Musings & Thoughts for Sunday, December 24, 2023, or: A Quick Pre-Christmas Life Update from Madison, New Hampshire

Late Morning, Sunday, December 24, 2023, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, there, folks. It’s Sunday morning here in my small – and chilly – corner of “almost Canada” (as one of my Facebook friends calls New Hampshire). It’s also the day before Christmas, so if you celebrate the holiday (be it as a religious or secular one), Happy (or Merry) Christmas.

Here, the weather is, obviously, wintry. As I begin this 1,371^st post on A Certain Point of View, Too, the temperature outside is 35°F/2°C under mostly cloudy skies, but it feels like 46°F/8°C. The forecast for the Conway/Madison area calls for mostly cloudy skies and a high of 41°F/8°C. No precipitation is expected today, but…you never know.

Last night, my PC’s Weather app announced that we were getting some snow. It was too dark and too cold for me to go outside to take pictures with my phone, but I took the news seriously and went to bed expecting to see the white stuff on the ground when I woke up.

Now, either we got a light dusting of snow that was so weightless that it drifted off before I woke up, or snow fell elsewhere in Carroll County but not over here in Eidelweiss (the name of my neighborhood here in Madison). Whichever of those two possibilities, I don’t see any evidence that it snowed last night.

My Day So Far: A Digital Armchair General Refights WWII in Strategic Command WWII: World at War

Well, since the weather is not exactly inviting enough for me to venture forth – and because for some reason Verizon says I can only make emergency calls on my phone – outside of the house, I have not done much this morning. I had a small breakfast around 8 AM, tried – without success – to put my new Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet in a case I ordered with it, and ended up reading a few pages from The Making of Star Wars – Enhanced Edition cos even though I have no phone service, we do have Internet.

And since, sadly, I’m not particularly in the Christmas mood, I spent some time playing Strategic Command WWII: World at War, a game for PC that allows players to refight World War II as a grand strategy simulation in a turn-based style. (I like to think of World at War as “Axis & Allies on Steroids.”)

I’m not particularly good at the game when I play the entire conflict (September 1939 to September 1945, although World at War sometimes allows the war to last until 1947 in some cases), so I stick to the scenario titled Triumph and Tragedy, which covers the period from June 6, 1944 to the end of the war (usually in 1945, but as I said earlier, the conflict can continue till 1947 If either side has not met its victory conditions).

I dislike the Soviet Union/Russia in real life; I’m not a fan of Soviet-style Communism or Putin’s authoritarianism. But in terms of playing World at War – and the Triumph and Tragedy scenario in particular – I always choose the USSR as my belligerent power. Mostly it’s because, as in Axis & Allies, the Soviet Union goes first turns-wise. It also has the simplest mission of the Big Three Allies: push the Red Army westward to liberate Soviet territory – including Ukraine and the Baltic States – from the Germans, then push into the Balkans, occupied Poland, and then the Reich itself as the American, British, and other Allied forces advance up the Italian peninsula and across France and Northwest Europe.

The other reason why I don’t usually choose to play as one of the Western Allies is that Britain and the U.S. not only must fight Germany in Western Europe and the North Atlantic, but they also have to wage war against Japan in the Asia-Pacific theater alongside their Chinese allies. That means having to think not only about massive land battles in China and on various Pacific islands (especially the Philippines and Okinawa), but I also have to worry about major fleet actions at sea. (Triumph and Tragedy depicts the strategic situation before the invasions of Normandy and the Marianas, so….)

Since I can save game sessions and don’t have to play World at War in one grueling marathon, I didn’t play for more than two game turns (each turn equaling two weeks of “real world time” during the war). And I started this particular game back in Florida – which I still sadly think of as home, something I must stop doing soon – before I left, so we are now in late September of 1944.

The Allies, as far as I can tell, are winning against the Axis, especially in Europe. My Soviet forces have suffered some losses against Hitler’s armies in the East, but they’re pushing deep into Ukraine in the center, heading into the Baltics up north, and have reached the border with Axis-allied Romania in the south. (I’m leaving the Finns near Leningrad alone; they’re not militarily strong enough to attack that city, and they lack armored units, so I’m content with letting Finland lose strength in futile infantry probes on the Karelian front. I want to get the Nazis out of Soviet lands first and foremost, then I’m going to conquer Poland and the eastern part of the Greater German Reich before the Anglo-Americans can reach Berlin. (Basically, just do what Stalin did in real life.)

Quick Life Update

Patti’s husband Marc is here to work on my two rooms. He is taking a break now, but he has figured out a way to set up my big 4K UHD TV (the one I’ve never used) in my bedroom without resorting to installing a wall mount there. He also has set up some of the media towers and less-complicated bookshelves i brought with me from Florida. The more complex Billy shelves still need work, but progress has been made on the settling-in front.

Since I only have one 4K UHD Blu-ray player but two 4K UHD TVs, I’m going to have to order another player (and a 4K UHD HDMI cable) at some point for my smaller TV, which will be set up in the writing room. That will have to wait for a while. In the meantime, I can attach a regular !080 HD Blu-ray player to that television as a temporary measure.

As for Christmas Eve…I don’t know what I’ll be doing tonight; I’ll find out later what that part of December 24 has in store for me. I am sure I’ll have a nice Christmas here, but we’ll see what develops.

That’s all the news I have to share, so I’ll sign off here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, stay warm, and count your blessings.