These days I drink less and less alcohol. I never drink at home, and when I drink when I’m out with friends it’s usually just one beer and no more then two per day when camping — maybe a beer at lunch or dinner and one along the fire. But most of the time I just drink water or lemonade as it’s cheaper and healthier. Alcohol is poison, it makes you fat, and intoxication can be just plain dangerous. Hang overs in your forties is much less fun. So I drink much less alcohol.
Kind of a pretty sunrise this morning and it should be a nice bike ride to work. I’ll close out that background I’m reviewing, call back the doctor, call the General about the airbag, move forward. It’s kind of the midpoint of everything but I’m moving forward.
Good morning! What day is it? A Day I’m Embracing, of course. Mostly clear and 52 degrees in Delmar for the morning walk. 🌅 Calm wind. The dew point is 45 degrees.
Yes, I’m actually out walking 🚶 this morning. The past few days I’ve been bad, though I either rode my bike to work 🚲 or walked the Plaza before work on Monday. Tuesday’s ride to work wasn’t bad though I think 🤔 I should lubricate the chain 🔗 again before heading to work. Mornings are dark and there is such a short window before the smoldering cars along the road at the High School 🚸 start. It’s just toxic and noxious to walk past all those idling cars along the road.
More fresh bread 🍞 was baked this morning. Experimenting with yeast, sugar and water to get more rise and perfect 👌 my bread. Apple oatmeal pancakes 🥞 for breakfast this morning. Last night was salmon with sweet potatoes 🍠 and onions with lemon 🍋 which was tasty with mango for dessert. I’m not complaining about buying a big bag of frozen mango at the store on Monday. Eating well, but not too many calories, though I have to be careful about all those carbs in fresh-homemade bread, though no added sugar and it’s whole wheat. Getting a better rise this time. Now I got to make more walnut butter up. Okay, I’ve totally fallen off the healthy-eating rocker.
Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 70 degrees at 3pm. Three degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around September 26th. Maximum dew point of 50 at 10am. Light and variable wind becoming northwest 5 to 9 mph in the morning. A year ago, we had light rain in the morning, which became mostly sunny by afternoon. It was somewhat humid. The high last year was 75 degrees. The record high of 90 was set in 1946.
To wear jeans 👖 or not? That’s the question, though I only have three pair that fit me properly. That said, I can probably wear the same pair of jeans twice. Maybe though today is cooler day, so better to wear jeans today and then shorts tomorrow, with jeans again on Friday. I don’t care about the weekend, I can always wear baggy jeans or re-wear somewhat dirty ones, especially if I go camping or just take the Nature Bus 🚵♀️ to ride trails up at Thacher Park.
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:50 pm with sun having an altitude of 48.5° from the due south horizon (-22.3° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 5.3 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:21 pm with the sun in the west (266°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (272°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 6:59 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 54 seconds with dusk around 7:25 pm, which is one minute and 47 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the First Quarter 🌓 Moon in the south-southwest (212°) at an altitude of 16° from the horizon, 236,305 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:00 pm. At sunset, look for clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 65 degrees. The dew point will be 49 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 8 mph. Tomorrow will have 12 hours and 16 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 52 seconds over today.
Riding Blackie to work today, 🚲 it might be a cool start to the morning but should be a beautiful commute both and to and from work. I just need to dress warmly and be careful on way back with all the cars in shadows. 👻 I have to admit I can’t wait for the leaves to be off the trees 🌲 for better visibility on some of the intersections during the commute. But then it will likely be dark out 🌆 and I’ll have to take the bus home in the evening, ❄️ not to mention that the rail trail will get covered with snow and ice, to say nothing of it being cold to ride.
So I have a list of things to do today. 📃 I need to call the doctor back about my blood work, though it’s hardly a priority as I’ve stopped having the pissing problem 🚽 once I cut back on drinking so much coffee in the morning ☕ and are more careful about how much water is in my oatmeal and eating too much zucchini 🍆 and tomatoes 🍅. I think that friend of mine who got my so worked up about my weight loss is a jerk. Also, no overnight oatmeal 🥣 before or fresh peaches 🍑 during road trips anymore. Might be easy until you find yourself pissing every five minutes. Also going to call the General about when I can have the air bag inflator recall replaced on Big Red, lest I get into an accident with somebody in the passenger seat. 🎈 The Taka Airbag Recall is kind of serious, but I rarely have a passenger, so I didn’t really care.
Tonight will have patchy fog between 4am and 5am. Otherwise, mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 44 degrees at 6am. Seven degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 7th. Northwest wind 3 to 7 mph. In 2022, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 57 degrees. The record low of 29 occurred back in 1973.
Went down to the library last night 📚 returned a bunch of books and looked and browsed books, but didn’t end up taking out anything. Sure gets dark out early, 👣 but I got my steps in. Tonight, I am thinking after a dinner of tomato and spinach wraps on homemade whole-wheat flatbread, 🌯 I will go for a walk 🚶♀️ around dusk for my steps 👣 and maybe start going through clothes, putting away most of my summer clothes and things that are too big to fit and getting out some of the clothes John Wolcott’s wife gifted to me, along with some other things that fit well like I got from dad. 👕 I’m tired of looking like a concentration camp survivor, or having to dig through so many big clothes that don’t fit anymore.
Still chewing over the blog, ✍ I mean I like doing it, but it’s a lot of money but then again it’s three years and blogging gives me a lot of pleasure. I guess it’s not that big of a hike from three years ago, but it feels like. Used to be a lot less cost. 🤑 I really could improve some of the code, get rid of some of the outdated crap and just make things a ton more efficient. There is a lot of things on the blog that are obsolete or old and outdated, and should be removed, as sometimes they randomly pop up on search engines. 🔍 And what I said years ago isn’t necessarily who I am today.
Somewhat of an improvement for the weekend. 🌥 Saturday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 67. Maximum dew point of 55 at 4pm. Sunday, a chance of showers before 2pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 71. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Maximum dew point of 59 at 11am. Typical average high for the weekend is 72 degrees.
It’s been going back and forth on the weekend, but I am thinking it will be stay-in-town weekend for heading out mountain biking at Thacher Park. 🚵♀️ Maybe I’ll ride down from the park after trail riding, though I think I will skip the trip down to Warner’s Lake as that was a good trip back up there. Sunday I’ll probably go out to the folks house for Sunday dinner, 🍽 and who knows I could go somewhere else to ride trail. I know they’ve built a good network of mountain bike trails on Wolf Hill, that might be fun to do. Ultimately depends on how wet the weekend turns out to be.
As previously noted, next Wednesday is More Night then Day 🌌 when the sun will be setting at 6:46 pm with dusk at 7:12 pm. On that day in 2022, we had partly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 68 and 50 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 70 degrees. We hit a record high of 89 back in 2017.
I’m back to thinking about that again. I decided not to auto renew my blog but I still have to October 23rd to make up my mind and pay the $530 fee for the next three years. Indeed the cost is the big sticking point but also a recent email from the hosting company suggesting an up sell to an even more expensive contract due to the size of my blog – 36 gigabytes as they’re enforcing a 40 gig quota come November 1st as unlimited storage with their plus plan comes to an end. Somehow that rubs me the wrong way with the higher costs all around.
I’ve been considering my alternatives. One is to pull the plug on the blog come November. Another is to change web hosts. Or I could improve the efficiency of my data management system and or purge the oldest photos and maps which rarely get served and don’t add much value. The PDFs for maps take up a lot of space but get few downloads compared to the JPEG versions. Lossless compression could be increased, duplicated maps and scaled data deleted. I’ve also thought about embracing advertising, especially on the maps and archives pages which are mostly search engine traffic. Indeed if I were to embrace advertising it would be a revenue neutral proposition.
Hints of fall can be seen in the trees ...
Sunday September 27, 2015 — John Boyd Thacher State Park
Plus I figured I’m bicycling to and from work so that I ought to count for something. The mornings are so dark now, plus post 6:45 the roads around the high school are filled with smoldering cars as the kids sit in there early along the road to get parking. Also I was busy doing a lot of cooking, especially with the quinoa, which the first morning before their cooked take a fair amount of time, between washing them good and clean and then boiling them down ont he stone.
Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Partly sunny and 59 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌅 There is a west breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 54 degrees.
Going to be a nice morning for a ride to work. 🚲 Then I’ll do the stairs. Hopping on the pumpkin 🎃 spice craze, I had the quinoa with pumpkin and no sugar but some added chia seeds. I did a much better job cleaning the quinoa this time, which kept them from being too bitter. Last night I made walnut butter in the food processor and that was delicious on home made wheat bread 🍞 that I cooked in the morning. It was good.
Today will have a slight chance of showers between 11am and noon. Mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 66 degrees at 2pm. Seven degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around October 5th. Maximum dew point of 56 at 3pm. West wind 8 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, which became thunderstorm by afternoon. It was humid. The high last year was 81 degrees. The record high of 90 was set in 1946.
This evening I’ll probably walk 🚶 down to the library 📚 to return books and maybe get some new ones out plus do a least some steps. Maybe an evening walk but truth be told I’d rather just retire to bed early. 🛏 Got some salmon out of the freezer, going to have with baked apples, butternut squash, mashed sweet potato and spinach. Should he a good dinner but will be dark by the time I’m done with it. The days of going down to the park after work have come and gone.
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:50 pm with sun having an altitude of 48.9° from the due south horizon (-21.9° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 5.2 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:23 pm with the sun in the west (267°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (273°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:00 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 54 seconds with dusk around 7:27 pm, which is one minute and 47 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the First Quarter 🌓 Moon in the southwest (225°) at an altitude of 13° from the horizon, 239,238 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:02 pm. At sunset, look for mostly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 61 degrees. The dew point will be 52 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 13 mph. Today will have 12 hours and 22 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 51 seconds over yesterday.
Yesterday I had to run to the store to get contact solution 👀 and ended up getting some sweet potatoes, avocados, frozen squash and melon, along with walnuts, the later which I used to make some walnut butter in the food processor. I thought about doing another try at the bread I made in the morning, which came out a bit flat but I might wait until tonight to knead up some more dough.
Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 48 degrees at 4am. Three degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around September 27th. Northwest wind 6 to 10 mph. In 2022, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It was somewhat humid. It got down to 59 degrees. The record low of 30 occurred back in 1979.
Weekend is looking pretty nice. 😎 Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 70. Maximum dew point of 55 at 12pm. Sunday, a chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 69. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Maximum dew point of 59 at 1pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 72 degrees.
I am not sure if I will head out of town, 🏕 🚲 as the models suggest different things, but if it’s nice, the Adirondacks are always a good option. That said, if I wait another week, it might be closer to peak color. That said, I told Mom and Dad, I’d take them on a trip to Speculator later this month, so maybe that will be the weekend to do it. It’s a day trip, so I could always just take a day off from work too do it. I need to use up some time, before it gets cold out, so I should plan some more trips. Thinking the week after Columbus Day Weekend for a trip out to the Finger Lakes, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and/or Allegheny National Forest. At least that’s the general direction I’m leaning towards. So many options, so little time. Otherwise, the fall back is the Nature Bus to Thacher Park. Always the most affordable option.
One month 📅 from now will be Average High is 60 🍂 when the sun will be setting at 6:08 pm with dusk at 6:36 pm. The average high temperature is 34 degrees, with a record high of 61 in 1895.
