Bloggin' On: Weekend Update, October 26, 2019

Debris from a neighbor's house that landed on the patio of my former home in Miami during Hurricane Sandy's passage through South Florida, October 26, 2012. Photo Credit: Alex Diaz-Granados (own work) 

Hello again and welcome to another installment of Bloggin' On, which is a feature on A Certain Point of View where I break away from the usual reviews and political commentary and just talk about everyday stuff or things that are on my mind that isn't the "usual fare" of this blog.

Well, it's almost early evening here in my corner of Florida on Saturday, October 26. Right now it's partly sunny outside; the temperature is 81℉ (27℃) and the humidity is at 82%. It still doesn't feel like fall here, even though summer ended over a month ago. It's not as hot as, say, mid-July or August, but if memory serves, it used to start getting cooler in the Sunshine State by mid-October.

Then again, I've only been living in this part of Florida for slightly less than four years, so maybe geography has something to do with the temperatures. But even when I was still living in the townhouse that I shared with my late mother for nearly 30 years, warm Octobers and late-season tropical storms seemed to be the rule rather than the exception.

October and November were hardly good "weather months" for us during the last 16 years of our stay in East Wind Lake Village. It was during the Halloween season of 1999 that Hurricane Irene hit Miami and not only left us in a waterlogged neighborhood for days but also indirectly led to the untimely end of one of my online romances. I'm not going to get into that right now, but October 1999 was the first of many autumn months in which hurricanes or tropical storms had dire effects on our lives. In 2005, Hurricane Wilma crossed South Florida on a southwesterly track and tore off half of our roof; in 2012, exactly seven years ago, Hurricane Sandy gave us all a scare when its winds and squalls rained debris from neighboring townhouses onto our patio.

Back then, not only did I have to deal with the homeowners' association (HOA) personally to get things cleaned up or repaired outside, but Mom was ill and confined to a hospital-style bed because she had stopped trying to walk or go outside to recuperate from back surgery she had undergone two years earlier. I found myself in the eye of a storm, literally and figuratively, when Mom could no longer run the household; I had to fend off the efforts of my jealous half-sister to take over the family's finances (something Mom was bitterly opposed to) while caring for a gravely ill parent.

I'm doing better now than I was four years ago, but with the holiday season nearly upon us (Halloween is only five days away; Thanksgiving is only a few weeks further down in the calendar, and Christmas isn't that far off, either!), I get a bit melancholic. I miss my mom a lot, and sometimes I wish my life had not been so drastically altered by her death.

On the Weekend Agenda

I don't have much of a plan for the rest of the evening. If I'm lucky, I'll probably get to watch a movie or documentary on the TV out in the family room. If I'm not, I'll just stay in my office and putter about on Facebook or play a couple of turns on Strategic Command WWII: World at War.  Hard to say at this point, especially since it is already past 6:30 and I usually don't like gaming into the late hours anymore. I used to do that when I was younger and had more stamina.  But after swigging one bottle of Heineken and staring at my monitor for several hours, gaming simply doesn't have the same appeal it used to when I was in my 20s or early 30s.

Well, kiddies, that's all the news that's fit to print, as The New York Times' slogan says. So, until next time, catch you on the sunny side of things!