Colorado was so much fun, y'all! So. Much. Fun. I am professionally obligated to say I learned a lot at my training conference (which also happens to be true). More importantly, I was a dang literal rock star. Two years ago at this same conference I spontaneously wrote a song about the show's mascot, the DNN Yeti. Then last year I did the same thing again with another cryptid called the Slide Rock Bolter. On both of those occasions, the songs were recorded in my hotel room and thrown online for the attendees to enjoy. This year, though, I was specifically invited to perform during the closing keynote session.

I got a standing ovation, yo!

This year's song was titled "She's an MVP MVC Sasquatch", and sang the praises of women in technology. I kind of got up on my soapbox a bit. I don't know if I made any difference, but people seemed to enjoy it.

Anyway, my single biggest fear about getting away from the treadmill for a week was that my weight would blow up. As it turns out, I needn't have worried. Granted, I did a fair bit of walking while I was in Denver. Also granted, I got pretty decent workouts up in the mountains between an afternoon of tubing and then an afternoon of snowmobiling (which is much more physical than one might expect). Being a Florida guy, it was really nice to go visit snow. 

Anyway, I am home now and back on the treadmill. So I guess I should get to talking about that.

It Takes You Away

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This is my other other favorite episode of the season. Yes, fully 30% of this season's episodes are my favorite, because Rosa, Demons of the Punjab, and It Takes You Away are all freaking amazing. Of the other seven episodes this season, six of them are firmly in the second tier as being very good, with only one dud in the entire bunch. Them's not bad odds.

Here, the TARDIS team finds themselves in present-day Norway. No, they are not pining for the fjords. And no, they are 193 years too early for the sheep uprising known as the Wooly Rebellion. Instead, they arrive to find a mysterious cabin occupied by a blind teenage girl, who claims her father was taken away by some mysterious monster.

Then weird stuff happens.

This is one that can't even be properly explained without viewing it, and I love that fact so much. There are carnivorous blood moths, there is a demon-like cave-dweller, there is a parallel universe occupied by an ancient legend. And yes, at one point the Doctor has a deep conversation with a talking frog sitting on a wooden chair. It makes sense in the moment.

This is the only thing that writer Ed Hine has contributed to Doctor Who, and I really hope they bring him back next season. His writing is strange and funny and scary and sad and human and alien and just all the things that you could possibly want from this show woven seamlessly together.

More of this, please.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Thirteenth
Companion(s): Graham O'Brien, Ryan Sinclair, Yasmin Khan
Episode(s): It Takes You Away
Steps Walked: 7,620 today, 4,458,472 total
Distance Walked: 4.11 miles today, 2,335.26 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 11,100 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 5,665 total
Weight: 262.60 lbs (five day moving average), net change -44.70 lbs