Musings & Thoughts for Friday, November 17, 2023, or: A Quick Update on the Preparations for M-Day

Late Morning, Friday, November 17, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Greetings, folks.

Well, it’s another cool, grey, and somewhat gloomy day in the Tampa Bay area. As I sit here at my desk, the temperature is 73°F/23°C under cloudy skies. According to the local forecast on my Weather app, we can expect mostly cloudy conditions and a high of 80°F/27°C. There’s no mention of rain, so it looks like this Friday might be a nicer day than yesterday.

Meanwhile, up in Madison, New Hampshire, it’s 46°F/8°C under mostly cloudy conditions, but the feels-like temperature is 61°F/16°C. Today’s forecast for my future place of residence calls for mostly sunny skies and a high of 58°F/15°C. Tonight, heavy rain is expected. I’m not there yet, though, so….

From Lithia to Madison: The Moving Out Saga Continues

Although a few of my Star Wars collectibles and family pictures are still in what is, for now, my bedroom/writing room, most of the stuff that marked this room as mine is now in boxes…lots of boxes. The only Blu-ray I have at my disposal is Ken Burns’ The War documentary from 2007, so if I want to watch any of my Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, or some of my Steven Spielberg films, I must watch the digital copies I have redeemed on either Vudu or Movies Anywhere. I’m not a fan of streaming, but at least that’s better than watching one 10-part documentary for the few weeks that I’ll be here in Lithia.

And, of course, I have e-book copies of a small portion of my library on my Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, so I do have stuff I can read from now till M-Day, which is scheduled for December 12.

Last night we sorted through some of the more fragile things that I brought to Lithia from my home in Miami – decorative stuff I inherited from my mom after she died, kitchen stuff, and my five Burger King Star Wars glasses – one from The Empire Strikes Back, which was the only one my mother had time to get for me back in 1980, and the four-glass set from 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

I am going to leave my mother’s wine glasses here; I am not much of a wine drinker (or much of a fan of booze overall, although I am not a teetotaler), and I already have a lot of stuff to haul all the way to New England, so…as much as I like those glasses, I’m not taking them. If I ever decide to buy wine glasses of my own – doubtful, but you never know – I’ll get them up North…someday.

I am, of course, trying to see this move in the best possible light, but I am still a bit melancholic about leaving. Lithia’s been my home a bit longer than Bogota, Colombia was – I’ve lived here for seven years, while I only lived in the country where most of my relatives are for less than six years. And, of course, I lived in South Florida for nearly 50 years – from 1963 to 1966, then from the spring of 1972 to the spring of 2016. I miss Miami more, of course, but I can’t afford to move back there, so…it’s off to “the Ice Planet Hoth” for me.

All Quiet on the Writing Front

As you can probably understand, I have not done much work on the novel this week. If I weren’t moving in a few weeks, I’d probably be doing more than the occasional proofreading and editing – what I call “nibbling at the edges” of Reunion: Coda.  Before I was told that the Madison option was still available if I wanted it, I planned to finish the manuscript in time to publish the second half of the Reunion Duology in time for the winter holidays.

That deadline was already looking a bit dodgy because (a) I had to devote a lot of time to fixing issues with the first half of the duology, a task that only ended in late September, and (b) two of the novel’s chapters proved trickier to write than I expected.  Still, hope springs eternal, and I still clung to the “Out by Christmas” schedule like a barnacle on a ship’s hull.

But, as my friend Thomas Wikman pointed out in a comment yesterday, “I think writing requires a rested and focused mind, at least when writing a book. Taking a break for a month when you are in the middle of packing and moving is not procrastination. I think you’ll get back into it when things have settled.”

I obviously do not have a rested and focused mind, so, except for occasional “nibbling around the edges” to assuage my conscience, I can only say all is quiet on the writing front…except for my blog.