One week until the start of the Christmas Weekend and two until New Years Eve Weekend. Both weeks will be abbreviated as I plan to take off next Friday and the following Monday and Tuesday after Christmas where I work are holidays. Lot of work projects on my desk as I pack up my office and get ready to do a trip out to Madison County next week. Today is Bill of Rights Day and also the 56th anniversary of the Silver Bridge Disaster down in Point Pleasant, WV.

Good morning! Happy Friday. Only two more left this year. Mostly clear at the freezing point 🌅 in Delmar, NY. There is a south-southeast breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. Going to be a nice day. Will be a bit cold for riding into work but I’ve done it in much colder weather for sure. Time goes by so quickly it seems.

The ride to work 🚲 was pleasant and if leave early from the party 🎉 I’ll be able to ride home after getting a beer 🍻 at City Beer Hall. I haven’t decided what’s for dinner tonight, last night fried up some left over riggis from last week’s Sunday dinner with corn, butternut squash, tofu, mushrooms and onions. Not too bad. Had some more of that rye bread I made up. Maybe I should stop frying things up, but it’s so good especially with some spices, and a little avocado oil isn’t the most unhealthy thing ever. You need some fats in your diet to absorb fat soluble vitamins, and omega-3 fats are the healthier option to do so.

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 50 degrees at 1pm. 12 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 15th. South wind 6 to 16 mph becoming northwest in the afternoon. 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 61 was set in 2015. 8.2 inches of snow fell back in 1968.❄

The cookies 🍪 I baked for cookie share day were kind of disappointing in my book, rather bland and too tart. The whole wheat flour I used was grainy, the stevia wasn’t sweet enough and had an after taste not balancing out the cranberries well. 🍒 I need to experiment with other sweeteners like monk fruit, or maybe honey or pure maple syrup, or just plain old sugar. Not everything has to be perfectly healthy, though I don’t want to get in the habit of consuming large amounts of unhealthy sugar, though I guess it’s somewhat balanced by the whole-wheat red flour adding fiber. Truth is I’ve kind of gotten to really dislike the taste of stevia — I first got into it for sweetening lemonade in the summer as a healthy low-calorie alternative to beer while camping, but the after taste it leaves in my mouth is kind of yucky, and I don’t like how it tastes with baking those cookies.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:51 am with sun having an altitude of 24.1° from the due south horizon (-46.7° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.4 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:38 pm with the sun in the southwest (231°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (239°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:23 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 24 seconds with dusk around 4:54 pm, which is 14 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the south-southwest (213°) at an altitude of 15° from the horizon, 228,509 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:31 pm. At sunset, look for clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 47 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 13 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 7 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 30 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have increasing clouds ☁, with a low of 34 degrees at 5am. 11 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around November 9th. Northwest wind around 7 mph becoming northeast after midnight. In 2022, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 33 degrees. The record low of -11 occurred back in 1917.

It’s annoying having that broken burner on my stove, ♨️ so I need to get that part this weekend. I am pretty sure it’s a standard 6 inch burner, and I can get that at Lowes for $11 so I am not going to bother my landlord. I’ll replace the drip trays again, which after about 3 or 4 years have burned through again. I really enjoy cooking, 👩‍🍳 so I want to make sure my stove is in top shape, especially as I often find myself using all four burners, and that’s the largest burner on my stove.

On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed under the weight of rush-hour traffic, resulting in the deaths of 46 people. Two of the victims were never found. 🌉 The Silver Bridge was an eyebar-chain suspension bridge built in 1928 and named for the color of its aluminum paint. The bridge carried U.S. Route 35 over the Ohio River, connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio. Investigation of the wreckage pointed to the cause of the collapse being the failure of a single eyebar in a suspension chain, due to a small defect 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) deep. Analysis showed that the bridge was carrying much heavier loads than it had originally been designed for and had been poorly maintained. The collapsed bridge was replaced by the Silver Memorial Bridge, which was completed in 1969.

Also, today in 2000, was an the end of an era at the infamous Chernobyl Power Plant. Reactor No. 4 was the site of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and the power plant is now within a large restricted area known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. ⚛ Both the zone and the former power plant are administered by the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management. The three remaining reactors remained operational after the accident; all three were eventually shut down by 2000, and the plant remains in the process of decommissioning as of 2019. Nuclear clean-up is scheduled for completion in 2065.

Tomorrow will be partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 45 degrees at 12pm. Seven degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 27th. West wind 6 to 8 mph becoming north in the afternoon. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 35 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 2021. 9.5 inches of snow fell back in 1981.❄

Planning on riding to the French’s Mills 🚲 and maybe the Pine Bush tomorrow. Should be a good day for a nice ride. Also need to put the hub caps back on my truck. I am thinking either Saturday night to go shopping and get the replacement burner or maybe Sunday morning. Depends how tired I am from lots of biking.

Looking ahead to Sunday, rain likely, mainly after 1pm. ☔ Cloudy, with a high near 47. Southeast wind 7 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. Typical average high for the weekend is 38 degrees.

Sunday going to the Nutcracker 👪 with the family, that is after going grocery shopping early in the morning. Then probably bake some bread later on in the day. 🍞 And head to bed fairly early.

Looking ahead to longer days and ultimately summer, next Friday is Days are Getting Longer ☀️ when the sun will be setting at 4:27 pm with dusk at 4:57 pm. By then we’ve already gained almost five minutes in the evening. First full day of winter. But probably won’t feel that way. On that day in 2022, we had partly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 34 and 19 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 36 degrees. We hit a record high of 60 back in 1990.