Bloggin' On: Sunday Musings

My former neighborhood, as seen in Google Maps. Contrary to what the satellite photo shows, there is no restaurant in the middle of East Wind Lake Village. 

Hello, Constant Reader, and welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain View in which I write about topics that don't fall neatly into my usual reviews-and-political commentary content categories.

It's Sunday, November 24, and as I mentioned yesterday, Thanksgiving 2019 is just around the corner. I'm trying to not get into a funk about my fifth major holiday season without my mom, but it's hard not to think about it. We were close, my Mom and I, so her absence around this time of year is a bit more palpable than in others.

Anyway, enough about that. Right now it's mid-afternoon in my little corner of Florida; the temperature outside is 70℉ (21℃) under sunny skies. It's definitely not as chilly as it is in more northerly regions of the U.S., but it does feel appropriately cool for the season. At my previous home in Miami, I often went on walks around the "core block" at East Wind Lake Village, the condominium where I lived from late February of 1978 until April of 2016. I'd do two, sometimes three circuits of the area around the man-made lake that gives the condo its name, and there were many times when I'd take a book to one of the two pool/recreation areas and lie on a deck chair, reading until sunset and the skies grew dark.

Here, I've gone on a few solo walks, but I just can't get into the habit of doing it on a regular basis. I know I should; it's a nice neighborhood and many of the neighbors are either active-duty military or retired veterans, so I think I'd be safe. But in some ways, I feel like an outsider, even though I've lived here almost four years and this address is what's on my Florida state ID card rather than my long-time South Florida one.

I don't really have any plans for the rest of this pre-Thanksgiving Sunday; I signed up with NaNoWriMo for next year's challenge to write a 50,000-word novel, but I am not going to start prep work for that project today. I have only a vague idea of what I want to write about, for one thing, so I'd be spinning my wheels - figuratively speaking - without accomplishing much. For another thing, I usually function better as a writer in the morning, and it's already a bit past three in the afternoon here.  NaNoWriMo 2020 doesn't start for another 12 months, so worrying too much about it would not help matters, either.

So...I could probably go watch a movie out in the family room or find a quiet place to read one of the many books in my personal library. Or I could just sit here at my desk and play Unity of Command II or watch music videos on YouTube. (In theory, I could watch the movie here in my writing room, but if you saw how the room is laid out, you'd understand why I prefer not to.)

In any event, I'll try to shake off my ennui in some way before the day is over.