The Raven's Roost

I realize I've not posted anything here in a while, but there hasn't exactly been a lot going on. Mostly just bitching about the heat. I can go out and run in this if I get out very early, but I'm still wiped out for at least an hour when I get home. I can even manage a long run if I fill my hydration vest with an electrolyte mixture, but it's brutal out there. Too bad man-made climate change is a hoax, right? (sarcasm - there's no good way to include a sigh and an eyeroll here)

We're heading off camping this weekend because why not go camping in the middle of August. :D It's camping at Disney so it's less bad, but you still have to go outside. We're planning to do our park stuff in the early mornings and late evenings, and then just hide in the camper during the heat of the day. I should be able to manage later nights than I'm used to since I'll be able to nap. I couldn't relax enough to nap in a Disney hotel because of the "health and safety" inspections. But no one's coming into the camper so my anxiety brain feels like it can stand down.

Anyway, it'll be fun to be at Disney on my birthday. We've done this a few times for Fox, but his birthday also falls very close to Wine & Dine race weekend. In my case we've been in August, but we'll actually be on property on the day. I don't have anything super specific I want to do, but whatever I do ought to involve ice cream, so if it feels like something we could do I might ask for a trip to Beaches & Cream, unless I see something inside EPCOT that's serving ice cream, like outside the normal offerings.

In books this month or so, I read some pretty weighty tomes. I finished Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae after having it sitting on my shelves for literally decades. I bought it and read maybe the first twenty pages, but if I remember correctly I had to put it aside to write my thesis, and Paglia doesn't touch on the authors I was writing about. I do wish she'd gotten around to bringing us into the twentieth century, but I enjoyed her take on Emily Dickinson. I feel like Paglia might be one of those people who would agree that Hamlet is best read as a black comedy. I also read Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir by Bill Hayes, an engaging book on sleep and the lack of it. My insomnia problems aren't as bad any more, but it's always encouraging to hear from someone who suffered with it as a child, given how often I was told I "couldn't" have trouble sleeping. It's tempting to go down a rabbit hole with this one - Hayes has written a lot more, and has worked with Oliver Sacks, whose writing I also enjoy.

I'm currently reading Chuck Tingle's horror novel, Camp Damascus about a gay conversion camp in the wilds of Montana. I preordered, but have been saving it for the trip, so I just started reading. I also received a gift for preordering, a spiffy yellow bandanna that says BURN IT DOWN, which nicely sums up my feelings about any and all conversion therapy. In addition I've got a copy of Picnic at Hanging Rock which should be fun. I have not seen the movie, but I'm familiar enough with the book's reputation to know some people think it's a true story.

In gaming, I hit the halfway point in Okami, which I'm still enjoying greatly. I also picked up Rain World again and started a new campaign as the Survivor, and I'm finding it actually a bit easier than the "easy mode" Monk slugcat. Monk does less damage with his attacks, and is slower and less agile. For me, the Survivor's more robust movement makes some of the platforming sections a bit easier. Not that anything is actually easy in this game. I hit on the idea of "activating" echoes as I go around the map, and then backtracking with my earned passages to actually meet those echoes, and that's worked out well for me. I'm about to head into the game's last major area, and the home stretch for getting my slugcat back to her family.

Fox is considering getting me a new bike, because we just discovered my old one is a steel frame. He thinks I might have an easier time riding an aluminum frame, and maybe save The Tank for later. Or donate it, IDK. His parents know a lady in Orlando who refurbishes bikes, so I might be able to buy a pretty good bike through her for cheaper. I'm still not really looking at riding competitively, running is going well and I'm far less likely to crash into things.

With Nana-cat gone, there are now two humans and two cats, so the balance of species power has shifted in their favor. But there are also now two male cats and a cat power vacuum, so they've taken to occasionally debating who is the top cat. These "debates" have been taking place at 1:30 am in my bedroom, for reasons I don't yet understand. Perhaps I'm supposed to be moderating this, like the sleep-deprived love child of Brian Lamb and Dr. Dolittle.

Anyway, I got out early this morning for my long run and managed to mainly succeed in pissing off my IT band - a recurring problem with me. I put it down to Covid and everything else this summer and fall. I keep feeling like I'm behind and adding longer miles to my workouts to "catch up." Which is stupid of me, I know better than that, but the little voice in my head keeps telling me to run longer or I'll post my first DNF. I normally train by the rule that says, be realistic about where you are, and train from there, not from where you think you ought to be. Anyway, I don't need to break any records or set PRs, just finish. So I'm taking time off this week ahead of the Wine & Dine 10k and half to just rest up. I have two more marathons and an ultra, but after the ultra in early December I can take it easy a while. In March I'll restart my plan to build both speed and endurance, the one I was working from this year when I got sick.

But being out very early in the morning meant I saw some cool stuff, like the local Crows getting a head start on their day by mobbing a Hawk, another Hawk just flying around screeching for some reason, a Bald Eagle out near the state forest, and a massive gathering of Turkey Vultures at some hunter's leftover gut pile. Plus a loose dog that got a face full of pepper gel.

I finally decided around mile eight to just walk home, though I could have put up with the pain. Yes, I could have run through it in a race, but for a training run, there's no reason to risk injuring myself. I ended up walking about five more miles through the state forest and across some fire/logging roads to get back home, and Fox walked out to meet me when he saw I wasn't doing too hot. By that time my ankles, hip, and hamstrings were all hurting and I was not thinking clearly, so when I saw another person ahead of me on one of the access trails, I considered getting off the trail and hiding in some brush, because meeting another lone person in the forest is generally Not Good. Yeah, my brain was starting to go into "just survive" mode. God, I'm dramatic.

Anyway, the camper is out and it's time to start packing soon. It will be nice to get away for a few days, and hopefully when we get home it will be cooler here. It's not super hot today but it's humid AF. Gross.

Did y'all know I've never read War & Peace?

I'm considering taking that on because the more I read of other people's responses to the book, the more I think it will be absolutely worth my while. I've come across a lot of blog posts and essays about Tolstoy over the past two years or so and it made me realize I've barely read anything of his writing. And it's not as if I shy away from books with difficult reputations.

On the one hand, it's a chonker. It's something like 1,300 pages. It's a doorstop. But then, I read long books exactly the same way that I read short ones, one page at a time. Some people take on a chapter a day, since there are 365 of them. I tend to do well with a minimum of ten pages a day goal, and by the time I'm "into" it, I don't bother keeping track because I know I'll finish.

It's also supposed to be dense and it has a lot of characters. So it sounds like LoTR. Especially some of the chapters where Tolkien is setting up the Elvish lore or earlier history of Middle Earth and you're reading along like, who the hell are these people. On my more recent read-throughs I know which bits I can skim for now, unless I decide to acquire some of the other Middle Earth books. I'm told War & Peace does something similar - as the story progresses, its focus narrows considerably, and you don't really have to give two fucks about a lot of the characters.

This is probably a lot weightier than anything I should be thinking about on vacation, but we tend to hide from the mid-afternoon heat, and I can't take naps, so I wind up reading, either online or a physical book. And yesterday I stumbled across yet another Tolstoy discussion so that's where this came from. I'll probably pick up a Penguin Deluxe from Bookshop.org.

Tomorrow's our last full day here and I'm already getting a bit Disney-ed out. But I'm also more accustomed to race weekends where the morning run is the major thing I do that day and the parks are just lagniappe. I'm also going to be in need of some intensive yoga sessions and maybe a water fast when I get home, I feel like hell, LOL. Today we managed to snag an early boarding group for Rise of the Resistance, and I think I'm going to pass on Slinky Dog Dash until next time. I'm almost at my fork limit for this trip so I'm trying to make things easier on myself. Yesterday I found out the hard way that there are two very different tracks for Big Thunder Mountain, and one of them is more intense than the other. Fox was like, "Oh yeah, I remember this track from when I was a kid. This one goes really high!" Me: "It ... what ..." *cue five uninterrupted minutes of screaming*

I saw on my phone last night that the forecast calls for a low of 49. I thought it was a typo until I heard one of our Google Homes repeat that figure, and she gets her weather from a different service. We're weather nerds, we have like four different weather apps between us. Anyway ... 49! IN MAY. We might open up tonight for a while, just to let all the cat farts out. Anyway, it's 61 right now, which might make for good outdoor running for a couple of days.

I've been nursing a minor ouchie. The ball of my foot and into my smaller toes hurts, and that actually has a name but right now I forget what the actual medical term is. But when you go up on your forefoot to break into a sprint - that part is what hurts. It's not so bad that I can't run on it, but I guess I might as well not exacerbate it. It's actually been hurting for several weeks, but it's never quite bad enough that I can't ignore it. But I don't want it morphing into something worse. I'm considering picking up a shoe insert next time I'm out, one of those that just goes into the toe. Today it feels decent, but there's now an odd pain on top of the foot that actually feels more like a blister though there's nothing there.

Fascinating stuff, yes?

Fox and Jeremy are likely going to be upgrading our tower this weekend. This has become more of a priority as one of the towers nearby is offline and the guy dropped his service. He was feeding two other households off his, so they're moving their service to ours. I think they are "only" going to add two sections, but that's twenty feet of height, and it should allow us to see over the trees well enough to see Belmore, and several other places where, right now, we're still looking at the canopy of some of the taller pines. Jeremy is bringing his crew and renting a crane, so all I have to do is ... nothing. Go watch if I want to. Last time we had to rebuild, Fox and I were doing this ourselves.

Our weekend at Walt Disney World was good. The parks are at about 35% capacity, and you can tell. Posted wait times for rides were often estimated high, and I think our longest was for Runaway Railway, which posted 50 minutes and took about 30. We even managed to easily snag a boarding group for Rise of the Resistance, and got to ride that around 11 a.m. I'll want to do that one again because my nerves were really shot by the time we started the pre-ride show and I would like to actually be able to enjoy myself. New rides stress me out, even if I've watched a video ride-through. One of the culinary highlights was getting cookies from Gideon's Bakehouse - highly recommended if you're ever in Orlando. Holy shit these things are amazing. I got the April special, which was a candied orange praline, and we picked up some regular flavors as well. Fox liked the cookies and cream, which he described as a meta-cookie where someone made a cookie out of other crushed cookies. I preferred the triple-chocolate because of course I did.

We added a third hummingbird feeder but it has an annoying design flaw. When the nectar in the base gets low, for some reason, more doesn't bubble down from the reservoir unless you tap the base. So the birds drink the base down, more nectar doesn't appear, and they stop coming to it. I've put tapping that feeder on my daily routine now but it's very weird how it's not quite working right.

 Right Bird, Right House! - this tool from Cornell Ornithology will give you a list of different species you can expect to attract, and has plans for building nesting boxes. I came across it this morning while looking to see what kinds of owls I might reasonably expect to attract. But that was before I remembered there are Great Horned Owls in the area, and in the late afternoon, you can hear them calling back and forth. I would be willing to guess that they don't require a nesting box if they're raising young already, so I think I'm going to go back to my original idea of building and mounting bat houses.

Bat house info for my Florida friends.

The last few days have been crazy busy for me. After finishing up in the yard this weekend, a lot of tasks I'd normally have done got pushed to Monday and Tuesday, and those days were pretty much non-stop. Today I just have some routine things to do and will hopefully be able to get back to art. 

We're going to be moving our fire pit into the area where we plan to eventually put the solar panels. I'll be scooping up all that nice ash and dumping it on my garden beds. I may also move my rain gauge, which was in a good place when we put it up in 2015, but nearby trees have grown enough that I worry they're beginning to block some of the rain collection. I'm thinking about one of the garden fence posts, since there aren't many large trees in that area. That might also be an ideal place to put up a pole for bat houses. There will be bat guano - which would be great in compost. Hmm.

I like it when I can get different natural systems or processes to work together. Instead of "I am a human and I am going to work my will upon this environment!" I tend to think more like, "I'm lazy. How can I get all this stuff to manage itself with the least amount of fuckery on my part?"

And we have our FastPasses for the spring Disney trip! We didn't get Avatar, but Animal Kingdom has "extra magic hours" one morning while we're there, so we may show up at rope drop and hit it then. Fox also picked up some rides in Magic Kingdom I missed in October because of my anxiety episode. We're not even bothering trying to get on any of the Star Wars rides at the moment, though we got to do Star Tours, which was cool. I haven't done Smuggler's Run yet, but we couldn't get passes for it, and they're still farting around with the tiered pass system. 

Some of the regular ingredients I cook with are kind of hard to get so I order them from Amazon. I got a fresh box of sea salt yesterday and noticed that the back was stamped with an organic food label. It's from Great Britain, so it was a name I didn't recognize the way I would, say, Oregon Tilth. I'm so glad to know my salt's organic. Because, yanno, rocks. Also it's not chemically organic since it doesn't or shouldn't contain carbon, but hey, at least they didn't label it "non-GMO." I know they just slap any applicable label they can on products to get them to sell, but seriously. 

Sorry, I'm just more than slightly skeptical of "organic" labels, because people are apt to twist things, and make it look like their product is something it isn't, and also because there are other people who don't bother questioning those labels. 

Anyway, as much as I'd like to sit here next to the fire and read all day, I do actually have a few things to do.

This past week or so has been a pretty busy one for us. This year we ran in the Wine & Dine races at Disney, completing the "Two Course Challenge" by running the 10k and half marathon. The 5k is a separate thing but that's a long story. Since it was also Fox's birthday we spent some extra time at Disney World just for fun. But, to the races!

The week before, we had the Middleburg 10k. This is part of the Black Creek Bowl, which was a 5k for most of its life, and then last year expanded when a change in course allowed them to loop it around and add a 10k distance. Basically they're doing road construction on part of the old course where we'd run up Blanding Boulevard. Anyway, last year I finished in an hour, one minute, and forty-seven seconds and was determined to do it in under one hour next time. And I did. I ran a 58:18 and came out first in my age group, 11th overall. Actually the lady who was first in my age group was third overall, so while I sorta-kinda was first, I was actually second, which is what my plaque says. Either way I'm really pleased about my time and hope to shave a few more minutes off that and place first for real next year. 

So then we went to Orlando and did Disney. My 10k time was more like 1:05 there but I was also not trying to PR. I wanted to run a good time but I wasn't shooting for anything specific. The next day I did the half marathon (13.1 miles) in 2:19:47 which is a personal best. I know these times are nothing to write home about but I'm proud of myself. Considering my first half was 2:53 and I almost quit, this is a good improvement. But I went into this telling myself not to worry about getting a personal record. I was saying it to myself all week. In the corral. At the starting line. As I was running. And my dumb ass still pushed to get the best possible time and boy did I pay for it later. My IT band was all kinds of pissed off, and that evening when we went to the after-race party in Epcot I was in agony. Just walking hurt enough that  I wanted to cry. I DID cry on the Skyliner because I'd had a stressful week, was in considerable pain, I'm afraid of flying but kept having to take the stupid gondolas, and to top it off while we were riding, they kept having emergency stops. So, hard stops in midair, with no way of knowing when they'll start again. I kind of lost my cool. And some jackass in an ECV ran over my foot later that night so it was loads of fun.

Anyway, I don't think I'd have been as bad about the Skyliner if I hadn't flipped out on Space Mountain. I'm usually okay with roller coasters, especially if I know what to expect. Normally I'll watch POV vids on YouTube and decide if I want to try one or not. I had no idea what to expect with Space Mountain and it terrified me. Like not fun scared, but traumatic scared. Because of my stupid anxiety brain, EVERYTHING became scary, including the Skyliner and other simple-ass shit around the parks that scares exactly no one except me and infants. So hooray, I suck. Hopefully that will fade as time passes, because I hate being afraid of things so much, but there's only so much I can deal with. Like with the "spoon theory" that folks with chronic illness use, I have so many emotional spoons each day and running out of them can result in a serious meltdown. 

I'm making this sound horrible but aside from the last night's Skyliner ride from hell and the Space Mountain incident it was a lot of fun. I got to try the new roasted veggie sandwich at our hotel's cafeteria, which tasted great but was hard to keep together, and would be better from a logistics point of view as a wrap. Like just get a big piece of lavash and make a wrap. Also it had huge slabs of zucchini that kept slipping out. The plant based waffles are also tasty, but buyer beware - they don't have as many dedicated machines, and if the demand for the other waffles is too high, they'll use the plant based machines to catch up. So if you have a milk allergy or something beware that there may be cross-contamination. Or if you wanna make them at home, get yourself Carbon's Golden Malted mix and add water or plant milk or your choice. Seriously - that's what Disney uses. You can buy huge bags of it on Amazon.

So tomorrow I do a short recovery run and see how things feel. Some yoga, walking, and stretching helped my hip a lot, to where today it feels normal. I really must be more diligent about evening yoga. I have a flow that targets my legs and hips and it does wonders when I'm piling up mileage, like I will be soon leading up to the Dopey Challenge this January. Because I'm not just a dumb runner, I'm a Dopey one.

And while I try not to buy a bunch of unnecessary stuff and have been focused on minimalism and reducing my consumption, they did have to come out with a Duchess plush the last day I was there, so now I have another stuffed kitty. I'm pretty good about sticking to my "no buy" guns until Disney dangles Aristocats stuff in front of me.

That's it for now! Tl:dr - I'm an idiot, but I'm a pretty fast idiot, and I like plushies. 

Weirdly enough, it's in the 40s at night here. So for the past few days we've had the windows open again, though I'm pretty sure someone will remember to turn Florida's broiler back on soon enough. Earlier today a bird hit the glass part of the storm door hard enough that the cats scattered in terror - scared the hell out of me, too. The bird was okay and flew off, but there's an impact outline on the glass and it had some small brown feathers stuck to it. I picked those off and showed the cats, who were GREATLY interested in them. SMELLS LIKE BIRBS

The interesting bird thing lately has been hummingbirds. We usually get some because, well, we put out feeders. But Fox has been watching what might be a mated pair on the rear deck, and this past week or so there have been not just two or three but nearly a dozen coming to the front yard feeders. On the back deck, the female often perches either on the feeder or on a rafter in the roof while the male does acrobatic flights for her. If she's on the rafter he flies up over it in an arch, back and forth, making this very distinctive chirp as he does. If she's on the feeder he flies loops wherever he seems to think she'll see. The front yard is basically a war zone. A very cute, beautifully-colored, insanely violent war zone. A female was defending one feeder last night and she'd go after other birds and literally SLAM into them. You could hear the impact. I'm not sure if I should put a few more feeders in other areas of the yard.

There hasn't otherwise been a ton of stuff happening. We visited Disney for the Flower & Garden Festival, and if anyone's interested I can link to a photo album. It was weird for me being at Disney when it wasn't marathon weekend, which is on the whole a more adult, and more in-shape crowd. I am so thankful for my IUD. But anyway it was also an excuse to hit Blaze Pizza again. They've got a vegan chorizo now which I want to try, but it wasn't out yet when we went. We'll be heading back in October for the Food & Wine Festival and the Wine-n-Dine Race Weekend. We're both doing the Two Course Challenge, so 10k and half marathon. The previous week is the Black Creek 5 & 10k, which I am currently training for and hoping to smoke my previous time in. So the Disney run will be more of a fun thing - or so I keep saying, but knowing how competitive I can be I'll probably bust ass at that, too.

Something woke me up last night and I heard the neighbor lady shout at someone to "get back in the ..." either house or car. One syllable, but I couldn't hear well. I don't know what was going on but everything seems okay today. Their kitty has been visiting our yard again though she hasn't managed to kill any birds lately. I haven't seen Bhageera (the big black tom) lately so I wonder if someone picked him up, or if something bad happened to him. We have some very active TNR programs so perhaps they caught him. And since I started bringing the hummingbird feeders in at night we haven't seen much of the bear. Fox also helped me get a little fence up for the trash can, which undoubtedly helps as well. I don't mind the bear living around here and doing bear things, but I'd prefer not to encourage her to regard human habitations as an AYCE buffet.

- There is pollen everywhere. The deck is yellow. The truck is yellow. UGH there's tree spooge on everything! Though, knowing Florida, there will be a major cold snap at some point before Spring really gets into gear. So I guess I'll just live with it being uncomfortably humid for a while.

- I was not 100% certain what a "bralette" is but I bought a couple online. My command of the English language tells me it's a diminutive of "brassiere" but not much else. They look like a cross between a tube top and a scarf - at least the ones I picked out did. I figure I've lost enough weight and gained enough definition in my arms to wear something like that, so what the hell. Anyway, they prevent people from seeing your nipples, which is apparently the single most important thing for anyone who is perceived as female.

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I survived RunDisney! Holy shit, it was cold. I have been cold in my life but the morning of the 5k was practically Arctic when you consider this is Orlando/Kissimmee we're talking about. Happily Fox found a huge pack of those Hot Hands things, so I stuffed some in my gloves, in my shoes, and even found the stick-on kinds to burrito myself with while waiting in the corrals. They gave out mylar wraps, too - a lot like the emergency blankets you find in first aid kits, but it was so cold that they mostly served as windbreakers. I managed to fold mine up and use it the whole weekend, but wound up giving it to someone else the day of the full marathon because the lady looked like she was going to actually, literally turn into a solid block of ice.

- I really should get a medal rack for those things.

- Running in the Gate River Run 15k this March! :D Because I have very weird ideas of what "fun" is. But we get to run over the Main St. and Hart bridges, which will be cool. (BEEP BEEP I'M A CAR)

- We're in Spring Cleaning mode here which means each week involves trips to the dump or various donation places. I've got a bed headboard to try to unload this week, plus some musical instruments and more books. I already took so many boxes of books to Chamblin's that I racked up over a hundred bucks in store credit. I'm just sort of at a loss as to what to do with the clarinet, bass clarinet, and guitar. I think there's a keyboard, too. Maybe the pawn shop? No idea. :P