Sunday, September 6, 2026 – Orlando, Florida

Hi, everyone — and happy Sunday from the steamy side of Central Florida.

It’s early afternoon here on this first Sunday in September, and Orlando is doing what Orlando does best: pretending the calendar is merely a suggestion. The sky is bright, the sun is enthusiastic, and the air has the texture of warm soup. The temperature is 89°F (32°C) under clear skies, but thanks to the humidity — and a very modest 4 MPH (7 Km/H) breeze from the west-northwest — it feels more like 102°F (39°C). The forecast says we may reach 94°F (34°C), though scattered light rain showers might wander through later and briefly convince us that relief is possible. Meteorological autumn may have arrived on paper, but outside it still feels like summer has planted a flag and refuses to leave.

I had planned to write one of my rare “reply to the WordPress Daily Prompt” posts today — the prompt was “What is the most annoying trope in movies or books?” — but last night had other ideas. Sleep and I were not on speaking terms, and this morning I had to be up early because my landlady had a Spectrum service appointment scheduled before she went to work. She did not want to reschedule it, which meant I needed to be awake, dressed, reasonably coherent, and ready not only to let the technician into the house, but also to explain the issues she wanted fixed. The appointment window was 8 to 9 AM; the technician arrived closer to 10, because there had been a service outage in the area and Spectrum, understandably, had to put out that particular fire first.

As for me, I’m not sure exactly when I finally fell asleep, but it could not have been before 2 AM, because I was still very much awake then, staring into the dark like a low-budget lighthouse keeper. I do know I was up by 7 AM, and I also know that my energy level is currently somewhere between “lukewarm coffee” and “Windows update at 97%.”

So yes, I may still write about my least favorite storytelling trope one of these days. Just not today. Today, the trope is “writer versus exhaustion,” and exhaustion has the bigger production budget.