Musings & Thoughts for Sunday, July 30, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part the Second

Late Morning/Midday, Sunday, July 30, 2023, Lithia, Florida

“Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.” ― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

It’s another summer day. A long, simmering, unbearably hot summer day, at that. According to my computer’s Weather app, the temperature outside is 90°F/32°C under mostly sunny skies. With 57% humidity and a 3 MPH/5 KMH breeze blowing from the east-northeast (a land breeze where I live now; in my past life, this would have been a sea breeze), the heat index is 97°F/37°C. As the afternoon progresses, the high is expected to reach 94°F/34°C, with the “feels-like” factor in the low 100s/high 30s.

Days like this make me wish for cooler weather. I am content to be at home most of the time, but the oppressive heat outside forces me to remain inside even though there’s no edict that says I can’t go out for walks if I want to. I just don’t have the same tolerance for heat and humidity I once had; even in my last year in Miami – between April 2015 and April 2016 – I only went out for walks when it was not scorching hot.

So…another “stay indoors day” for me.

Taking it Easy

As much as I’d like to be working on my novel today, today will be another rest day for me. I didn’t wake up with any ideas for Reunion: Coda this morning beyond “Okay, Chapter 10 is done, let’s move on to Chapter 11 now!” I only have a vague idea about the new chapter; it’s another 1983-set episode that takes place at South Miami High School, and it’s deeply connected to Reunion’s Scenes from a Long Goodbye chapter, so I know more or less how it plays out.

Aside from that, though, I have no clue about how to start the chapter. All I have to work with right now is that I know what has to happen (since, as I said earlier, it deals with events that were established in the first book of the Reunion duology) and the consequences of those events on the protagonist, Jim Garraty.

So, unless I have a sudden Eureka! moment between now and bedtime, I’m going to take it easy on this, the last Sunday of July 2023. Maybe I’ll shake my weekend routine and watch a movie once I post this on WordPress; I’ve found that if I wait till 10 PM to watch something in my room, I end up falling asleep not long after I press PLAY on my Blu-ray player’s remote regardless of the movie or TV series episode I choose to entertain myself with. My best bet is to start watching stuff earlier in the day, regardless of which TV I use. (I prefer the family room set because it’s larger and has a better sound system than the 4K UHD set I have in my room, even though my personal set is newer and has a better picture.)

We’ll see what happens, though.