3.25 miles
trestle turn around
59 degrees
A late afternoon run. Nice! I might try doing more of these later workouts this winter — but not outside, in the dark! I like the light at this time (around 5) — softer, longer, winding down, golden. I only stopped once — to take off my sweatshirt. I considered taking it off while I was running, but thought better of it. I felt strong and confident that I could keep running.
10 Things
- bright yellow leaves
- a roller skier
- laughing voices below me in the ravine
- bright yellow t-shirts and vest on some of the walkers
- still green below the sliding bench
- a long line of cars stopped on the river road whenever there was a stop sign
- someone speeding my on a scooter
- in the tunnel of trees the path was covered in bright red leaves
- a loud honk ahead of me, on the lake street bridge
- no geese or turkeys or rowers
vision study
I went in for my second vision test appointment at the U. Colin, a post-doc in the psychology of vision department tested me on a fancy machine that takes 300 pictures of my eyes a second to track what and where I’m looking.
First, a calibration. I put my chin on the chin rest, didn’t move my head, and moved my eyes to track a dot as it moved from the upper left corner and around the lower right. When I saw it, the dot would explode in confetti. Nice!
Second, a reading test. I was given a sentence to read that kept getting smaller. I struggled to read it when the text was big, but it got easier, and I got faster as it got smaller. I could read sentences that were even too small for my tester to read. When that was finished a screen popped up: 390 trials. Colin said, oh boy. What? The screen said I needed to take 390 of the “trials” to determine if my vision/eyes would work for this study. I asked, what’s the average number of tests? Colin: 100. Of course, my weird eyes would require more testing and of course, this delighted me.
Third, the real test. I had to stare between two dots and try to identify the 3 letters that flashed. At first, the text was too big for me, and I couldn’t see any of the letters. Then Colin decided to try and make the letters a lot smaller — way smaller than anyone had even done, or even that the program could handle. He thought it was very cool and I could tell he was excited. When I asked him why, he said that he had never seen anyone’s vision work this way. Yes! Even among people with strange sight, my sight is strange! I knew it.
It was fun to do the study and talk with someone about my vision. Will I qualify for the study? Not sure yet. My vision might be too strange, and too much for this program. They’ll let me know sometime in the future. Whatever happens, it was fun and I got more verification that I’m unusual!
This afternoon, I submitted 5 of my Girl Ghost Gorge poems to a journal, and my chapbook, “I Empty My Mind, I Stuff it with Color” to a contest.