January 27, 2020 Night

Good evening! Cloudy and 35 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a west-northwest breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is 24. There is a dusting of snow on the ground. β˜ƒ Temperatures will drop below freezing at around 11 pm. β˜ƒοΈ

Not a half bad day, relatively quiet at work. 💼 As I was in late according to the time clock 🕒 I had to wait until 5:08 to clock out. Which was fine but also super pointless as I probably spent most of the final eight minutes staring at the clock because it was too late to really get started on the project that dropped on my desk five minutes to five. I did manage to catch the express bus back home 🚍 but for some reason it seemed so pokey with the traffic 🚦, especially past the lane restriction by the Capitol but the whole commute was sluggish, probably because I’m used to catching the express from Peter Kieran Plaza as it gets onto Water Street and the expressway. But that wasn’t going to happen as I had to stay late to make the time clock happy. πŸ™‚ Needless to say I’m going to get to work earlier tomorrow.

I am cooked up a big pan of tuna fish 🐠 salad up 🍲. Probably not the healthiest meal 🍴 ever with all that mercury rich tuna and fatty mayonnaise but oh so good. It did have nearly 3/4 lb of broccoli in it and lately I’ve been eating like four pounds of broccoli a week 🌿 so you gotta pick your fights. I rode the bike 🚲 for a hour or two after. Finished off the mayonnaise and I had to wash out the jar for recycling. What a pain. I tell you when I own land out in the country, things like that are prime candidates for the burn barrel to clean up. 🔥 Recycling is good, especially in the cities where there is lots of people and lots of garbage β™» but it can be such a pain in the ass compared to tossing it in a fire.

Its a pretty mild evening when I went out for my evening walk earlier. 🚶 Certainly really cloudy though. ☁ I also rode the exercise bike 🚲 for an hour or two while cooking dinner than listening to music 🎶 and then watched the latest from Arms Family Homestead with them birthing goats 🐐 – “wife is coming home soon….. I got to wash the after birth off my hands 👐 before I cook dinner.” Now that’s a line, knowing how livestock after birth can smell. Maybe he should have taken a shower 🚿 too. I really enjoy watching YouTube and learning about farm life from birthing and preg testing through butchering. 🚜

Regardless I got home and read 📖 for 45 minutes before killing the lights. πŸ’‘ Almost done with that book on the News Corp that I’m reading. I do keep my room dim at night but now it’s completely dark with the goal of being completely asleep by ten 🔟.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 30 degrees at 3am. 15 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 27th. Maximum wind chill around 22 at 4am; Northwest wind around 9 mph. In 2019, we had snow in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 8 degrees. The record low of -16 occurred back in 2005.

The Snow ❄ Moon is on Sunday, February 9. The darkest hour is at 12:09 am, followed by dawn at 6:45 am, and sun starting to rise at 7:16 am in the east-southeast (115Β°) and last for 3 minutes and 12 seconds. Sunrise is 52 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 7:58 am with sun in the east-southeast (122Β°). Tonight will have 14 hours and 11 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 12 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a high of 36 degrees at 2pm. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 19th. Northwest wind 8 to 10 mph. A year ago, we had light snow in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 22 degrees. The record high of 56 was set in 1916. 9.6 inches of snow fell back in 1897.❄

That kind of sucks. ☁ While this winter has been quite mild the sun hadn’t shown all that much. I guess it doesn’t matter that much in my basement office 🏢 but it still is pretty dreary, especially on the weekends.

In four weeks on February 24 the sun will be setting in the west-southwest (258Β°) at 5:38 pm,🌄 which is 36 minutes and 25 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had rain showers, partly cloudy and temperatures between 42 and 34 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 37 and 19 degrees. The record high of 74 degrees was set back in 2017. I do remember how warm and misty that year truly was.

Looking ahead, Clean Your Computer Day 🧹 is in 2 weeks, Presidents Day 👴 is in 3 weeks, Read Across America Day 📚 is in 5 weeks, Worm Moon 🌕 is in 6 weeks, Arbor Day 🌳 is in 3 months, 8 PM Sunset 🌇 is in 14 weeks, Flower Moon 🌕 is in 16 weeks, Memorial Day 🇺🇸 is in 17 weeks, June 🍹 is in 18 weeks and Average High is 80 🏖 is in 21 weeks.

🇺🇸🦅Only 115 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!🦅🇺🇸

Icy

How to Retire at 40

How to Retire at 40

The “4 percent rule” is a bedrock of retirement planning. But does it apply to those who quit working before 65? The rule of thumb holds that retirees who spend only 4 percent of their investment portfolio annually, adjusted for inflation, will be able to stretch out their savings for the rest of their life. For example, a $1 million brokerage account gets you $40,000 a year to spend.

Lately, the 4 percent rule has been under assault, with experts warning that the future could bring weaker market returns, an increased life span, or both. “If you retire at 40 with a couple million dollars, you’re going to worry—about financial emergencies, taxes, inflation, market crashes, and the chance you’ll live a lot longer than you’d planned for,” says Robert Karn, an adviser with Karn Couzens & Associates in Farmington, Conn.

Evan Inglis, an actuary at Nuveen Asset Management, offers an alternative rule: Divide your age by 20—couples should use the younger partner’s age—to get the percentage that you can safely spend. For a 40-year-old, that’s 2 percent, or $20,000 a year on $1 million in savings.

Yeah, I don't think I'll be able to retire at 40 but I'd sure like to retire closer to 55 then 65, so I have some time to enjoy my off-grid homestead and do all kinds of fun stuff on my land before I'm too old.

Ride, Ride, Ride

A cowboys life is a lonely road
Your back gets bent and your legs get bowed
Riding herd from town to town
Make your bed on cold hard ground
North to the grass-covered plains we go
south where wild winter winds don't blow
Early morning untill the daylights gone
Round up strays and keep moving on