Delmar, New York

Sunny and the birds are chirping and the windows are open. 44 but getting up to 75 degrees later with increasing clouds late in the day. Going to be a nice spring day. Great weather for running down to the post office and filing your taxes… Happy Monday!

It was a good weekend even though I pretty much stayed in town for the weekend except for going up to Partridge Run WMA for a while this afternoon. For all the time I spent fishing this weekend, didn’t keep anything worth keeping. I like fishing but I never said I was good doing it.

57 degrees under moon lit skies. The Waxing Gibbous Moon is almost due south, with nearly three quarters illuminated. Full moon is on Friday.

Back to work tomorrow. I have a list of things to do tomorrow, I don’t even want to think about it. The air has cooled already a lot this evening but the low for tonight is only 44 degrees so relatively mild for April. Despite relatively warm and sunny days the clear skies have allowed temperatures to drop a lot in the evenings. Sunny and 72 degrees tomorrow but clouds will be creeping in during the afternoon and evening. A 30% chance of rain on Monday night.

I’m pretty tired. I headed back in and are now laying in bed under the dim red lamp in my bedroom. For the most part I have nothing but positive things to say about the red light bulb as its very sleep promoting but it doesn’t necessarily help when I wake in the middle of the night. The real acid test is next winter when all the artificial light seriously starts impacting my sleep.

Note to myself, besides calling the landlord about the faucet, I need to dry clean my sports coat. The world need not know about my dirty jacket but if I tell them, I’ll remember to take care of it tomorrow.

Vacation planning continues to go well. Rainy or very cold weather could change that though. I am really excited to get back to Madison County to fish the Chittenango Creek off that railroad bridge… I had such good luck in Nelson Swamp in years past. I haven’t been to Montezuma in a decade. The Finger Lakes will be pretty in spring time as they green up. The next few days I’m going to decide on the campstove so I can test it out this weekend. I’d like to set it up and test everything out before I leave for my trip.

Primary Day is Tuesday for the Presidential Primary in New York. My prediction is that Bernie Sanders wins upstate big and Hillary Clinton wins New York City relatively narrowly, but recognizing that the Democrats overwhelmingly reside in the city, Hillary will end up winning the state comfortably. I will probably end up casting a protest vote for Bernie, as I like protesting establishment politics but I know Hillary is almost certainly the Democratic nominee. I don’t know who I will vote for in the general election as I worry that the Democratic party has gotten a bit too extreme in recent years, being focused primarily on the colored and poor urban folk and failing to recognize the great diversity in our country.

I am not crazy about Donald Trump and certainly won’t vote on the Republican line but would consider voting on the conservative or working families line for president. I want to hear what the presidential candidates have to say about the role of public lands, wilderness designations, climate change, resource protection, hunting and trapping, and gun rights. Agriculture issues too, even though I’m not a farmer, as farms protect the large amount of land in America from development. I’m not crazy about a climate change extremist who wants to ban all fossil fuels but nor do I support idiotic climate denial.

On that note, good night.

With the moon just a little past its highest location with a million stars in the sky, it is 50 degrees in Delmar. Enjoying some Corona out back listening to some music on an old set of ear buds because I managed to lose them between the dock I was fishing on earlier this evening.

In was pretty quiet on the dock this evening on the Hudson River although I kept getting hits on my line. I pulled in a half dozen Pumpkinseed Fish and tossed them back in. Caught something bigger but my headphones got caught in the fishing line and I lost him (lol?) . Very placid on the water tonight but there were a lot of people fishing down there.

It was nice at the Elm Ave Town Park earlier in the afternoon. Besides playing on my laptop down there, I spent like am hour reading down there. I am blessed that I can walk to so many great places from home and take the bus to work every day. Now that it’s finally warming up, I expect to spend a lot more evenings down at the park with a book or on the Internet.

Despite the warmer weather conditions, the evenings can still get quite chilly. Even with a long sleeve shirt, I’m not exactly feeling warm out back. It was cool on the dock after dark too. I guess I can’t be in too much of a rush for summer, as it goes by too quickly. Today, four months from now, will be opening day for the Altamont Fair. At that point, we will have reached the closing days of summer. I was looking at a Facebook friend’s photos from the Potholers, thinking how I can’t wait to get up there. Summer is delightful. The road to Powley Place doesn’t open until late May or early June but you can drive almost all the way to the Potholers before the gate.

Not heard much from the spring peepers tonight although I just heard them briefly chirp. Must be too cold for them. The low tonight is 37 degrees which still is a degree below normal. While we’ve seen warmer days recently, the nights have remained remarkably cold. A month from now, the average low will be 47 degrees meaning that most evenings will be in the mid to upper 50s. Comfortable but with lots of black flies.

Tomorrow is going to be sunny and around 70 degrees. Nice weather, 11 degrees above normal but 22 degrees below the record set in 2002. Monday will be 73 degrees. The normal high temperature one month from now is about 70. Will be warm or at least mild most of next week but some modestly chilly nights but no frost anticipated in the city through next week. Showers possible on Tuesday and next weekend may be cloudy or rainy. I may also stay in town next weekend to prepare for my road trip.

Make sure to remain hydrated and be extremely careful with fire. Humidity will remain low all weekend and with that breeze and lack of greenest in the woods means a fire risk. The humidity for most of the afternoon was under 20% producing dew points in the teens. In contrast in the summer we sometimes have dew points in the low to mid 70s on those hot and sticky days. Even exceptionally clear summer days don’t often have dew points below the mid 50s.

Tonight’s Waxing Gibbons Moon is 2/3rd full as we head towards the full moon early in the morning of Earth Day on next Friday. Moon sets around 4 AM with sunrise at 6:08 AM. First light is now well before six, starting at 5:38 AM.

It’s getting late I’m tired. Sleep well…

Six weeks from now will be the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend. Today will be sunny and 61 degrees. Sounds warm compared to recent days but not really, as we are now in the second half of April and the average high for today is 58. Another cool night on tap with a low around 34. Those clear skies allow the mercury to fall a lot.

Next Friday is Earth Day and the full moon, known as the Pink Moon. Which doesn’t mean that moon will turn pink or green despite Internet rumors, but instead celebrates a pink spring flower that comes out around the time of the full moon in parts of the states. Wear rose colored glasses next Friday and the moon might appear pink.

Good evening. It was a pretty nice day but the mercury is dropping fast on its way down to what is now expected to be 29 degrees by daybreak. But as fast as it goes down under clear skies, it will climb back up come morning. First quarter moon sets at 3 AM and sunrise at 6:11. Blue skies and lots of light to get you up and going tomorrow.

I walked down to the park this evening and played on my laptop until after dark. I really should have just brought my book, as I don’t really need to waste more time on the Internet. Regardless, I like how I have until well after 8 PM now before it gets dark out. Tomorrow I might bring a book down to the river and go fishing. I know if I want something I can clean and eat, I should go out to Lawson Lake which is equidistant but I like sitting down by the river with a book, watching the boats go by, and be able to stop on in Glenmont and buy beer and supplies on the way home. If it’s warm out during the weekend evenings I want to get some Corona and drink it out back. None of that cheap Budweiser stuff now that it’s getting truly nice out. Maybe my neighbors will have a fire out back tomorrow night and I can join them.

Still totally psyched about that MMQGIS plug in that lets you export KML data with basic styling data attached. I tweaked a few lines in the code of the plug-in to improve th output, but I’m pretty happy with the result. Good stuff. Lots more KML maps coming soon. I should also update the county /regional KML maps with the latest data I got from the DEC and I have ideas for further improvements to my blog’s KML viewer.

I hate all the politics stuff in Facebook lately. I tend to think that the national Democratic Party has really gone off the rails lately, with their extreme liberal positions and their mostly pro-urban poor agenda. Most Americans live in the suburbs, most are not colored or poor. I respect people of all races, but our political dialog can’t solely be about a small sector of the electorate. Donald Trump is a buffoon and Ted Cruz is nuts. But this whole hyperpartisan national debate does nothing for any of us. I just want a boring government that provides a quality education to our kids, invests in our parks, libraries and cultural institutions. I want a government that stays out of my business but keeps my community safe from drugs and crime. I just really hate politics these days. I don’t know if in November I will vote for Trump or Clinton. Well see.

That red light bulb helps a lot with the sleep. It’s sounds stupid but killing the lights in my apartment except for that one red bulb is so much easier on my eyes, very calming, and makes sleep come a lot easier for more restful nights. Ever since I got my Smartphone and started blogging before bed, I’ve had trouble sleeping. Now with the red light every night, I always wake up well rested. Stupid but it works for me. I also avoid my computer an hour before bed, so I have as little blue light as possible.

Good night. Sleep well.