Good evening. Mostly cloudy on this night with the April Pink Moon overhead, given a soft wispy glow behind the clouds. Mild around 68 degrees around ten o’clock hour. Right now I’m sitting out back enjoying a cold one before I head back in shortly to watch the PBS Newshour and retire to bed.

I am hoping we get some good rain tomorrow so things aren’t so dry. Red flag conditions today but a 70% chance of showers come morning and likely showers by afternoon tomorrow. Up to a quarter inch of rain, which admittedly isn’t much but better than nothing. 75 degrees for the high tomorrow. I may end up changing my camping plans to go to another location if it stays so dry, as I like having a good campfire but not when it’s bone dry and you have to worry about embers kicking up a fire. While residential brush burns are banned camp fires are allowed unless it gets much drier but expect it will green up, especially in the Finger Lakes. Had the Pete Grannis gotten his way, all open burning would have been banned back in 2009.

Tonight we are looking at a low around 56 degrees. That’s more of what is to be expected around June 9th then late April but so be it.

So I got the propane campstove I’ve been researching for a while now. While not a big purchase at about $100, I had been planning on getting a good quality propane stove I could run off the propane tank that I bought for the Big Buddy Heater. I figured I would get the stove once it was warm enough to not need the heater on in the morning as its not going to be useful at the same time. I ended up getting a Camp Chef Everett Stove, their most powerful tabletop stove with a maximum BTU of 20,000 per burner which is twice as hot as a base propane stove. I had studied the reviews and was quite pleased with it when I got it out of the box. I cooked some sausages on it and it sure heated them up fast in water but also ratcheted down well to prevent burning. I do need to get another propane hose so I can use it at the same time as the lantern.

I’m getting excited about my Finger Lakes trip. Tuesday will be hear before you know it. This is the first big trip I’ve taken since West Virginia last fall. The later sunsets combined with nicer weather should lead to one of best trips I’ve taken in a while. I hope to catch many fish, have some fun paddling, do some hiking and seeing some great wildlife at Montezuma.

I will do a fair amount of packing this weekend and will put the kayak on my truck on Sunday. Monday evening is the Young Democrats meeting, so I won’t have a lot of time to pack on Monday evening, and I plan to leave for my trip right from work. I will buy most of my groceries and supplies out in the Finger Lakes.

I continue to take full advantage of my hacked version of the MMQGIS plug-in to export KML maps from QGIS. While QGIS has long had KML export it didn’t have the ability to attach the color ramp to the export. Then I can adjust and set the color ramp in QGIS rather than do it programmatically outside of the program. Tomorrow’s map will pull data from the NYS’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics data. More census data next week. I love the ease I can toy away with color ramps with KML now like I could only previously do with static maps. Mapping and working with data can be best summed up with – It’s fun.

Went down to the park this evening but because I was playing with the stove didn’t get there until fairly late. And with the clouds dusk came early. At least it was mild.

I’m tired and off to bed. Dawn tomorrow is 5:30 am and sunrise at 6 AM. Sleep well and enjoy tomorrow – it’s Earth Day.