Good morning! Happy Thursday. It was a cloudy morning but it has cleared out as the day as the day progressing. Five weeks to Tax Day 💰 . I am making more progress on my taxes, it looks like I may be getting a good-sized refund, as I did a regular IRA to offset the fact I couldn’t participate in 457(B) program when I working my other job. Partly cloudy and 47 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a south-southeast breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. Snow piles are melting away quickly, ☃ Temperatures will drop below freezing at Saturday around midnight. ☃️

Stayed over at my parents house last night to let the dog out while they got their second rounds of COVID-shot. I keep hearing more and more of my friends are getting the vaccine, some of them I wonder how, but I guess they work in industries were it is required and they get to move up in the line. While I am no rush to get it, as I can work from home, it will be nice when I can get it and be protected. I am really hoping they offer it either at work or I can just swing by the pharmacy on the way home. I don’t want to wait in line or have to make a reservation.

I felt so stuffy when I woke up this morning, and just felt miserable driving home and sick as a dog from my allergies. There is some kind of terrible reaction I’ve gotten since my parents got the dog they have. I don’t know why I’ve developed such severe dog allergies lately. Or maybe it’s their cat. So I slept inside, keeping the dog off my, and things were good, but waking up this morning I felt so awful. But I’m starting to feel better now.

I thought about sleeping out in my truck, but my parents neighbors dumped a big ol’ pile of pig shit and what smells like deer or hog entrails in their field up past my parents barn. Now I grew up in farm country, with cow slurry-hauling trucks fertilizing fields and I don’t mind the smell of manure that much, and I’ve gut a few animals and occasionally run past some entrails, but this shit stunk. Heck, my parents used to run a dairy goat operation, they’d have bucks in heat and my neighbors raised hogs, but whatever was in gut pile was gross. They need to throw some wood chips and dirt on it to tie down carbon or at least till it into the soil. I wonder if my parent in a tit-tat with the neighbors or something. It’s not like they don’t own the heavy equipment they need to bury the shit so it rots and can turn into good farm dirt later on.

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 67 degrees at 3pm. 25 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around May 6th. South wind 9 to 11 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 48 degrees. The record high of 70 was set in 1977. We could break that record, although in recent years we’ve been having more March thaws and records have been broken more offer. 4.1 inches of snow fell back in 1941.❄

I have a project to work on today for work, so I will probably work at my desk and then maybe sit out back. It’s so nice, I might take advantage of the free unlimited Internet either down at the library or the park later. I am hoping the sun will stick around and it will turn out to be a nice day, although I’ve heard there is a threat of shower later on with some upper level instability. But I have enough bandwidth, that I probably could do anything I need to do from my phone and computer at home, if the weather doesn’t turn out real good.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:06 pm with sun having an altitude of 43.8° from the due south horizon (-27° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 6.3 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 5:20 pm with the sun in the west (260°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (266°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 5:58 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 55 seconds with dusk around 6:25 pm, which is one minute and 12 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:58 pm. At sunset, look out possible for rain showers 🌧 and temperatures around 64 degrees. There will be a south breeze at 11 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 44 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 55 seconds over yesterday. Almost the first day of spring.

Tonight will have a chance of showers, mainly between midnight and 3am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 43 degrees at 6am. 19 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 1st. South wind 8 to 10 mph becoming northwest after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2020, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 34 degrees. The record low of -12 occurred back in 1948.

I accidentally left my windows open in my apartment last night, 🔲 and the heat turned on around 50 degrees. It realized my mistake when I was almost at my parents house yesterday, but I figured at that point, it best to just not worry about it as it wasn’t going to be below freezing, and even if the heat did come on for a few hours in the late hours of the night, it wasn’t going to be a big deal.

Today in 1993, Janet Reno is confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn in the next day, becoming the first female Attorney General of the United States. See certainly was an obnoxious personality, and probably a distraction to the whole administration of Bill Clinton, but it is good to see more diversity in government to bring in more perspectives. She certainly was very anti-gun, so I was no fan of hers. But ultimately much of what the Clinton Presidency was defined by was whatever crap the Republicans served up in Congress, as the Democrats lost control for the final 8 years of his presidency. Maybe that was good though, although it took many years to undo the 1994 crime bill which has locked up many good people and promoted racism.

A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Saturday, sunny, with a high near 41. Northwest wind 14 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 42. Typical average high for the weekend is 43 degrees. I am really looking forward to getting up to the Adirondacks this weekend. It looks like it will be cold enough up north that the snow should still be frozen for late winter camping and maybe some skiing, but not so cold that it will be unpleasant when dressed in layers and sitting by the fire. The nice thing is with the snow, I won’t have to worry about keeping the fire small, as nothing is going to burn with a foot plus of snow on the ground.

🌹🌻🌼Only 9 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼 A week from Saturday. But today will certainly feel spring like, and I look forward to having the windows open, listening to the birds, breathing in the fresh air.

Looking ahead, there are 5 weeks until Tax Day 💰 when the sun will be setting at 7:37 pm with dusk at 8:06 pm (Daylight Savings Time). Lots of sunlight if you burning your evening oil on your taxes. Used motor can certainly be a bit pungent when you burn it on your old tax forms. On that day in 2020, we had partly cloudy skies with a few snow showers and temperatures between 48 and 33 degrees. Kind of a chilly day. Typically, the high temperature is 58 degrees. We hit a record high of 86 back in 2003.