Good afternoon! Happy Thursday. Partly sunny and 23 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a northwest breeze at 10 mph. The current wind chill is 9. It’s really a pretty cold winter day when the wind is blowing outside, although I don’t think it was all that bad when I went out earlier and bought some milk. Mornings aren’t the same without the milk for the coffee, especially now that I bought that fancy hazlenut coffee in the tin can.

Today is my final vacation day off from work for 2017. I figured I needed to take off one more day or otherwise I was going to lose the time, so why spend the $2.60 to take the bus from home and work when I knew it would be a relatively quiet day in the office because it just is this time of year. I don’t anticipate taking off any more vacation days between now and April unless maybe we get somewhat decent weather around Presidents Day Week and there is hard water for fishing on Balsam Lake in Chenango County. That might be a fun weekend of snow camping, as they plowthat road for ice fisherman and access to the campsites (though you have to bring a shovel for the campsites themselves).

The sun will set at 4:22 pm with dusk around 4:54 pm, which is 14 seconds later than yesterday. At sunset, look for mostly clear conditions and 21 degrees. The wind chill around sunset will be 8. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 14 mph.

Today will be sunny, with a high of 25 degrees at 3pm. 11 degrees below normal. Northwest wind 10 to 16 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 33 degrees. The record high of 63 was set in 1901. 12.5 inches of snow fell back in 1956.

Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low of 11 degrees at 5am. 10 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around 5 at 6pm; Northwest wind 6 to 11 mph becoming light and variable after midnight. In 2016, we had mostly clear skies with more clouds in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 6 degrees. The record low of -8 occurred back in 1874.

Cool this weekend with temperatures running 6 degrees below normal but otherwise sunny. Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 31. West wind 6 to 10 mph. Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 30. Typical average high for the weekend is 36 degrees. 

Saturday looks nice but cold for the Save the Pine Bush hike. I bought some Facebook advertising for it, it will be interesting if we get some more people to go.

Today I’m thinking of going for a short walk at Five Rivers Environmental Education Center and then will go to Shoprite to buy supplies for the dish I am making for the Christmas party. I decided to go with chicken salad, which should be good and easy to make, and not a problem to serve cold. That pre-cooked, pre-seasoned chopped frozen chicken you can get at grocery stores makes some fairly easy and relatively healthy meals.

It is so cold outside, or at least it looks that way with the wind whipping around. For a while I considered hiking Overlook Mountain for the sunset as Ido some years, but I don’t think today with that wind and cold temperatures. I’ve done a lot of trips lately and my bank account is running a bit low, so I have to cut back. My heating bill also was a bit high for November in part because it was a cold, and I’ve been keeping the heat up a little more, because I don’t like being so cold at home.

Just for shits and giggles, I decided to look at some of the home prices for cabins and land in Northern Tier Pennsylvania. Quite remarkably affordable, but I don’t know what I would do to put food on the table there. Those shed-to-homes, which are popular down south, really aren’t that cost competitive at least in the north when you figure out the challenges of local zoning and permitting, and the structure versus an existing small cabin on land that are already fully approved and ready to move in, which are common in Northern PA. Many are grid-tied though, which means your indebted forever to the local utility and tempeted by cheap coal-fired electrons that you can burn without further thought.

It’s a fun thought experiment though, but honestly I have to let my savings grow quite a bit more to pay primarily in cash, and because honestly I don’t know what I would do for a living there, and I’m not crazy about driving in the winter. Certainly down south is a lot warmer with a hell of lot less road salt and blowing snow, and indeed I was actually looking at what life is like in like a place like rural north Alabama. Maybe a little too southern there, but they have some remarkably nice looking national forest, and people seem to be fairly laid back about life down there. 

I tell you, it certainly looks cold outside. I probably should take a shower and get going, but it’s so cold, and I’m lazy and I just like relaxing on my day off. But there is a hell of a lot more I stuff I should and could do, but the hell with it. I think I’m happy just looking out the window, at the blowing snow, day dreaming. I do like living in the city, and not having to give the cold much thought.

In four weeks on January 11 the sun will be setting at 4:43 pm, which is 20 minutes and 43 seconds later then today. In 2017 on that day, we had rain, snow, partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 52 and 37 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 30 and 14 degrees. The record high of 57 degrees was set back in 1975.