Good afternoon! Cloudy and 34 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a west-northwest breeze at 14 mph. The current wind chill is 23. I was expecting better for the weather today, but it was not be. Today is a pay day, and I think I got enough sleep last night, so I can’t complain that much. That said, most of the check, after automatic withdrawals for savings, investments and retirement will go to paying down the credit card. But so is life, living paycheck-to-paycheck. Money is always tough — there is never enough to make ends meet, but we are getting closer to spring.

Only 70 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!

The sun will set at 4:41 pm with dusk around 5:12 pm, which is one minute and 5 seconds later than yesterday. At sunset, look for mostly sunny conditions and 31 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 13 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 16 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one minute and 20 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low of 15 degrees at 5am. Two degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around 10 at 4am; Northwest wind 5 to 10 mph becoming light and variable after midnight. In 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies, clearing in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 17 degrees. The record low of -13 occurred back in 1968.

I was tired last night, so I went to bed early around nine. I did listen to podcasts until I fell asleep shortly thereafter. It was a pretty good, and it was warm enough that I finally could leave the heat down, and yet it wasn’t that cold out in the morning. The LED lighting worked pretty good, although I’m increasingly thinking I should replace some of the RGB string with a row of warm white LEDs to improve efficiency, as I think the reason the strings look relatively dark — despite ample output — is the lack of good color fidelity due to the mixing of the Red-Blue-Green channels with no broad-spectrum light. You can make any color with RGB LEDs but the color is simulated compared to real broad-spectrum light, making color rendition poor.

Still keeping an eye on the weekend forecast, to see if it will be reasonable enough to head north for the holiday weekend. It sure would be nice to have a campfire under the stars, listen to some music, drink some beer then snow camp in a heated tent. Maybe do some target shooting. May go skiing on Sunday or Martin Luther King Day when I return from my trip. I basically have the supplies I need for such a trip, so I’m just monitoring the conditions. I want to get there pretty early on, so I have ample time to dig out a parking space, set up camp. There is probably a lot of snow up north, so I will have to do a lot of digging.

While my day to day finances always seem to be a struggle to make ends meet, as there is so much competing for my bank accounts attention, I do have to say Trump’s first year was a good one for me, with an average of 20% growth across various investments helping me to put me closer to a secure retirement, and building up savings so hopefully I can buy land and an off-grid cabin eventually. Things are growing really fast right now, although I expect it be balanced out in the coming years with a recession. Some years you make $35,000 in the market, other years you lose $40,000. I’m young and risk adverse, I’m going to continue to ride the bull, and just look the other way the next time the market crashes and sets me back. The goal is just to come out ahead.

I’m a bit annoyed with my neighbor with the low rumble of his game machine half of the day, but I’m not going to say anything for now. It sounds like a semi truck rumbling along the road. He probably isn’t that pleased with me hears me cussing out the mornings with me stumbling around, and my alarm clock being reset multiple times. I’ve been trying to keep my noise down when he’s home, swear less and turn my alarm in my phone to vibrate. I don’t really think I need a loud alarm at this point, from habit I wake at seven. I think if it continues after a few more weeks of me trying to be extra quiet and non vulgar, I’ll talk to him. For some reason, the walls just seem extra thin this winter. Maybe because I’ve been home more, maybe it’s because my neighbor has a newer rattling subwoofer for his game.  I don’t really understand why one would want to play stupid games all day. That’s one reason why I can’t wait to have my own place. So I don’t have to worry about being quiet. That’s the great thing about camping in the wilderness.

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until National Pie Day when the sun will be setting at 4:58 pm with dusk at 5:28 pm. On that day in 2017, we had rain, freezing rain, snow, sleet, mist, mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 39 and 32 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 31 degrees. We hit a record high of 64 back in 1906.