No joke, last night was straight-up terrifying. Hurricane Irma took a late turn to the east, and the eye of the storm wound up passing right over us. Even with the storm losing strength from traveling across the land to get here, it packed a real wallop. Hurricanes are freaking loud, and it is crazy to hear your own house creaking in the wind as debris flies by an bangs into things. That being said, we were very fortunate. We lost power for a grand total of sixteen hours. We lost a bunch of shingles from our roof, but maintained structural integrity. A portion of our fence came down, but I was able to repair it during the day today. We had some water intrusion through our front door (not from flooding, but from driving rain), but we have that all mopped up. There are trees down all over the area, there are homes and businesses destroyed, but we got away with nothing more than a scary night and some cosmetic damage. It could have been so much worse and I am grateful that it wasn't.

It seems somehow poetic that I started off the Third Doctor with the fireworks of the Fourth of July, and now I have finished him with a cataclysmic storm. The primary theme of the story's climax was all about facing your fears, and boy howdy did we do that. So let's talk about that.

It is not lost on me that somehow coincidentally I am racing to the cataclysmic end of the Third Doctor era perfectly in tandem with Hurricane Irma bearing down on me. I watched the first third today, I'll watch the middle third tomorrow, and then the storm hits tomorrow evening. Will I witness the Third Doctor's regeneration on Monday as scheduled? Or will my world be destroyed just as the entire Universe is about to be destroyed onscreen? Time will tell. (Don't worry, I am as safe as I can be. I will probably lose power, the only question is for how long.)

I got a bit of a late start today. As in, I didn't even get on the treadmill until nearly 9pm. But I know just how much you rely on me, my dear Imaginary Readers (not at all), and I know how disappointed you would be if I missed a day of watching Doctor Who while walking in place (again, not at all). So here I am, with midnight fast approaching on this lovely holiday weekend, writing about deceptive lizards wandering around the streets of Central London in 1973. It's a life.

So let's get to it.

So, Jon Pertwee was a fan of James Bond type fiction, and in particular the gadgets. He personally commissioned a spaceship-looking vehicle for the Doctor to drive around in, and in today's viewing it shows up as the Doctor forgoes a UNIT jeep in order to use his new wheels to triangulate the location of the hidden power source dredging up dinosaurs. Ultimately the car is only seen onscreen one more time (I think, I suppose I'll find out for sure over the next two weeks). Pertwee kept the car, though, after he retired as the Doctor. And also, by the way, it wasn't just some cheap dolled-up prop. It was fully capable of hitting a top speed of 105mph. Check out this short feature about it:

So anyway, let's talk about today's viewing.

A bit of an odd day today. My (autistic) son stayed home sick from his Adult Day Training program, I stayed out sick from work as well, and although I did eventually treadmill it was at a weird time of day. Then, when I started watching Invasion of the Dinosaurs on the treadmill, I was initially thrown because part 1 was in black & white and opened with the title Invasion. I knew it couldn't be the Second Doctor story because the opening credits were clearly Third Doctor, but I was very confused. It turns out that the color master videotape for the first part had been wiped and re-used, and was lost for a full ten years until a 16mm black & white telerecording of the episode was found. That makes it one of the very latest "lost" episodes in the series, with only one other coming up in the next story. As for the title, the complete title was deliberately elided for the first part in order to keep the appearance of a t-rex at the cliffhanger a surprise.

So hey, dinosaurs running around in Central London. Let's talk about that.

What a viewing today! The Time Warrior was the first story in the eleventh season of Doctor Who, and although I had never seen it before it was just like visiting home after being away for years. There were just so many firsts in this story, starting off with this:

Right off the bat it's the familiar time tunnel that began literally every single episode of Doctor Who that I watched as a boy in the 70's, combined with the iconic diamond logo that was used for the remainder of the decade right up through the end of Tom Baker's reign as the Fourth Doctor. Within the first few seconds of treadmilling this morning I had a stupid grin on my face, and the hits just kept on coming.

Let's talk about that.

First off, can I get a what what for two consecutive days under 260? I strongly suspect that tomorrow I will bounce back up a bit, but that's ok.It just feels awesome to feel awesome. And it's pretty dang cool to look in the mirror and not see fat-me anymore. I'm only ten years in (or six months, however you choose to count), and honestly anything after this is gravy. Mmmm. Gravy...

Anyway, lots more giant maggots in today's viewing. Have I mentioned how much I love typing the phrase "giant maggots"? So yeah, giant maggots, a super-intelligent but slightly ADD evil computer, and a marriage proposal, all in the same day. Let's talk about that.

I'm totally gonna talk about Doctor Who (and, apparently, giant maggots), but first I have to cheer -- this morning for the very first time I weighed in at under 260 lbs.  This past month in particular has been frustrating in terms of making forward progress, and it has been nearly eight weeks since I crossed below 270, so I was overjoyed when I finally crossed that milestone this morning. I keep trying to remind myself that I don't have any particular weight goal, and that I am only doing this to feel physically better (which I totally do!), but seeing my progress stall out like that has been a real challenge. Today, though, feels like a victory. So, hooray for me.

Anyway, getting back to The Green Death: sure. lots more giant maggots today, but also some lovely comedy bits to offset the horror. Let's talk about that.

If I had to pick two words to describe The Green Death, they would have to be "giant maggots". I mean, honestly, what else could you possibly take away from this story? And to think I almost stayed in bed. Honestly, though, the reason I almost stayed in bed was because my foot was throbbing all night long. Even so, I got up and hit the treadmill and then a surprising thing happened: once I started walking on it the pain went away. Maybe the nerve endings just got overwhelmed when I started stepping on it constantly, but within a few minutes of walking it stopped hurting at all. So that was nice.

This is going to be brief because I'm in Vegas, the conference I have been helping to run is over, and I have a party to go to. But dang it, I still managed to squeeze in an hour on the treadmill and two episodes of Doctor Who because you all matter so much to me, my dear Imaginary Readers. So let's talk extremely briefly about The Three Doctors.