Up bright and early again this morning. Oatmeal Pancakes at five o’clock with cranberries, shredded oranges and bananas topped with maple syrup and cherries. A good sugar rush to start my day. It’s nice that with the new smoke detector it doesn’t set it off even when I send a big cloud of smoke up overheating the olive oil on griddle. Photo-electric detectors are good if you are annoyed about the alarm going off every time you cook. That and use avocado oil, you’ll produce a lot less smoke if you a bad cook like me.

Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Snow flurries glitter down from the sky as I sip my coffee ☕, its around 30 degrees in Delmar. ❄ There is a south breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. Things will start to thaw out at around 7 am. 🌡️ Going to be decently warm come mid-day, figuring we are in the second half of December. Going to ride to work 🚲, hopefully there won’t be a lot of damage to the rail trail from yesterday’s flooding.

Not a lot cooking up this morning 👨‍🍳 besides pancakes. Used up the last of the cranberries with a banana and a whole orange mixed with some whole-wheat flour, egg and some baking soda to make the pancakes, 🥞 topped with cherries and syrup. 🍒 Last night I enjoyed Cajun 15-bean soup, with lots of carrots and celery, and fresh rye bread, which actually is a mixture of rye and whole-wheat flour, as I don’t have white flour to use with the rye. 🍞 Came out pretty good, very dark in color and rich in flavor as I used red onions. Also some vital wheat gluten was added for texture, and obviously dill weed which is neccessary for rye bread. Maybe the next result is pumpernickel, although I guess in that case it would be truly whole-grain rye, which is pumpernickel not the blend between medium rye (partially refined rye) and whole-wheat. I am happy, and if you don’t like it, don’t break into my apartment and eat my bread.

Today will have a slight chance of snow showers, mixing with rain after 9am, then gradually ending. Partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 38 degrees at 10am. One degree above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 17th. South wind 9 to 16 mph becoming northwest in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 26 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with more sun in the afternoon. The high last year was 36 degrees. The record high of 54 was set in 1895. 7.8 inches of snow fell back in 2008.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:53 am with sun having an altitude of 24° from the due south horizon (-46.8° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:39 pm with the sun in the southwest (230°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (238°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:25 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 25 seconds with dusk around 4:56 pm, which is 24 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the First Quarter 🌓 Moon in the south-southeast (157°) at an altitude of 43° from the horizon, 226,942 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:32 pm. At sunset, look for partly cloudy skies 🌃 and temperatures around 34 degrees. Breezy, 16 mph breeze ⛅ from the northwest. Tomorrow will have 9 hours and 6 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 9 seconds over today.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 24 degrees at 1am. Two degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 13th. Maximum wind chill around 21 at 6am; Northwest wind 7 to 13 mph. In 2022, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 23 degrees. The record low of -19 occurred back in 1951.

Today in 1974, Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as Vice President of the United States 👴🏼 under President Gerald Ford under the provisions of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution. 📜 His appointment was controversial, and what should have been a swift confirmation process turned into a protracted and grueling inquiry into the extent of the Rockefeller fortune and its hidden influence. 💵 Basically he handed a stack of cash to anybody who got in his way as Governor of New York over his 15-odd years in the position. Which is why he always got his way and built so many big things, including the Empire State Plaza and World Trade Center.

Looks like great weather leading up to Christmas 🤶. Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 37. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 41. Christmas Day — Monday, Partly sunny, with a high near 44. Typical average high for the weekend is 36 degrees. And the days running up to the Christmas holiday will be as follows — Thursday, mostly sunny, with a high near 36. North wind 10 to 13 mph. Friday, sunny, with a high near 33.

After chewing it over for a while, I decided to take off Thursday and Friday to head out to Madison County, likely for four days. 🏕 While I’ll need to camp in two different locations unless I go down to Sherburne to get a permit, I could either go out to Cazenovia or Brookfield or stay part of the week at Cherry Ridge and the rest at the horse camp. Got to watch out for snow, though it doesn’t look like it’s going to be much of a problem though there could be a dusting or even an inch or two after the snow showers come rumbling through today, and it’s not going to be much above freezing in coming week. 🌨 Going to work from home tomorrow I think so I can run to the store mid-day and fill the propane tank and get any other needed supplies for camping. Plan to drive home on Christmas Day for Christmas dinner with the family. 🎄 👪 🎅

One option I’m seriously looking at is on Friday 🚲 riding more of the Canalway Trail, this time from Canastota up to the area around Rome, maybe Durhamsville depending on the time. I think the trail will be free of snow by then, though Friday might be a bit chilly though sunny and shouldn’t be so bad with gloves on. Or I could hike around Stoney Pond or if I decide to spend time at Charles Baker, then I could ride the roads there. 💭 Off-road bike riding isn’t permitted in the winter, but road-riding is okay per their website. The road up to Cherry Ridge could be icy, though it’s usually plowed but not sanded, except for the campground which isn’t plowed at all. But as of now, they don’t have any more then any dusting per the web cams and snowfall predictions.  ⛄ Thought about heading further south to Long Pond State Forest, but that’s quite a ways south and west. West Virginia is too far away for four nights, not to mention they have a ton of now.

I am dipping a bit into my time reserve for time next year, ⏲ not rolling over the maximum into 2024, but when I thought about it some more, it doesn’t matter as I don’t expect I’ll be taking much time off until late April, which will give me several pay periods to build time back up, plus I get 35 hours of personal time (5 days) on the first of the new year. Starting my new position as Director of Data Services, I am not going to want to miss much work 👔 as I have much to learn and I want to put in the long hours, to make a good impression in my new position. Not sure how much comp-time I’ll get to use next summer, 😎 though I think there is definitely a possibility of remote work with my new position that is more about working data and running reports ⌨ then working with people, or so I think. I don’t know, I haven’t started the training yet. 👨‍🏫 Things are getting wrapped up at Research it seems for the year, there is a handful of projects outstanding in the Production Book but I’m not worried as the year comes to close.

It will be four nights out camping this week leading into Christmas, 🏕 then I have off Christmas Day to visit with the families and Boxing Day is also a holiday at my company. 😀 Then it’s three days of work, but I”m thinking of potentially working from home that Friday leading into the New Years Weekend, so I can leave early and set up camp in Rensselaerville and do a three-night trip there through New Years Day. Depends on how much snow we get the second half of next week. ❄️ Really hard to say. Lots of winter camping this year, but it’s been so mild. Come January though I’m not planning anything until at least mid-month with Martin Luther King Day but even that’s uncertain — and as I noted, I’m not sure if I will take any time off from work for trips until April with my new position getting underway. Might be a busy summer too, but I’m thinking at least part of the time I will be able to remote work 👨‍💻 so I could extend trips by working part of the time from camp and/or the Speculator and other other libraries.

Looking ahead, next Tuesday is Boxing Day 🥊 when the sun will be setting at 4:29 pm with dusk at 4:59 pm. Days are getting longer. On that day in 2022, we had partly sunny and temperatures between 30 and 16 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 35 degrees. We hit a record high of 59 back in 1895. Before my time, lol 😂.