My Depot Parkrun 5K Today

This morning at race time for the weekly, free Depot Parkrun 5K in Gainesville, it was 59 degrees with 84% humidity (dew point at 54 degrees), markedly cooler and more pleasant than in previous weeks.  I decided to run it again, now that my intended race, the 10K Tom Walker Preview on the Hawthorne Trail, had been cancelled...ostensibly due to Hurricane Milton, which only lightly touched upon this area.  Melissa accompanied me and walked some, as well as cheering me on.  The course was crowded, no doubt with some runners who like myself had planned on running in the other event...but also because the weather was so nice.  There was also another 5K race in the same park, scheduled to start at 8:30, an hour after the Parkrun.  So there were a lot of folks out there today, no problem.  I just ran my usual pace, pushing hard through to the end, and finished with my second best Parkrun time at 26:58...click HERE to view the posted race results.  On a side note, during this warm and muggy summer and early fall mornings at Depot Park I had noticed that the usual red-winged blackbird songs serenading us on the park's south side had disappeared...they were back in force today!  I guess my avian friends like the cooler temperatures as well...

Quote of the Week...from Rob Dial

Environmental psychology shows that physical spaces influence the way that you think, the way that you feel, and the way you behave.  And so here's how you want to do it: you want to create a deep work environment.  Find a quiet place, a comfortable place, a place that you can be undisturbed.  

     ---Rob Dial

This quote is from Rob Dial's personal development podcast The Mindset Mentor...today's episode dealt with enhancing one's mental focus on tasks.  He brought up this point to underscore the importance of one's surroundings in effectively focusing on work. You don't sit down to work in a place that is in the middle of a traffic lane that invites distractions from others, nor do you allow distractions like the TV or your phone to be readily available for interruption or temptation.  Besides finding a relatively isolated location to do your focused work, it's important to respectfully notify others there that for the stated period of time you're going to be concentrating on your task and to please hold their thoughts...unless of course there's an emergency.  Sounds good to me, now onward to finding such a place...

In Milton's Aftermath

Today I'm writing this late in the evening, in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton's attack on the Florida peninsula. It's effects were primarily felt on the west-central part of the state, in the area spanning Clearwater to Naples...and points inland as the storm, 120 mph landfall intensity, made its way eastward through Wednesday night and this morning, now weakened in the Atlantic. Although spin-off tornadoes were expected, the 126 we got...overwhelmingly making landfall in southeastern Florida...were astonishing.  In Gainesville conditions were mild...we got rain and wind, but nothing like a couple of weeks ago with Helene.  Still, my Florida Track Club decided to cancel its upcoming Saturday morning race...although the Depot Parkrun seems to be a go.  The hotels here in town are still packed with the evacuees from further south, and the congestion on I-75 is reversed, clogged with southbound traffic now.  I feel blessed to have skirted this storm, but also feel sympathy toward those returning home to less fortunate circumstances...

Weekly Short Stories: 1997 Science Fiction, Part 14

Here I finally conclude my prolonged look at short science fiction from the year 1997 as it appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection.  The final story is a novella, and one written in the good old tradition of "hard" science fiction, celebrating extraterrestrial exploration in our near future...

A COLD, DRY CRADLE by Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre

A privately funded team of four has gone to Mars to claim a prize for being "the first" there...and to bring back to Earth their discoveries.  This story predicts the privatization of space travel as the first President Bush's 1989 goal of going to Mars in thirty years hits a major snag when the "astronomical" price of the venture is revealed.  Instead, a much smaller prize is offered in a competition to see who can get there (and back) before others.  The protagonist is Ann, a biologist married to Piotr, the mission's captain.  Her discoveries underneath the Martian surface, as well as the technical aspects of running and repairing the damaged ship along with various facts thrown in about astrophysics, makes this an interesting fictional lesson in science...especially with regard to biology on a number of levels.  Also, the authors gave no doubt about how they felt about how the sensationalist news media has fed into the public's perception of space travel.  I felt that this tale was more in line with what I would deem to be "classical" science fiction, along the lines of how Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein treated the genre...

The next time around in my short story reviews I plan to look at the year 1998 in science fiction...

New Hurricane Milton Threatening Central Florida and Possibly Gainesville

Ever since Hurricane Helene passed through Florida and points north in late September...causing calamitous destruction and death, especially in North Carolina...the meteorologists have been pointed to a low-pressure area in Helene's general zone of origin in the western Caribbean.  The prognosis was always the same: 40% chance of development over a period of several days.  But a couple of days ago the message abruptly changed, as a Pacific tropical storm passed through Mexico into the far western Gulf of Mexico and formed the core of a dangerous new tropical disturbance.  It has since rapidly strengthened and been named Milton, at this writing a full-fledged hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph.  Milton is predicted to reach Category 4 strength as it crosses the Gulf toward a rendezvous with the west coast of central Florida around Tampa.  Before hitting land, though, it is also expected to weaken a little.  But statewide we're already being saturated with much rain...more water in the ground is the last thing anyone needs.  Milton is expected to arrive on Wednesday and cut across the state, subjecting my Gainesville area once again to strong tropical storm winds and placing people and property in peril as well as almost certainly causing widespread power outages.  This storm is said to be smaller than Helene was...I guess I should be thankful for any good news...

My Depot Parkrun 5K Run This Morning

This morning I resumed my participation in Gainesville's weekly free 5K run/walk, the Depot Parkrun at Depot Park, a few blocks south of the city's downtown area.  To get your finishing time recorded and posted, you can sign up on their website and they will provide a printable barcode for you to take to the race for them to scan...all free of charge.  As with previous weeks, the weather was warm and (ugh) muggy, 72 degrees with 100% humidity, at the 7:30 race time.  I had decided to run it and admittedly struggled some amid the humidity.  Still, I had a reasonable finishing time at 27:28...click HERE to view the posted results.  October promises some good race opportunities, yet I also have upcoming medical procedures that may interfere with me entering them...I'll just have to flow with what happens.  In any event, I was happy to get out there again this morning and circle the park a few times...

Quote of the Week...from Captain Walker Keel

Damn it, Jean-Luc, I tell you that Star Fleet's top command people are changing! This could affect the very core of our organization.  Officers I've known for years are bluffing their way through talk of old times. 

   ---Captain Walker Keel from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Walker Keel is a guest character appearing in the first season episode Conspiracy in the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.  He is the captain of the starship USS Horatio and has called Captain Picard of the Enterprise, along with two other starship captains, to an isolated abandoned planet to discuss what he sees as an insidious conspiracy overtaking the United Federation of Planets leadership.  It's a great episode, my favorite in the series...I highly recommend it!  Yet conspiracy isn't why I quoted this fictional character.  Rather it's what Keel says about "bluffing their way through talk of old times" that reminded me of some strange experiences I've had with people...some of them close to me...over the years and recently as well.  In each case I'll bring up some anecdote they were involved with, to which they deny everything and sometimes even come up with an alternate reality version of events.  And there's no compelling reason for them to lie or conceal anything...these are all harmless memories.  With one person I might say they are deluded with the memory in question, but when I see it with others then I wonder whether their memories are truly intact and that, over the years, they might have rolled over with their identities and conscious memories into another reality.  It reminds me of another sci-fi experience, the end of the Matrix Reloaded movie when Neo meets the Architect and sees all these different versions of himself on the above screens.  Are people just naturally slipping over time from one state into another?  Or perhaps maybe I myself am deluded.  Anyway, it's fun to speculate while going on with life as it is (or seems)...

Love and Miss My Parents

It's easy to see both my mother and my father's personality makeup within myself...for better or for worse.  Each of them had their own individual strengths and frailties.  My mother died in 2002 and my father in 2013...both had their lives shortened from extensive cigarette smoking over the course of decades...back when it was customary for teenagers to smoke and little kids (like me) could walk a few blocks to a convenience store and buy a pack for their mommy.  Although smoking is something I've never done and thankfully don't have to consider the consequences from it, I...like each of us...have my own unique physical makeup.  That made for the necessity to have a congenitally defective heart valve replaced and aortic aneurysm repaired three years ago...and to undergo current procedures to either rule out or confirm cancer elsewhere.  But there's only so much I have control over...beyond that I'm at peace with where my health is taking me.  As for my parents' personalities, my mother enjoyed routine, simplicity, and the enjoyment and appreciation of what was going on around her...she loved her crocheting and TV shows.  My father was much more goal-driven and loved the adventure of pursuing new skills and experiences...like his mastery of the unicycle and the piano keyboard in his senior years, for example.  Mama, on the down side, could get depressed while daddy was prone to anger and impatience...especially when around others.  I'd like to think I got all the good stuff from them, but we adult offspring know that it's often a package deal and you get some of it all, the good and the bad.  But I dearly love and miss them both...

Weekly Short Stories: 1997 Science Fiction, Part 13

Somehow I managed to read a couple more 1997 stories from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifteenth Annual Collection.  There's just one novella left after this, and then I get to move on to the next year.   But first things first...

THE MASQUE OF AGAMEMNON, by Sean Williams and Simon Brown

In the distant future, I don't suppose that it's a surprise that nanotechnology has combined with artificial intelligence to produce a vastly transformed technology...much to humanity's benefit, I'm sure.  But from time to time things backfire, as this tale of a predatory warship manned by mythical characters from ancient Greece demonstrates.  I couldn't help thinking of that horrible first Star Trek movie about a space probe gone awry.  This story's final line makes an assumption about the reader having read a memorable first line in an equally memorable novel...

GULLIVER AT HOME by John Kessel

It helps to have already read Gulliver's Travels before starting out in this tale surmising what it might have been like for the protagonist's family and home life between and after his illustrious adventures.  Having read it myself, I fully comprehend how ridiculous his affection for horses was, based on the super-intelligent and wise ones he encountered (and their equally ridiculous names).  A funny story, though maybe you should first read Jonathan Swift's novel...

Next week (hopefully) I'll conclude this protracted look at 1997 in the realm of science fiction with my take on the final story...a novella...in Dozois' anthology...

My September 2024 Running and Walking Report

In September I exercised daily, keeping my running and walking fitness level at a satisfactory level.  On the 7th I ran the "Is It Fall" 4-mile race organized by the Florida Track Club at Squirrel Ridge Park off Williston Road.  Then, I returned to Depot Park to speed-walk the weekly Depot Parkrun.  Those were the only races I participated in for the month, with general aching over my body and Hurricane Helene's effects mitigating against races at September's end.  In October I intend to step up my racing...the FTC is holding a 10K race in mid-month along the Hawthorne Trail and I'm walking a breast cancer fundraising event on the 26th with Melissa.  Otherwise I plan to do the Depot Parkrun.  Looking forward to it all...

Carolinas Suffering Calamity from Atlantic Storms

It's a sad time for the Carolinas, what with "PTC-8" slamming their eastern sides and remains of Hurricane Helene wiping out entire communities on the hilly/mountainous west, killing many and causing catastrophic damage.  And I see that they're talking about a new possible system forming in Helene's old spawning area of the western Caribbean.  After Debby gave us here in Gainesville a close call back in July, we'd had quite a lull in this Atlantic hurricane season, which had been predicted to be very active.  Now, after Helene we've had Isaac, Joyce and Kirk, all three eastern Atlantic storms posing danger to only maritime interests there.  Yet just the wrong combination of factors...as was the case with Helene...can cause a monumental disaster.  My own household only suffered a seven-hour power outage and we had a few fallen branches in our yard...no structural damage, thankfully...

As For Watching Sports

In watching sports...and following them in general...I have become rather detached about which athlete or team I want to win.  My tendency now is to follow the process and appreciate what is involved in whichever sport that happens to be before me.  I've noticed that there is one aspect to it all that I have come to oppose, and that is the tedious, overdone commentary often accompanying the action.  More and more, I mute the volume on my TV set and find that this doesn't detract in the least from my enjoyment of the sport.  It's interesting that I have never played American tackle football (only the flag variant) or baseball (only the softball variant), yet I still enjoy watching others play them.  With basketball, I played it a bit in my youth and likewise enjoy it as a spectator...the same goes for soccer.  Ice hockey?  Never played and don't like to watch it.  With more individual-oriented sports like tennis and golf, I have played very little with the former and only the miniature version of the the latter...yet I have come to be a fan of the pro tournaments in both sports.  Swimming I'm not good at but enjoy watching races.  The sports I do engage in...running and speed-walking...I ironically don't like to watch, unless it's one of those virtual races on YouTube...

No Racing This Weekend

I was planning to go to my local Albert Massey "Westside" Park this morning to participate in the US Road Running racing event scheduled on the fourth Saturday each month...I was going to do the 10K race, which I did there a month ago.  In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which brought down a lot of branches if not whole trees even in Gainesville, not in its direct path, the Depot Parkrun, held in that city park, was canceled for today at the request of the Gainesville authorities who expressed the need for time to clear it of debris.  I'm imagining that the same conditions exist at Westside as well, and besides when I woke up this morning it was raining and soggy...yuck.  So, instead I'll exercise some indoors today and make the best of what's around me.  I think I got a little spoiled anyway with that Depot Parkrun being held every week...a little break from public races, as with other things, can be a healthy thing...

Quote of the Week...from Geladriel in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of Men, who above all else desire power.     ---Geladriel 

In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Geladriel...played in the film version by Cate Blanchett...is the "Lady" of the Woods, the great Elf-queen of Lothlorien.  She gives a preamble to the epic, explaining the origins of the different rings bestowed upon the various humanoid groups of Middle Earth by the scheming Sauron, deviously seeking to bind them all under his control with the Ring of Power.  As for men, the above quote explains their rings and their motivations...they themselves seek power, even if it means ultimately bowing down and surrendering all of the values they claim to hold dear.  Rings are pretty to behold...as is the notion of free and open elections in our "real" present times.  Both are attractive features of society, yet in the final analysis our politics point to Geladriel's message, which is that with politics as with most anything else, people seek power over others.  In our 2024 election cycle, all those smiling faces and resumes and family backgrounds and staunchly held "principles" are like rings masking the true aim of aspirants to political office: the attainment of a position enabling them to tell others what to do and how to live. When I see a political ad, whether on TV or social media or in my mailbox, I don't see potential public servants but rather power-grabbers. Sorry to be the one to bring you these sober tidings...no, I'm not, actually I'm quite happy to do so, thank you...

Hurricane Helene's Brunt to Pass West of Gainesville This Evening

Hurricane Helene is passing by this evening, a near-miss to Gainesville...but a miss still the same.  Although schools, garbage pickup and different businesses are closing for either the whole day today or a part of it, my workplace at the post office is remaining open...at this writing I'll be off to work in an hour or so.  Although destined to miss the brunt of Helene's predicted Category Three winds at its landfall later today a few miles south of Tallahassee, we should still be under sustained tropical storm winds throughout the evening, eventually slackening during the wee early morning hours.  The rain level here shouldn't be all that bad...it's the wind and possible power outages that present the biggest concerns. Wishing you and yours safety and a smooth passage through this storm...and it is forecast to affect most of Georgia and points beyond as well.  There, I got to use the word "brunt" today...

Weekly Short Stories: 1997 Science Fiction, Part 12

Although my reading has slowed down, it's still there, and I'm here to dutifully report on another week as I got through one more story in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifteenth Annual Collection, and featuring his selections of short fiction from various writers appearing in the year 1997.  Here's my take on the next one in the book...

AFTER KERRY by Ian McDonald

After reading this story about voluntary memory erasure, I was reminded of the Jim Carrey/Kate Winslet 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which a split-up couple have their memories of each other erased.  After Kerry, predating that film by seven years, has the adult daughter of a manipulative, abusive and chronically gaslighting mother going a step further and having her own entire identity changed, wiping out all of her memories of her previous existence and substituting implanted new ones.  Kerry's brother, the protagonist and narrator, goes on a detective sleuthing mission in search of her new location and identity after their mother's death to reveal the "good" news.  There's a lot of darkness in this story...but maybe that's a common element of science fiction that tries to delve deep within the sometimes very dark and disturbing recesses of the human psyche...

Next week I'll hopefully be in a position to review a larger number of stories from this 1997 anthology...

Potential Hurricane Helene Slated to Hit Thursday Evening

Yes, recently this blog's output has been a bit porous, with me often skipping days.  Today, though, I thought it timely to discuss what is brewing weather-wise out in the western Caribbean: Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine, or PTC-9.  Now all the head honchos in the weather bureaus have it forecast to became Hurricane Helene and become a strong one before crashing into Florida's Big Bend area on Thursday evening before heading on to blanket Georgia.  The Governor has already had his hurricane prep press conference, and people in the affected areas...which extend far down the Florida Gulf Coast and inland to places like my Gainesville...to stock up on necessary items and prepare for power outages.  The maximum sustained winds at this Tuesday morning writing are still at sub-tropical storm force, so calling it a "potential tropical cyclone" is still technically applicable.  But it's no service to the general public to delay...like they did with two other systems in recent weeks...in giving it the next name, Helene, just because some ivy tower meteorologist wants to get anal about it all even though the winds may be strong enough: I've had it with this  "PTC" nonsense.  In any event, the storm in question is predicted to rapidly form and intensify in the next two days while picking up a lot of speed traveling across the Gulf of Mexico.  Hopefully, we won't be too directly affected by it in Gainesville, but then again they're not totally certain exactly where it's going to hit...

.....and now it's 11 AM, and they just named it Helene.  Winds are now at 45 mph and it's picking up speed, about to pass between Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula before entering the Gulf...

Body Aches, Took It Easy at Home Today

Today I stayed at home, skipping my customary Saturday morning running race.  Yesterday all day I felt crappy, with a general sense of body aches and inflammation.  Today I spent time with my family and enjoyed watching sports on TV...later on I did do a little running in the house.  Hopefully, I'll continue to feel better tomorrow.  Maybe next week I'll see if I want to run a weekend race.  Oh, I did have an interesting experience while I slept in this morning.  I was dreaming (in bed) when someone knocked on my car window and woke me up...into another dream!  A nested dream, just like in the movie Inception...

Quote of the Week...from Rob Dial

Done is better than perfect.                             ---Rob Dial

Once again I pick a quote from personal development podcaster Rob Dial, who delivered it during a recent show.  His message is simple: better to get yourself in the mix of things, and then you can see where you need to improve.  Otherwise, never starting is guaranteed failure.  Now, as in just about all generalizations, this comes with important exceptions.  Like surgery or flying a plane, for example...although with preliminary training that doesn't involve putting others' lives at stake, Dial's maxim is still in full force even in those areas.  Besides, even with the best in any area, perfection is an elusive goal...

Long Lull in Supposedly Active Hurricane Season Continues

As long as I'm sitting here at this computer, I might as well write something on the old blog.  Let's see...after all the commercials and non-weather-related features, I finally got to hear what The Weather Channel and Fox Weather had to say about the Tropics and hurricane season.  Looks like there are a couple of spots out in the Atlantic that might develop in the next week or two, but the main area is in the southwestern Caribbean off the Central American coast where they expect development over the next few days...and that's it.  Nothing at all like the extraordinarily active system they were predicting...and it doesn't hurt my feelings one bit...