… dot, dot, dot. And then later possibly turn to snow before clearing out. Winter wants to remind us it’s still a thing, even though most of new week will be in the fifties and sixties, with the bite of winter not having much left due to El Nino and climate change.

Good morning! Rain showers are ending, around 36 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☔ There is a northwest breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. Temperatures will drop below freezing at tomorrow around 3 am. ☃️ My windows have been closed all of last night and most of the evening, though the heat has been off but I used the heated blanket.

Kind of an usual Sunday, 😵 up early at 5 AM and showering soon 🛀 and then off to Wally World to get groceries and supplies. 🛒 Nothing to earth shocking. 💣️ I mean, I did set my clocks ahead, so I really got up at 4 AM, but we won’t say that. Then I want to do a drive out to country,  🐄 look at some properties I have been thinking about and explore some back roads, 🛻 and then head out to the folks house fairly early for Sunday dinner. I’d like to get home by 7:30 PM tonight so I can avoid driving after if possible. I don’t mind is so much any more, since I’ve started to eat more carrots 🥕, adjusted my headlights 🔦 and generally are more healthy, but why drive after dark if you can avoid it? Says the boy who is thinking about building an off-grid cabin out in the country, and seriously considering absurdly long commutes in the dark to do it. 🤷‍♂️ I am probably totally nuts, 🤪 letting my mental illness and pyromania 🔥 get the best of me. But just think of the bonfires I could have if I lived out in the country. Or the warmth of the wood stove. I just love burning things. 🧡 🤣

Today will have a chance of rain, mainly before 8am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a high of 45 degrees at 1pm. Two degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 15th. West wind 7 to 17 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 44 degrees. The record high of 72 was set in 1977. 5.7 inches of snow fell back in 1964.❄

Last night I baked bread 🍞 and made a big pot of red lentil soup. 🍲 Also I cooked up a acorn squash that I will be enjoying most of this week. The bread is carrot bread with lots of shredded carrots. 🥕 The red lentil soup contains peas, shredded carrots and lots of turmeric and spices. 🧂 I had been cutting back on carrots, as they can be a bit excessive on the fiber side thing, but I saw that had been piling up in the refrigerator, and didn’t want them to go waste and they are healthy. Not as sweet as they are some times, but they do make bread so moist and delicious. Eggs for breakfast today. 🐓 My pantry is getting a bit bare now.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 1:06 pm with sun having an altitude of 43.5° from the due south horizon (-27.3° 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 6:19 pm with the sun in the west (259°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (266°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 6:57 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 55 seconds with dusk around 7:24 pm, which is one minute and 11 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the west (266°) at an altitude of 2° from the horizon, 226,500 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 7:58 pm. At sunset, look for snow 🌨 and temperatures around 39 degrees. Breezy, 18 mph breeze ⛅ from the west-northwest with gusts up to 36mph. Tomorrow will have 11 hours and 47 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 54 seconds over today.

I was thinking today marks the four years since the pandemic shit got real. 😷 While at this point wearing muzzles didn’t become standard fare yet, it was the evening when we all got the news that things were shutting down 📂 and that we’d all be working remote for the next year or two. Of course none of that was known, we were promised four or six weeks of isolation, and it wasn’t fun not having Internet at home at first, but I got good working out of ol’ Big Red 🛻 down at the parking lot of public library, 👨‍💻 at least on warm and sunny days, ☀️ at least those days it wasn’t so hot. And in many cases, working remote from the Adirondacks was a lot of fun, camping 🏕 and hanging out at the Speculator Library doing Zooms when the internet wasn’t flakey due too many people being on it. Time goes by so fast, I mean it’s was only a year ago when using the word shit became something you could use in a country song and polite conversation. 💩 It’s good, we all do it, and makes crops grow. 🌱 And I do it a lot with all the fiber I eat. 🥦

Tonight will have a chance of snow showers, mainly between 7pm and 5am. Cloudy 🌧, with a low of 32 degrees at 4am. Seven degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 2nd. Breezy, with a northwest wind 15 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. In 2023, we had light rain in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 28 degrees. The record low of -10 occurred back in 1939.

Getting up at 5 AM this morning, 🛌 I expect to be super tired by evening. But the plan is to get to bed early, and keep getting up each morning early. I have best thoughts, and most interest in reading and learning in the early mornings. 📚 Yes, it’s going to be dark in mornings for the next few weeks, but with earth wobble 🌎 and changing of seasons meaning the fastest growth of daylight 🌄 we actually pick up daylight in the morning quickly this time of year.

Today in 1969, in Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr. 🛐 He later unsuccessfully attempts to recant. Didn’t help that the FBI had a very active role in trying to kill King, and while they didn’t pull the trigger, they certainly didn’t offer him any protection and actively harassed him until his death. 👮‍♀️ The FBI, especially ol’ J. Edgar Hoover, was convinced that MLK was a bad news, a dangerous radical. That said, I am not at all convinced that J. Edgar Hoover wasn’t a closeted homosexual with multiple prominent men who took his aggression and insecurities out on the new left. 👬 He certainly was close to Paul Harvey, another character who you had to have a lot of questions about. People should be honest who they are, and not give a duck what others think of them. ✊  And not take out their own insecurities on others, especially if they person of power like J. Edgar Hoover. 😟 It’s funny how us mentally ill people take out own problems on others.

Looking ahead, next Sunday is St. Patrick’s Day 🍀 when the sun will be setting at 7:06 pm with dusk at 7:32 pm. Which means the drunks will be on the roads next weekend, as will the cops trying to catch them. 🍻👮 St. Patricks Day is far more dangerous then the time change for deadly crashes. 🚗💥🚙  People make such a big deal out of  the time change, 🕓 but it’s the beer that kills. And summer is by far most deadly time on the road — more driving, more beers, less cares. On Saint Patricks’ Day 2023, we had rain showers, cloudy and temperatures between 47 and 32 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 45 degrees. We hit a record high of 75 back in 1990.

The prior the intention is to get an FHA loan, tear out all of crap and send it to the landfill and replace with Home Depot cheap swank features, while the later is already covered with that marble crap and swank features, and already has had that tear out done. In some ways it makes me feel good knowing that I’m not totally responsible for trashing my apartment, as shit wears out if you not constantly repairing it. Things have a lot shorter lifespan and are designed to be sent to the mound on the outskirks of town much sooner then you might think. Maybe I’m too much of a horny buck goat myself, who sprays his beard with urine because it smells so good at least to a horny buck goat, and even though I don’t spray my own beard with urine, I find those to be such a spirit animal.

Good morning! Monday’s come back around again. Mostly cloudy and 35 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a south-southeast breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. Temperatures will drop below freezing at around 10 pm. ☃️

I was listening to this audio book, Jennifer McGahan’s Flat Broke with Two Goats, 🎧 last week which of course had too many descriptions of goat sex and all things smelly and dirty about owning buck goats, listening while I ride to work, probably as I pass through the Delmar suburbs and the poverty South End, and people are horrified overhearing the audio with the often very descriptively smelly parts of goat farm life. But shit’s real, unlike those marble countertops they keep trying to push me towards when I look at Zillow ads. And vinyl siding. Have you ever seen how black that vinyl siding shit burns, like my childhood neighbors did with the scraps when they got their then new double-wide manufactured home? 🔥 Yuck. I’m cool with people burning shit out in the country, but vinyl siding is so toxic and nasty to burn. ☠

Today will be mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny ☁, with a high of 52 degrees at 3pm. 13 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 31st. South wind 5 to 9 mph becoming north in the afternoon. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 39 degrees. The record high of 63 was set in 1976. 8.4 inches of snow fell back in 1972.❄

Going to be a great day for riding to work. 🚲 And maybe also at lunch time. That’s one of advantage of living in city, well the suburbs for now. Figure might as well take advantage of it while it’s a thing. 😀 Plus it’s a great cure for my anxiety. 🤪 Yesterday, I had multiple anxiety attacks as I’ve been incredibly stress about taking over management of the Data Services division 💻 all by myself this week, the whole situation about the rent check 📜, even though I know it will be fine as I mailed the paper check to my new landlord, as much as he doesn’t want a paper check, he has to accept it, 🤷‍♂️ and he pretty much agreed to it in writing. It should be in box by tomorrow at the latest, which is three days before it’s required. I know things will work out, but it’s really a tough time in my life, as I’m pulled in forty different directions. ◀️ ▶️ I am no longer in my twenties and thirties, the days of rambling in the wilderness 🌲 are probably coming to an end. But maybe becoming a hobby farmer is next, and heating with wood and having bonfires 🔥 out back in next.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:09 pm with sun having an altitude of 38.5° from the due south horizon (-32.3° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 7.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 5:03 pm with the sun in the west-southwest (252°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (259°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 5:41 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 58 seconds with dusk around 6:08 pm, which is one minute and 15 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:42 pm. At sunset, look for mostly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 48 degrees. There will be a north breeze at 8 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 7 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 49 seconds over yesterday.

I was really hoping to meet my friend from Boy Scouts yesterday to learn more about he financed and secured his 10-acre homestead outside of Greenville 🐐 but he got stuck working late. He works really long hours, but then again I had to do some work adding accounts for the data system on Sunday too. Everybody is quite busy. Started to go through the list of properties in the hilltowns with back taxes owed to county, studying acreages, aerial photos, and LIDAR to glean what knowledge I can. 🔍 I am not saying this guarantees I’ll find the right land for me for cheap, that frees up funds for building the homestead of my dreams that smells like horney buck goat or hogs 🐷 and isn’t afraid of some mud, 👃 but pushing the paper — well actually the GIS databases and property tax information can provide insight into who to send certified letters in hopes I might find a willing seller for a reasonable price. 🤝

I’m not afraid to haul some garbage and tires for the perfect property without the marble counter tops that I have nothing but disdain for. 🏚 Maybe next weekend I can get together with him, I think he has a lot of good ideas I need to learn about, because I don’t think a real estate agent will be pushing me to the right property. I’ve also started reading a e-book 📖 from Libby about the process of building your own home, 🏠 or restoring an existing property. I can haul garbage but I don’t trust myself with a hammer, 🔨 especially anything structural or supposed to look the least bit purty, not that I give a duck 🦆 about being purty but functional. I am also studying possibly having a cabin built to my specifications — there is lots of acerage available locally but so many of homes for sale have marble countertops and probably aren’t appropriate for raising hogs or burning shit out back without the neighbors calling the jack-booted thugs on you. 👩‍🚒 As my farmer friends like to post, happiness has a smell and it smells like barnyard. 👨‍🌾 Silage can be so pungent.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 28 degrees at 2am. Seven degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 21st. North wind around 6 mph becoming calm in the evening. In 2023, we had light snow in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 23 degrees. The record low of -13 occurred back in 1940.

Awesome weekend on tap, with temperatures running 16 degrees above normal. 😎 Saturday, mostly sunny, with a high near 53. Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 59. Typical average high for the weekend is 40 degrees. Maybe I can go camping. 🏕 I need some time in the wilderness. Nothing like a good ol’ fire to soothe the soul 🔥 especially if we get some rain this week and it lowers the fire risk. March camping might be a challenge if we’re under red-flag conditions much of the month, especially if it’s windy as much of the spring often is. Honestly, I don’t mind a bit of snow in March, but hopefully at least we will get some needed rain. 🌧

Looking ahead, there are 5 weeks until April Fools Day 🤡 when the sun will be setting at 7:23 pm with dusk at 7:50 pm (Daylight Savings Time). Day after Easter. 🐰 Early this year. On that day in 2023, we had rain and temperatures between 74 and 41 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 52 degrees. We hit a record high of 77 back in 1986.