Musings & Thoughts for Sunday, March 24, 2024, or: Weekend Update, Part the First…and a Revised Excerpt from My Upcoming Novel

Late Morning/Midday, Sunday, March 24, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, everyone. Well, the winter storm that hit us Friday night and all of yesterday has cleared the area, and today is a much nicer day for early spring here in New Hampshire. The current temperature (as I start this post, anyhow) is 31°F (-1°C) under sunny conditions. With the wind blowing from the northwest at 3 MPH (5 KMH) and humidity at 35%, the feels-like temperature is 50°F (10°C). Today’s forecast calls – thankfully – for mostly sunny skies and a high of 39°F (4°C). Tonight, it will be cold but with mostly clear skies. The low will be 7°F (-14°C).

Weekend Update, Part the First: A Snowbound Saturday

As I mentioned earlier, the weather sucked yesterday. It was snowing when I woke up in the morning, and it snowed well into the evening hours. Sure, it’s pretty at first, especially to folks who live in warmer climates – such as my home state of Florida or were born and raised in northern climes – such as my friend Thomas, who is from Sweden and lived for many years close to the Arctic Circle – but it quickly becomes something to worry about, especially when you live in a rural area where the power lines are the old-school “hanging from utility poles” kind and not the more modern “underground” ones. We have been lucky so far and have not experienced a power outage, but I am not looking forward to the time when I hear Stuart, the guy who rents the room on the opposite end of the house, say, “Alex, that storm that passed through here last night knocked out the power.”

I don’t know how much snow we got, but at one point in the late afternoon, Stuart took out a ruler, stepped out on the porch, and measured how deep the snowdrift on our front porch was. 13 inches! And it was still snowing then!

So, I didn’t step outside, not even out to the steps on the front porch, because of the falling flakes. I didn’t want to put on snow boots, and the snow was too deep to even go past the threshold.

In conjunction with my worries about when I’m going to hear from New Hampshire Health and Human Services about my application for public assistance and whether or not I’ll ever date again, much less make new friends beyond Patti – who’s already been my friend online since the early ‘00s – Marc, and Stuart, being snowbound, even for a day, was depressing. As a result, the only things I did yesterday were to work on the Kindle Create edition of Reunion: Coda, listen to music on my Amazon Music app, and watch a bunch of random YouTube videos because I couldn’t decide whether to watch a movie or play a computer game.

My Saturday night was also unremarkable. I made a modest dinner, then went to my room to watch a couple of episodes of the CNN documentary series Cold War. To my surprise, I fell asleep well before 11 PM, in the middle of the episode Reds, which delved into how the early years of the Cold War affected both the United States and the Soviet Union.

(Spoiler alert: Both countries were increasingly paranoid and the nationalism in both American and Soviet societies was ramped up considerably. I see echoes of that in today’s MAGA movement…only dumbed down and more extreme.)

On Writing & Storytelling: Friends Bond Over Beer, Revised (Excerpt from Reunion: Coda)

A knock at the door fractured my contemplation. My mother’s voice, warm and familiar, filtered through the wood. “Jim, honey, Mark’s here.” Mundane as they were, her words came like a lifeline thrown into the turbulent sea of my thoughts, pulling me back to the present, to reality.

“Thanks, Mom,” I replied. I jumped up—or at least rose—to open the door.

Mark stood in the doorway grinning. He wore Wranglers and a Return of the Jedi tee and clutched a Publix bag as if it were something precious. The soft clinking of glass hinted at its contents. “Hey, buddy. How are you doing?” he asked.

“Fine, I guess,” I answered, my eyes darting to the bag. “I hope that’s not another graduation present.”

He set the bag down with a clatter that seemed too loud for the quiet room. With a glance at the door, he shut it firmly. “It is a present,” he admitted, “but not the kind our moms would be thrilled about.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Well, it’s definitely not the July issue of Playboy.” The lightness in my tone belied the turmoil in my mind.

Mark’s grin was a prelude to mischief. “Man, gift a buddy—no, a best buddy—a Playboy for his 18th, and it’s like you’ve signed a pact for eternal ribbing,” he said, his eyebrow doing a comical dance that pulled a genuine chuckle out of me. “Zip it, and check these out…”

He delved into the Publix bag, the drama in his movement worthy of a stage, and emerged victorious with two Heineken bottles held high.

My surprise must’ve been clear as day. “Where on earth did you snag those?”

Mark, ever the secret agent, gave a quick, paranoid sweep of the room before leaning in, his voice a low whisper. “You recall that last visit to my dad’s? The monthly post-divorce ritual?”

I nodded, intrigued.

“I swiped these bad boys for an occasion just like this. Dad’s got a whole stash of Heinekens in his ‘special fridge.’ He won’t notice a couple missing,” he declared with a grin that spelled trouble and camaraderie all at once.

The chill from the Heineken bottle seeped into my fingers, a stark contrast to the warmth of the room. I raised a finger and tapped my chin in silent questioning.

He caught my look and chuckled. “I stashed them in the freezer the moment we got back,” he said with a conspiratorial grin. “Mom and Leslie were none the wiser.” He plunked his bottle down on my desk, the sound was a solid promise of the night to come. Fishing out a bottle opener from his pocket, he popped the caps with practiced ease, the metallic ping of the caps hitting the floor a testament to our quiet rebellion.

I took a swig from my bottle. A curious blend of bitter and sweet rolled over my tongue mixed with a malty backbone complemented by subtle notes of biscuit and a whisper of green apple and sweet corn. The beer was as cold as the water from a mountain stream in late fall, sending a shiver down my spine. I wasn’t sure if I liked the taste—there was a complexity there that I couldn’t quite place, perhaps a hint of something almost skunky in its boldness. But as the lager settled in my stomach, I couldn’t deny the comforting surge of warmth that followed.

“Whoa,” I managed, the word hanging in the air between us.

Mark’s smile displayed the enjoyment of shared secrets. “You’ve officially lost your beer virginity, Jimmy boy,” he teased, his blue-gray eyes twinkling with the kind of camaraderie that comes from years of friendship. “Maybe next year, you’ll be sharing a beer with a girl and…” His voice dropped off, and he took a hearty swig from his bottle.

A flush of warmth spread up my neck and over my cheeks, whether from the beer or Mark’s insinuations about girls and what comes with them, I couldn’t tell. “Hey…”

“Cheers,” he interrupted with a laugh that was both knowing and forgiving.

“Cheers,” I echoed, and this time, a genuine smile spread across my face.

We finished our beers in contemplative silence, each lost in our own maze of thoughts. When the last drops were gone, Mark gathered the empty bottles and tucked them back into the Publix bag. “I’ll ditch these in Mrs. Finklestein’s trash on my way out,” he declared.

I raised an eyebrow. “Just make sure she’s not out there playing cat wrangler on her porch.”

“Nah, she does her feline roundup at 7 sharp every evening,” he replied with a certainty that came from years of neighborhood observation. “We’re in the clear.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve got her routine down to a science, huh?”

He shrugged, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “You pick up on things after a while, like the eccentricities of cat ladies—or,” he paused, a serious note creeping into his voice, “…the signs of a best friend with something on his mind.”