Indian Lake

September 30, 2020 Morning

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Good morning! Where did September go? Only a few more hours until October. 🎃 Four weeks to Average High is 55 🍂. Rain showers and 56 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☔ There is a west breeze at 9 mph. 🍃.

Today will have showers likely, mainly before 11am. Cloudy, then gradually becoming mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 68 degrees at 4pm. Two degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around September 27th. Maximum dew point of 55 at 8am. Breezy, with a west wind 9 to 14 mph increasing to 15 to 20 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 32 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 68 degrees. The record high of 88 was set in 1905.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:46 pm with sun having an altitude of 44.4° from the due south horizon (-26.5° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 6.1 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:02 pm with the sun in the west (260°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (267°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 6:39 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 54 seconds with dusk around 7:06 pm, which is one minute and 45 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Full 🌝 Moon in the east-southeast (102°) at an altitude of 5° from the horizon, 250,242 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 7:40 pm. At sunset, look for partly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 63 degrees. The dew point will be 46 degrees. Breezy, 16 mph breeze ⛅ from the southwest with gusts up to 26mph. Today will have 11 hours and 45 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 51 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 49 degrees at 6am. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around September 23rd. South wind 7 to 13 mph. In 2019, we had light rain in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 60 degrees. The record low of 28 occurred back in 1993.

Autumn like but sunny this weekend. 😎 Saturday, mostly sunny, with a high near 60. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 61. Maximum dew point of 43 at 2pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 65 degrees.

Looking ahead, there are 4 weeks until Average High is 55 🍂 when the sun will be setting at 5:53 pm with dusk at 6:22 pm. On that day in 2019, we had mostly cloudy and temperatures between 60 and 45 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 55 degrees. We hit a record high of 78 back in 1971.

Campsite on Pensuila

Trump signs

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I don’t really like TRUMP all that much, he’s kind of piss poor executive but his grassroots support is pretty amazing, as represented by all the homemade, often very talented signs and displays you see dotted along the rural highways.

While I’m sure soon after the election most will be chopped and turned into firewood – winter is coming – or sent to the landfill, I hope some of the displays are preserved in photographs or as museum pieces in hick town historical museums. I think it’s a cultural phenomenon that should be preserved and remembered for better or worse, something that shows the talent and the passion of many craftsman who are passionate about the incumbent president.

SEFCU really wants me to buy a car with their money 💰🚘 🤔 🗑

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SEFCU really wants me to buy a car with their money 💰🚗🤔🗑

Apparently I’ve been tagged as interested in buying a new car. While my big jacked up truck isn’t that old at nine years and 90k miles and I plan to keep it at least one more year, I have been spending some evaluating my options and occasionally clicking through ads to see the fine print for the teasers.

While I’m not even sure I will own my own car come the end of next year – or if I’ll get new tires and have various suspension parts repaired or replaced – SEFCU has decided I’m somebody who needs to be followed around the internet and blasted with twice a week emails promoting their low finance rates, mainly because the fed rate is so low these days.

I tried to get off their list – but I am apparently not allowed to – unless I unsubscribe from all important bank and credit card account notices. I guess I could set up a spam filter but I just find it so obnoxious that the automated marketing systems are following my every move.

I also can’t imagine financing an automobile or anything that you throw away every couple of years. Cars while they are nice are basically just landfill fodder full of rust holes and dents with worn seats and falling apart controls and buttons after a decade. Borrowing and paying back money for something you end up paying to have buried in a landfill every few years just seems wrong.

I could to a certain extent see financing land or even a farm tractor and implements but those kind of things can last for decades and can make money that exceeds their debt service. Definitely there are plenty big ol John Deere 40xx series tractors still in use on dairy farms across Upstate NY, and they haven’t been manufactured in a quarter century – to say nothing of many other old rigs from the 1960 or even earlier like the Ford 40N. But most mechanical things are just garbage, to be used for a few years and thrown away and shouldn’t be financed.

Honestly, while cars are fun and I make good money these days, I enjoy saving money and looking more forward to eventually owning that off-grid farm property – and not spending so much money on landfill fodder.

String cheese 🧀

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String cheese 🧀

The other day I bought some string cheese at Wally World. I hadn’t had string cheese in years, maybe because too many times as a kid it got kind of warm and the oils worked its way out of it. But I was reading that string cheese is just mozerella cheese and made from real milk and its actually a pretty delicious treat. I don’t like how it is individually wrapped in plastic but I figured I was going to have a fire so as long as I picked up the wrappers and made sure it got burnt it was fine.

First car at Watch Hill 🗻

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First car at Watch Hill 🗻🍂

This morning at 9:30 I was the first car at the Watch Hill Parking Area on this beautiful autumn morning. While I passed somebody walking their dog on Old Route 30, I haven’t seen another person. While I bet the Snowy Mountain parking lot is packed like much of the high peaks, I’m enjoying the solitude and beautiful views of Snowy Mountain and Lewey and Indian Lakes from this largely wilderness peak, that the state has put a lot of money into promoting and developing trails on but few people ever visit.

Great Moose Festival 

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I had absolutely no idea that today was the fourth weekend of September and it was the Great Moose Festival in Indian Lake. But then again, next Sunday  is October 1st.