Good evening! Partly clear and 56 degrees 🌉. There is a east-southeast breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 49 degrees. The skies will clear tomorrow around 11 am. Not a terrible evening but I decided against sitting out back after my evening walk. Should be a great evening for sleeping. 💤

Sipping on some nice cold drink of water with a hint of that cider vinegar. 🍏 I’m so glad I quit drinking alcohol. 🍻 Budwiser is so tasty now that it’s a rare treat in the wilderness. Water is so much healthier and has zero calories. And cheaper. Maybe the slight acidity is bad for the teeth but I can’t imagine it’s any worse than soda. I do get regular check ups at the dentist and I still drink a lot of milk 🐮 although not as much as I once did as milk is kind of expensive and a lot of calories.

All and all it was a pretty sucky weekend weather wise, 💦 but except for running to the store I pretty much stayed home. I did get groceries so I’m not totally out of food like yesterday when I was stuck eating cream of chicken soup 🐔 dunked with stale bread. Hey, it had to be used up and I was in a cranky mood yesterday so I wasn’t going to go shopping. I figured sticking around home saves money. As does using up what is at home before buying more.

Tonight will have a slight chance of rain before 10pm, then a slight chance of showers between 10pm and 1am. Cloudy 🌧, with a low of 49 degrees at 6am. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 21st. East wind around 6 mph becoming north after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 54 degrees. The record low of 29 occurred back in 1969.

Tonight will have a Waxing Crescent Moon 🌒 with 5% illuminated. The First Quarter Moon is on Friday night with mostly cloudy skies expected. The Flower Moon 🌝 is on Friday, May 17th. The sun will rise at 5:43 am with the first light at 5:12 am, which is one minute and 17 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 9 hours and 42 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 22 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 71 degrees at 5pm. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around May 20th. Maximum dew point of 49 at 4pm. North wind 3 to 5 mph. Should be a nice day. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 65 degrees. The record high of 89 was set in 1930. There was a dusting of snow in 1994.❄

Tomorrow is another work day but with my south facing office 🏢 the sun will be nice ☀. I love the views of the Heldebergs and Catskills from my office and with all the greenery from the spider plants 🌾 its always nice. I’ll definitely walk outside to the Capitol.

Over the weekend I worked on some improvements to the blog that make it easier for me to locate old content for refeaturing and updating. After all these years of blogging it becomes hard to constant think up new things. 💭

I won the eBay auction for the hand drill 🔩 I plan to use for drilling holes in quarter inch luan plywood for building LED signs. Minimum bid $8, even with shipping I think I got a fair deal – certainly cheaper than buying new and much higher quality rool. I am thinking my first project will be a USA red white and blue sign for use at camp.💡 I’ll probably just run it at five volts USB power with everything in parallel. If I drive the LEDs at 15 mA I can run 30 in parallel and draw about 1/2 amp at 5 VDC or 2.5 watts.

I also ordered two more HC-05 Bluetooth modules and a USB to serial adapter 🔌 from China to replace the one I burnt up this weekend. Still haven’t paired the two together I have but I’ll figure it out eventually. I also played with the waterproof temperature sensor a bit today. I got to get it now working with the esp32 that drives my VMS display and run the wires outside so I can measure the outside temperature. ❄

I started thinking more about what life would be like without an automobile 🚘 this weekend. I’ve thought a lot about the savings but less about the costs – ride sharing fares, more bus fares, car rentals, laundromat, paid trash pickup vs hauling my own, and even having to either order online or buy from Hannaford rather than buy cheaper at Walmart. The big savings seem less than at first. Well I guess the same thing is true when I study car insurance 🚙 options – big savings don’t materialize by shopping around if you want to maintain decent coverage. The way you save big bucks is by dropping the amount of coverage you have which increases your risk especially in case of severe accident. Being that I don’t own a house nor have my money tied up in property it’s less safe from liability lawsuits so I want to have decent coverage. 💵 Plus I think it would mean a lot less nights in the wilderness.

Right now, next weekend looks pretty nice. 😎 Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 64. Maximum dew point of 46 at 6am. Sunday, a chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 64. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Maximum dew point of 44 at 11am. Typical average high for the weekend is 68 degrees.

If the weekend forecast remains true, 👍 I’m still thinking about Piseco Powley Road and then Little Falls on Saturday. ⛺ Things could change before the though. I know that the gates are closed north of the Potholers but the lower part of the road will be open and hopefully won’t be too soft. Or I could consider other alternatives.

In four weeks on June 2 the sun will be setting at 8:27 pm,🌄 which is 27 minutes and 14 seconds later then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had humid, partly sunny, patches of fog and temperatures between 78 and 60 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 74 and 53 degrees. The record high of 94 degrees was set back in 1895.

Looking ahead, Mothers Day 👩‍ is in 1 weeks, 8:30 PM Sunset ️⛱️ is a month away, Fathers Day 👨 is in 6 weeks, Dog Days of Summer 🌻 is in 2 months, National Nude Day 👱 is in 10 weeks, Sunset Before 7:30 PM 🌆 is in 17 weeks, Autumn 🍂 is in 20 weeks and Average High is 60 🍂 is in 23 weeks.