on fruits and vegetables 🍏 🥦 and unpacked. I was going to wash off my truck but I didn’t think I could get home without more salt splashing on it. 💦 I’ve only driven 40 miles since I washed it. Well if I have to drive anywhere this week I won’t have to worry about it getting dirty.
Tonight will be cloudy ☁, with a low of 32 degrees at 4am. Seven degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 2nd. Calm wind becoming south 5 to 8 mph after midnight. In 2022, we had light snow in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 18 degrees. The record low of -6 occurred back in 1885.
Tonight will have a Waining Gibbous 🌖 Moon with 71% illuminated. The Worm 🐛 Moon is on Wednesday, March 29. The darkest hour is at 12:06 am, followed by dawn at 6:46 am, and sun starting to rise at 7:14 am in the east (94°) and last for 2 minutes and 54 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 43 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 7:52 am with sun in the east (100°).Tonight will have 12 hours and 10 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 55 seconds over last night.
Tomorrow will snow likely before 9am, then rain and snow likely between 9am and noon, then rain after noon. 🌧 High of 40 degrees at 2pm. Four degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 2nd. Southeast wind around 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had heavy snow in the morning, which became light snow by afternoon. The high last year was 34 degrees. The record high of 70 was set in 2012. 22 inches of snow fell back in 1993.❄
Will we get one more last hurrah for winter 🌨 before its done for the season on Monday evening into Tuesday? Who knows but I’m the first one to admit that my 54 day run of more than 10,000 steps may come to an end tomorrow. All things come to an end. That said I’m now thinking about taking a fifty mile hike this summer. The steps aren’t a problem – I do that many weeks but I would have to build up my back for carrying a pack. Plus I would have to plan a route and get used to doing more hills. I could camp in the hammock with a mosquito net. I’m hoping to shed some pounds this spring time.
In four weeks on April 9 the sun will be setting in the west-northwest (281°) at 7:31 pm,🌄 which is 32 minutes and 17 seconds later then tonight. In 2022 on that day, we had rain and temperatures between 52 and 36 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 56 and 34 degrees. The record high of 77 degrees was set back in 1991.
Looking ahead, tommorow is , Last Day of Winter 🏂 is Next Sunday, 7:30 PM Sunset 🌇 is in 4 weeks, Average High is 60 🌷 is in 5 weeks, 8 PM Sunset 🌇 is in 8 weeks, Mothers Day 👩 is in 9 weeks, Fathers Day 👨 is in 13 weeks, Last Sunset After 8:30 PM 🌆 is in 18 weeks, Last Sunset After 8 PM 🌆 is in 5 months, 6:30 Sunrise 🌇 is in 26 weeks, Constitution Day 📜 is in 27 weeks, October 🎃 is in 29 weeks, Average High is 65 🍂 is in 30 weeks, Columbus Day 🛥️ is in 7 months, 7:15 AM Sunrise ⌛️ is in 39 weeks and Christmas Eve 🎅 is in 41 weeks.
With all these complaints about the time change, I am somebody who actually likes getting up early. And with brighter mornings not that far away, especially coming in May, I am seriously considering getting up closer to 5 AM and getting out and walking and getting extra steps in before work. While I walk at 6:15 AM most of the year to kick off my mornings, when it’s getting bright out at 5 AM it sure seems to be a waste to be asleep. I could be spending my mornings down in the park, walking and enjoying more nature.
I guess that would have to be tempered against the fact that the nights soon will be getting much brighter later in the night. Come June I can easily spend my evenings down at the park until 9 PM and then by the time it’s really dark and I walk home it’s 9:30 PM. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to sleep, as I like to do nine hours of sleep a day, especially as some of that sleep isn’t perfect and Iike being well rested before work as I don’t preform well on a bad nights sleep. I used to stay up later, but I don’t see much benefit of wasting electricity on artificial light when I could be getting needed sleep, while enjoying the brighter parts of the day outdoors.
Don’t eat the rice, you’ll get arsenic poisoning! 🍚
White rice is unhealthy, fruits and vegetables are often contaminated with heavy metal, especially if you don’t get the special expensive organic type from the yuppie store, and you might as well not eat fruits and vegetables if you don’t eat kale.
And other bullshit along those lines.
I’m passing up on the free cake at work and I’m making sure to eat many pounds of fruits and vegetables every week now. I make rice a part of many meals — a mixture of white and brown rice. Brown rice is more filling and healthier but it takes longer to cook. So I do both, and make a big portion for multiple dinners and lunches. Cook it with lentils, which are another cheap food source that is quite healthy.
I often think the organic and pure healthy foods crowd really doesn’t want you to eat healthy but is just a shrill for the processed food industry. Let’s be honest — an apple or broccoli farmed with conventional methods is far healthier then any junk food you could find at the store. Cheaper too, as most processed food looks cheap but it’s not compared to fruits and vegetables bought in bulk, especially if they are flash frozen.
I was listening to a podcast the other day, and they had an advertising segment for Whole Foods. Yes, they did mention healthy foods, but quickly switched to reminding people they have a bakery full of cakes and desserts. I can’t help to think that many people go to Whole Foods to buy “fresh” kale to only allow it to rot on kitchen counter while they gorge on the brownies they bought while healthy shopping.
I’m quite happy to shop at Walmart and get my apples and frozen fruit and rice there, even if it is conventionally grown. There may be heavy metals residues in foods, we live in a world of modern chemistry. Milk, cheese and meat — and most processed foods have dioxins, PCBs, and other chemicals. But let’s be honest what kills most people, it’s not the trace levels of arsenic or even dioxins in food. It’s the fats and sugars that are part of our contemporary diets. Federal food safety standards provide a reasonable level of safety for eating healthy food, and any trace levels of toxins in healthy food are far surpassed compared to the unhealthy, common alternatives.
