Gray Skies, Small Wins

Thursday, February 5, 2026 — Orlando, Florida

Central Florida woke up under a heavy gray quilt today. The latest cold front is sliding south, and as I write this, the temperature sits at 57°F (14°C) beneath a sky that can’t decide whether it wants to rain or simply brood. Light showers are expected around 3 PM, and tonight’s low may dip to 39°F (4°C) — a number that feels more New England than Orlando.

The good news is that this wintry mood won’t linger. Once the front moves through, Friday promises a return to sunshine and a gentler chill: clear skies, a high of 62°F (16°C), and a low of 50°F (10°C). Still jacket weather, but at least the day will look a little more optimistic.

Meanwhile, in my corner of the world…

This morning’s small delight came courtesy of my Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard: someone in the U.S. bought a Kindle edition of Reunion: Coda. Because it’s currently on sale for $1.99, my royalty for that purchase is a grand total of five cents. Not exactly the fortune my 15‑year‑old self imagined back in the late ’70s, but honestly? A nickel is infinitely better than zero, and more importantly, Reunion: Coda has found a new reader. With luck, they’ll enjoy the story enough to recommend it to someone else. That alone feels like a win.

On the tech front, I’m still waiting for the replacement power brick for my Lenovo IdeaCentre. Amazon insists it’ll arrive tomorrow; the U.S. Postal Service, ever the realist, says Saturday the 7th. Until the package materializes, I’m working from my Ideapad S340 laptop. Thankfully, Microsoft Word runs just fine on it, so the daily blog posts continue uninterrupted. And now that my new Logitech mouse has arrived, I can navigate, write, and even sneak in a game or two without wrestling with the touchpad.

The one real limitation is The Jim Garraty Chronicles omnibus. Kindle Create doesn’t save projects to the cloud, and the .kpf file lives on the IdeaCentre’s hard drive. I could rebuild the project from scratch on the laptop, but that would mean manually fixing every subheading in Reunion: Coda again — a task I’d prefer not to repeat unless absolutely necessary. Here’s hoping the new power supply works and the IdeaCentre springs back to life. The laptop is a fine understudy, but I’d rather not promote it to a leading role.

Before I wrap up, a quick reminder: the Kindle edition of Reunion: Coda is still on sale for $1.99 through February 8 — a 67% discount. If you’ve been meaning to meet Jim, Marty, Mark, and Maddie, or know someone who might enjoy their story, you can pick it up for less than the price of a Happy Meal.