go to barnes and noble, baby!!

take a look at the icon in the lower right of the page.

well, i bet you are wondering how i did on nanowrimo. truth is, i think iím almost done. of course, the other truth is, after the first 30k, everything started falling apart and i was just typing words for word count sake. i even retold stories from my blog, last night. i stayed up until about 3:30 am. i went back and read a bunch of my old blog entries, and then retold them. part of me feels like iím cheating, because i already wrote those stories. but then, part of me says ìfuck off! so iím using ideas from past stories? they are my words and i am retyping them!î which is true. and nothing comes out the same way when you write it a second time. i can tell you, there is not a single word in my story that did not come from me. as a matter of fact, i am writing this blog entry in my story now. why? because i donít have time to waste words, people! and like i said, the story has pretty much fallen apart. iím ok with that, iím going to continue on with it, but iíve made some changes, and i have some new ideas. iím going to write the whole damn thing, believe me. and iíll probably use some of my stories from the blog, changed to fit into lucyís world. write what you know, right? thatís what life experiences are for.
things iíve learned:

• i love to write.
• i want to write for a living.
• you have to write every day. donít take too many days off in a row, in the middle of a story, youíll lose your flow.
• as crappy as you think something is, while you write it, when you go back and read it, you find itís not crap at all.
• characters really do take over the story, and decide what is going to happen. i thought it was cliche, but itís not.
• just because you donít want any romance in the story, does not mean that lucy is going to listen to you.
• sometimes, characters change their names halfway through the book.
• and, again, i love to write. i think that maybe, itís possible, that just maybe i might eventually get to do it for a living. you never know. stranger things have happened.

you know, the first half of the 50k i wrote, for nanowrimo, wasn’t all that hard. but this second half. it’s hard! it’s crap. all the things i thought would happen, are sounding trite and boring. i no longer have the momentum of the ‘beginning.’ i guess i am working my way to end of the first third of a book. and maybe that’s the real tough part. i don’t know. i’m spending a lot more time thinking, and less time typing, than i did in the beginning. in the beginning, it was dying to get out.
anyway, not going to be too much updating done, until i finish this thing. sunday night seems awfully soon. and time travels faster when you are vacation, that’s a proven fact. you’ll hear from me again, when i break 30k.

i love chris, the nanowrimo guy…
“And if you, like me, are somewhere far below 50,000, know that the week of our heroic, come-from-behind victory has officially begun. This is not just something we’ll do. It’s something we are. We’re last-minute writers, quick-witted storytellers, and procrastinating dreamers. Dreamers who are wide awake now, and flying towards the finish line. ”

i have more than half of my word count left to write, and it is the last week of nanowrimo. am i insane? yes, i believe i am. for pete’s sake, what was i thinking? i guess i was thinking i needed a little pressure.
today is the last day of ramadan, which means that soon, fee will be able to pig out!! like a hungry, vegetarian pig. and, in celebration, all non-muslim americans will pig out on thursday. in a show of religious tolerance. because that’s what america’s all about right? tolerance. sure. actually, i believe america, and thanksgiving, is all about turkey. for me, it’s all about stuffing and pie. i’m in charge of the pies every year. and i think this is due to be one of my good years. every few years, i start to get cocky, and think i’ve got this pie baking shit down pat. and something bad happens to humble me. last year i decided to forgo the pecan pie, which i don’t like anyway, for another family recipe my mom really likes. my grandma loretta’s apple cake. it was a disaster!! i don’t remember what the cake is supposed to be like… but my cake was mush, and tasted like… paste. the pumpkin pie was fine. but a few years before that, i forgot to put sugar in the pumpkin pie. it tasted like … again… paste. this year, i’m sticking to the traditional pumpkin and pecan pies. nothing fancy or new. so i should be ok, knock on wood. like i said, i’m due for a year of successful baking, after last years horrific apple cake debacle. if someone wants something else, let them make it themselves. the best part about it is, i’m making one pie for the family and one for me. yummmm… i could live on pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top. [don’t say it, fee. i know what you are thinking.]

what does this mean? i don’t know… i was just killing time.

Your soul is bound to the Yellow Rose: The
Gentle.
“I’ve travelled through the land of
surrender and seen it all. I throw my heart
out and keep my head up, and now I travel
through the land of peace.”
The Yellow Rose is associated with friendship,
intuition, and fun. It is governed by the
goddess Hestia and its sign is The Intertwined
Rings, or True Friendship.
As a Yellow Rose, you always look out for your
friends. You would much rather have strong
ties with friends than a single tie with a
lover and your devotion to your friends is
clear. You may have great intuition and be
able to read emotions clearly, but sometimes
you can seem distant yourself.

What Rose Is Your Soul Bound To?
brought to you by Quizilla

i am a product junkie. i admit it. a product, for the sake of this entry, is something one uses on one’s skin, body, hair, face… whatever, to make oneself more attractive, or perhaps to look younger. or to make one’s hair shinier. or all of the above. i don’t include makeup in that category. it has it’s own special category called “makeup.” i’m less of a makeup junkie. although i do like nail polish. i mostly only wear mascara. but it’s good mascara. or should i say bad mascara? anyway, i’m in good company. i was reading another journal today, about The Soap. That’s what she called it. The Soap. it’s a japanese soap you have to order online, and it’s $34. and the thing is, i can believe it. i can believe it’s that good, and worth $34 dollars. it’s supposed to last 3 months, which is $11 a month. so i’m curious about The Soap, and i do a little reading about it. now i want The Soap. why not? don’t i deserve to glow? i think i do. i just know that this Soap could change my life. it could make everything better. but am i buying the Soap? no. because the IRS has stolen all the joy from my life. they keep me from things like fabulous, expensive, japanese soap. bastards.
speaking of soaps, here’s another one i love. this one’s for the entire you, and it’s absolutely delightful. it’s chocolate milk soap. it’s french. or at least half the label is in french, so maybe it’s canadian, i don’t know. it makes my regular liquid shower soap feel like gas station restroom hand soap. i can’t describe it, it’s just so … rich and creamy. the chocolate scent is very very subtle. and it comes in other “flavors” all of them in a glass milk bottles, pump sold separately. but it’s $27 a bottle. so it’s not my every day soap. it’s my couple times a week soap. my “sunday night too bad i have to go back to work i need a treat” soap. maybe if i am good, santa will bring me another bottle of chocolate milk soap for christmas. i can just see santa, in the guise of my mom, Pattie, saying to herself “twenty seven dollars? FOR SOAP?” best we don’t tell santa pattie about the other Soap.
one thing the irs cannot take away from me is my girl shanti. shanti does my eyebrows. she used to wax more of me, but those luxuries were sacrificed as well. all i know, is things better be looking up by late spring, i am NOT going to shave my legs all summer. however, the irs can do a lot of things to me, but they cannot make me give up the brow wax. never underestimate the power of a well groomed eyebrow people. it makes all the difference in the world. more difference, i imagine, than any japanese soap. not that i would know. *pout*
i saw shanti this morning, got my brows done. they look fabulous. before i left the house, i read some ¸berblog entries. my friends had written about their ecological concerns, maximizing benefits while reducing costs, building communities of like-minded people and spiritual quests to shed the ego. [i haven’t figured out, yet, what that means, i’ll let you know when kam explains it to me.] and what do i post about? expensive Products.
god i love being shallow.

oh you KNOW i’m procrastinating now… i just spent an hour researching robot exclusion files. i have now told all spiders and web crawlers to BUZZ OFF. no more sneaking around, looking for links and email addresses. ya bastards.

i’m on vacation!! i’m on vacation!!
you know, i was thinking about it, and i cannot remember the last time i had a solid week off. i think it was last christmas. i’ve been taking days here and there, but i haven’t had a whole week off. i’m even taking an extra day, monday dec. 1st. i marked out this PTO time in august. i’ve been waiting forever to be on vacation. and i worked my tail off today, getting my list of to-do’s done. which is good, because people were starting to comment on the tail.
so, lots of writing to be done this week. gotta put my nose to the grindstone. or, as dr. stevil and i decided, i have to put my nose to the rhinestone. because that sounds prettier. so instead of writing, i came home and added a Currently Reading booklist like loon’s. i’ve always been jealous of her. i want to be just like her if i grow up. not when. if.
and, in other news, louise set up her blog. you should go over there and look at the pretty jewelry she makes. such an artist!! i’m hoping she soon puts up pictures of her newly adopted cats. one’s name is fred, and the last i heard, the other one’s name might be daphne. her website is called vratch, but i can’t remember what that means. i’m going to link to it anyway!!