For Junko

This is the day for reflection on impurity.  Today we can abandon the mind that is tainted by desire.

There's also a full moon today.  The so-called Hunter's Moon, named for Hunter Biden, will rise at 7:15 p.m. tonight and set at 8:36 p.m. tomorrow morning.  Just kidding, tonight's full moon is named for gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.  But seriously, the Hunter's Moon commemorates the time of year that animals fatten up in preparation for the colder months ahead and hunting season is underway as hunters stock up on meat for the winter.

Bela Lugosi was born on this day in 1882.  Were he still alive, today would have been his 139th birthday, which makes sense because he was freaking Dracula.  But the mortal Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956 in his Los Angeles apartment while taking a nap. Impermanence is swift.

Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei died on this day in 2016 (impermanence is swift).  In 1975, Tabei was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, despite the fact that while climbing, an avalanche struck her camp and buried Tabei and four of her fellow climbers under snow. She lost consciousness until sherpa guides dug her out, and although bruised and injured by the incident, barely able to walk and forced to spend two days recovering, she resumed the expedition and continued leading her team up the mountain. She was also the first woman to ascend the Seven Summits, climbing the highest peak on every continent.  In later years, Tabei organized environmental projects to clean up rubbish left behind by climbers on Everest, and led annual climbs up Mount Fuji for youth affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.  Asteroid 6897 Tabei was named for her, and in 2019 a mountain range on Pluto was named Tabei Montes in her honor.  

Seasonably cool weather persists this week in Georgia.  The forecast high temperature for today is 79⁰, although the low will drop to 52⁰.  I actually had to turn the heat on for a few hours yesterday to warm up the interior of my house, and I've got the heavy winter blankets on my bed.  It's nice weather for enjoying outdoor walks.

Out in the Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center continues to report no developing storms at this time, although we're at the peak of the usual hurricane season right now. And the average number of new covid cases per day in Georgia is now 1,547, well below the August 31 peak of 9,244 cases.  Good times.

The Red Sox got clobbered in the Ninth Inning of Game 4 of the ALCS last night, blowing a 2-2 Eighth Inning tie and giving up 7 runs to the Houston Astros.  The series is now tied at 2 games each, so we've effectively got a best-of-3 series ahead of us.  Game 5 is this afternoon (5:00 p.m.) in Fenway and I'm still confident the Sox are the better team and will prevail.

Finally, for those of you keeping track of such things, instead of a second playthrough of Beyond: Two Souls, I reinstalled the video game Fallout 76 and started a replay of that.  I quit the game back in 2019, frustrated by it's numerous bugs and lack of NPCs, but the developers have significantly improved the game since then and I'm finding this second playthrough much more enjoyable.  The bugs have largely been fixed and the game now has bona fide NPCs and coherent story lines. It's finally an actual video game now, and not just a setting for a potential video game.  On this second playthrough, I'm experiencing an odd mixture of the familiar and the novel.  

And such are the quiet days of my retirement - playing Fallout 76, watching the Red Sox on television, keeping an eye on covid and hurricane statistics, enjoying my afternoon walks, exploring music, and reading when I can find the time.  Not a bad way to spend one's time.