NaNoWriMo, Week Two

So it’s week two of NaNoWriMo and I’ve fallen behind at last.  I was doing very well that first week, but the weekend was a mess.  Southern Honey and I had to run lots of Thanksgiving-related errands on Saturday and on Sunday afternoon.  Then I had to run up to Cardinal City for training today, and I got stuck in traffic.

By the time I managed to get to the hotel, I was pretty much exhausted.  I did some writing, then tried to sleep.  I should have passed on the sleep and done more writing — I tossed and turned all night and ended up not hearing my alarm.  Woke up twenty minutes before I thought I was supposed to be in training, rushed out the door, and barely made it on time.  Except that they had pushed back the training by fifteen minutes.  *facepalm*  All I have to say is thank heaven for Holiday Inn Express’s Rapid CheckOut or whatever it’s called — I didn’t even have to stop by the front desk on my rush out to the car.

Training was pretty much what I expected, although I didn’t expect the Big Boss to come in dressed in a polo and khakis to speak to us.  I figured, from everything I had heard, to see him in a suit.  It was a pleasant surprise.  Everything else was normal, new-to-wherever training.  So I had heard most of it already (There was a mandatory ethics training I have already had.  Twice.).

Now I’m just waiting for all the interesting stuff to finish on TV so I can get a little more writing done.  Maybe I can get caught up to where I should have been last night, at the very least.

Thanksgiving Day Planning

The great Turkey Day Planning of ‘09 is on today!

Southern Honey and I have been kind of out-of-pocket for the past few years in terms of making it home for Thanksgiving.  We’ve done our own thing a lot — last year, in fact, we went to a friend’s place up in Virginia because I couldn’t get time off work.

This year, Southern Sister and her husband suggested that we kids get together and let the parents fall where they may.  Southern Honey and I liked the idea immensely and agreed.  This has subsequently metamorphosed into a fairly massive family gathering at our new house.

List of attendees:

Southern Honey and myself, my brother, my mother, possibly my grandmother, Southern Sister and her husband, Southern Honey’s mother, his grandmother and her boyfriend, and his uncle.

That’s eleven people in our little house.  Plus our two cats and Southern Sister’s Yorkie.  And one of those people is on oxygen.

So, I now have to find a table and chairs for cheap, get the house cleaned up, and figure out what we’re eating.  I want to go to the GFS Marketplace store, too, and see what we can get in bulk for cheap.

I love decorating for the holidays — I already have a vase full of awesome flowers and leaves that are totally Thanksgiving appropriate — but this is going to be a challenge.  We’ll see how it goes.

NaNoWriMo, Day 4, and Feline Pneumonia

So, there are two more days of NaNo down, and I’m closing in on 10K.  I stopped last night at an even 7.5K, but I’ve only pulled out about 800 words tonight, so I’m a bit down on where I’d like to be.

Unfortunately, one of the kitties has pneumonia, and the other apparently suffers from severe separation anxiety or jealousy.  So, while the sick one is quarantined to our bedroom so that he can get some interaction with us, even if it’s just to curl up with us at night, the other sits outside the door and yowls at the top of his tiny lungs.  For hours.

Needless to say, that does not create an environment conducive to sleep at all.  I’m absolutely exhausted today and haven’t been able to concentrate worth a darn.  Hopefully tonight will be better; I have things that must be accomplished tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo, Day 2

6,331.

That’s my word count after two days of NaNoWriMo.

It’s good progress here on the front end, hopefully buying me some time on down the line when the month gets hectic.

I think the story itself is going fairly well.  Sixteen pages, double spaced between paragraphs and page-shifted between chapters.  Seven chapters of varying length down.  Half of the main characters introduced.

This is going to be a long month…

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet…

That’s right, everyone,  it’s that time of year again.  Sugar-rushing children, cheesy costumes, women running around in practically no clothes, parents unhappy about the fact that it’s raining.  Yes, folks, I give you… Halloween!

I said once before that this is my favorite holiday of the year, and that’s quite true.  I get to play dress up and pretend to be someone else.  Tonight I’m going to be Violette the pirate wench, accompanied by the Punisher.  I know, those don’t really go together, but since the Punisher is a widower or whatever, there’s not really a female figure to go with him anyway.  So I broke out the pirate wench trappings and bought a new corset.

Pretty soon I am going to  have to get up and get a shower.  We might get trick-or-treaters or we might not, but I want to be prepared if we do and have some candy and be in costume.  We’ve never had trick-or-treaters; I want to do it right.  Perhaps I’m a perfectionist.

Then tonight we’re going to go out to one of the clubs in town and have a good time.  We haven’t gone out like that in ages.  In fact, the last time we went out dancing together like that, we still lived in UniTown.  It was probably our fourth anniversary, so that was a while back.  There is a costume contest at the club, and I suspect that Southern Honey has a pretty good shot at winning — his costumes are always incredible.

Best of all, the clocks turn back tonight, so we can either stay out an extra hour or stay out the same amount of time and get more sleep.  And the club has drink specials for that extra hour.  *grins*

The extra hour of sleep would be fantastic to me — National Novel Writing Month kicks off at midnight, and I’ve got a lot of work to do there.  I need to knock out at least three thousand words tomorrow to sort of compensate for the time I’m going to have to devote to Thanksgiving, a friend’s visit the weekend before, and a trip to Louisville for training.

So, for those starting a novel tomorrow, good luck!  And for the  rest of you, happy hauntings!

Happy Almost-Friday

Today was a really good day at work.  I don’t remember the last time I said that at my old office, yet I’ve said it about this job several times in the last month and a half.  That’s a step or three in the right direction, I think.

I got to sit in on a discussion on Pakistan and Islamic extremism.  A lot of the broad strokes were a reiteration of college classes, but the speaker brought a different perspective on things as a former resident of Pakistan and current resident of the US.  The speaker also went a bit in-depth on Salafism and Salafi-Takfirism, which I had never had anyone explain before.  Extremely informative.

In addition, I met several individuals who do similar jobs to mine and exchanged contact information with them.  That’s definite positive motion right there.

I am making progress on a couple of other projects I have rolling at work.  It’s quite common to have multiple projects going at once, but I have more than just about anyone else because I have to touch on each of theirs in one way or another.  One is heating up, and I had the opportunity to participate in a brainstorming session for it.  I’ve never been involved in something like this, so it was a fun experience.  Educational, too.

Tomorrow I have lunch with Southern Mama — we’re meeting at her office, eating there, and then checking out a new cupcake shop on the Square.  One of the guys in the office talks about it all the time, and his wife recommended it.  I’m practically drooling at the thought.  *grins*

On top of that, I think we’ve figured out what we’re doing for Thanksgiving.  I’ve been pondering it for a while now and just had a doable solution present itself today.  Once upon a time, we went to my dad’s family’s house early on turkey day, then went to my mom’s family’s house.  Then my parents split, and it got totally screwed up.

This year, I’d love to go see my dad’s family, but it would tear my mom up.  So, as many people as want to are coming to us: Southern Honey’s sister and her husband, his mom, Southern Mama, Southern Brother and his girlfriend, plus any extended family who want to tag along.  Hopefully there will come a time when I can take a day off work and we can go to dad’s, then have everyone here, or just switch off years.  But for this year, this will have to do.

Halloween To Do?

Halloween is getting closer, and we have no plans.  Or costumes.  Southern Honey has the better part of a pretty kickass Punisher going, but it doesn’t make much sense to finish it if we haven’t got anywhere to go.  I have bits and pieces of a pirate wench outfit, but I’m not inclined to buy the rest if I’m not going to wear it.  Alas.

“Castle” just kicked in.  Gotta love a TV series where the main character dresses up like a previous character he played on TV and his TV daughter gives him crap for it.  “1, there are no cows in space… And didn’t you wear that like five years ago?”  Brilliant!  *grins*

In all seriousness, I love Halloween on television.  The integration of costumes, silliness, and serious plot lines simply leads to fantastic story lines.  Well, it can, anyway.  Sometimes it just goes overboard, but I think that’s the beauty of Halloween.

We’re trying to figure out what to do for Halloween.  There’s a club in town that’s having a costume contest, but it’s a new spot, so there’s no telling if it will actually be any fun — and will probably be filled with college kids, since it’s just off-campus.  But it’s something to do and would be fun.  So, maybe?

I’d hate to let Halloween pass us by…

Of Dolls and Moral Dilemmas

I thought I was finished for the night with that wordy post on the satanic nature of butterflies (heehee!), but then I watched tonight’s episode of “Dollhouse” and had to come back here.

When I watch a show for the long haul — a show with an overarching story line in addition to a weekly plot — I generally find myself looking for character depth.  The only reason to become emotionally invested in it is if I feel some compelling connection to the men, women, aliens and supernatural creatures I see on the screen.  Without an emotional connection to them, even a good plot becomes dull and tiresome.

“Dollhouse” had, in previous episodes, moments of brilliance.  Whedon’s typically zingy one-liners and some nifty plot twists carried the day when I couldn’t quite make a connection.  Several characters seemed very one-dimensional, and there were a lot of blank spots — why were some of the dolls there in the house?  What brought them to the point where they were willing to give up years of their lives in exchange for being pimped out like high-priced escorts?  What made others decide to find a job as shepherd of human sheep?

As a result, tonight’s episode kind of blew me away.

Don’t read any further if spoilers make you sad.

Tonight we finally got an explanation of why Sierra is in the house.  We got a glimpse of what Victor is running from.  And there was this tiny glimpse of hope for the human being that Topher could one day become.

Topher, I think, has been the most one-dimensional character of all.  There have been no real changes in the way he behaves or thinks — we just get the overbearing, egotistical, arrogant supernerd who is completely certain that he is always the most intelligent person in the room, on top of being the smartest.  He’s never shown any signs of recognizing the difference between the two.

That was what made tonight’s episode so compelling.  Tonight, Topher’s faith in himself, his surety of the rightness of what he does, was shaken to the core.  He found himself caring what happens to at least one of the dolls and feeling responsible for the situation she was in.  And he found that maybe, just maybe, he has a moral compass after all.

You see, Topher brought Sierra into the dollhouse.  She was a huge challenge for him, an intellectual puzzle: his very own paranoid schizophrenic to make whole, at least temporarily.  But she’s almost his finest creation because he’s made her functional again.

Unfortunately, there’s something wrong with her.  When  he looks into it (at Echo’s urging),  he finds that the customer was her doc at the psych ward, who was drugging her.  She was never schizo at all.  But he wants her imprinted and sent to him for good.

Now Topher knows the truth, and suddenly he has to deal with the fact that he wiped Sierra under false pretenses and that she’s not what any of them thought in the beginning.  Plus the fact that he’s been sending her on engagements with the freak of nature.  He’s aided and abetted this guy in a really nasty plan to mind-fuck Sierra over and over and over.

He makes a decision when he is ordered (by an admittedly drunk and pissed Adelle.  Things go south.  And suddenly Topher is taken out of his lab and plunged into the reality of what he’s set in motion.  It’s not a pretty picture.

When all is said and done, Topher admits that he is no longer sure of what he thought he knew: that the dolls are happy, that he is doing good work.  He’s shaken deep down in a way we’ve never seen before.  And I loved every minute of it.  Even the one (or three) where I cried.

Thank you, Joss Whedon, for reminding me why I enjoy your shows and your characters!

And, while I’m at it, a tiny tidbit from “Project Runway,” one of my guilty pleasures:

“Irina’s actually a good designer.  The only problem with her is that she’s a bitch.”  Nicholas

Butterflies

“They’re just little flying spawns of Satan!”  From an episode of “Jeopardy”

Kittehs!!!

I went to pick up the kittehs today and brought them home.  It’s really great to have furry ones around the house again.

They both have colds, but it’s unlikely that they have a virus like Titus and Lucius, so the antibiotics we have for them should clear that up shortly.  Which is good, because Prometheus is sneezing every time he turns around, poor guy.  Seriously, when we were fixing dinner, he just sat in the kitchen floor and sneezed pretty much nonstop the whole time.

I’m trying to make sure they get enough to eat and drink and to monitor their consumption.  If they’re getting sicker, I want to know in plenty of time to take care of things.

They’re total kittens, though.  One minute they’re all energy, the next they’re snuggled up to you snoring.  Prometheus in particular snores; I think it’s the congestion.

I’m already sporting my battle scars.  I had on a dress shirt when I went to pick them up (forgot my jacket at work), and Prometheus taught me a lesson there.  I have three lovely claw marks down the front of my sternum, with the middle one deep enough to draw blood.  I look like someone mistook me for a cadaver and tried to cut me open before I was dead.  It’s not a cute look.  Plus I’m going to have to wear turtlenecks or something until it heals.

On the writing front, I put together a very brief synopsis of my novel for my NaNo page.  It’s the first time I’ve managed to articulate the plot in a shortened form, so that makes me feel a bit better about things.  A bunch of WKU students are doing a write-in tomorrow afternoon.  If I didn’t have to be at work, I would definitely be on campus instead!

I know, November doesn’t start for more than a week.  The write-in is just designed to let writers meet-and-greet and do some writing exercises, whip out a few plot bunnies, throw down an outline or two.  It would be beyond useful if I could make it, but it’s just not going to happen this time.  I think I would do better if I had someone outside myself to be accountable to.

I need to get in gear on the scene summaries if I’m going to have a novel’s worth by next Sunday.  I really only have the first tidbits of the novel set out right now.  I still need to get into the meat of things, with assassination attempt number one, a blossoming romance between the assassin and his target, and their race into the desert.  Then comes the denouement with the army and guild banging on their front door and the decision that must be made: to kill or not to kill.  Now that is the question.

And no, I’m not going to tell you.

Yes, the idea of an assassin falling for a target has been done.  There’s more to it than that, I promise, but it’s hard to get into in the short term.  Trust me.  There’s public corruption, political intrigue, and violence to offset the mushy stuff.  Of which I hope there is not too much — even I don’t want to read that crap, and I’m the one who’ll be writing it.

I’m going to need to bang out more than 1000 words a day to get things done.  Although if it goes as smoothly as this journal entry, that might not be too bad.  I suspect I’m going to have to lock myself in the bedroom each night for an hour or two so I don’t get distracted by the kittehs.  Or Southern Honey.

Speaking of kittehs, here is a brief moment of cuteness brought to you by Konica Minolta, makers of our trusty digital camera (and no, they’re not paying me anything to say that):

From left to right: Tesla, Southern Honey, and Prometheus.