I keep three calendars.  One is a moleskin monthly calendar that I carry with me.  Snapshop of the whole month, it gets pretty crowded and technicolor what with all of the highlighter and colored ink.  I have two on my desk at work.  One is a month view that I scribble work stuff down on and will notate personal stuff that's going on.  Why?  Because if something happens to me there's a physical copy of what my plans are lying around somewhere that's not my home.  The last calendar is a new addition and I keep it at work because it's just easy.  It's a week view calendar that I rip the top sheet off every Monday and figure out my week.

This morning before work I realized that I have only one 'social engagement' that is not writing related this coming week.  This is good.  I'm coming down to three weeks before Armadillo*Con, this writing convention in Austin.  I'm accepting that I probably will not be able to go to the DFW Writer's Convention this year because they raised the cost.  I don't really understand the hike to $300.  It's a rough economy and asking more money from people who probably won't break even on what they spend to write any time soon seems like a silly idea.  Publishing is hard right now.  The Convention sold out last year - probably because it was so affordable.  Anyways, since the DFW Con is pretty much out, I need Armadillo*Con to count.  Means, I need to have as much on the table as possible.

What I have yet to say is that I'm going to be very unsocial in the coming weeks so that I can recoup on the writing time I've lost from spending so much hanging out with people.  Yes, I adore my friends and I like doing stuff with them but I want to do well in Austin since it's just that much more important for me.

DFW Con isn't 100% out, but with it costing that much more, and earlier in the year it's harder to make happen.  Last year it was late Spring so you had time after Christmas to take a breath and then pinch for the con cost.  This year it's more expensive and in February.  I think I paid $185 last year.  It's almost $300 this year.  That really sucks because there were a lot of agents and authors scheduled to be there I wanted to meet, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.  Maybe the next year, huh?

The big point is that I'm going to be less social, more writerly.  At least until the end of August!

I know, I'm supposed to do a Girl Talk Thursday blog today, but I haven't blogged about me in over a week so I might as well.  I've been busy, I have a lot to say.  Like - how I need to really keep my camera on me.  I really should take more pictures.  I'm bummed because we had a baby shower on Saturday - and did I think to take any pictures?  Nope.  I really would have liked to.

So, my sort of goal now is to take more pictures.  More memories.  I want new pictures to hang on my walls at home and fill those gaping places.  I should get the chance this weekend; I'm going to my best friends, little sisters wedding - in Oklahoma.  It's love to go to Oklahoma, let me tell you.

And what have I been up to the last two weeks since I haven't really been blogging?  I've been catching up with my friends.  Doing things.  Watching movies mostly.  Knitting.  Ooooh!  I knitted a book cozy.  It's going to go with my first Book-Addicts.com giveaway and it's super nifty.  I need to make one for me so that I protect the books I thoughtlessly toss into my purse all the time.  I also need to take a picture and update my Ravelry and just show it off.  The next one I make will have a few changes, like a ribbed edge instead of just a k&p every other row kind of plan. 

I've been knitting a lot more.  I think it has something to do with that whole wanting to make Christmas presents thing going on in the back of my brain.  I'm working on an adorable pink and blue stripped scarf.  It rolls in on its self, so it would be a really good accessory, but not very functional.  I'm thinking I'll give it to one of my younger nieces and do scarves for the whole brood.  That's five kids.  Just so you know.  That's a lot of knitting - but I wanna do it!

The writing and revising has been going very slowly.  I'm up to the third chapter on the new WIP called My Personal God.  I've cut about 7K from Sing Softly - and that hurts.  Like OUCH!  My goal with Sing Softly is to just get the plot in place and the manuscript readable and get someone to just read through it; probably the #writersdatenight girls because they're all bugging me about it.  After that I'm thinking I'll shelf it and n-e-v-e-r work on it again. 

I wound up dancing at Stratos for the oil spill fund raiser last week.  It was random and happened at like 4pm - and silly me - I thought there would be more than just one other person and myself doing it.  I'm so silly!  Over all dance has gotten much more challenging.  Myself and three others were bumped up to the intermediate class, which is also intro to zills.  Uh, I can't even move my body in all the ways they're telling me to, and now I'm supposed to zill?  For me it's the body moving that's harder.  Zilling?  Pft - I was in marching band, yeah my right hand is a little dysfunctional; I played French Horn.  But zills and moving and playing doesn't bother me.  Yes, I do get off rhythm easily, but I've always had issues with my internal metronome not functioning properly.

Oh, and I had my first ever experience at a gaming place with a friend for her hubby's birthday.  Yeah, I so don't have a nerd/geek card.  Race?  Class?  What?  *plays with Killer Bunnies*  Yeah, I have never felt so normal in my whole life.

What else?  This weekend is the wedding and the kick off for Book-Addicts.com - so go enter my friggen contest Saturday!  Fer serials people.  I'm going to be giving away a copy of Feed.  You don't know just how awesome this book is.  It's very much a rock-your-socks-off book.

And while we're talking about books, my awesome, funny, talented, mommy-amazing friend Erinn is celebrating her blogging success with a mystery box giveaway of books! G-o E-n-t-e-r N-o-w !-!-!-!

Right.  So that's all the interesting stuff I've been doing for now. 

Okay, so things went from, totally not busy at all, to wow.my.god.too.much.to.do!

I'm currently at that state where I'm so busy I don't want to look at email, twitter or facebook because I'll remember yet again something else I'm supposed to do, have done, be doing - that I'm not.  And won't happen.  It's frustrating and makes me easily bummed.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of really good stuff happening in my life - which a good chunk of it I can't/won't blog about/yet.  And that stuff takes time, accordingly, and I know this, but I like to pretend I'm Super Woman!  I can do anything!

This last weekend saw little to no writing done.  I did, however, get most of my bedroom, you know that Epic Closet Cull 2010 thing?  It's practically done, I just need to haul off the clothes I don't want.  I discovered that I'm not a big skirt person. Or I just don't own many?

As much as I'm trying to make this week productive, I feel like I'm already failing.  Last night I marathoned Tremors 2-4, which resulted in me staying up far too late with my company over and now facing today practically main-lining Dr Pepper to stay awake.  Not that great, right?  I'm hoping to go home and take a quick nap after work and then get up and proceed to be super amazing.  I want to do things like, dishes, tidying up a bit, and writing.

As for the rest of the week, it's something like this:

• Wednesday - Strattos for Greek Night
• Thursday - Writers Date Night
• Friday - .....I don't think I'm doing anything......
• Saturday - possibly the RA meeting, but we're fer serials going to see Beauty and the Beast
• Sunday - Crafty Day

Well, at least I can't say I'm bored!

Okay, so ~ I am alive. I am getting better.  There have been no more instances involving the cops and my mother.  That is a good thing.

I know I recapped the DFW Writer's Convention via my writing blog, but I thought I'd talk about the non-professional aspects over here too, since I haven't posted and well, I feel like it.  I meant to get all ready on Friday but wound up piddling around with Linda, shopping and getting lunch and stuff until mid-afternoon when there was a whole trip back and forth to Ross to return a laptop bag and dig around for another.  See, I found this perfect blue and black laptop purse, but it's made for a 15"ish laptop.  Lappy is a 17is" laptop.  Two inches.  Two friggen inches kept me from having the coolest laptop bag.  I'm upset.  I also had to just accept that most stuff is made for 15" laptops apparently!  Insert a very unhappy Cidly  :(  I did get two really nice shell-shirts to wear under sweaters for work and stuff, so that was a win!

Saturday Linda came to my place and we took Jeepie to the convention where we met up with Suzan and Criss - yea!!!  Haven't seen Criss recently since she got prego on us.  I miss her face!  I was really surprised by the lack of technology.  I assumed more of the people there would have laptops and all, but apparently our group was in the minority.  In most of the classes we were the only people clustering around outlets and taking notes on laptops.  And I'm the one in our group that brings a power-strip.  NaNoWrimo taught me well.

There was much fun to be had at my expense because I went to the romance/sex writing workshops.  This included twittering about me being in these with the con's hash-tag.  I also saw people sitting in front of me pulling up my twitter profile as SOMEONE twittered yet another silly thing at me.  Oh well.  Good thing I like to laugh at myself, right?

My amazing friend Linda got a partial request from an agent, so uber congrats and well wishes her way.  (I have yet to hear back on the short story I sent in, but I shouldn't hear back until end of next month)

Saturday night was the cocktail party in which I played dress-up with Suzan and *gasp* MADE HER WEAR A DRESS!  This included a really funny Marylin Monroe moment while Suzan took a smoke break.  We also met a really cool recent transplant to Texas who will be joining our online critiquing.  Super jazzed about this.

Sunday.... Linda and I - without talking about it - both automatically assumed that the conference would also be starting at 8am.  She showed up at my place same time as the day before - without us deciding that's what we were doing, we both just assumed the same thing!  And we arrived at the convention center... and realized our mistake!  LoL!!  I had about an hour long conversation with an author who is trying to understand twitter and so we sat on some benches and I pulled up my TweetDeck and we discussed twittering, retweeting, hash-tags, and the benefits and uses of twitter.  We also got the guy leading the twitter workshop to come over and join us and then there were four of us talking about twitter.  It was really fun.

During a session with one author, the author stopped speaking for a few moments and then asked the full room if anyone had any Claritin - allergies are really bad this year.  Well, when I'm sick and I need to be in public sans-medicine-head, I take Claritin.  Yes, it's expensive but it leaves me clear headed and functioning.  I pop'd up with the medicine and this author said she'd read my first ten pages of a manuscript and critique it.  I needed to have gotten it out last night in all honesty but I got blocked with web hosting issues on godaddy.com

So I'm excited about that!

I also hate godaddy.com  If anyone is better with internetz than I, I would love helps.  Otherwise I'm going to corner Suzan and beg her to help me, though it might not take begging, it could just take some Dr Pepper....

There were also some really nifty writerly threads available.  Sometime this week two shirts I bought will be here and I'm sure there will be pictures. I can't figure out if they have a website so I'll just have to tell you that both shirts are funny and one is semi-sexually funny, but writerly, both are girly.... yeah.

Ho-hum...  I'm rather certain I don't like staying at home.  I don't think I ever realized how little time I spend in my apartment some times until I had someone living with me.  I'm sorry world, I make a terrible roommate.

The Epic Closet Cull is .... still underway in the way that I mean there's a huge freaking pile of STUFF at the foot of my bed.

My apartment is a wreck.  Tonight will officially be Cid-cleans-stuff night; bathroom, bedroom, chin cage, dishes, trash - you're all going down!!!!!!

And my garden is officially beyond resuscitation and is dead.  Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  I'm sad.  I also don't know if I have the willpower to start over again.

I think this covers it.... yes, it should, if not, well, I'll say it next time!

((For some reason this blog is not showing up right for me. Hopefully it's just a problem on my end....))
Well this weekend was a bunch of well-I-didn't-expect-that's.  But ya know what?  It was still fun.

Friday I obviously stayed home and gardened, which I will digress immediatly into more gardening ramble....now.  OMG I had no idea things would sprout so quick! I thought it would take another day or two before I saw anything that really looked like it would make a plant.  It's been a while since I grew anything from seeds.  Anyways, several of my sugar snap peas are throwing out roots and that first little tale-tell leafy thing. I have a Sunflower that's really adamant about I-want-to-grow-NOW. I think the other ones are Johnny Jump Ups that look promising as well as several of the herbs that look like they're doing really well, but it's harder to tell with them because their seeds are so tiny so the resulting plant bits are equally as tiny.  Anyways, here are some really crappy pictures!!

Saturday was supposed to be my research day.  I posted about my like of research and how the research actually went via my other blog.  It didn't go as planned, I can say that much.  I stopped by Half Priced Books on my way home (bad idea, I know!) and sort of hit a gold mine.  I found several volumes I had been thinking about buying after at the library and two others that just looked promising.  I also bought two knitting books.  Yes!  Me - bought knitting books!  One focuses on using colors and patterns which I would like to learn.  I had sort of decided to spend the rest of a failing Saturday knitting, but a friend of mine wanted to go see Alice in Wonderland.  Long story made short, I drove all the way to Arlington - like south-west corner, lol - only to find out that the movie was sold out. Awwee!  So we saw Book of Eli instead!

Book of Eli...  Okay, so you know going into this movie that it's probably some sort of post-apocalyptic, religious  movie.  After seeing Legion I was skeptical about this one, but I had heard a few good things so I still wanted to see it - and Denzel Washington does a lot of good movies so I decided to be hopeful.  The setting was sort of Resident Evil meets I Am Legend.  It was sort of believable from what you are led to understand.  The characters were ... interesting.  You really only get inside four characters through the movie, Eli, the girl I sort of intentionally ignored, the bad guy, and the girls mom.  Can you tell I don't pay attention to names well?  Anyways, they were all pretty much okay.  The plot is that Eli is taking what is the only copy of the Bible left on earth,  west, where God told him it will be safe.  Okay, I can believe that; a hard sell to non-Christian or religious audiences but I can get that.  The really hard bit for me to accept came at the end where they do the big reveal.  I've decided to not say what it is...  I don't really think the big reveal is all that believable because he was too aware of things through the movie for that thing to be true -- though if you ignored the plausibility of it, it was a dang good kick to the evil guy.  I liked the movie.  I really did, and that surprised me.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Sunday I had decided to go to church, take the chins out to the patio and scrub their drop try.  I apparently did not set my alarm, and it was raining.  Neither of those things happened.  I did, however, get some knitting done. Here are the pictures of my headband!  Which I finished while watching Ponyo, but I'll talk about that in a moment.
So the yarn is really great and soft.  I need to get a button to sew on to really finish it, but you get the idea.  It's a headband, super fun and comfy.  Of course it's done now, when it's too warm to really wear it anymore!  Oh well, next winter, right?  I'm really proud of this!!



Right, anyways, Ponyo!  I'd posted via twitter that I had it coming in on my Netflix and a friend of mine responded that she wanted to watch it so we deiced to get together and watch it.  Now if you know anything about Miyazaki's films, they're generally a bit abstract or weird, but usually really cool!  I have heard some not-so-great opinions about it so I was ready.  However, I don't know that I was really ready for this.  Ponyo is sort of a take on The Little Mermaid, where Ponyo is the daughter of... well... I'm not quite sure what he was, but he had magic and lived under the ocean and yeah...  So Ponyo has a brush with a human and decides that she wants to be human too!  And she sort of becomes this human-chicken thing.  It was strange.  And then she becomes a human and she gets utterly obnoxious.  I think we commented more on how crazy everything was and how irresponsible the parents were and just how nutty it was and how all the characters just accepted that crazy, silly stuff was going on all around them.  I can say that Ponyo is not my favorite Miyazaki film.


We proceeded to watch bad TV that I think was Legend of the Seeker -- based off of books I hated.  Eventually - thankfully - the Oscars came on.  We were both struggling to write and outline and be productive during all of this.  The best part of the Oscar's might have been Neil Patrick Harris doing the opener.  After that I officially didn't care as much about the awards.  Now, Ben Stiller coming out as a Na'vi was awesome and I still want to know if the fishing pole bit was planned...  I will have to say, after watching the Oscars I now need to see: The Hurt Locker, The Blind Side, and The Secret of Kells.  The fun part about watching award shows, all the movies you decide that you might as well watch.


Okay, so that was my long-winded weekend that was apparently all about movies....and gardening......and knitting......and not as much about writing and books as I intended.

OMG - stop the presses - I just found out that Brandon Sanderson, the person who is completing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series will be at Dragon*Con this coming year.  My friends have been trying to coerce me into going but I think this just won me over. Go to Dragon*Con, hear him speak, maybe see the other Writing Excuses guys?  HECK YES!  *strangles inner fan-girl*

I'm adding two more things to my 2010 Goals.  I can't recall if I blogged about this already and I'm too lazy to go back and look. I'm joining in the blogging adventure, Project 52.  The idea is that you write 52 blogs a year, once a week.  Now I know I can do this; I wrote close to 80 to close out 2009 and only started in like...September.  However, I think it's a good goal and I'm doing it.  The other goal is a bit more daunting; it means I have to be a bit more disciplined.  Inky Girl is challenging people to write 1000 Words a Day in 2010.  This means I'm already behind, having written a whopping 1500 words last night on Premonition.  Gee, I need to get something cranked out today. I'm hoping this motivates me some more this year to continue with my writing.  I'm even biting my teeth, really wanting to go to the DFW Writer's Conference in April, but I don't have the cash just quite yet.  I emailed my mother, thinking she'd talk me out of it because that much money right after Christmas is hard to come by - but instead she was very excited and is encouraging me to go.  *sigh*  We'll see what I can come up with in the next few weeks.

Okay, so I haven't blogged much because New Years sort of tirededed me out.....

I spent New Years at my friends place; we played some cards, some other odd games and then did a champagne toast at midnight where I discovered - I don't like champagne.  No big surprise, honestly.  Then someone had the great idea to go out on the balcony and light up sparklers and stand in a circle facing each other. Yeah - doesn't that sound like a great idea to you too? Not to me. I stood outside of the circle and was the only person to not get burned.  I was the first to leave, but I also had the furthest to drive and went home and I think I went to bed fairly early.

New Years Day my brother came over around noon and we hung out for a bit.  I introduced him to The Lightning Thief and I believe he's currently hooked.  We also went down to Chance Webb's Tattoo Emporium and got our tattoo finished - finally!  We're both really happy with how it turned out.  I'm entering that painfully itchy stage of healing that makes me want to go cross-eyed all the time, but soon enough it'll all be over!  I think I cooked us dinner and we watched some Four Star and then went to go see Avatar in 3D which wasn't all that much different from the normal one; I thought it looked a lot more unfocused and that it would have been just fine to see it without the 3D nonsense.

The next day my brother and I went to a Stars game.  It was super fun and I got a Dallas Stars SNUGGIE!  Don't be fooled by their strange looks, they rock. I really like mine, even if it's all covered in rabbit hair now; silly rabbit.  Brother left not long after the game to go back to Wyoming and I had a few hours to myself.   (Note - I waylaid the Ice Girls and informed him he was getting his picture with them.  He didn't protest.)

My friend Micah came over late (I'm talking either 9 or 10pm) that night.  It's probably the last time I'll see him for several years.  His parents are taking up a church in Vietnam and they'll probably stay over there for most of the next three years and he lives in Virginia Beach now doing his doctoral so though we talk on Skype a lot (during his classes sometimes - oopse!) we probably won't get to hang out.  I was super impressed when he gave me a bottle of home-made vanilla extract.  Like REAL vanilla extract! He MADE it.  Really - like it's real stuff and wow.  I'm just blown away by that. I think I'm going to try to make some myself.  How cool is that???

Eventually Micah had to scoot out and that left me going to bed a bit late - but because I made Sunday my Selfish-Day, well, it was okay.  Really I stayed home by myself and read The Titan's Curse and watched a movie and did some cleaning and played with my Chins and the rabbit and did laundry and went grocery shopping and had a great, stress-free day.  I think I'm going to start requiring more of these in my life; like once a week or something.  I knew going into this week that we were having a writing night Monday, Critique Group was Tuesday, The Mix where I volunteer with the youth is on Wednesday, people come over to my place on Thursday - the only other time I'd have to just veg would be FRIDAY!  So I didn't feel bad about taking Sunday to myself.

A little update on my challenge to write 1000 words a day.... I wrote a little over 1000 on Monday, and like 700 on Tuesday.  I'm a bit frusterated with those numbers, I'd like them to be higher, but oh well.  Now if I'm really going to this Writer's Conference I need to have a finished something to take with me.  This means I'm going to be putting a lot of effort into Premonition now and hopefully will finish it in January and start editing Suspicion in February and get the second draft done and start getting critiques and reads in March.  WHEW!

Bah! I checked my Amazon order and it's STILL not here! I ordered my bookclub book before Christmas and it's yet to show up.  I'm getting impatient. I think I shall read Gail Carson Levine's Writing Magic the rest of the week and camp out at BandN and read the last Olympian book because I just don't want to buy brand new hardcover.

[edit] After skimming through the first two chapters of Writing Magic, I realize I need to do as the book suggests and sit down and do the writing exercises.  I'll be doing this, but I think I might take it slower - maybe do one chapter a day or something and compile all of the writing exercises into a yWriter project.....

And one last interesting bit. I joined Ravelry this morning at the urging of another knitting friend.

And with that, lunch is over and I must go back to work....

I'm having one of those days where I just want to sit around and read and do nothing else; I'm even happily plugging away at the Book Club book - which is a Christmas book!!!!!!  I'll save my other comments for the book review.

I am slightly frustrated with myself;  I have yet to get Christmas cards out - I'm going to try for tomorrow since I also get paid tomorrow, which means I need to write and finish and print my letter today so I can write out all the addresses, most of which are still locked away in my phone as text messages.  I meant to be so much more on top of things this year! I rocked it last year.  Today will be putting the finishing touches on a terribly rambling mess of a letter I began yesterday and hopefully printing it out on the fancy holiday paper I bought at Target.

So again I could not hook up the Wii last night; I have a friend who is coming over tonight to help me with it and in preparation I want to go buy additional controllers and look at some games - though for now I'll probably just rent games.  I've invited some others, but I have no idea if anyone's actually going to show or not - I at least have some meat thawing though today is really one of those I - don't - want - to - cook days. 

I had a long conversation with my dad last night; he's such a funny bird.  He gets angry about everything and anything. Right now he's mad at my mother, and it was that reason he said NOTHING while we were all out at dinner because speaking during a conversation with her in the same restaurant - well that's just not acceptable! I think I've figured out why he's mad at her, but I already know she won't do anything about it and he's too stubborn to understand things if they aren't the way he wants them to be. Ug. I love my father. I love my mother. But I don't want to be like them.  Have you ever been that way?  Love someone, but want to be nothing like them?  My parents are both very autonomous people and it's almost like they clash more than they get along and it's so silly.  I couldn't live that way.  It's troubling to know about it, and feel like they both just need to sit down, talk about it and be okay - but know it'll never happen.  They'll just continue to run this circle and complain about eachother and so forth.

So I'm less excited about this next statement; I joined the Oprah Book Club today. (Now is it bad that I misspell Oprah regularly, or that spell check knows her name well enough to correct me?)  If you know me very well, you'll know I'm not a fan of hers, I think she holds far too much power and makes statements and decisions without many facts and affects far more people than she has a right to.  That said, she also does some very good things.  Now my main reasons for joining this book club are selfish and I'll let those out of the bag later on my Goals for 2010 blog - but if you want to find me over there, my screen name is CidWrites, because you HAD to have a sn with 6 characters.  I'll only use that blog to post my personal thoughts and reviews of the books, so don't expect much from that one.  I very well might regret even considering this....

It's Thursday, which means today is one of my designated writing days, yet I haven't written anything. I'm frustrated but still feeling slightly drained from November. I have ideas and goals that I plan on following up on, but I think it will be this weekend before I really write much of anything except rp posts - which are going really well.  I missed writing with my friends!

Books, talking about books - I just order Gail Carson Levine's Writing Magic book. She's the author of Ella Enchanted - of which I own the DVD, and have read the book.  Again, this is a purchase I'll explain with the Goals for 2010 blog that's stewing in my drafts, getting edits and additions and subtractions. 

I'm rather surprised at the lack of interesting bloggings this week; last week there was just so much stuff being blogged about that this week is a bit stark.  Not much worth sharing other than a few interesting articles I'm not going to bother to link.  I think that's it for now; I've had an aweful headache that after taking some medicine and eating lunch is going away so I'm sorry if the blog is a bit dull and boring today.

I do intend to take something of a break AS SOON AS I FINISH PREMONITION!!!  Really.  I have some great ideas inside my head, but I need to let my gray matter turn solid again.  I want to knit!  I want to read this book that was suggested to me several times over that I FINALLY bought today on Amazon - Stephen King's On Writing.  Familiar with it? I've heard both good and bad things, but as I was listening to Writing Excuses and they suggested it, I just bout it.

Well yesterday was our last Monday-Nighters write-in at LM and I'm very sad to see it go.  I really liked meeting up with Linda and Lynne' each week and writing and all of the...odd things we'd talk about.  We all three hit our goals last night, me eeking it out shortly before the restaurant closed and celebrated by buying us chocolate tourt cake something or other. I was ready to go to bed early...and then couldn't sleep. I wound up picking up some knitting - only to realize I must have been on crack when I started this scarf.  It started out probably between 15 & 20 stitches, and widened to 26 - so I had to do the painful thing of completely ripping the whole thing to pieces, rerolling the yarn and starting over.  It's super soft, angel hair green stuff that fits our company's green super well and will - eventually - be a scarf for my co-worker.

So today starts the mad dash for Danielle's wedding.  I have GOT to put the hem in my dress, drop it at a dry cleaner, and start organizing stuff.  I'm supposed to go to the critique group tonight but I'm wondering if I shouldn't skip it in favor of cleaning and finishing the dress and the billion other things I really need to do.  I got ----

I need to pay bills!

Okay - now where was I?  Other things I need to do! I got roped into hosting a Christmas/TGIO/Birthday party, and I'm warming up to the idea - but it also means in depth cleaning and preparation for a party the day after Danielle's wedding.  I will survive, I swear!  And I've completely lost my train of thought.

Okay, I'm going to move my other blog or article references to the end of a my blogs.  With that said......

So poor choices are not just limited to Wall Street; Jane from Dystel & Goderich Literary Management discusses some of the frivolous things book agencies do.  I really, really, really like reading Nathan Bransford's blog; he usually has some really awesome thoughts and ideas and sees things from both sides.  He just posted a blog about taking critique letters and how best to respond to them; as I'm thinking about revising Suspicion it's really good to take these ideas to heart because I'll be facing critique group - eventually.  For now, as of Tuesday night, I'll just be observing and probably sitting on the sidelines plugging away still until I finish Premonition. 

There are a lot of blogs I'm hearing about that have nuggets of interesting stuff to say about revision, I should put those all together at some point, and print them out.  I'm still going to go back to Gail Carson Levine's blog Do Over when I start revising; it was a great blog, very inspirational and upbeat.  Today Inky Girl twittered Brian Yansky's blog on Seeing Your Mistakes; not anything super long or how-to, but a nice, brief read and encouraging.  Inky Girl really dishes out good resources and in the theme of revision, here's a back-blog from Paperback Writer blogger, Sheila Kelly on revision.  

I continue to love The Inkwell Bookstore blog for all of the random, fun, interesting stuff they post.  Their blog, Tuesdays' Tips for Flailing Writers is rich with links and stuff!  (One of them, Why Writing Rubbish is Productive, references NaNoWriMo.)  I'm still looking through it so it's really interesting and whatnot.  Check it out!

Back to work I go!!!!

I did it!

I did it!

I really did it!

I got 150K!!

Now, I need to go home and validate - and proceed to go into a coma.

It's been nice knowing you.

<3

Oh my, time really goes by quickly, doesn't it?  Good grief, I've slept a lot the last few days.

I will not have time to finish this blog before 8am, so it'll be saved and edited later, but for now know I'm in the office pre-8am and actually, oh dear LORD! Reading all the blogs I have not for quite some time.  I found I missed an opportunity to enter a blog contest I would have otherwise have jumped at, but what can you do?  I did, however, find this intriguing contest EA is hosting for a book, Mentors, Muses and Monsters.  So I will be thinking about that like, tomorrow...or some day that does not fall in the parentheticals of November.

Also, The Inkwell Bookstore blog posted this today on the lists of 2009 I will have to pour over some other time.  As well as this post, from Ask a Literary Agent - where they discuss the length of a book for submission.  Yet more confirmation making the decision to cut my book in 1/3's is a great idea!

I got terribly little done on my NaNo novel during the holiday. I had anticipated having much more done and even finishing days ago and powering through to reach the end of Premonition...but I fear it will be the end of December by the time that is done and I can go back and revise Suspicion enough to show up at critique group and participate, and only THEN can I think about even starting to write Intuition AS I continue to revise.  I feel like drowning just thinking about it (not really, it's just before 8am, Monday morning.)

Oh well.  Thanksgiving was wonderful.  I wound up writing a ton Wednesday and then little bits of drivel here and there over the last few days.  Thanksgiving Thursday I went to my parents house, walked in the door and was immediately given the task of creating a Turkey from a squash, a pear,bits of cheese, bell pepper, grapes and skewers. I still swear it looks more like a Doxin than a Turkey - but what do I know? I only have Chinchillas.  (I find it obnoxious that after spell-checking Doxin and googling it to make sure I knew what I was talking about, I still get the red line under the word.)  For lack of anything else to do and too many distractions to write I laid down on the couch to stare blankly at men in spandex tackling each other......and fell asleep for about three hours.  Yes. Three hours.  My grandmothers left and didn't even say goodbye.  I left later that night and went home; I think I tried writing - and went to sleep fairly early.


Friday I braved the craziness of the mall and went shopping. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as I'd feared and I actually got most of my shopping done.  WalMart was pretty much completely deserted and I got to shop without wishing ill on any one - except I was more than a little creeped out by the guy who walked up to me and grabbed my arm while I was deciding whether or not to give canned potatoes another shot or not.  See, I go grocery shopping with my iPod, I find it makes the whole experience much more enjoyable - except if anyone speaks to me and I don't see them - I don't hear them.  So this guy just reaches out and helps himself to examining my arm.  Wound up having a lovely conversation with him, but the beginnings were strange.  I also dyed my hair Friday; I had too many colors going as it was so now it's a semi-even black cherry color that over my brown hair will fade to a reddish brown, very unnatural color in time.  For now it just looks sort of ambiguously purple.  I'm okay with that. I'm also going to have to realize my hair is long enough I will need two bottles of dye from here on out if I do this myself.  I know I did more things Friday; I think there was baking involved and going to Cassy's house....


Saturday I slept in.  I did a lot of sleeping until 10 or even noon these last few days - and going to bed before midnight!  I did writing; not enough really and truely.  And then went to my bestfriends surprise birthday party.  Her family had one planned jointly for her, her sisters' fiance and her other sisters' husband but because of pre-surgery stuff she could not attend and knowing very well it would hurt her feelings they planned this one in advance, but just didn't tell her.  It was great.  She's not the kind to suspect anything at all! It was a really fun evening - however I learned AGAIN that I really stink at playing Chicken Foot.


Sunday I had planned to spend powering through the last 7K to finish my NaNoWriMo novel, but opened my NaNoMail to find yet another hate mail message, which after reading four words I deleted.  I twittered about it again and some other people picked up on it and unlike before when I mentioned the previous two I've gotten ML's got involved and now I realize that instead of deleting them I should have handed them over.  Oh well.  It did throw me into a funk for the rest of the day.  I wrote terribly and hardly anything so my friend Kyle coming over was a welcomed break.

We got soup at Panera and came home via Half Priced Books looking for cheap Christmas movies - which I did not find. I did, however, find a copy of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta and Watchmen, which I've wanted to read.  Not so much Watchmen except his characterization and setting are supposed to be fantastic.  We'll see if I finish reading it.  Completed last night putting up my Christmas tree and hanging ornaments around my apartment since this year the bottom quarter of the tree is not getting decorated nor the backside.  The goal for this Christmas is to get a tree topper.  I was just happy to have a tree and ornaments I liked last year that I just didn't bother with a topper.  I'd like one this year!


Thankfully once everyone left I did get a lot written last night before copping out at midnight and crawling into bed.  Today I need to write 3K to reach my own, personal goal. I can do this!!!

Also looking forward to a two-day work week this week!

Okay, so my last blog was like, terrible and I was so grouchy that day for a lot of different reasons and I know better than to really post stuff when I'm like that so - I'm sorry.

On to better news!!!!!

Robin McKinley's pep-talk was sent out while I was sleeping!!!  OMG I'm so happy.  I really liked it too; she talked about how she realized a book she was working on should really be two books, which is where I'm at only it's three.  I really liked it, and it was a great read for me right now  ^__^ 

I made the decision yesterday that my NaNoWriMo novel really will be split into three, light volumes.  I'm thinking the set will be called The Barking Dog, because I'm attached to the symbolism behind that, and then yesterday the individual names for the books just fell into my lap; Suspicion, Premonition, and Intuition.  They fit, I think, I really like it so yes. 

Yesterday I was like giddy hyper, so I didn't blog because I couldn't sit still long enough to pull words out of the air.  I didn't even START writing yesterday until about 5pm when I did a word-war with the @NaNoWordSprints on Twitter.  I cranked out words pretty easily yesterday like that just because it was like I was on Speed all day; I still sort of feel a bit jittery like that but much more manageable today.  I'm hoping to reach 5K early this evening so I can run over and hang out with my friend who had surgery Monday before the Thanksgiving crazies eat us all.

I fully intend to latch onto the open days to write over the holiday and crank out the end of Premonition and if I can get started into Intuition I will.  Unfortunately I think all I can hope for is a rough draft of Suspicion and Premonition in November; Intuition will probably be what I crank out in December during my vacation time.  That is my goal...

Thanksgiving!  Right.  Tomorrow I'll pull myself out of bed semi-early and trek to my parents house and set up my laptop there and crank out words and talk to my mom and ignore whatever football stuff is on tv.  Holidays are a small thing with our family; at most it will be my parents, my Mamaw and possibly my Grandmother - and that's it.  No pressure, nice relaxing day - I hope.  I'll come home in the evening and actually go to bed - because it'll be Black Friday!

The one and only reason I will be getting up early on Friday - to be at Half Priced Books at 7am to attempt for the gift cards they are giving out to their first customers of the day.  I might try to meander into Best Buy to drool at the notebook I want but that's not for sure; I will probably drive by and gauge if I go in by the amount of cars in the parking lot.  Yup!

I'm finding it hard to concentrate on anything except my now building interest to write on my novel.  The pep-talk has me with the itch to write!!!

So I realize I did not post yesterday, but that does not mean I did not blog yesterday.  You see - I have this habit of keeping a few posts in edit and collecting stuff in each one; yes, there really is some sort of strange method to all of the crazy stuff I push out there!  Anyways, so pretend you understand what day it is I'm talking about and I'm going to do my revision thing so it doesn't sound like I'm more crazy than NaNoWriMo has already made me.

Yesterday morning I was struck with the realization that I think there should be a law about people not being allowed scissors in their own homes; they should be checked out or something and only used in front of a trained scissor professional. This would effectively prevent people from cutting their own hair and making the mistake I did this morning with my bangs.  Not that I did a particularly bad job, but I know I'm going to get laughed at when I finally do go and get them fixed.  They're a bit shorter than I'd intended and I somehow achieved a layered effect, but opposite of the way the layers - for bangs - should have gone, I think.... I am no hairdresser extraordinaire..... So yes, this morning I did the stupid thing and trimmed my own bangs; thankfully there is still almost two weeks from now until Danielle's wedding when I will go get them shaped up by a true professional and laugh at my own folly.  I should also see about dying my hair as well.  I have about three colors currently and I really only want one.  After washing my hair last night and playing with them with the slightly curved straitghtener I have (yes, it's an oxymoron but I'm not the genius who made it, I just use it!) they don't look too bad. I still intend to get them cleaned up before the wedding business.

So I think I struck the creative gold mine on my way into work yesterday morning; unfortunately it has nothing to do with my current NaNoWriMo novel, The Barking Dog, but everything to do with my graphic novel idea.  It's sort of like an onion at the moment.  I pulled it out of the depths of my mind and as I try to puzzle out what I should do with it I start stripping away layers and getting acquainted with it - except I don't like onions so I don't think this analogy makes much sense....it did when I started it in my head.  Suffice it to say, the idea is getting really interesting to me and I'm planning on doing some research - but later!  I even have a list of graphic novels that I should go read, though the ones that interest me are not in the genre or style I'd find appropriate for my idea. Oh well!

Okay, so growing up, Dr Who was not part of my childhood.  I think it is beyond mentioning by now that I had a less than normal childhood so anything and everything it seems that was part and piece of your childhood - was an unknown in mine.  However, it is interesting that a new Dr Who book is currently underway to being signed into production.  Nifty 'eh?  I hope it's good, for the fans most of all.  Like, I really like the Hitchhikers Guide movies and everything, I just have yet to sit down and read the book; I know I will fall madly in love with it when I do - I just haven't yet.  Yeah...lame excuse I know.  Well, a certain someone wrote a sequel that is getting rather negative reviews (caution some strong language); it makes me sad.

Now - onward about my NaNoWriMo progress.  Wednesday I stayed up horendously late to get in my 5K and realized that wtih nothing planned for Thursday I was so going to blow 100K out of the water and get to bed early, as well as do very important things like tend to the Chin-children, shower, take out the trash, etc.  As I gauge out the book currently.I think the story will come full circle around 200K, but I cannot manage that by the end of November I fear unless all I do is write like a crazy lady over Thanksgiving and just kill the rest of the book.  Wednesday I wrote some really intense scenes between the FMC and MMC and introduced the ambiguous other presence in the book.

Last night would see me move on to where things just start snowballing and suddenly it turns into a roller coaster.  Well - that was the plan - roller coaster IN the book - not IN my life.  I believe many people are acquainted with my incident previously which I have dubbed, When Roaches Attack, well I fear we have hit the sequel: When Roaches Attack: The Dive Bombing Kamikaze. Last night, while attempting to watch The Office and cut up some chicken to bake for dinner, I heard a sound - now I have some new neighbors who I think probably launder money and the upstairs ones have various children inhabiting the apartment at different times so I don't bother myself to pay much attention to strange sounds unless they sound, well, serious and this was not a serious sound.

Except then something hit me - or landed on me....Now keep in mind please I am currently armed with a steak knife, cutting chicken over the sink in a pyrex dish.  I step back, look down and OMG THERE'S A ROACH CRAWLING ACROSS MY SHIRT!!!! Dear lord I think I screamed, somehow got it off of me and well - what does one do when armed with a knife? You use it....yes, I knifed a roach in my kitchen and was able to stun it so I could get the ever useful in capturing strange insects dish to put over it...except then it tried to escape and I sort of cut off part of it's thorax...Unfortunately being knifed and having part of it's lower body removed was not enough to do this sucker in so I dug out my neatly put away can of Raid and did the honors, then proceeding to spray baseboards, around the fridge and doors and found out that it takes 5 minutes for Raid to kill a roach; the commercials lie!

My apartment complex will be getting another lovely package of the six legged variety this afternoon.  I really, really like my apartment and where I live - but if this issue with the bugs persists it's going to force me out and I'll be foaming at the mouth by the time my lease is up.  I am probably going to take some more proactive measures on insect prevention though.

That said, it took me nearly an hour, hour and a half to stop twitching at every strange sound expecting another dive bombing attack any moment!  I couldn't find music to write to that didn't make me want to do something else or just flat out did not fit the scene; Pandora really failed me last night for a while.  However, around 11:15 (keep in mind I had really hoped to be in bed by 10pm) I hit the rhythm and just flowed with it.  Got almost 6K written and at 11:45 I had to make the very hard decision that I really had to sleep and sleep was not, in fact, optional.  There was so much good stuff going on too!  Ug - I didn't even sleep much - staying up might have been the better choice, but I did not.  Really itching to start writing this stuff though.

Oh dear LORD! Thanksgiving is like - right around the corner!! Where did that come from??

I need to get out the Christmas tree. I haven't even THOUGHT about Christmas cards - this is a nightmare...I have become increasingly more and more forgetful as all I'm thinking about is my novel this month.  I've left my apartment without my lunch several times now, forgotten I left things out, I've been leaving my phone in weird places or completely turned off.  Goodness - I really have lost my marbles!  But the month is half over, I'm within sight of 100K, I can almost taste it - and I can feel the build up of events in the novel; it's just all the little streams trickling into a river that's swelling to the moment a damn, somewhere, is gonna burst!

Except this process has made me extremely tired.  I now lay in bed for an hour, yes an hour, as my alarm clock goes off in my ear before crawling - yes, really, I crawl out of bed - around 7 - 7:10 and somehow scoot out of the apartment between 7:30 & 7:40 and somehow, by the grace of God, make it to work not even on time - EARLY!  I am having the best luck this month; seriously.

Plans are underway to see Boondock Saints: All Saints Day sometime this weekend which really excites me.  Combined with a write-in and it's the best way to spend a Saturday right now.  The new Star Trek movie came out yesterday and I really want to buy it, but I'm making myself wait.  I can't even watch my freaking Netflix, I'm not buying a movie to collect dust on it's pretty little shiny plastic cover until I have time and the state of mind to think about anything other than my novel for a 2 hour period, kay?  I've had Duplicity for probably two or three weeks now; really.  And I really wanted to see it too! Crank and Crank 2 should be coming in as well in the near future, both of which I also really want to see but will probably hold on to for a few weeks until I have time, again, time.

The novel.  It's going well; conflict is still building up.  The poor FMC is having a rough time and it's only about to get worse.  I really think she's getting off lucky; if I would have thought about the plot matrix before hand, her literary life would have been Hades. Editing will not be nice to her nerves I think.  Dear lord I'm blogging about my character as if she's real; someone please shoot me now??

Um, blogs - we all know I love reading blogs. I need to read more news and current events blogs I think; but we'll save that for after NaNoWriMo, kay?  Well, something funny first off.  The Inkwell Bookstore Blog I discovered yesterday; their posts are hilarious, really!  They had a whole string of comical posts involving NaNo or advice on NaNoWriMo - back read people!  Well this morning in a blurb in their blog they revealed that some author who had been writing under a pen name and was unknown even to her own editor and publisher and agent, etc - revealed herself.  The woman who blogs in character about her time spent as a fancy prostitute is actually, a neurotoxicology scientist in London and revealed herself to one of her biggest critics.  The story was good for one of those head shaking laughs where you don't really know what to think of the world at the moment.


I am getting antsy about wanting to reread all of the Wheel of Time books again, but resisting because THEY ARE STILL UNFINISHED! I refuse to yet again become involved in a relationship with a book series that is unfinished; I get left hanging and ignored and hurt and I just can't take it!  Well, maybe after November I could.  I do, however, love reading how WoT has inserted it's self into the lives of people - thus this wonderful chuckle I got from EA's blog.  (Yes I did censor the title of the blog.)

Last night I talked to a fellow NaNoWriMo friend who is attempting to spear head a year round writing group that would really function more as a monthly or bi-monthly traveling write-in.  I like the idea; the ideas I used to come up with so easily and so often are crawling out of the recesses of my brain and clamoring for attention now that I promise to pay them at least a shred of attention instead of going, "Oh, I'm sorry - you aren't related to so-and-so's class, I just can't write you into Modern Hermeneutics! Sorry alien boys!" Yeah, well, maybe not really alien boys but you get the idea.  We were both a bit edgy about the idea of people critiquing our stuff; I know, I know, I know I take things far too personally and that's something I have to always, always, always be conscious of.  I really need to stretch my writerly wings again, get a few drafts under my belt, maybe anther project or two and work my way into really wanting feedback.  It didn't really help that Fuel for Your Writing posted this blog entitled How to be an Editor's Best Friend, in which makes me realize I need to take criticism better; like really!  Funny enough, over on the BookEnds, LLC blog they posted about The Benefit of Critique Groups, in which it didn't really seem all that much like a benefit as much of an - "If that works for you awesome!  It's not for everyone." 

There was another blog that talked about writing really good dialogue and I cannot for the life of me recall where I saw it; I think it was a link via Twitter from Inky Girl but I really wish I had snagged the link.  It defined about four categories of dialogue and how people write.  I think I am a Fuzzy Dice type of person who describes things far too much and is too verbose.

Should you really want your head to explode, EA does a great blog on understanding the money of publishing a book - What's the difference between earning out my advance and making a profit for my publisher?  Really - my head hurts too bad to read this now - but later, some other day in the distant future - after November - I want to come back to this one.

And I really want a Tim Tam.....so I can do the Tim Tam Slam.

Dear lord, work approaches - must flee to work!!!!!!

[EDIT]

I found it!!!!!!!!  Beginners' Four Faults.   I'm totally Furry Dice  >__<

I feel like I should make a great, profound statement or something but I just sit here and think: Wow, I've rambled on for 50 some odd posts? Yikes.

Today I find myself looking around with a lot of things to do.  A project I'd completed got shot back to me with a note, 'Oopse! We didn't explain this well enough - you'll have to redo it.'  This is frustrating. I dislike redoing stuff, I want to do it right the first time but so often I cannot ask the questions I need to ask because I'm states away and the people that I need to talk to are very busy. So I find myself sort of shooting into the dark at times and just hoping I can do it right and feeling like a failure because I did not understand that within the context of a single sentence ten bullets of change were automatically understood because in order to get the desired End Result, well of course A, B, C, D, E, F and G all have to be changed!  A, C, D and E were completely new to me....  I'm frustrated but I cannot get too upset; I probably did not try hard enough to understand.  However, I am currently working on a large, tedious project that is just as time sensitive as the other one.  I refuse to get bent out of shape over this; I'm going to bust my arse to work on them today but I'm only capable of so much so go me for resolving my little temper tantrum on my own - without having the tantrum.  I really do like where I work and the people, sometimes just being so far flung makes communication difficult.  It also means that it's drought or drown as far as work goes; I am now drowning in comparison to what it's been like recently.

This means my only writing will be before work, at lunch and after work.  Yesterday I got in a rock'en 1.3K during my half hour lunch break.  My novel's really starting to rock along.  Dan Wells from Writing Excuses published this really cool blog about a book idea he's working on and in his blog he talked about a matrix style way of outlining action or points of conflict using an excel sheet.  I'd never thought of this before!!  I think that in my editing process for working out the kinks in the first bit of the book I need to do something like that.  There's far too little anything in the first bit of the book and just uninteresting daily events and me being far too verbose.  I really should sit down and do this for the current part of my novel and if I have some free time after meeting my daily goal I will to double check everything.  I have a lot of conflict going on at the moment which is really cool; at one point while we were all sitting around at La Madeleine the five of us realized we were all writing conflict.

I have also set myself a carrot on a stick.  I don't think that finishing my novel will be an issue; it's the editing I'm worried about.  So I don't get my carrot if I finish my book - I get my carrot after I've edited the dang thing and feel comfortable letting my friends read it.  Of course this is also holding out that my parents don't buy me the carrot since I did put it on my List for the season of Birthday & Christmas.  What is it? Should I tell you? Okay - I'm terrible at keeping my own secrets! I want a Wii Fit; I gave up my gym membership to move into a place where I felt safer, but there was the added bonus of a gym and racquetball room!  I don't know what's happened but the gym is occupied like 24/7 and it's a tiny gym so four people in there and you're a) claustrophobic b) dying from humidity.  And I have yet to find racquetball partners.  I've played with a few friend's Wii and I like it, it's fun, and it's something I could see myself doing as a game, thus fooling myself into physical activity.  I think it's a great thing, actually so should all go well, I'll be buying one in like - January.

So I think it's become clear I'm addicted to reading blogs.  I pick up reading anyone I find interesting and I've subscribed to a lot of literary agents and editors blogs; lots of things that involve the book industry.  I don't remember when but I ran across Nathan Bransford's blog via the Inky Girl blog.  Well Nathan posted this hilarious blog entitled What I Learned About Writing While Watching Reality Television. I'm surprised that I got a bunch of the references!  I personally only really tune into the Tool Academy though I am very tempted to pay to download the Project Runway episodes, and I sort of want to watch America's Next Top Model again.  Hm, what could I say I learned from Tool Academy about writing?  Tool Academy proves that your tool character really is possible; there are really men out there who are that bad.  On the flip side, the idiot girl character really can be that dumb to believe whatever he says and stick with him.  Not very good lessons, I'm not as witty as Nathan but I really liked his blog.

And also in blogs, yesterday or day before yesterday was author Robin McKinley's birthday - happy birthday!  Her blogs are normally filled with hilarious commentary but I feel that her birthday blog while hilarious, is also perhaps a reason friends shouldn't let friends blog drunk.  Okay, she wasn't that bad - but the blog was funny. 

I've also learned that while I'm terrific about reading blogs and commenting when I feel I have anything even remotely worth saying - hey, I really like seeing I get comments so I figure others do too, even if it's just a few words - I'm horrible about double checking to see what other comments were left after mine.  Just an observation  :)

So where do I find myself today?  Well in a few short minutes I need to tackle work things now that I've poked at my email, the day will officially start in a little while.  I'll work diligently today, really, I'm going for consistency!  I hope to finish the project I started yesterday, get some class paperwork done, some post class bits I've been confused about and by then it'll probably be lunch.  I'm sort of scraping my larder here; I realize suddenly that I don't like salami sandwiches anymore....this is disturbing. I've always liked them.  I do, however, really like this sundried basil cheese I found.  So since I have nothing but cheese and bread I'm eating a bag of snap peas for lunch and string cheese; yum.  Finger foods to accommodate me while I write!  I was ideally saving the peas for something else but I really didn't want to have to run out and buy lunch yet again; ug!  This afternoon hopefully dabble in the project that was kicked back to me and pray I really get it this time.  I need to stop by Kroger on the way home because I ran out of toilet paper like Saturday and have been using Kleenex since (TMI yes, I know).  I also need a handful of other items so it's a well timed trip and I can snag some peanut butter and fall back on that option.  I think Alicia is coming over for a bit before heading over to the write-in at Borders...I think.  Regardless I need to unpack the dishwasher and do something about my kitchen, pick up some general stuff and put the clothes that have been air drying away.

The Chins probably also need some attention but I don't know if they really want it, lol.  They're so funny.  I tried feeding them dried blueberries last night; they seemed to like them!  I was eating the blueberries and decided to share; I think they appreciated the gesture.  I should get them some more toys and one of those calcium, hanging things they go through in three freaking days!  I <3 my Chin-Children.

Okay, over and out - it's work time people!

[edit] Ug, I think I need a new blog layout....and a banner.  I'm so silly.

[edit] RAWR - changed blog layout and lost everything as far as the sidebar stuff goes. so frustrated. rebuilding but lacking time to do it in.

I want to write - but not so much on my  novel today. I know I want to write on it at some point today - just not right now.  I'm sort of frusterated with the lack of subplot through this first section and really am considering pushing myself to finish the novel pre-December and go back and add bits and pieces into the first bit to make the closing of this first section ever so much more satisfying to the reader. I feel that the dislikeable characters are not unlikeable enough and the one character I'd been so ready to paint as a terrible old man never appeared except as a name in a list of attendees for two or three events.  I'm frusterated and I really hate the last section I wrote; in my head it was so witty and fun but when I started typing it came out flat and uninteresting.  I'm frusterated with my lack of inspiring writing.

I'm also frustrated that other people cannot keep up with one measly reply to a co-writing thing that's going on and there are other people waiting.  If it weren't for the fact that one of the people who has already submitted their bit royally ticked me off because of his lack of consideration for the other writers in the group I would probably just plow ahead and write out the next bit taking the other two writers silence as acquiescence to whatever I choose to be the next move for the story; granted I'm the one weaving the overall story, they just create more subplot than major arc which is getting old and getting us all bogged down. I'd really like two cinder-blocks and the opportunity to bash some heads.

I think I'm still harboring some frustrations from Tuesday night.  See, I hit 50K sometime Monday and as a reward had some people over, made a nice dinner and sat down to watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  I think I would have enjoyed the movie were it not for the company and the constant feeling of being badgered for OMG KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT X-MEN! Serriously - just because for some small fraction of my childhood I liked the cartoon and happened to read a few of the comics when we were still traveling and I happen to know something about the characters - that makes it alright to mock me for an evening?  However, Gambit being in the movie made me ever so happy and the actor who played him was unknown to me - but I loved it.  It's what really saved the movie for me.

I was startled to learn that Ryan Reynolds - one of the actors in the Wolverine movie - is such a huge comic fan.  Unfortunatly I don't particularily care for him because of some of the rolls he's chosen to play, the characters are too far stuck in my head that I feel too much dislike of him to like him now.  He is, however, in the upcoming Deadpool and Green Lantern movies, both of which I would see willingly.

So yesterday I learned that finally - FINALLY - Boondock Saints: All Saints Day is being released; the midnight showing is tonight but I won't be going.  I am toying with the idea of finding a showing tomorrow night and going; I'm a huge BS fangirl though I don't own a single shirt or any memorabilia from the movie - except the like, ultimate collectors edition of the movie....yeah.

This week is crazy but I think after this one I should be able to manage the rest of the month pretty handily.  I haven't read any of my blogs, really - and I look at the list in my updated box and just wanna sit here for a while and read and read and read - but I can't.  It's almost time for work so I really should get to that, as I have neatly wasted away all my possible morning writing time with my frusterated blog and talking about movies - go me!  So far I have left this week is seeing the Lance Armstrong movie with my mom tonight and plans for Friday night are uncertain.  I think I should check with Alicia to see if she would be up for seeing BS and Repo! Rock Opera before at my place whilst baking for the NOWD on Saturday-Sunday.

I need something to make me a happier person today; I'm just feeling a lot of pent up frusteration that has yet to get out.  Maybe I should invest in a punching bag?

This will be a haphazard, messy blog. My apologies. I don't remember when I wrote my last blog or what it was about. Right now I don't remember a lot of things. I'm very tired, just slept about 12 hours after returning from Oklahoma and I'm allowing myself to piddle around until noon, by which time I really need to have taken a shower, cleaned my Chinchilla cage and eaten *something* (it doesn't really matter at this point what it is).  By noon I want to settle in on my couch and start cranking out todays goal of 10K.  I'm going to give myself from about noon until 11, and from 11 to midnight I need to get ready for the work week and figure out what to do with the mound of clean clothes.  Washing them isn't hard...it's the putting away that's killing me.

I'm at 34,395 words, writing the last section in chapter four.  I realized my novel will have three "books" in it, with each book having four sections and each section having as many chapters as is needed. This will help my 10K chapters turn into far more easily manageable reading bits for my poor friends who have blindly offered to read it. I pity them. Amanda is working on the first draft of chapters 1-3 right now with a red pen. I lay awake in bed afraid of what she's doing to it.  She sat next to me trying to read it while I was writing before The Office came on Thursday, I got maybe 30 words written because she was making me so nervous, moving that red pen around! I finally made her stop - I couldn't take it.

Oklahoma was a good trip. We went shopping way too much - but we're girls - that happens - oh well. It was probably also the last big shopping for me to be done before 2010.  The party was fun.  We played games and established that I carry the most crap around in my purse.  I also "won" this greatly awesome pomegranate lotion; how I <3 pomegranate.  I also <3 late night runs for snacks; I don't do those anymore. It was fun

Um, ah - I don't know what else to say - so I'm going to go see about that Chinchilla cage and a shower. And food. Can't forget food.

I think I've lost out on my regular blog reading, my email hasn't been checked and I'm sort of avoiding starting on today's writing.  I think I realized Tuesday that 50K was not a difficult goal anymore.  Heck, I'll be halfway there today quite easily, 1,048 more words and I've hit it to be exact.  Anyways!  I've uped my goal.  At first I was all, well 100K would be a good goal! But I think that I can say with confidence that I could, in fact, reach that.  So I uped it again to 150K and now I feel swamped and behind and a tad bit panicked.  That's what I need! So that's my goal. I'm challenging myself to write 5K every single day without fail and so far I've reached it or surpassed it though the last two days doing it was difficult.  Today will be difficult as well.

Today I need to: get some groceries, plus some padding presents for Danielle's wedding shower, and wrapping paper to wrap the presents, cook dinner for guests, probably clean chinchilla cage, wash clothes, pack for the weekend, but concert tickets for Amanda's birthday, get eyebrows waxed, see about a haircut and maybe coloring my hair again, cleaning wouldn't be a bad idea and then write, write, write, write, write.  It's also The Office night AND the 5th of November (I always watch V for Vendetta on this day) so...I have a lot todo.

I'm considering that tomorrow after I get off work at noon I can run out to get my eyebrows done and a quick trim at like GreatClips or something; it's not like my hair is incredibly difficult anymore, it's long and has some layers.  I know that would put me into OKC a little later than I'd hoped but I was going to be getting there pretty early, an hourish wouldn't be too bad to save my sanity tonight, right?

Yesterday was a big day for writing.  I had my meet-cute, someone died, and the dogs made their grand entrance.  Big day yesterday!  Today will be pretty big as well, if I can get psyched up enough to start.  I think I need to break down and have some coffee....

Also hate my bookcover I did, it's silly and reflects nothing of the book. Considered posting something in the artists forum but I don't want to bother anyone with doing it.  Just because I think it's a cool idea doesn't mean anyone else will.

Rambling, will stop, going for coffee now.

Since I don't have time to really write anything on my NaNo before 8am and I got to work early today - thank you screwy time change - I'm going to make more of an effort to blog today.  Yesterday was a bunch of silly frustrations: they're doing construction outside my office in the parking lot and the jackhammer was about to give me a migraine, the fans plugged in to air out the 1st floor after the building flooded vibrate the floor of my office thus all of my furniture, my book club seems to take half an hour answering one question, I couldn't have my laptop at the book club, two people in our book club who normally do not bother me were all over my nerves last night (one never likes any book we read, except for the overtly Christian books and the other hardly ever reads the books yet talks the most and has an opinion on all the questions/answers - normally both reactions are funny, I think I just wanted the book club to go faster and their commentary made it last about 2.5 hours - which I could have been writing).

I did finally get a two paragraph portion I really liked well enough to post as an excerpt on my NaNoWriMo page.  It has a nice, pointless description of the city and then a drop of - 'hey what was that?' I'm sure as things unfold there will be something much more interesting to include.

I was really happy that both Alicia and Linda showed up for my write-in at La Madeline.  Apparently someone else showed up after the posted time-frame that we would all be there; I feel bad but I said several times that I would be leaving at such-and-such time and Linda said she'd only ever be able to stay an hour and some change at most.  Next week one of the ML's thinks she will come so I'm happy - and LM is a nice place to be - if we can hopefully not have the obnoxious table talking about their latest exploits in the drag community (yes, drag, as in men dressing as women).

Today we have been issued a challenge of writing 4K as our region is in an average word war with a smaller Connecticut region, "David versus Goliath" and their ML put it.  With such a big region we also have more people who sign up and then don't contribute so those of us who are writing away must write more to make up for their non-writing.  It's not total words here, it's per-person average.  That's a big difference.

Tonight I need to: clean the Chinchilla cage, get my dad a birthday present, go grocery shopping, and take out the trash.  I'm also hoping I can make it to Colleyville for the write-in there since those seem to do me good and I like the social aspect of it yet I'm still able to focus and get a lot done.  Anyways - I'll edit this tonight if/when I get stuff done
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It's not EOD yet, but I have more to say now.  I think I'm a little sleep deprived because I have a very short patience for things and I'm getting grumpy at stuff easily.  We're talking insurance for next year at my company and last time we had to change it was an unplanned move and happened quickly - our provider went under basically.  I wound up getting the short end of the stick because I was not a Florida resident.  I had to pay more out of my pocket than I thought I could afford, wound up making it, but I can no longer put money back into a retirement/savings plan which makes me nervous, period.  Well talking of moving insurance again makes me nervous because I really cannot afford to pay more out of pocket for insurance since I moved into the apartment I live in now.  Should insurance go up I'm going to have to evaluate where I'm at and what I have to bargain with and make some tough choices I don't want to think about now.  Sometimes life stinks.
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Crap - I just realized I still need to write my Christmas Cards at some point so they're ready to send out the day after Thanksgiving!!!!!!
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Did go shopping for dad.
Didn't go grocery shopping.
Did have dinner with Kara.
Didn't make it to write-in on time because I got lost.
Did write at write-in.
Didn't make 6K daily goal, finished right over 5K.
Did reach 18,840

I'm probably too tired to be writing anymore words, but that's not sticking in my brain right now.  I think it's Sunday - actually - I know it's Sunday because I just checked to make sure.  This weekend has been busy, but thankfully not as busy as I had feared.  Friday I hung out with Amanda's family and knitted.  I had to put aside the project I was working on for Sam as I realized I'd pretty much forgotten my co-workers birthday and the thing I thought she would really like was a scarf.  So I'm working on an angel-hair scarf in what I would call Academy Green.  This is the color we wear to trade-shows and what our instructors wear when on site at a clients place.  It's a pale green color and impossibly soft.  Very fun  :)

Saturday I had big plans for - which included a trip to Ikea and grocery shopping and lots of stuff.  Little of it happened.  Woke up too late to go to Ikea.  I went to go to Ross - the line was stretched to the back of the store. Went to go grocery shopping and the whole dang parking lot was full.  However, I did go to church and worked in the coffee shop. It was okay.  It's not as fun as my last coffee gig, but it was cool.

I went to the NaNoWriMo kickoff around 10pm, and set up my stuff and chit-chatted with the people there.  The ML (group leader) expected about 15-20 people and around 50 showed up.  We were packed in there like sardines, it was fun! People wore costumes, we did hourly contests to see who could write the most in ten minutes and whatnot.  I almost won one of the word wars - almost!  I wrote until about 5:20am (the correct 5:20 am after the time change) and realized I was far to exhausted to continue, had something just over 6,000 words and called it a night - but didn't sleep until almost 7am. 

My alarm went off at noon and I got up to putter around my place for like an hour before making cinnamon rolls and intending to write - that was almost immediately derailed by my friend texting me to say that the latest Tool Academy episode aired early so of course I ran over to her place to see it. After that it was Home Group and then grab some food and head home to log in 2,000 more words to finish off tonight a little over 8,000. I'd hoped for more, but I've nicely doubled my expected word count for today, which was originally 4,000.  Well, now it is 10pm and I'm by no means making much sense so I'm going to go to sleep.