Crises, Existential and Otherwise

We're keeping an eye on this tropical system down in the Caribbean right now. Last night it was expected to develop into a category three storm within two days which is terrifyingly fast. It should be making landfall Thursday around the Big Bend area, but obviously the track can and will change. We're making some preliminary preparations right now and by tomorrow morning I'll know if I need to go fight crowds in town for a more extensive supply run. As it is, we may simply have a long power outage. And Waffle House is still open, LOL.

I'm trying to remember now - why did I want my stories to be in the form of comics? Probably because I like comics and I like to draw, but writing was always my strongest point. I'm a slow, meticulous artist, which doesn't allow me knock out pages of comics easily and has me agonizing over poses all day. The thing I'm working on right now, Lora, for example, has something like another thirty pages to go? I forget how many rough pages I laid out. And I cut a bunch of stuff from the story to make the comic something I might be able to finish before I die.

So, why don't I just write? If it needs a picture, I can do some illustrations or short comics. Actually I like doing short comics - around five to ten pages.

Why not write? I'm an English major who focused on literary criticism. I know how a story goes together. I know how world building works. I know where my towel is. People have said they like my art, yes, but I've had people put down a piece of writing I did and say, "Wow, that's really great." So ... why am I not writing?

I don't have a good answer for that aside from the fact that I kind of always wanted to be a cartoonist, but I'm now having to admit that my style of art is just not well suited to it. Of course that doesn't solve the problem of Lora being unfinished, but it makes future projects feel SO much less daunting.

I started re-reading some Gene Wolfe novels, and I suppose that helped nudge me. Every writer has that one author who makes you strive to be a better writer yourself, whether that's Gene Wolfe, Patrick O'Brien, or Ursula LeGuin. I just haven't been reading as much lately. My brain sometimes feels too wrapped in fog to do much of anything intellectual. Hopefully the changing weather will help - summer is just something to be endured, white-knuckling your way through the heat until one morning, the thermometer says 66, and you go outside and you can breathe. Or perhaps that's just me, a person who takes the Florida license plates that say "Endless Summer" as some sort of threat. Always summer! Always summer and never Halloween.

Run, You Dopes

The WDW Marathon Weekend course maps are out. I think I'll casually take a look at the Facebook group and see what everyone's mad about this year.

Let's see:
Parking lot laps at Blizzard Beach - we're familiar with this one. Since we no longer run around ESPN we've got to pick up miles somewhere. The water parks are usually closed that time of year so this is an easy place to have us run around and set up food and water tables. Also BB has a couple of sets of bathrooms.

EPCOT is the same as last year, I think. Around the World Showcase to start, then out to the highway past The Seas. Back into EPCOT for the last mile looks like same as last year - we don't stay in the park that long because it will be open for guests at that point.

Magic Kingdom - this is different! Perhaps I do "Disney Adult" wrong, because I like it when things change. Anyway, we still run up the highway along the monorail line, but once we're inside the Mouse House, we are going to circle the park the opposite way of what we normally do. We get to run through Adventureland, which I've never done, then through Frontierland, etc, through the castle, then out through Tomorrowland. This is likely because demolition will already be starting on Rivers of America, so we won't be able to exit the park through that back gate.

Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios look about the same as previous years - by the time you get to these locations, they'll be open for guests, so while Disney wants you to be able to get your park photo ops in, they also don't want runners taking up too much walkway space. It looks like we still run past the elephant and rhino barns, so we get to smell the magic there.

The narrow foot path between EPCOT and HS that's usually the bane of my running existence should actually not be super crowded that late in the race. Last year it seems like there were quite a few of us, but we weren't elbow to elbow. We don't exit EPCOT by Mexico which is good and bad. No margaritas = bad. Not needing to run past several large dumpsters = good.

The start time has been moved up significantly, which Fox and I actually like. Starting earlier means finishing earlier. Disney says they've done this to give runners more time in the parks. We'll obviously be needing to go to bed even earlier but I think on the whole that it's a good change. Gets us slower runners out of the sun a little earlier.

Oddly enough I can't find maps for Wine & Dine Weekend, but they're probably the same as last year.