Good evening. Currently 54 degrees with an occasional breeze that has seemed to die down in the past hour or so. For the first time in a while I went for a nice evening walk. Between various events, vacation, and weather, I hadn’t been out for my walk in a while.

There are some rain showers on the way for the greater Albany area in a bit, but I don’t expect low temperature below 41 or so. Sunny tomorrow but much cooler with a high around 52.

It sucks that Veterans Day is on a Wednesday this year. I want to take a long weekend in November, so I guess I could take two days of plus Veterans Day. Still looking at going to Brasher Falls State Forest and camp / hunt up in the North Country mid-November. We will see. I’ve taken a lot of time off from work already at this point, I’m not sure how much more I can ask for off.

So earlier in the week I start looking at propane camp heaters and pricing them out. When I was down in West Virginia one of the hunters I was hanging out was talking about how great they are in the morning and how you can use them to blast heat into your tent or truck camper in my case. A cold morning ain’t so bad with a hot blast of heat. This year I’m increasingly serious about winter and late fall camping for hunting, trapping, and ice fishing. The hunters spoke favorably about the Mr. Heater hooked to a 20 lb BBQ grill sized propane bottle. Online reviews seems to agree. I haven’t bought yet but are looking at a refurbished model. Probably will make the jump next week.

Which of course got me looking at guns somehow. As much as I love my 20 gauge Remington 870, I would like to also get a 12 gauge. I’m thinking of trying my hand at deer hunting this year and while you can get slugs and buck shot for a 20, a 12 is more flexible and easier to get. I saw they had a Mossberg 500 deer and field combo gun (you swap out the two barrels it comes with) on sale for $300 through Saturday. Seriously thinking of buying but the sale ends Saturday. Next week the 870 is on sale but I certainly don’t want to have two nearly identically looking and operating guns that takes different size ammo. That could be dangerous. I don’t know, the gun is kind of low priority and Dick’s has sold them for less before. Been chewing it over all week. I don’t know if I really need the 12 gauge right now as the 20 can do nearly everything, but it would last for a long time and Mossberg is a good brand.

What I should really do with the money leftover from vacation is invest it in the stock market. But I think the market is overvalued but returning the money to my FDIC insured cash savings means I’m loosing to inflation every month as the low funds rate means I’m only collecting 0.95% interest. But I like guns and $300 won’t break the bank for another inexpensive shotgun. In 2016, I want to take some money from savings for a snowmobile but for various reasons not so much this year.