Good evening! Cloudy and damp around 70 degrees on Delmar. ☁️ There is a west breeze at 13 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 67 degrees. The skies will clear around 9 pm.

Not a super nice day so I stayed home 🏡 and read and worked on a variety of little projects. I wanted to go for an evening walk 🚶🏻 but the threat of rain was much too high. Tomorrow I’ll get out hiking. Put together some new maps 🗺️and stuff for the blog, was reading another book 📙 about homesteading. 🐐 Cheeses and dairy science is fascinating stuff 🧀 – minor changes in processing milk 🥛 can create vastly different effects products or more likely ruin it entirely.

I finally baked up that cookie mix 🍪that expired in April. Good peanut 🥜 butter cookies that I bought last fall for my West Virginia trip but never eat. 😋 I figured I better eat it before the mice get in an chew holes in the packaging.🐁It’s been a bad year for mice in the woods – something people were talking about yesterday on Facebook and I noticed we’re bad both in the Finger Lakes and Piseco Powley Road.

Tonight will have a slight chance of showers before 11pm. Partly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 58 degrees at 5am. Typical for tonight. Maximum dew point of 67 at 9pm. West wind 10 to 13 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2019, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 57 degrees. The record low of 38 occurred back in 1982.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous 🌔 Moon with 90% illuminated. At 9 PM, the moon was in the south-southeast (156°) at an altitude of 21° from the horizon, some 239,388 miles away from where you are looking up from the earth. 🚀 At the state speed limit of 55 mph, you’ll make it there by February 27^th. Buckle up for safety! 💺 The darkest hour is at 12:57 am, followed by dawn at 5:49 am, and sun starting to rise at 6:19 am in the east-northeast (77°) and last for 2 minutes and 59 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 4 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 6:56 am with sun in the east (83°). Tonight will have 10 hours and 44 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 44 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 72 degrees at 3pm. Six degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around September 16th. Maximum dew point of 58 at 7am. Northwest wind 13 to 15 mph. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 82 degrees. The record high of 98 was set in 1953. The great Heat Wave of 1953.

Should be a nice autumn like day. 🍂 Nice change from the humidity and stormy weather today. I am thinking of doing some hiking and fishing 🎣 at Partridge Run tomorrow. Should be a great day to spend outdoors but maybe a bit chilly by the time I go out to my parents house for Sunday dinner. 🍲 But then again, Tuesday is September. Summer has quickly bit the dust.

I get so tired of hearing so many police 🚨 sirens lately. The past few months they really have been abusing them it seems. For a while they were relatively quiet, tapping the sirens only briefly at the traffic light 🚦 to warn motorists but lately it’s been non-stop and it’s annoying. That and the super throaty motorcycles and trucks 🏍. Maybe I’m noticing it more this year as I’m home all of the time I’m not in the woods enjoying the quiet. 🤫

I am planning my next trip after Labor Day Weekend. 🍂 I’ll have to get out my blaze orange and gun cleaned up at that point. I’m thinking the Spectulator Area most likely especially if I’m planning several weekdays because the library is a pleasant place to work for Zoom Meetings. After October 1st I might camp and work from a combination of Stoney Pond State Forest and Charles Baker. ⛺ I can probably get Wi-Fi at the Cazenovia and Hamilton libraries out there for Zoom. Remote work has its benefits. 💻No permit is needed for Stoney Pond State Forest after October 1st and it’s unlikely I’ll see anyone there except maybe a grizzled old hunter. 🎫 Fishing in Nelson Swamp is a lot of fun too.

I really enjoy reading and looking at pictures of folks off grid properties on the Facebook. 🏡 I just really like the simple and the small with lots of land in remote country. Some folks are really fancy or big builders but that certainly aint me. Some are into art work and making things pretty but I’m fine with chipboard for walls. The less you have, the less to spend money on, the less to break or have to throw away regularly. 🛠️

I’ve considered doing a trip in October to the Finger Lakes 💻 and remote working from there but I have concerns about the length of day and having enough sunlight then to keep things charged and the long trip back to Albany after hours should something break that I can’t continue to work from there likedead fuse, inverter or other problems with the solar system which I couldn’t fix in the field. ⬛ It would be fun though to enjoy the leaves, 🍁 hunt before 9 AM 🐿️🐰🦃and then work the rest of the day from camp but maybe exhausting to boot. At the National Forest you can camp for two weeks in one site, no permits required.

I also don’t want to put on too many miles or break shit in my truck 🔧before the state inspection in November. Since addressing the tire wear issue on the truck in June things have been a lot better at slowing the wear and I’m not concerned about this year’s inspection but I also don’t want to have any kind of costly repairs this autumn if possible. 🔩

In four weeks on September 26 the sun will be setting in the west (269°) at 6:45 pm,🌄 which is 49 minutes and 15 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had partly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 69 and 53 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 68 and 47 degrees. The record high of 90 degrees was set back in 2017.

Looking ahead, Northern Zone Regular Season 🦌 is in 7 weeks, Halloween 🛥️ and the Blue Moon 🌕 is in 9 weeks, Small Business Saturday 🛍️ is in 13 weeks, Repeal of Prohibition Day 🍺 is in 14 weeks, Boxing Day 🥊 is in 17 weeks, Cold Moon 🌕 is in 4 months, Static Electric Shock Day 🧼 is in 19 weeks, National Cheese Lovers Day 🧀 is in 21 weeks, 38th Birthday 🎉 is in 5 months, Save the Pine Bush Turns 43 🦋 is in 23 weeks, 5:30 PM Sunset 🌆 is in 25 weeks, Snow Moon 🌕 is in 26 weeks and Snow Moon 🌕 is in 26 weeks.