September 20, 2000 2:08 PM EST

This afternoon a fence guy came to put up my fence. Hooray! At long last!

I bumped into my neighbor on the way to the mailbox and she's also home today -- had nine spots of skin cancer removed from her face this morning. She explained it was from overexposure to sun. We were talking about fences and our brown, crunchy yards. She thinks they are worms. I'm not so sure about worms, but I'll consult Paul and maybe this weekend we will go out there and figure out something. The neighbors treated their yard and they think that if it doesn't improve, they will resod. I told her to tell me if they do that to tell us ahead of time because then we'd do it as well and just get one group of people to come do both front lawns at the same time. We had this problem last summer and I spent some time doing extra watering and things worked out. But if it is lawn parasites and not just heat? Argh! House maintaining minutia!

Which reminds me, I need to change the AC filter.

Meanwhile, still hyped over the Oct. 10K and I am hunting for a November running event. There's a Turkey Trot the day of Thanksgiving, but that only works if I stay in town that day. Totally bummed out that the Cypress Gardens Jingle Bell run/walk is on a weeknight. It's a night event through the gardens that kicks off their holiday displays and it sounds really cool. I am trying to figure out if we can do that one or not but not too hopeful unless we have that day off for some reason. Now that I think about it some more, it would be a fun place to visit and go jogging around in one weekend even if we don't attend that race! We haven't been there since the last Corvette show that was held there.

We were supposed to tell Anita, the program director, how training's been going and what event we feel we can do so she can schedule it properly by October. So after the four months of "pre-training," and now that we're into 2 weeks of training for real, we started taking inventory of our abilities. After some thought, we settled on the half-marathon as our NF event. We always knew that near October we'd have to get definite about which we'd be doing despite training like it a full so either way it would feel easy. Adrith's thinking of switching to the Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer schedule and I'm thinking of switching to the one Jeff Galloway outlines in Marathon!

I don't know when Anita is sending us singlets -- I should have asked her. I still will have to get mine altered because it's too dang long. I could use the ones I sent to the bookstores if I get them back, but with stores I won't hold my breath. I've left my number, but for all I know they will trash the stuff I gave them once the display time is over.

Things are coming along ok with each little milestone, and I get a better and better idea of what this race business will be like. I got the pictures back from the weekend.

We went in the afternoon in the rain, so the whole day was rather gloomy and most of the pictures aren't all that great. Even for bad "vacation-y" photos, they are substandard -- we took very few of ourselves smiling and waving and junk. This wasn't even a pleasure trip to the theme parks -- it was a scouting mission! We rode three rides (Test Track, Imagination, Spaceship Earth) and then spent the rest of the time walking around following the course from Epcot to the Magic Kingdom. Six hours of this!

I had taken the printed map with me and we tried to take a photo at every mile marker, of tall buildings we'd be able to spot as landmarks and of the ground, roads, etc. In the sample photos above, the big "ball" of Spaceship Earth, we will be able to see from miles 1-2. The photo of Space Mountain from the road and monorail track is right at mile 10, and then heading towards Cinderella Castle from Main Street is somewhere around 10.5 miles. There were so many people at the Magic Kingdom despite the rain it made the near naked Epcot look funny.

I LOVE the off-season though -- the weather is cooler and there are practically no lines for anything, In the summer peak season, you waste so much time waiting in lines. I know people like to bring the kids when school is out in the summer because that's the most convenient, but it's really not the best time to visit Florida. Hot, cranky kids -- some fun! When we were there earlier this summer the wait line for Test Track, a 5-10 minute ride, was 3 hrs so we nixed it. This weekend, the wait was 5-10 minutes. Tell me that's not waaaay better!

As I was putting the photos in order with Sharpie marker notes, it REALLY helped put it into my imagination more clearly. I will go back again some other weekend and try to get better, photos of the ones that did not turn out. Meanwhile, I have to get this batch into the mail for Adrith.

~Astrophe