Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

A good turn-around week, to some extent.

Great meeting Monday.

Big work document got shoved out the door. Of course, I’m still behind on everything else at work.

Laundry is on-going. The cow mouse pictured here is, in fact, fresh from the dryer. My laundry sorting of “Darks, lights, whites, reds, cat toys” apparently missed this guy.

I’m almost caught up with my online writing course. I’m really enjoying it and getting more out of it than I expected. Hurray!

Chicken fajita quesadillas (with home-grown green peppers and remarkably spicy jalapenos!) for dinner. Green peppers will be on the list of plants to grow again next year.

One pie is out of the oven, another is in the oven. A pumpkin pie will help the Fop survive the weekend allllll alone.

I’m leaving for the weekend tomorrow afternoon! I haven’t packed yet. But I have pie.

I’m gearing up for Nanowrimo… next month, 50,000 words!

cooking, gardening, nanowrimo, random, writing

I’m apparently having one of those years that flies by. It seems like everything has gone very quickly and all the time I thought I had is also already gone. Such is life, I guess.

The Philadelphia area is threatened with promises of a harsh winter. The local news stations are adding to the hype, naturally. The Farmer’s Almanac actually has us on the border of the cold wet and the cold dry areas so who knows what we’ll actually end up with. I’d certainly prefer more snow to less snow but no one is surprised by this.

I didn’t get very far on Nanowrimo this year. I haven’t had a very productive month as it’s been whipping by. I guess the fact that we were away for the first week didn’t help. I finished a knitting project last night and played with some swatches for some lace patterns with varying degrees of success. I really would appreciate consistent terminology and notation in knitting. I’m told that’s a total pipe dream, but I dream of a day when I don’t have to decipher each knitting pattern according to author’s birth sign, region of origin, phase of the moon and account for current sunspot activity. (Hyperbole, it makes you funnier.)

I have successfully avoided malls all weekend! I did a little online gift shopping and a lot of browsing. I am taking it slowly but I expect the avalanche of the holiday season will hit me soon enough.

holidays, nanowrimo, random, winter

Coffee is good stuff. In fact, I’ve been so productive this weekend that I’m going to make the big pot of coffee this week to see if I can continue the momentum. Friday was Social, Saturday was Creative and today was Productive. Monster Cat is done for the week though I’m still prepping the posts. Laundry is, of course, on-going but big box store and grocery shopping is done. The kittens have been good this weekend and, of course, Mr. Paw has been a love dove.

I’ve re-started Nanowrimo. I’m vaguely on track if I stick to a revised pace.

(soft-core spoilers for The Fourth Kind ahead)

We went to see The Fourth Kind last night. I would have enjoyed the movie more if I’d kept up with scuttlebutt around the film. I’d only seen a couple of trailers earlier in the season. So I spent most of the movie dissatisfied with their sources, wanting to follow up on their data and see their bibliography, so to speak. I left less convinced of alien visitations than before, despite Milla Jovovich’s not-so-gentle prodding in the other direction. A few quick searches once I got home and my suspicions were confirmed. Disappointing, but I guess in part it was my own fault for not keeping up with my movie gossip.

coffee, the fourt kind, the fourth kind, weekend, movies, writing

You might be crazy if:
a) you get to mid-November and think, “Yeah, I can still finish Nanowrimo.”
b) you get to mid-November and think, “Yeah, I can still finish Nanowrimo.” and then you change your novel concept and start over.
c) you plan to start and finish Nanowrimo in 2 weeks while working on several other projects plus a somewhat unpredictable work schedule.
d) you think the easiest thing you have to do in the next 2 weeks will be writing 3500 words a day and to prove that you write 5000 words to get started.

So yes, I am indeed doing Nanowrimo this year, I’m just off to a late start. I’m at 5054/50,000. A week on a boat and then a somewhat crazy week of other stuff left me a wee bit behind, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem. Right?

[insert maniacal laughter here]

nanowrimo, writing

“We shall tear this toy to shreds!” declares Abby. “Shreds, I say!!!”

Or rather, the roses are still blooming. Through rain and gray and temperatures in the 50s, the rose bush out front carries on as if it were still August while the climbing rose out back is starting to peter out. We are getting a proper autumn here this year! YAY!

This week has been really busy… work is in a whirlwind, kittens are little tornadoes of energy and my brain hurts quite literally. Oh, and laundry is on-going. Why is laundry *always* on-going? And did I mention we’re going away next week? Tadcaster Cruise. I’ll be working on vacation again, which doesn’t bother me too much as it beats coming home to a huge mess. Plus it gives me the excuse to bring my laptop so I can start working on my Nanowrimo project.

The messages from the cat planet were strong today. Quite strong. Today’s kitten “toys” included: a post-it note of unknown origin, Tennyson, a bottle cap, sister’s tail and my slipper. I also had to defend myself while eating my lunch. The girls have figured out the telltale signs of eating cereal with milk and swarmed me. Tennyson, of course, took a stoic yet expectant pose by my elbow. The little fuzzy ones, though, climbed all over my keyboard and arms in an attempt to get into my bowl. I had to use one hand to defend my cereal and the other to eat.

There are a few more kitten photos up over in their Flickr set.

In the interest of completely random, UserFriendly’s link of the day was an amusing site: Cheese or Font? Dreda, I thought of you immediately.

In other news, NASA would like to reassure us that the world won’t be ending in 2012. [Giggle alert: the linked article uses the phrase "fictional fiction" - you have been warned.] From the article: “People are very gullible,” he added. “It a sad testimonial that you need NASA to tell you the world’s not going to end.” Sad, yes, and media-hyped to a frightening degree. We are also the country where the media went to NORAD to ask about their planned course of action when they thought some little kid had taken off in a balloon the other week.

“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” growls Tasha.
“GRRRrrrrRRRRrrrrrrrr…” she adds more emphatically.
autumn, bengals, kittens, random, roses

Apparently I have been forgiven for the trip to the vet today. I have a large, gray cat in my lap trying to help me with my re-write for class tomorrow. He’s warm, cute and purring, so I guess I win. It’s amazing the positions he finds comfortable too… curled up with his head ont he desk and the rest of him in my lap. I’m like 3 miles away from my keyboard right now. Miss Evil is still grouching on the bed but her vet visit was more taxing and she has earned the right to grouch.

Procrastination is a good thing.

I will be doing Nanowrimo this year despite a long laundry list of reasons to skip it this year. I don’t expect to finish or hit 50,000 words this year, but it’ll be good to use the momentum of Nanowrimo to get something started. My novel can help me procrastinate doing my resume and my resume can help me procrastinate writing my novel. And when both need to be procrastinated, there’s always my next essay revision for class. I may have stumbled upon the perfect procrastinatory productivity loop.

Right, back to my essay.

cats, evil, photographs, procrastination, tennyson

I finished my 50,000 words yesterday at 7:33 p.m. I actually ended up a little over since I was in the middle of a rather pivotal conversation at the time. I hit 50k at a good point but the story isn’t over. I still need to add a couple more scenes to resolve the plot. I think I’m going to wait to do that in the Spring when I pick this up again. Right now I’m still feeling rather like I had two finals and a final paper due yesterday – which is too say, recovering.

So, 10 days ago I wrote that I didn’t like my story much anymore and I started mentioning to friends that I didn’t really expect to finish. What changed? The plot hit its stride and got interesting. It’s still not high art, but it’s definitely less trite than I’d feared. So not only was it an awesome experience that I hope to repeat next year, I have a large body of text to work with and try to work into a finished product after a requisite waiting period. The waiting period is definitely necessary. I need to step away from it completely so that I can see whether it is actually a cohesive story and world when I reread it. Ideally I’ll go back to it with fresh-ish eyes in April or so…

So what did I write? It’s a little, still untitled fantasy novel about a world just to the other side of our own. No, you can’t read it yet. Wait for summer after my editing exercise. I won’t even let the Fop read any of it.

I learned so much doing this writing project.

• Guess what? I can write a solid 2000 words a day even when I have no idea what to write!
• I need to get to know my characters and world before I can really get into the plot. The first 14-20k words were still part of the book but I think another time I’ll do more pre-writing rather than just jumping in.
• Writing is good for my brain.
• I can kick out high volumes of text when my plot is interesting and the deadline looms. I wrote about 14,000 words in the last 24 hours of my writing. (Just look at that graph!)
• I can send my inner editor on vacation for a month but sometimes there are ramifications of that in other parts of my life.

It was awesome. It’s like I remembered how to write over the course of 50,000 words. The difference between the flow at the beginning and the end is huge I think. Now we need a National Novel Editing Month scheduled for May…

finished, nanowrimo, novel, victorious, writing

I finally hit the halfway point in my writing for Nanowrimo. This is farther than I’ve ever gotten before! YAY!

However, I’m behind. I’m also starting to not like the plot and how it’s developing, or not developing as the case may be. I didn’t get a lot of writing done today but I did do some outlining in the hopes that it will help me fly through the rest of the week. My original plan had me not writing on Thanksgiving but I think I’m going to try to write that day anyway in the interest of actually finishing. It’s definitely an interesting and productive experience – I’ve learned a lot having gotten this far finally, despite no longer liking my own book. Hopefully that will change by the end of the week so I can finish this with a bang!

nanowrimo, writing

It’s been a very gray Monday here so I am combating the drear with a very orange pumpkin! It’s a proper November day though – dim, threatening to be damp and generally conducive to naps, hot soup and building fires. Of course, I haven’t been able to do any of these things since I’m working today.

I had a most excellent and very busy weekend! Here’s the summary of my whirlwind tour for those of you interested:

• Thursday night I flew up to New Hampshire. Jon picked me up and we hauled K out to dinner at a fabulous Mexican restaurant in Concord.
• Friday morning, my mom picked me up for our adventures in Portland. I spent a lot of money on an embroidery sewing machine. I’ll be picking it up when I drive up for the holidays in December. Lunch Friday consisted of Maine Italians which made me really, really happy. Friday afternoon, I had a conference call that I couldn’t really miss, unfortunately. Friday night was spent hanging with the parental units and eating yummy hamburgers.



• Saturday morning we went back into Portland to go to an Italian grocery we hadn’t had time to go to the day before. Lunch Saturday was fresh mozzarella, Italian bread and bits of prosciutto. We made some really tasty cookies and fiddled about with my mom’s embroidery machine for a bit in the afternoon. The marvelous slyppi whisked me off to her brother’s house for a birthday party for her nephew (who is now 4!). We had a lovely time – much wine was had by all and I enjoyed meeting more of her brother’s in-laws. They are a fun family. We spent the night at slyppi’s dad’s condo in the Old Port.
• Sunday morning we wandered about a few shops in the Old Port then had brunch with our hosts. The Porthole makes awesome breakfast. We hung out with slyppi’s dad and M a little longer then headed towards Manchester to drop me off at the airport… of course, we had to stop along the way for a little, very successful shopping!

So all in all it was an excellent weekend. The weather up north was mild yet chilly – just biting enough to remind us that it was November. I took some photos in Windham and the Old Port that I’ll post eventually too.

Somewhere in there I found time to write about 1000 words for Nanowrimo. I’m about 2000 words behind now, but my plan is to make that up this week, hopefully by the weekend. If not, the weekend will be a big word-count push. I’m getting really excited about the world I’m creating as well as the story that’s wrapping around it. I still have no idea about a couple of key plot points, but they’ll come eventually… I hope!

maine, nanowrimo, new hampshire, old port, photographs, photography, sewing, travel, weather, weekend, writing

When we were up in New England, we got to Maine after dusk and as such I only took a few photos and I like … 2 of them. I’m not a big fan of flash but I kind of like how this photo came out though the center leaves have a little too much light.

Remember to turn your clocks back tonight and be careful in the evenings this week! Daylight savings time always screws people up – auto and pedestrian fatalities go up significantly around the changing of the clocks. There’s nothing like artificially shifting our day by an hour to muck everything up.

I’ve been writing a lot today… I’m up to 6092 words so I’m currently on pace. I’m hoping to get 10k done by the end of this weekend so I have a little bit of a margin of error in case of writer’s block. So far I’m amused by the little world I’m building. The nanowrimo web site is slow as molasses going up hill in Maine in January, but my profile is here – drop me a comment or e-mail with your profile info if you’re also doing the race.

autumn, daylight savings time, fall back, leaves, maine, nanowrimo