December 18, 2019 Night

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Good evening! Cold, cloudy, windy around 20 degrees at the One Commerce Plaza but feels much colder waiting for the bus. ❄ There is a west-northwest breeze at 14 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is 7. There are 4 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at Sunday around 11 am. 🌡️

The Pine Bush Dinner 🌲 was good but I started feeling so exhausted and achy by the end of it. 😴 Maybe it just was the thought of waiting outside for the bus in the cold around 9 pm. So I left early. It’s not like I haven’t heard the same old music 🎶 acts before, after 15 years or more of involvement the holiday parties all start to seem alike. Cavagahan’s granddaughter is a very talented folk singer. 🎸 I sure hope that the Lyme isn’t coming back, making me sick – I feel so awful by the end of the evening. 🐜 Only have a day or two of the doxycycline left and then if I sicker after the holidays I’ll have to visit my doctor 😷 again.

Once I get home I’ll probably take my doxycycline 💊 and I will probably retire to bed. I’m hoping after some sleep I’ll be feeling better. I left the heat turned up before I left for work so I expect it should be comfortable and warm when I get home. 🏡 I’m glad the doxycycline is almost done, as it’s a pain to remember even if it no longer makes me feel sick in the morning.

Tonight will have a slight chance of snow showers before 1am. Partly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 5 degrees at 6am. 15 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -10 at 6am; Northwest wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 16 degrees. The record low of -13 occurred back in 1973.

Tonight will have a Waning Crescent Moon 🌘 with 39% illuminated with the moon rising at 11:40 pm. The moon will rise at 12:00 am. The New Moon is next Wednesday. The is on Wednesday night. The sun will rise at 7:20 am with the first light at 6:47 am, which is 39 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 14 hours and 57 minutes of darkness, an increase of 15 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 18 degrees at 2pm. 17 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -10 at 6am; Northwest wind 11 to 14 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 37 degrees. The record high of 54 was set in 1895. 7.8 inches of snow fell back in 2008.❄

A bitterly cold ❄ day tomorrow. Not sure if I’m going to walk down to the express bus 🚍 or take the local in. I really do like the walk but not if that wind is really biting like tonight.

I ordered an USB 18650 battery 🔋 charger on Amazon today and are going to pick up an extra pair of batteries to use with my LED lantern 🏮 mom and dad are getting me for Christmas. I probably eventually will also get an 18650 based LED flashlight though my existing ones work fine and truth is I could use ordinary NiMH rechargable batteries in my existing flashlights too.

I am looking forward to my camping trip in two weeks ⛺ but I wonder how muddy it will be. It might be above freezing in the day time which might mean not a lot of snow but a lot of mud. I’m still thinking about the Finger Lakes National Forest but if it looks like I’ll only be able to camp for three nights due to the weather I might stay somewhere closer to home.

I do need to test my propane camp lantern 🏮 that I cleaned this weekend. I’m thinking it will work well now but I haven’t hooked up mantles or tried it out. I’m trying to figure out what I can hang it from to test it out back, not sure if I have a good place near my apartment to string a rope. I’ve thought about getting one of those lantern posts that people use but I’ve heard their unstable especially when the tank is near empty and often break or bend when dropped.

I have to reorder my contact lens 👀 online. My prescription is probably expired, actually it is but I know they don’t actually stop you from buying it online. I would have ordered them last summer when I had a valid script but I knew worse comes to worse my insurance now partially pays for yearly exams for contacts. That said, I hate going to my eye doctor, they’re jerks, always trying to upsell you and charge you for extras. 👓 I’m sure they work on a commission and low profit margins but the local place I usually go to is the absolute worse. I’ve been to other eye places but both of them have subsequently closed.

I often think some of the zero waste ♻ stuff is kind of silly but I guess it’s probably good behavior if you live in a city and are an urbanite. I’d rather focus on plainly consuming less, dumping the occasional apple core in with the gut pile or manure pile 💩 on my land, burn the majority of whatever I buy that is packaged 🔥 and recycle the cans and glass as a last resort. ♻ I want to use wood for heat and a minimal solar system for small electrical loads and a few lights but nothing big and fancy. I guess I’m not into saving the earth 🌎 but doing what is right for myself and my land. I want to see wild land remain wild 🐺 and not turned into luxury parks for the ulta wealth. I don’t see much difference in what the zero waste folks are proposing and overall waste generation 🚮 – they’re not willing to attack consumerism, take out food 🍲 or waste more generally in our lives. As it stands right now, I buy a lot in bulk and a lot of frozen fruit and vegetables do my actual food waste is minuscule and most of the plastic wrappers probably get burnt or something like that. 🔥

In four weeks on January 15 the sun will be setting at 4:46 pm,🌄 which is 23 minutes and 5 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had mostly cloudy skies, some snow showers and temperatures between 33 and 10 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 30 and 14 degrees. The record high of 65 degrees was set back in 1995.

Looking ahead, Bubble Bath Day 🧼 is in 3 weeks, National Bird Day 🐦 is in 4 weeks, Winnie the Pooh Day 🍯 is a month away, 37th Birthday 🎉 is in 6 weeks, National Drink Wine Day 🍷 is in 2 months, Average High is 40 ☀️ is in 11 weeks, April Fools Day 🤡 is in 15 weeks, Pink Moon 🌕 is in 16 weeks, Tax Day 💰 is in 17 weeks, Average High is 60 🌼 is in 4 months, Earth Day 🌎 is in 18 weeks, Flower Moon 🌕 is in 5 months and Inauguration Day 2021 👴🏻 is in 57 weeks.

Ice Pattern

NPR

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Trump Impeached By House In Historic Rebuke : NPR

"No president ever wants to be impeached. And whether Donald Trump leaves in one month, one year or five years, this impeachment is permanent," Lieu said. "It will follow him around for the rest of his life and history books will record it. People will know why we impeached."

Whether or not you stick your penis into the mouth of your intern and lie about it to Congress, or you spin up a deal with a foreign power to get intelligence on your revival, the truth is to be impeached is a let down to the country. Sure, it's a partisan affair and the Democrats were looking for something to impeach the president for but it's no different than the Republicans 21 years ago. But in both cases it was the loyal opposition publicly doing the definition of impeachment "to call into question the integrity or validity of (a practice)."

President Trump's actions have been a let down for the country and the Senate will have the opportunity to decide whether to remove him - but everybody knows they probably won't. But there is no undoing an impeachment, it will be forever recorded and only fully judged by historians in later generations. I am disappointed with the president's actions but I'm willing to keep an open mind towards 2020. They're may or may not be better candidates than, I'll carefully look at the issues and the totality of the impeachment and what is beyond it.

The Experts’ Guide

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How to Be a Good Listener: The Experts’ Guide

On day one, in my first training session, I realised to my horror that I wasn’t a very good listener at all. All the habits that I thought made me good at it, all that advice I was giving my friend, was just getting in the way. Each session brought new revelations and useful lessons. Since putting those lessons into practice with my friends and partner, I’ve seen what a difference it can make. As my trainer Pam tells me, “I have seen people in severe emotional distress, feeling like the only way is down. But they talk and cry, and I just listen. Verbalising their emotions helps them see things more clearly. Being listened to makes us feel valued.” It makes the listener feel valued, too. There are several ways to approach a difficult conversation (the general rule is, say less than the other person). Here are a few: