Walked the Tom Walker Half-Marathon This Morning

When I signed up to enter Gainesville's top November running race, the Tom Walker Half-Marathon, I decided to try something new: speed-walk the entire 13.1-mile distance along the Hawthorne Trail southeast of town.  I wanted to see how my endurance would handle walking all-out for this distance as well as whether I could do it in less than 3 hours.  As it turned out, the answers were both a resounding "yes".  Although this course is pretty hilly and the weather was unseasonably warm and muggy, I stuck to my standard race-walking pace that I used for 5K races and extended it more than fourfold, finishing in 2 hours 54 minutes 40 seconds.  There were quite a few people in this race...206 finished.  I placed at #176 overall but that was of course due to me walking the whole course.  The Florida Track Club organizes this event and in their email not only warned participants to not necessarily attempt to set personal time records due to the warm and humid conditions, but also pointed to not having enough volunteers to run it as well as in previous years.  And that's true on both counts, especially regarding the fact that for most of the course there were no mile markers.  But for those who did volunteer, they were all very friendly and helpful.  For the first time in a distance race I used energy gels (three times) and they seemed to help.  I also had a playlist of favorite songs I listened to throughout this long, long walk.  How did I physically feel during the race?  While maintaining pretty much the same pace throughout...as well as up and down hills...I never felt winded or tired.  But my legs and feet began to ache early on and this intensified as the miles piled up, although it never got to the point where I felt like slowing down or stopping.  This was my 18th overall half-marathon finish (I began them in 2010) and my 6th with the Tom Walker Half-Marathon, tying my total with the now-defunct LifeSouth Five Points of Life event.  If you want to view the results, click HERE. I'm writing this later in the afternoon and, other than some expected leg aches, feel totally okay.  Oh, one other thing: deliberately walking in a race like this does demand a bit of humility on the part of the one doing it, because you know up front that most everyone will pass you and you'll be listed near the bottom of finishers without recognition that you chose to speed-walk it.  Since I'm beyond those concerns, I also enjoyed being not only more aware of the beautiful surrounding scenery in such a race, but also found that it made absolutely no difference to me whether I was walking on a flat surface or going up and down hills, no matter how steep.  I think that with today's results I might just try a full 26.2 mile marathon and see whether I can't walk the whole thing in less than 6 hours. But then maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself... 

Volunteered at Today's Depot Parkrun 5K

Since I am planning to enter tomorrow's Tom Walker Half-Marathon, I thought I would take advantage of tapering down before that race by skipping my customary Saturday morning Depot Parkrun 5K, instead opting to volunteer there.  And since this weekly free race...runners and walkers are equally encouraged to participate...is completely run by volunteers, I do step up from time to time, although probably less than the organizers would like.  Today I was the finishing-token sorter, which is basically collecting scanned little laminated plastic barcoded cards and lining them up in numerical order...technical stuff that doesn't involve heavy amounts of interaction with others, although in the end I found myself conversing a lot with those around me.  It all went well, and I noticed that some of the usual top-finishing runners took it easy with today's event, no doubt because they...like me...plan to race tomorrow morning.  See ya there, although I'll definitely be spending most of my time way behind, at the back of the pack, testing my ability to walk fast for a considerable distance...

Quote of the Week...from Bilbo Baggins

I think I'm quite ready for another adventure.          ---Bilbo Baggins 

I'm not sure whether J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved elder hobbit, chief protagonist of his novel The Hobbit and a bit player in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, speaks the above quote in the latter series.  But in the final Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, he utters it as his old friend Gandalf invites him on the boat that will take them to the fabled Grey Havens at the end of the saga.  And like Bilbo, I, too, am ready for another adventure...a string of them, in fact.  But let's start with what is immediately before me.  On Sunday I plan to speed-walk my first half-marathon race...I've run the previous 17 since 2010.  It's the Tom Walker Half-Marathon, which I've run 5 time before, including the last two years.  It runs along the Hawthorne Trail, leaving and returning to Boulware Springs Park off SE 15 Street in Gainesville.  I've been wanting to see how fast I could speed-walk this kind of distance and how my energy level would flow during longer races.  Well, here goes.  As for more adventures, let's just say that I'm looking forward to my retirement which begins after my final scheduled workday on November 29th...

A Brief Note About the Recent Election

Just a brief note on the recently transpired general election.  Yes, we are all on a runaway train...hopefully it won't crash.  Never before have I felt so alienated from those around me.  I feel that too many of my compatriots are in a state of voluntary self-brainwashing, comfortable in their own designed (by others) social and mass media feedback loops.  The funny thing is that, when politics is factored out of the equation, everyone for the most part seems pretty normal and coherent.  I know many wonderful people in my life who, for some reason, go off the skids when it comes to politics.  Oh well is all I can say, I guess it's part of being a human being in the year 2024.  On the other hand, I don't have to be in a state of voluntary servitude to media.  Just turn it off, or at least pause a moment before settling on a channel or posting.  This is just as important following such an election as it is preceding it.  As I mentioned in a previous article, I'm done with it all.  Sure, I plan to occasionally read up on the issues and candidates and vote in future elections, but beyond that, don't bother me about your political notions, which were probably spoon-fed to you by some mass-media hack or social-media agenda-driven foreign hacker...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 4

As I (slowly) go through the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, which includes his picks of short sci-fi-from 1998, I've once again encountered one of his several novellas...so there's just one entry below.  In 1998 I briefly tried running again, after some 22-23 years of having abandoned the activity.  Still, I had maintained a good level of cardiovascular condition through much bike riding over those years, and got to a three-mile/per run level of activity during the first few months of the years before I again lost interest...not to pick back up on it until 2007.  Anyway, here's my reaction to that story...

SEA CHANGE, WITH MONSTERS by Paul J. McAauley

After reading Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2061 (in the 2001: A Space Odyssey series) a few years ago, it was fun to see Jupiter's waterbound, ice-covered moon readdressed.  This time it was in greater detail, with of course a much different story line.  Here it's many more years into the future and humanity has explored and settled throughout the habitable solar system.  A recent war between Earth and those living on Europa has resulted in the former's victory and the latter's subjugation under their resented occupation.  The war involved Earth sending genetically-created "monsters" to Europa's seas to wipe out their indigenous life and starve out the people.  A local, mysterious monastery on the moon requests an investigation into what they say is one of the monsters still prowling around their premises.  When the investigator (the story's protagonist) arrives, she not only encounters prejudice from the all-male order there, but also more mystery than she had anticipated.  It's a good tale, and I blame myself and my current circumstances for not having been fully involved with it...

Next Wednesday, we'll see if I can't come up with another installment in this weekly series...

Rafael the Latest Storm in 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season

Tropical Storm Rafael has been born in the western Caribbean and, this morning so far, carries 60 mph sustained winds as it strengthens into what possibly could be a Category Two hurricane after it enters the Gulf of Mexico in a couple of days.  That should concern anyone living near the Gulf Coast, but so far the predicted trajectory, a composite of numerous diverse meteorological projections, has it aimed toward the Louisiana coast.  Plus, the cooler waters in the northern Gulf should eventually weaken it.  Still, Rafael could be the source of a lot of rainfall toward the end of this week, even in Gainesville where I'm planning on entering a long-distance race on Sunday.  It seems this 2024 hurricane season that these storms seem bent on messing up my races: the sooner it ends the better... 

Thoughts While Watching NYC Marathon Coverage on ABC Today

I was sitting here a little while ago, surfing the TV channels, when I noticed that ABC was covering the New York City Marathon in its afternoon lineup today.  They were at the finishing line in Central Park, the camera looking down on participants as they trudged on through after a 26.2 mile grueling course that goes through all five boroughs of the "Big Apple": first Staten Island for the briefest time, then across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and to Brooklyn for a long stretch, then relatively briefly through Queens, followed by a long bridge crossing over the East River to Manhattan, on briefly through the Bronx and then back through Manhattan to the Central Park finish.  The featured finishing times were really slow, going over seven hours, and the "runners" for the most part looked pretty out of shape, probably because they were.  Still, I liked the fact that this particular marathon doesn't impose strict time duration limits for the race and are fine with people walking it.  Taking ten hours to complete a marathon does strike me as being a little excessively long, but I think the organizers know what they are doing...especially when one "chamber of commerce" type person, interviewed on the ABC show, shared how all the runners (more than fifty thousand) and other visitors for the event greatly stimulated the local businesses with all their spending.  I thought yes, that sounds like the New York City I knew when I visited there back in 2010...they sure do love our money! Still, I'm quite comfortable with a course limit of, say, seven hours as being reasonable.  Here in Gainesville we had something like this for years with the great Five Points of Life Marathon, and in nearby Ocala's own marathon.  That gave speed-walkers a chance to participate, as well as more elderly runners and those practicing the Galloway run-walk method.  Here in Gainesville we have three marathons offered annually, all taking place on the remote Hawthorne Trail southeast of town, away from the city bustle...so there's absolutely no problem with shutting down street traffic during the races.  Yet the organizers on their websites have set unreasonable time limits of five hours for the finishers...although they seem to have begrudgingly posted slower runners' finishing times in the past.  I have run one official marathon, the one in Ocala (2011), and during it had to walk the final seven miles with an IT strain, with a time of six hours, four minutes.  Yet earlier that month on my own neighboring training course I ran a marathon in four hours twenty-three minutes.  At this stage in my life I've stopped caring whether or not anyone believes...without a posted "official" time as proof...that I completed a marathon distance run.  To me it's now a matter of the experience and my own expectations of myself.  I don't need cameras showing me grinning crossing the finishing line or crowds of people cheering me on in order to derive pleasure and meaning from my activity.  I'd like to try a marathon race at some time in the near future, but the organizers around where I live seem elitist and unaccommodating.  I still do the half-marathons around here, but the atmosphere toward anyone but-the-fastest tackling marathon-distance races held in the Gainesville area seems hostile and elitist...

Ran Gainesville's Weekly Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Today, the first Saturday morning in November, the day before we turn our clocks back an hour to return to good old Standard Time (with late afternoon darkness), I got up and made it down to Gainesville's pretty Depot Park to engage in yet another Parkrun 5K there.  And, again, I decided to run it (instead of speed-walking) in spite of the 100% humidity and 64 degrees...not exactly pleasant conditions but not unbearable, either.  There weren't as many folks there today, and many chose to walk it...I totally understand.  But in spite of the mugginess, I somehow finished 12th, with a time of 26:56, just 5 seconds slower than my fastest Parkrun finish...click HERE to view today's results.  I always enjoy the positive, encouraging atmosphere there although with the shared pathway with dogs and little kiddies straying this way and that it can be a bit of a challenge to just avoid colliding or tripping over others.  But that all goes with the territory, as they say, and I enjoyed the overall experience.  Next week I plan to volunteer during the Parkrun, as the next day on Sunday the Florida Track Club is holding its annual Tom Walker Half-Marathon, which I usually run...although I'm considering speed-walking the 13.1 miles this time around.  That is, assuming we don't get slammed by the next hurricane in the meantime...

Quote of the Week...from Groucho Marx

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.                                                    ---Groucho Marx

Sounds like Groucho, doesn't it...of course, he was the cynical, talkative member of the renowned comedy group of brothers that produced a string of very funny movies during the first couple of decades in the talking movie era.  Yes, the quote is funny, but it's also so, so true.  Yet, I think in today's world of widespread gaslighting...outright lying about reality to trash one's opponent...Groucho, if he were around today, might consider extending it with another witty barb.  Here in Florida we're closing out our second week of early voting for the 2024 general election, and next Tuesday is the official Election Day...all before the losers start crying foul.  I voted a few days ago and, for me, that's it.  Done. I have my own life to live, and if anyone else wants to rant and rave and riot and march and whatever, then they can be my guest...just (with a nod to the late Chris Cornell of Soundgarden) keep it off my wave...

Possibility of Tropical Storm Activity Next Week

In keeping with my earlier plan to keep up to date with developing tropical weather disturbances this 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, I'm reporting only a potential so far out in the Caribbean and Atlantic just north of Hispaniola, a low pressure zone that different forecasting models predict will develop some time next week.  These range from having it attain hurricane strength and threatening Florida to it only becoming a depression and entering the Gulf of Mexico.  In any event, the more northern waters in my Gainesville latitude are much cooler now as we enter the month of November and should interfere with any intensification if any storm comes our way. Still, I'm not all that enthusiastic about having to follow yet another threatening tropical system...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here's another installment in my weekly review of short stories as I read them.  The year I'm currently covering is 1998, and the anthology I'm reading is The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, and featuring short stories and novellas from 1998 that series editor Gardner Dozois, also a sci-fi writer in his own right, selected.  I got through two tales this week, so here are my reactions...

TAKLAMAKAN by Bruce Sterling

Taklamakan is a desert area located in central Asia, specifically in Xinjiang, China.  It's the setting for a "black ops" spy operation in the future as a pair of operatives...one a humanoid alien...infiltrate a heavily-defended (by myriad robots) complex in that desert.  Sterling's stories often reflect a cynical view of the "world order" with multinationals and militaristic countries vying for power.  It's the same here...what they find once inside reminded me a little of the premise behind the Matrix movie series.  And the author's depiction of the robots and their "ecosystem" is nothing short of staggering... 

THE ISLAND OF THE IMMORTALS Ursula k. Le Guin

I looked it up: the archipelago and specific island in this story are apparently fictional...maybe that's for the better as the protagonist is on a quest to discover the rumored immortal people dwelling on that island.  Yet while everyone there seems to confirm this, their utter lack of enthusiasm about the notion of people living forever is quite a shock.  That is, until he discovers what is behind their immortality...and where their "eternal life" eventually lands them: quite a surprise ending.  A sobering tale by a legendary author in the genre...

Next week: more about science fiction from 1998...

Anybody Else Following the '24 World Series?

 This past Saturday, if you looked hard enough among all the TV channels featuring college football games, you might have discovered that Major League Baseball's vaunted World Series had begun.  I'm curious: without first looking it up, do you even know who's playing?  Or, for that matter, have you ever followed baseball?  When I was a little kid, I collected (along with my father) baseball cards we cut out of the back of Post cereal boxes.  I knew of Mickey Mantle, Willy Mays, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra...to name a few...but at the time (1962, I was around six) I didn't really know anything about the game itself.  You step up to home plate, swing at the ball the pitcher throws at you with your bat, and try to make first base.  But I had never played the game, and to be perfectly truthful, at my more advanced age of 68 I still haven't.  Oh sure, we would have weeks in school physical education class when softball would be the sport of interest, but even our version of that game was modified a bit.  Nevertheless, I came to enjoy following it, especially with the beginning of the 1969 season...that was the year the "Miracle Mets" astonished everyone and won it all.  Then, over the years I'd sometimes keep up with what was going on...and sometimes the World Series would pass by with hardly a notice.  I do notice one thing: whereas before I would be more interested in the teams, now I like to sit back and observe the process of the unfolding game.  This 2024 season saw a traditionally familiar matchup in the World Series: the American League champion New York Yankess vs. the National League's pennant-winning Los Angeles Dodgers.  Before tonight's contest...played in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx...L.A. had won the series' first three games, largely through the home run heroics of their first baseman Freddie Freeman, and were aiming for a series sweep.  And wouldn't you know, Freeman stepped up again early on and delivered yet another home run, putting them ahead.  But the Yankee bats woke up finally and pounded out 11 runs, handily winning this contest.  So tonight they'll be at it again, and without all those college football games to compete against for viewers' attention... 

Just Finished Reading Forever Strong by Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is a family physician who has made a name for herself as someone focusing on geriatric health, with her podcast and numerous appearances on different YouTube channels.  I've seen her on some of these and decided to read her recently-published book Forever Strong.  Dr. Lyon, like her "ally" Dr. Peter Attia, is primarily concerned with both extending one's life span as well as their "health span", maintaining that to accomplish the latter it is necessary to counter the tendency of the aged to drastically lose their muscle mass, a condition medically termed "sarcopenia".  As such, both Lyon and Attia stress much larger daily protein intake than is officially recommended, along with regular resistance/weight training, to maintain muscle and strength in elderly people.  Lyon is also a big advocate of animal protein, maintaining that this is superior in nutrition to the plant-based type.  All of this she includes in her book, which presents some admittedly compelling arguments for her positions.  She, like Attia, claims that falls in seniors...made more likely from loss of strength and balance...carry with them a high risk of mortality. But cardiovascular disease and cancer still dominate the death picture throughout life, especially as one grows older.  Eating more sparingly can help alleviate the risk of succumbing to these two latter "horsemen", as well as fighting chronic conditions like diabetes and dementia.  Maintaining a healthful lifestyle, as I see it, is a kind of daily dance, balancing different factors that, individually taken to extremes, can be harmful.  I accept positions such as those held by Lyon and Attia for the truth value I see in them, but I will never just follow such advocates blindly...

Book Sale, Early Voting Yesterday

After our charity fundraiser walk at Celebration Pointe for the fight against breast cancer, Melissa and I decided to attend the opening day in Gainesville's twice-a-year Friends of the Library used book and media sale, on the 400 block of North Main Street.  Arriving only a couple of hours after its opening, we were taken a little aback at the still-long lines of people waiting to enter the sale's warehouse site...but we persevered and made it inside.  The sale was as it usually was...some things change little over the years.  What was different is that I didn't buy anything, although Melissa did pick up three 50-cent paperbacks.  The browsing was fun, though, and I'm glad we went.  After parking a few blocks away from the sale, we had walked through the half-empty parking lot of the county elections office, where they were holding early voting for the general election.  One thing led to another and before you knew it, the two of us were in there, casting our votes.  Whew, glad that's over, now I can just forget about all that political crap, right? Wrong, sigh...this country's hopelessly hooked on it, and my workplace by its very nature throws it in my face whether I like it or not.  I do care who wins, along with the referendum questions.  But beyond my vote, which represents just a drop in the ocean of the final results, I resolve to be at peace with it all and deal with the things in my life I actually have some modicum of control over.  But all in all, I'm glad we voted...

Walked Against Breast Cancer This Morning

The organization American Cancer Society, with its Making Strides Against Breast Cancer fundraisers, held a fund-raising walk this pretty Saturday morning at Celebration Pointe on the southwestern outskirts of Gainesville.  My dear wife Melissa, a survivor who has just completed her treatments after a successful tumor removal in May, formed a walking team, "Team Irwin", consisting of her, me, our wonderful daughter Rebecca, and some of Melissa's work associates and students.  Lots of folks were there as we swamped the closed roads, normally abuzz with motorized traffic.  If you're interested in making a donation to this fine effort, you can click HERE for more information...  

Quote of the Week...from Pema Chödrön

Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to let another person or event control your emotions.

---Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön is an American-born and raised Tibetan Buddhist nun who has written a number of books promoting her beliefs.  Whereas I'm not all that keen on immersing myself in another religion's underlying mythos and dogma, on a more practical level they often can provide some useful insights into living and how to approach it. The notion of "inner peace" isn't just an element of Buddhism, though, and doesn't have to necessarily be tied to organized religion.  The above quote of Pema testifies to this, although if you're stuck...say on the job...in a subordinate position to a bullying and disrespectful supervisor...it may prove to be challenging to implement. Yet I've discovered that I can deflect it all, by refusing to let myself become entangled in conflict, and once free, I am definitely at peace.   Pema's quote is true, but as I mentioned before, implementing it is sometimes difficult...

Tired of 2024 Hurricane Season, Still Not Done

I've been happy during the past few days to be experiencing generally dryer and cooler weather conditions here in Gainesville...although that temperature has been climbing back up.  Unfortunately, I also experienced a sore throat the last couple of days...that seems to be abating at this writing late Thursday.  It looks as if...according to the Weather Channel...a new low pressure system may be gradually developing in the western Caribbean and could eventually head back over here, taking the same general path that Helene and Milton did earlier when both slammed into Florida as strong hurricanes. The "pattern", if you can call it that, is for the Weather Channel and Fox Weather to speak in loose, overly general terms for days on end regarding specific areas of concern until, one day, they suddenly go into "alarm" mode and proclaim a rapidly-intensifying hurricane with 24 hours, and naturally, headed my way! "Patty" would be the next named Atlantic tropical storm...I don't know about you, but I'm quite ready to put a close to this already-old and disruptive 2024 hurricane season.  The only blessing I can muster is that I have been living here in a zone of what they call "hostile winds" that have kept us from more direct hits.  May those hostile winds continue...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here's another Wednesday, time to continue with my ongoing reactions to short stories I've just read, my current project being the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, and featuring the editor's selections from this book of 1998 tales.  Looking back on that year, I remember really liking certain songs I heard off the radio: Fly Away by Lenny Kravitz (my "song of the year"), Building a Mystery by Sarah McLachlan, The Way by Fastball, Ray of Light by Madonna...and Intergalactic Planetary by the Beastie Boys immediately come to mind.  It was a good year musically...but back to those stories...

APPROACHING PERIMELASMA by Geoffrey A. Landis

This is a remarkable, science-packed speculation into what it might be like to go through a black hole, along with the necessary drastic preparations that include uploading the observer into a heavily-fortified 1 mm tall body.  If you're a Stephen Hawking fan, this description of the event horizon and the various characteristics of black holes should be a treat.  The only drawback I see in the story is the notion that personal identities can be transferred...and extinguished...this casually...

CRAPHOUND by Cory Doctorow

While the previous tale delved into black holes, this one is a treatise on the art of discerning hidden treasures found in yard and junk sales.  The aliens have landed, and they seem to be unusually interested in memorabilia...the tackier the better, trading valuable high-tech secrets for what seems to be essentially worthless "crap".  The narrator befriends one of these traders and resents the extraterrestrial for outbidding him on a highly-sought item.  A very funny, tongue-in-cheek tale that seeks to present a possible positive outcome of first contact...

JEDELLA GHOST by Tanith Lee

A young man, a writer, encounters what appears to be a young woman...around eighteen...who had wandered into town from the woods.  She says she is sixty-five, though, and does not understand what death or sickness is when she witnesses it.  The man eventually goes on a quest into the woods to discover the mystery of her origins.  This is a mood piece that might have fit in well with the old sixties television series Night Gallery, and was a refreshing departure from the usual type of sci-fi short stories I have been reading.  Actually, I see this tale as being more in line with the more psychologically-intense fiction so ably produced by Stephen King...

Next week: more stuff from '98...

Nadine and Oscar Mark Dwindling Atlantic Hurricane Season

This morning we have the Weather Channel on the TV, and they were discussing...among other things...the current situation in the Tropics as the Atlantic hurricane season enters its final weeks.  The other day, at almost the same time and after many days of looking of two weak systems...one in the western Caribbean and the other north of Puerto Rico...they were both suddenly named tropical storms, Nadine and Oscar.  Nadine quickly landed in Central America at Belize and dumped its rains on that small country and further on in Mexico's eastern end.  Oscar briefly rapidly intensified in a Category One hurricane before hitting far eastern Cuba and weakened when hostile winds from the northwest (protecting us in Florida) tore into it, redirecting it away from us into the open Atlantic.  Elsewhere in the Atlantic potential tropical storm development is unlikely anytime soon.  That's okay with me: I and too many others have long grown tired of this tedious, destructive Atlantic season.  Beryl, Debby, Francine, Helene, Milton: no, that's way more than enough...

Local Library Now a Crowded Early Voting Site

This morning Melissa and I were driving down NW 43rd Street here in Gainesville when we passed our nearest public library, the Millhopper Branch.  I had wondered when they would begin to pepper the surrounding landscape with campaign signs, for this place is a designated early voting site.  Sure enough, with today marking the beginning of early voting in the 2024 general election, there they all were, along with accompanying campaign volunteers waving at us and the other passing vehicles.  The parking lot for the library was packed with what I assumed were voters, cars circling within it looking fruitlessly for empty spots.  I'm not sure what the deal with these folks was other than maybe it's like the opening day of the local Friends of the Library book sale when lines stretching a city block attend this (also) multi-day event's opening moments.  Friends, there's going to be plenty of time to get your votes in...for what it's going to be worth...in the next few days.  Or, if you're like me, you'll just wait until Tuesday, November 5th, and visit your local precinct...for what that's worth.  For me, no way am I suggesting how you should vote, but sure, I've left a few of my own opinions in past articles.  In the final analysis, one thing is certain: power seekers will win their power, and dress it all up as public service...