Good evening on this Christmas Eve 🕯️ ! Partly cloudy and 27 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a north breeze at 5 mph. 🍃. There are 2 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around noontime. 🌡️

Had a nice lunch with the parents and my neice and sister 👪 and we exchanged presents 📦. We had macaroni and cheese for lunch although I guess tomorrow my parents are also doing a formal Christmas dinner 🍲. My neice is already getting close to four, I remember her baby shower a few years ago 👶. She’s got such a large vocabulary and is so smart being plugged into the whole Saratoga scene.

Hiking Bennett Hill was nice but I need to repair microspikes that I strap on my boots 👢. One of them had a wire break while another had a chain 🔗 pop loose. Easy enough to fix but walking back after sunset with the microspikes off it was slippery and I sort of twisted my ankle a bit. I’m fine though. I did enjoy the sunset and the rural agricultural landscape. 🚜 I miss that so much living in the city even though I do live far enough on the outskirts of the city I can still tell when the farm down the street is spreading manure. 💩 Someday I’ll move to some rural areas a few miles out from a small town like an Oneida or a Utica or a Plattsburgh but not in New York with all the gun laws and fire restrictions.⛔ But in the mean time, next week’s road trip should be great.

I was going to go out for my evening walk 🚶 after I got back from hiking Bennett Hill but I was tired and got watching the YouTube videos I downloaded this week. 🎥 I probably watch too much but at least it’s add free and a lot of stuff I watch is educational even if it’s not as good as reading 📖. When I’m camping in the Finger Lakes next week I’ll do a lot more reading for sure. I thought about riding the exercise bike 🚲 but I’m not sure if my neighbor was home – his lights were off but his car 🚙 was in the drive. I think he may have gone to the city on a bus or with a designated driver. 🍻 I’m still not sure if I’m coming down with something or it’s the Lyme disease. I am feeling again like I was in early November. I’m not thinking 💭 it will impact my trip next weekend but who knows.

I was watching this amazing video of a weather balloon with a camera floating up from earth to the stratosphere. ☁ I guess the same thing you’d see on a plane ✈ but I haven’t been on an airplane in years and it’s fascinating to see the different – and quite thin layer that seperates all of mankind from the vast emptiness of outer space that is extremely hostile to all life. 🌎 The atmosphere is really only a few miles thick. Honestly, I really like the idea of the Space Force and a greater emphasis on the understanding of the earth’s climate and the boundaries between space and the earth. 🚀

Christmas Eve will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 19 degrees at 5am. One degree above normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 23rd. Maximum wind chill around 15 at 4am; Northwest wind 3 to 5 mph. In 2018, we had light snow in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 24 degrees. The record low of -22 occurred back in 1969.

Tonight will have a New Moon. 🌚 Not much too see though as tonight is fairly cloudy. The sun will rise at 7:23 am with the first light at 6:51 am, which is 25 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 14 hours and 57 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 11 seconds over last night.

Christmas Day will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 38 degrees at 3pm. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 10th. I think that’s a bit too optimistic based on other forecasts I’ve seen lately but so be it. I’m thinking more clouds. Calm wind becoming south around 6 mph. I have less than a quarter tank of gas in my truck ⛽ so I have to be careful how far I go. 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 66 was set in 1889. 19.2 inches of snow fell back in 2002.❄

A week from now will be New Year Eve 🎉and my final night of my Finger Lakes camping adventure. It should be a nice trip but the second day might be quite rainy ☔ based on the forecast but a good chance to get through a book of two in the tent, sitting next to the heater 🎪. They have even less snow there than here at this point, I think it will totally be gone by the time I get there – but fortunately not so muddy because it is expected to be a fairly dry week until Sunday out there. At least next Sunday will give me a chance to do a lot of reading 📖 and maybe some writing too.

For Christmas 🎄my parents got me a nice little rechargeable lantern 🏮 that is perfect in the tent for reading at night especially with the nights so long now and the heater adding to the ambiance. Although also I’m looking forward to some long winter nights and hopefully getting the quality sleep that seems impossible lately at home – it’s terrible 😰 how I keep waking up at 3 or 4 each morning and can’t get back to sleep. 🎅 Maybe it’s Santa Claus waking me up each night, but it seems like every winter my sleep declines enormously. I think it’s too few nights in the woods. I still haven’t tested my big gas lantern, mainly because I have no where to hang it. I really should consider getting a lantern post but the thing is usually in the woods I have trees I can run a rope between to hang the lantern from. I really should do this tomorrow. And maybe start pulling stuff for camping from the attic. Gotta get my holiday decorations out tomorrow to hang at camp. . I’m hoping to also get a few extra Christmas lights and extension cords to use up at camp to replace broken and then cracked ones. 🔌

In four weeks on January 21 the sun will be setting at 4:53 pm,🌄 which is 27 minutes and 28 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had snow showers, cold weather, partly cloudy and temperatures between 5 and -7 degrees. That was a pretty cold day but not unheard of for January. My metrologist friend says he thinks late January this winter will be just as cold if not colder. I guess I wouldn’t mind the cold so much if my place had a better heater and more insulation. Typically, you have temperatures between 30 and 14 degrees. The record high of 61 degrees was set back in 2006.

Looking ahead, New Years Eve 🎆 is in 1 week, Coldest Week of the Year 🌬 is in 3 weeks, Martin Luther King Day 🖤 is in 4 weeks, Don’t Cry over Spilled Milk Day 🥛 is in 7 weeks, National Drink Wine Day 🍷 is in 8 weeks, St. Patrick’s Day 🍀 is in 12 weeks, 7:30 PM Sunset 🌇 is in 15 weeks, Cinco de Mayo 🤠 is in 19 weeks, Primary Day 🗳️ is in 26 weeks, Latest Sunset 🌆 is in 6 months, Election Day 2020 🗳️ is in 45 weeks and Election Day 2020 🗳️ is in 45 weeks.