Well, Dear Reader, it’s Friday, September 4, 2020 – the first weekend of the ninth month of perhaps one of the worst years I’ve ever lived through, on par with 2015. It’s also the start of the Labor Day weekend, which is not exactly one of my favorite holidays, but whatever.
Right now, it’s still early afternoon in my corner of Florida. It’s also hot; the temperature outside is 95˚F (35˚C) under sunny skies, but with humidity at 58% and an 8 MPH breeze from the east, it feels like 110˚F (44˚C). I’m in an air-conditioned house and the sun is not yet streaming in through my window, but I can tell it’s a scorcher out there. I feel ripples of warmth wafting through the room, and with so many air-conditioning units working at the same time, I am sure the strain on the electric grid is immense. We already had a momentary loss of power – less than a minute long, yes, but my computer shut down and the digital clock in the kitchen was blinking as a result of the “micro-outage.”
I haven’t done much of anything today; I feel tired, headachy, and unmotivated. I didn’t stay up all night as I sometimes do when I get the occasional bout of insomnia, but I did wake up unnecessarily early. Worse, I had no idea what I was going to write about today – I usually have a topic chosen either by the time I log on to my Lenovo all-in-one PC in the morning or, at the very latest, by noon on days when I have to put my computer on airplane mode to free up the Wi-Fi for others who need it more for work or school. Today…well, I had to force myself to sit down and write this Musings & Thoughts post.
I was hoping to receive my Hasbro Star Wars The Black Series Luke Skywalker & Yoda (Jedi Training) 6-Inch-Scale The Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary Figures yesterday; until late Tuesday night, Amazon kept telling me that the status of my order was “Will arrive on Thursday, Sept. 3.” Turns out that the shipment of the two-figure sets has been delayed; the new delivery window is “September 24-October 11). I am thinking that the COVID-19 pandemic is playing merry hell with Hasbro’s supply line; like its former competitor-turned-subsidiary Kenner, Hasbro manufactures its Star Wars products overseas – in China, to be more exact. Something may have gone awry somewhere between the factories – in the Kenner days, Star Wars toys were labeled “Made in Hong Kong” – and the States. ( I have no idea if Hasbro moved its facilities to the mainland or if its operations stayed in place in the post-1997 Hong Kong SAR,) So now I’m wondering if COVID-19 is gumming up the works for the toy-making giant. I had also ordered a 40th Anniversary Imperial Snowtrooper (Hoth) figure and it was also supposed to arrive on September 1. Now Amazon’s delivery window for that figure is October 1.
I’m not angry about the delays; I know that the pandemic has had a detrimental effect on every aspect of life throughout the world and getting angry about something as trivial as a Star Wars figure is neither rational nor mature. I was disappointed; I was looking forward to getting my Luke Skywalker & Yoda (Jedi Training) 6-Inch-Scale The Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary Figures and writing about them here, but I have to be philosophical about it and accept reality. As the Rolling Stones once put it, “You can’t always get what you want.”
As for the rest of my Friday….
As soon as I publish this post, I’ll probably go to my favorite reading area – the living room couch – and resume reading Twilight of the Gods: The War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 for a bit. I have read three or four chapters and I am enjoying Ian W. Toll’s concluding volume of his Pacific War trilogy. It is one of the best books about World War II naval history that I’ve read, but I am not quite ready to review it yet.
I could also read another chapter from Sand and Steel: The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France by Peter Caddick-Adams. I don’t know why (a) the book subtitle suggests that it delves into the whole battle of France – it does not – or (b) Amazon’s image of the book cover has a typo (“invasions” instead of “invasion”), but the book is excellent. So much so, in fact, that I ordered Caddick-Adams’ previous book, Snow and Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45. I will get that on Sunday.
Heck, I might even play a quick session of Cold Waters. As a Tom Clancy fan and long-time player of such games as Red Storm Rising and Silent Service II, I enjoy stepping into the role of a nuclear-powered fast attack sub and pitting my skills as a commander against the computer-controlled Soviet and Chinese navies portrayed in this 2017 sub warfare simulation.
Beats curling up in a fetal position in bed and wishing it was 1983 all over again, no?
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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