Hi, Dear Reader. It’s late morning here in New Hometown, Florida on Wednesday, July 21, 2021. The present temperature is 85˚F (30˚C) under partly sunny skies. With relative humidity at 51% and the wind blowing from the west-southwest at 6 MPH (9 KM/H), the heat index is 94˚F (35˚C). Today’s forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 93˚F (34˚C). Tonight, skies will be partly cloudy, and the low will be 74˚F (23˚C). Today’s Air Quality Index (AQI) is 28 or Good.
Yesterday, I received my Blu-ray set of Star Trek: Discovery – Season Three from Amazon. I had it on pre-order since April, and although it was priced at $34.96 ($11.03 less than its retail price of $45.99), it turns out that I don’t owe a penny to my Visa card. As a cursory look at my invoice reminded me, I’d used a huge chunk of my Amazon Rewards points to pay for it. I had forgotten this, but I checked my Amazon account this morning because I wanted to send my payment today and found out that I owed nothing.
I tried to watch some of the episodes last night, but I must have been exhausted by the time I put Disc 1 (it’s a four-disc set) in my 4K UHD Blu-ray player around 8:30 PM. I managed to see That Hope Is You, Part 1in its entirety, but I fell asleep halfway into Far from Home,the second episode of Star Trek: Discovery’s third season. So I guess I’ll have to rewatch both episodes later today, because although I remember being wowed by the visuals, I’m a bit hazy about the story other than the fact that Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the USS Discovery are now 1,000 years in the future of the Star Trek timeline in the aftermath of the events of Season Two.
I think one of the reasons why I was so tired last night is that I spent a great deal of energy trying to keep my emotions on an even keel. Mid-July has been a difficult time of year since Mom died on July 19, 2015, and although I think that I do a good job at reining in my negative emotions (my dark side, if you will), it takes a lot of willpower to put on a pleasant façade for my housemates. This is hard to do under ideal circumstances; in less-than-ideal ones it’s like landing on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, armed with a BB gun instead of an M-1 Garand rifle.
And because I fell asleep well before 11 PM, I woke up super-early this morning. I had to, ahem, answer the call of nature at 4 AM, and even though I went back to bed immediately afterward, I had a tough time going back to sleep. I think I dozed off a bit a few times between 4 and 6 AM, but I was fully awake by 6:30 AM and had a light breakfast of café con leche and soda crackers around 7:15. I think I’ll be fine and functional today, but man, I sure would have loved to sleep soundly after visiting the loo.
I wish I had more interesting stuff to share with you today, but unfortunately I don’t lead much of an exciting life these days. As William Shakespeare writes in Macbeth:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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