Good evening! Partly clear and 35 degrees at One Commerce Plaza. Calm wind.Temperatures will drop below freezing at tomorrow around 5 pm. ☃️

It was a good Pine Bush Dinner and now I’m home and in bed. 🍲 Bus was right on time but I took a sleeping pill as I don’t want to be kept up by the decaf coffee ☕ I had at the dinner. Not a terrible day, fairly busy but productive. Kind of sad 😐 with the death of Chet, who was a big time black powder hunter and ronaduvue outdoorsman who wore full costume and a Pine Bush activist starting with decades ago. Those old school black powder guys are the real woodsman. Seemed perfectly fine 👌 until he missed the last dinner and was dead less than a month later. I guess if your going to die of old age it’s best to happen quickly.

The whole tire burning thing they talked about at the dinner was concerning ⭕ but I’m not a scientist so I don’t know. It is a new cement plant went it comes to the on site emissions controls. But on the other side, synthetic rubber is so nasty to burn especially if you plan on burning thousands of tires a day or roughly 45% of the state’s tire production every year . 💭 Things add up even with pollution controls. Little more than a farmer starting a brush pile with a tractor tire on a big ol mid west cattle farm 🐂. I did sign the petition calling for a local law on it but I’m not really sure what a difference it makes. Just don’t know about the things government approves.💀

It’s always funny people after the Pine Bush dinner ask if I want I ride home. 🚙 But after hearing that lecture about the impacts of tire disposal I figured it best to take the bus home. 🚍 Plus I like my quiet time riding the bus. The bus is one of the few times in the day I have all to myself with no other scheduled or potential activity. Cars are such problematic things in cities although I like my big jacked up truck with the 35 inch tires that will probably have to landfilled or incinerated by the end of the year, maybe at La Farge as nobody actually knows if they are already burning 🔥 tires there under their BUD permit.

Tonight will rain and snow likely before 4am, then rain likely between 4am and 5am, then a chance of rain and snow after 5am. Increasing clouds 🌧, with a low of 35 degrees at 9pm. 21 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 8th. Calm wind becoming south 5 to 9 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Little or no snow accumulation expected. Going to be too warm. Sloppy but not that bad locally. In 2019, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 23 degrees. The record low of -16 occurred back in 1971.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous 🌖Moon with 67% illuminated. The moon will rise at 10:36 pm. The darkest hour is at 12:05 am, followed by dawn at 6:52 am, and sun starting to rise at 7:23 am in the east-southeast (119°) and last for 3 minutes and 19 seconds. Sunrise is 27 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 8:07 am with sun in the southeast (126°) at an altitude of 6°. Tonight will have 14 hours and 35 minutes of darkness, a decrease of one minute and 39 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have a chance of rain and snow showers before 3pm, then a slight chance of snow showers between 3pm and 4pm. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a high of 40 degrees at 11am. 10 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 4th. Breezy, with a northwest wind 11 to 16 mph increasing to 20 to 25 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 46 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Little or no snow accumulation expected. A year ago, we had light snow in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 39 degrees. The record high of 62 was set in 1995. 15.1 inches of snow fell back in 1945.❄

Got home 🏡 and something was rotting in my garbage can and it really stunk. 👃 I think it might have been the ice cream container. I don’t know but I put it outside. I dug out with my hands, ✋ I’m not afraid to touch garbage, and I try to reuse garbage bags as long as possible as I try to use one as long as possible – why pay for something your going to ultimately burn? 🔥 That said I do often buy firewood to use in camp, especially in the winter. ⛺

I signed the Bernie Sanders petition 📃 today. It doesn’t matter, I’m not committed to vote ❎ for him but it helps ensures he is on the New York ballot. I’ll look and see come April which candidate to support. I think by then we will have a better chance of knowing where the candidates stand on the issues. I am still somewhat leaning towards Elizabeth Warren but in 2016 I voted for Bernie Sanders although at that point I didn’t have strong thoughts on either candidate and ultimately voted for Jill Stein in the general election.

Looking at the Empire Plaza heading down to Chestnut Street 🌰 I was thinking 💭 how beautiful and graceful the Empire Plaza is. I know people bitch about the cost of lighting the Plaza in the evening – it’s not cheap – and it means a lot of coal or gas is burned but it is graceful. I can dream a lot of better places 🌆 but Albany is my home for at least a few more years. I make too much money 💵 , I still have my family locally 👪 to just walk away at this point. I know there are better places out west, great small towns without the craziness 😜 of the city but I’m here for now, it’s my home.

Do I get too invested in Albany? No, I’m trying to structure my life without too many entanglements locally. 🔗 I am not politically involved, I’m not fighting for social justice except for the work with Save the Pine Bush. 🌲I don’t own a lot of stuff or property so I’m not tied down. I have a lot of concerns about the CCA deal the activists are fighting for that would have the town by only green sources of electricity but I’m remaining quiet, observing 🔭 but not saying anything beyond some observations on the blog. It just seems like community choice aggregation doesn’t really bring in much more green energy ⚡ electricity is fungible but I could be wrong. I still dream of living in a small town out west somewhere on an off grid property. Off grid all my power not from the gas generator would be renewable.

In four weeks on February 12 the sun will be setting in the west-southwest (252°) at 5:22 pm,🌄 which is 35 minutes and 58 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had snow and temperatures between 21 and 15 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 34 and 17 degrees. The record high of 55 degrees was set back in 1932.

Looking ahead, 37th Birthday 🎉 is in 2 weeks, February Save the Pine Dinner 🦋 is in 5 weeks, Average High is 40 ☀️ is in 7 weeks, Ides of March ✝ is in 2 months, April Fools Day 🤡 is in 11 weeks, Pink Moon 🌕 is in 12 weeks, Tax Day 💰 is in 3 months, Earth Day 🌎 is in 14 weeks, Latest Sunset 🌆 is in 23 weeks and Inauguration Day 2021 👴🏻 is in 53 weeks.