Musings & Thoughts for Sunday, September 17, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part the First

Late Morning/Midday, Sunday, September 17, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hi, everyone.

Here in my corner of the Tampa Bay area it is – as I begin this post – late Sunday morning. Even though it’s not quite noon, the temperature outside is still a scorching 86°F/30°C under sunny conditions. With the wind blowing from the southwest at 4 MPH/7 MPH and humidity at 71%, the feels-like temperature is 97°F/36°C. And it’s going to be hotter still; the forecast for today calls for mostly sunny skies and a high of 91°F/33°C.

I remember a time when mid- to late September wasn’t as hellishly hot as it is in the 2020s. Oh, sure, we didn’t start feeling “nips in the air” cool weather till mid-October, but when I was a kid in the 1970s and ‘80s, the first weeks of meteorological fall were hot and were often punctuated with showers and thunderstorms and the occasional threat of a hurricane or two. And – as I so often say in this space – I used to love going out for a walk or two during the day, preferably in the early morning or early evening hours when it wasn’t so sunny and torrid. But now with the temperatures rising throughout the world (in Iran this summer, there was a region that experienced 152°F/66.67°C!), I prefer to stay indoors.

Anyway, at least I don’t have to worry about a hurricane or tropical storm coming this way any time soon. (But…we still have over a month and a half till the end of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season. So, there’s that.)

Weekend Update, Part the First

Yesterday I didn’t work on the manuscript for Reunion: Coda, even though last week wasn’t as productive as I wanted it to be. I thought long and hard about at least trying to write those last 585 words that I need to get to the 50,000-word mark in my first novel, but when 2 PM – my absolute latest time to start writing seriously – came and went and I had not opened the Word file for the rough draft, I gave in to the inevitable and decided to play Regiments instead.

Yes, I had some fun with MicroProse/Bird’s Eye Games’ Cold War-turned-hot simulation of modern warfare at the regimental level. I grew up during the last decades of the real Cold War, and when I first started using MS-DOS-based PCs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I played games in the same genre (imaginary versions of World War III), including Gulf Strike, F-15 Strike Eagle II, Red Storm Rising, M1 Tank Platoon, and NATO Commander. I was, and still am, into war games partly because I’ve always been fascinated by the military and military history, and partly because it helped me deal with my fear that someday a crisis between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would turn south and I’d be one of the victims of a nuclear holocaust.

Anyway…about Regiments: I played two variants of the Bischofroda Skirmish (single battle) in Attack mode; one with Day – Haze and another with Dusk – Clear conditions. I did okay in both, winning Total Victory endings (all eight Objective Zones captured before the time limit ran out), but (as you can see from the screenshot of the after-action report) I suffered more casualties than I would have liked.

Aside from that, I didn’t do anything different from what I’ve done on weekends over the past few years. I read a little bit, spent time – maybe too much time – online, listened to music on my Amazon Music app, and watched an episode of Star Trek: Picard – Season Two. (I was going to watch A Bridge Too Far because today is the 79^th anniversary of the start of Operation Market-Garden, the historical event portrayed in director Richard Attenborough’s 1977 film, but I remembered the movie is almost three hours long. When I thought about watching it, it was already late in the evening. I usually start watching movies between 9 and 10 PM, and I knew I’d fall asleep before I reached the midway point of A Bridge Too Far cos I was tired, so I’m going to watch it this afternoon instead.)

That’s all the news that I have for you today, so I’ll just take my leave of you here, folks. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.