Good morning! Happy Bubble Bath Day 🧼 ! Never was into the bubble bath, but I do like the bubbly potholers on a hot summer day. 🏊 Three weeks to my 38th Birthday 🎉 . 17 years until I will be 55. That said I’m not sure if I will stick around in Albany for another decade and a half. 👴 So many things to do before then. Cloudy and 21 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a north-northwest breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. There is a inch of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at around 2 pm. 🌡️

Kind of a cold and gray morning. 🌥 I am rather disappointed with the weather. Fewer dog 🐶 walker to have to put the mask on for and step off the trail for on the era of THE COVID. Hopefully, we will have more sun later ☀ as I like looking at blue skies with the endless work zoom meetings of lately. ⌨️ Normally I mute 🔕 myself but lately with too many Ferris Buehler moments I left the microphone on and then my typing got picked up and I got yelled at during the meeting. I just find the phone zoom app is incredibly hard to unmute I a hurry. So it’s back to staring out the window. ⬜

I think today will be a work from home day, 🏠 that is after I go for my morning walk on this most cloudy start of day. ☁ Yesterday was so nice with all that sun to get the morning started, but that’s definitely not to be today. But hopefully it will get nicer once that high level front passes through. But I was hoping for seven days of blue skies in the morning, but that was not to be.We can have hopes for nice weather, but that rarely comes to be. But still I enjoy my morning walks. 🍳 I had a good pan of eggs with a chopped up ham-steak, broccoli, cheese and lots of coffee ☕ so I should have plenty of energy for the day. 💤 Slept well last night.

Today will be cloudy through mid morning, then gradual clearing ⛅, with a high of 34 degrees at 3pm. I am surprised how cloudy it out this morning. I thought the week was supposed to be a lot more sunny. Debbie downer I guess. Geos-East shows a row of clouds pushing through. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 11th. Northwest wind 7 to 9 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, which became mostly clear by afternoon. The high last year was 39 degrees. The record high of 60 was set in 2008. 8.3 inches of snow fell back in 1923.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:03 pm with sun having an altitude of 25.2° from the due south horizon (-45.6° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 12.8 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:55 pm with the sun in the southwest (232°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (240°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:40 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 22 seconds with dusk around 5:11 pm, which is one minute and 2 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:47 pm. At sunset, look for mostly sunny skies 🌃 and temperatures around 32 degrees. There will be a north-northwest breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 14 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 14 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 17 degrees at 6am. Two degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around February 11th. Maximum wind chill around 14 at 3am; Northwest wind 6 to 8 mph. In 2020, we had light snow in the evening, which tapered off and the skies become mostly clear and cold by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 13 degrees. The record low of -20 occurred back in 1968. But not 1968 cold, as it rarely gets that cold these days around here, but who knows with the polar vortex roaring around, although it seems unlikely to hit here in New York.

Tomorrow will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 33 degrees at 1pm. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 6th. Northwest wind 7 to 10 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, which became mostly clear by afternoon. The high last year was 30 degrees. The record high of 62 was set in 2008. 9.9 inches of snow fell back in 1953.❄

I haven’t decided yet for sure but I might just walk 🚶🏻 out to Five Rivers tomorrow 🐦 to watch the birds rather than driving anywhere. 🚘 I just washed my truck yesterday and I don’t want to get it dirty plus the fuel tank ⛽ is getting low and I don’t want to have to get gas until next week and I’ll save money 💵 by not visiting Aldi for even more groceries. Although I do also want to explore the Van Dyke Preserve which is near Meade’s Farm Road — never been there before, and it’s a short walk from the house. Maybe I’ll hike to the Van Dyke Preserve then out to Five Rivers. That will give me a full day of hiking and keep me busy if the weather is decent. I never trust the forecast these days.

Looking ahead to Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 34. 😎Northwest wind around 7 mph. Typical average high for the weekend is 30 degrees.

I am thinking Sunday I will go for a walk 🚶🏻around the Holt Preserve. Been a while since I was last there, and I don’t want to drive too far this weekend. 🚘 Close to home and it’s an easy drive out there without too many back roads to get my truck dirty with.

Finally got to the bank yesterday, 🏦 and got the stack of checks I had been hoarding into the bank. I’ve gotten good at driving my big jacked up truck to the ATM. 🏧 There was a big line at the bank drive through as all the interior banking facilities are closed due to the COVID, and I had trouble making the turn to get to the ATM but eventually traffic moved ahead, and with a little jumping of the curb with the back wheel of Big Red and some careful negotiation of the drive through, I made it there safely.

I wasn’t going to do the IRA thing this year in favor of a Roth, 💵 but after looking at my tax situation, I’ll probably do some of a regular IRA for part of $6k. If I do move to a low tax state in my later years for my homestead it won’t be that big of a deal, and if I have my own land, I’ll probably not be spending that much money on any particular year so my income will be lower. Then when I max out the IRA, I’ll just do the CD or investment account. Should do the trick. And I’ll keep looking at properties in rural Missouri and Neberaska to tease myself in thinking about a better tomorrow.

I also got a bunch of groceries, 🛍️ and cleaning supplies. 🧽 I bought this big bottle of ammonium – lemon cleaning solution and it stunk to high hell, 🦨 but it did a good job cleaning the kitchen and bathroom. At first I thought I thought there had been a mixture of some of the old residual chemicals and the ammonium producing noxious chloramine but no, it just was a lot more pungent 👃 then the other knock-off Pine Sol I normally get. The stink quickly dissipated though, and it was very effective at cleaning the floors and countertops. I am trying to spend a few hours year week cleaning to keep things a bit nicer around here. ☠ Probably toxic as hell but so be it. We live in a world of chemicals.

I haven’t seen any mice since the mouse I caught yesterday, 🐁 so that’s a good thing. I thought this would be a mice free winter, and until January 6th, that was the case. Then that one made a riotest appearance. Despite the news from that hick town some 500 miles south of me, I thought Wednesday was a pretty quiet day except for that one mouse I caught. I also bought more peanut butter for traps or to use with lunch.

The peanut butter will be good for snacks.🍪 I got kind of a sweet tooth when I got that big bag of Christmas cookies at Aldi’s two weeks ago, but I normally don’t have cookies or sweets at home, but a glob of peanut butter along with the frozen fruit in the freezer should help make up for it. I don’t like to have cookies at home, as they’re not healthy and there are a expense I can’t afford with my budget being as tight as it these days. 💸🚭 I’ll eat cookies and drink beer and maybe even drag on something when I’m camping but I refuse to do any of those vices at home.

I’ve been using less data then expected, 📶 so come April if I’m still working from home, I’ll probably switch back to the 10 GB hotspot plan and then back to the old, cheaper phone plan once I’m back to work again downtown. Right now, things are working out good, just spending one afternoon a week at the library parking lot when it’s not to cold to get the big files I need for mapping or other purposes. The extra $20 a month (or $10 if i go back to 10 GB) is reasonable these days with no or little bus fares to pay working from home. But I think I’d prefer to work down at the library or the park when the weather is nice and not have to be watching every megabyte on the gauge. 🔌 Then I’ll be just watching the watt-hour gauge and resetting the undervoltage relay when it clouds up too much.

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until 38th Birthday 🎉 when the sun will be setting at 5:05 pm with dusk at 5:35 pm. On that day in 2020, we had partly cloudy skies 🌥 and temperatures between 35 and 19 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 31 degrees. We hit a record high of 54 back in 2002.

🌹🌻🌼Only 71 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼 Tomorrow marks ten weeks until calendar spring. But sometimes we get nicer weather before then but who knows. It varies a lot from year to year, with sometimes the worse blizzards in late March, although that time of the year with average highs in the 40s, snow doesn’t last long.