Which Past Was Hers, 5th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): For the first day in over a week, either by my calendar or yours, the NWS didn't issue a heat advisory for Georgia today. 

Still, it was hot, 89°, and humid, 68%, for an uncomfortable dew point of 70° and a "feels-like" heat index of 91°. Betelgeuse being a walking day, I went out and hiked a 7.4-mile (according to my phone) Jackson, although the mileposts indicate I walked eight miles. 

More of those scary electrical storms passed overhead last night; one of them knocked my power out at least five times in the course of about a minute, but the power kept returning. Unfortunately, I was playing a video game at the time, and the sudden power loss wiped out my progress. More specifically, I was playing Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a remake of MGS III (which I had never played) and in the middle of a tedious boss fight (Volgin, if you've played the game), I had rage-quit the fight the night before after I kept getting beaten. I took the game back up yesterday afternoon before the power losses hit and I was actually starting to get the hang of how to beat him. I was making some serious progress on whittling down his health when the power went out and my PC shut down, and I lost all my progress. 

Once I felt confident that the power was finally back on to stay, I started the game and the fight again, and after a few close-but-no-cigar attempts to beat Volgin, I finally did it. He went down and a little pop-up alert appeared on the lower right of my screen announcing that I got the "SEIZE VICTORY" Steam achievement for beating him. A cut scene started, but as my avatar rode away on a motorcycle, my PC suddenly crashed. No power surge, just a computer issue, apparently. When my PC started back up, I was back at the beginning of the fight, as if I had never beaten Volgin.

Fuck.

I figured that now that I knew how to beat him, I'd make short work of defeating him again, but it was not to be. I kept getting killed, over and over, just like I had the night before and earlier in the day. I rage quit the game for the second night in a row. 

I thought playing games was supposed to be fun. Between the tedious fight itself, the power loss, and the computer crash, this has been anything but.