Delmar, NY

Good morning! Happy Saturday. It’s Presidents Day Weekend. 👴

It’s the weekend we celebrate the old foggies in the White House, and in some cases not so old people like Barack Obama. But lately we’ve been electing or maybe selecting a lot of old farts, with ideas about as dated as their advanced age. Maybe I shouldn’t engage in such ageism, but I can tell you pushing forty, and I’m in some ways less sharp then I once was when it comes to learning new stuff, and much more stubborn, although probably more learned. But I still don’t think the President should be of the retirement age. No way in hell am I working into my seventies, unless you consider work to be feeding goats, pigs or cattle or hauling feed, manure and water.

Snow flurries and 20 degrees in Delmar, NY. ❄ There is a south breeze at 15 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is 6. Things will start to thaw out at around noontime. 🌡️

I was really hoping to get out of town this weekend 🏕 and maybe I’ll do tomorrow, but today looks bad with the snow squalls. They expect them to be particularly severe with the front coming through mid-afternoon and I don’t want anything to do about that. 🌬 Plus tonight looks to be incredibly windy and gusty, with very cold windchills. But then moderating Sunday into Monday. 🌞 Maybe 50 come Presidents Day.

I might go out to Five Rivers but I don’t want to get caught in snow squalls. 🌨 Plus I think it might be mighty cold come later in the afternoon. But we will see. I should go out for a walk 🚶‍♀️ to build on my progress of yesterday, where I got my 10,000 steps in for the first time in a week. I think it might be very cold later on, so I probably should either stay home or maybe walk down to the library. 📙 Truth is I haven’t been down the library since November, mainly because I don’t like wearing the muzzle and with my cellphone I can pretty much do whatever I need to do from home.

I was happy to see my credit card bill for all of January was only $352. 💳 Not traveling much, not putting much gas in my truck and only shopping once a week really is helping make the money go farther. It’s not like I haven’t wanted to get out of town, but January was exceptionally cold, I’ve been busy work 👨‍💻 and I’ve had little incentive to venture far from home. Come April I plan to do a lot more traveling though.

Today instead I want to learn more about mapping 🗺, specifically how to make better, nicer looking maps that are eye pleasing. I tend to lard up my maps with way too many layers and details, and don’t always use the best label positioning or coloring. R is showing me how to make simpler, easier to read maps but there is a lot I don’t know, having learned a lot of this by doing rather then formal education. Picking up somethings from the free PACE GIS class I’m taking but I could learn some more. There is some good lectures on making quality cartography from a professor I’m finding on Youtube, giving me some good ideas.

Good morning! Happy 6 PM Dusk 🌆 !

Days are getting noticably longer now. But the brief break of warmer weather and rain seems to be just a memory as the mercury is quickly dropping.

Partly cloudy and 30 degrees in Delmar, NY. ⛅ Breezy, ️22 mph breeze from the northwest 🌬 with gusts up to 37 mph 💨💨💨. The current wind chill is 17. There is a dusting of snow on the ground. ☃ Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around 11 am. 🌡️

Got 7,000 steps before work but it was cold out walking. 🚶‍♀️ Caught the earlier express downtown which was surprisingly on time. Maybe they fixed the issues with the school run before the bus or maybe the Albany schools are closed. Never knows these days with the COVID.

Good morning! Today 5:30 PM Sunset 🌇 .

Partly cloudy and 43 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌅 The sun is rising as I go for my morning walk 🚶. There is a south breeze at 14 mph. 🍃. There are 2 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Temperatures will drop below freezing at tomorrow around 8 am. ☃️

All and all its a pretty decent morning 😊 although the wind makes it seem colder than the mercury would read but I’m out here pretending it’s spring wearing just my vest and a long sleeve shirt in what is still mid February. But you are free to dream it’s spring.

The truth is that I don’t have to go for my morning walk at quarter to seven ⏰ because I have breakfast 🥣 and iron before then but I’m up and so is sun and there is less traffic at the hour. Plus I kind of like to have a little bit of time when I get back home before showering 🚿. Yesterday thought I missed the bus 🚍 as I lost track of the time. 🕒

Last night I should have gone to the store 🛒but I did not as I was tired and lazy, figuring out alternatives meals for today. I did get milk 🥛 bright and early at Stewart’s. Only a handful of people where wearing their muzzles there. 😷

Did you see gas prices lately? ⛽ Maybe you don’t want to see them. You see so much traffic on the road these days and have to wonder how anyone can afford to motor. 🏁 I still kind of want to get out of town this weekend so I might have to just bite the bullet and gas up Red.

I was looking at my pay stub this morning 🎫 and noticing that my gross pay was equal to how much I’ve saved for deferred compensation for the year so far. Which makes sense, as I’m doing 25% through the program so four paychecks at 25% equals 100%. I pay a lot in taxes but at least for now I don’t pay taxes on that until retirement. I have to do a Roth for my other IRA because the government seems to think that I make too much money 💵 even though I’m pretty broke most weeks with rarely more than the bare minimum in my bank account. 🏦