It's 5:00 AM somewhere

I know that it was a mistake to fall asleep at 7 o'clock last night. I know I will regret it this afternoon when I've been awake since 2 o'clock in the morning. However. The hours between two and six were not a complete waste. I did not spend them, much as I might have been tempted, falling down the rabbit hole of Reddit or YouTube. I did something productive beneath the light of my brand-new desk light.

 I have always known that I wanted to write a book that started with an expletive, and I've toyed with it a few times over the years since I had that idea, but I never spent more than a few minutes thinking about it.

Last night/this morning as I lay awake, I saw the first scene in my head, I heard the words on the page and I jumped up to stumble (it was two in the morning) to my desk. I know how it begins, which is only slightly better than knowing how it all ends.

I needed a name for my character and suddenly Mina existed. She is running from someone and suddenly Tharin existed.

I don't know who these characters are yet, or what story awaits them. I wonder if Mina will be anything like her literary namesake. Unfortunately they are in a long queue of ideas for books and stories so it may be some time before I can discover the answers.  For now. Time to go to the job that pays the bills. 

YAWN!

Me at 7:00:  Ooh pizza sounds good.

Me at 8:30:  Blech  pizza is gross.

NaNo...oh no

Hello.


So there's this thing called NaNoWriMo. Where literaryily insane people try to write 50,000 words in just 30 days. I'm not sure how it has escaped my notice all these years. Especially when you consider the fact that I did work in a bookstore for 4 1/2 years, but there ya go.

A few months ago, shortly before moving #3,  The roommate and I were discussing various writing projects. She was recently having been inspired to begin her first novel) and I've eager to get back to writing again, but lacking the motivation/inspiration/kick-in-the-butt to sit at my desk and write.

Somehow we conceived of our own writing group and Since November fell conveniently after our Halloween/New House Party, and well before any holiday travel plans, NaNoWriMo became a frequent boogeyman in our house.

This has to be one of the scariest, most terrifying things I have ever had to deal with. Worse than a haunted tour of an Edinburgh graveyard, or waiting at the grocery store for your debit card to go through the day before payday

 Its...A DEADLINE!


Let me put it this way. 100,000 words is the standard for manuscript length for most publishing houses. NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write HALF of an entire book in 30 days. Something my above average procrastination skills have only ever managed to accomplish in a matter of years.

People do this.

Voluntarily.

For FUN?!?!??!

*I*  agreed to do this?!


Why did I agree to this?  I wasn't that drunk at the Halloween party. Hell, I wasn't even drunk!


Don't panic.. Don't panic.. Don't panic.. Don't panic.. Don't panic.. Don't panic.. Don't panic.. Don't panic.. 



Don't mind me, I'll just be the girl, huddled around her laptop, eating her own hair cursing the inadequacies of Google and thesaurus.com calling out random brobdingnagian words, ranting about creative flow vs. the writing applications of Occam's razor and figuring out how to pay for all the therapy I'm going to need to deal with my kakorrhaphiophobia 


*Deep Breath*....*DEEP...Breath*



Okay back to work now.




Here's hoping my fingers don't freeze and my brain doesn't boil.

The most beautiful thing in the world

One of the most beautiful sights that I have seen in quite a while has to be a pile of unpacked and  flattened boxes.

Yes, the unpacking has begun. If fact, I don't have that many boxes left. Although I cannot speak for my roommate.

When we first looked at this house, I thought that having the office space right off my bedroom would be a bit of a pain, but after a few weeks, I am beginning to realize the benefits.  Having the computer right there, it's pretty hard to ignore. And while the organizing and unpacking takes precedence over my writing, I can feel the siren's call of the keyboard and the urge to head for that shore is growing strong.  

I will be very glad when all the boxes are in the bin and I won't feel guilty for spending the evening brainstorming with my roommate or actually working on my next book.

In the meantime I wanted to give a short update on the new place.

The yard is massive and the dog LOVES it.

The cats have realized that there is grass outside and not a breezeway--so the opening of doors has become a little more dangerous and Zoe the escape artist has been apprehended twice already.

 Mary and I have now learned one very important rule of owning a pool--you cannot forget the chlorine or algicide--EVER.

Yesterday my mother came over to take the tour and said one of the best things she could have to make me feel even better about our new living arrangement.   "I'm jealous"

Yep, it made my day.  

Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have time to write up a book review or two and post them. 

Thanks for reading

-A

The Law of Inevitable Needing aka. Why Moving Sucks

As I mention in my last post, we're moving again. The roommate and I are deep in the "Oh-My-God-we're-never-gonna-get-all-this-crap-out-of-here!!!!" stage of packing.

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? We know the move is coming. We've known for MONTHS The widget on my phone has been counting down the days and we've been anxiously, excitedly repeating that countdown like a mantra to keep our sanity as we attempt to deal the the anguish of living in this craptacular apartment for a blessedly short fraction of sample a remainder of the month. .

I don't mind the packing, or the unpacking. but its the actual lugging of all my worldly possessions from one place to another that I find to be painful. Its confronting the reality that I own a lot of crap. and I mean A LOT.

How did this happen? how did I become such a sucker for all the marketing and impulse-purchasing? When I did become such a possessor of things? When did surround myself with all this stuff?

Experienced movers will understand that I'm in that "Did I really think I needed that when I bought it, and I why God why have I held on that thing for so long, and I should just donate everything to Goodwill and feel good about myself-but then really I'd still have to actually move all this stuff-just to Goodwill instead of my new place"--stage of moving.


The part of the move when you seriously consider selling everything you own on EBay--like that one guy who actually did it-- and more and more you find yourself considering a commune, or an ashram or just moving to Russia---except, then I'd have to learn more Russian and I'm just not that great with the Slavic languages.

The most annoying aspect of the moving processes--especially when you have a lot of time before the actual move is finding the balance of waiting to pack and actually packing.

There is a sort of Murphy’s law of packing---that I call the "Law of Inevitable needing" You have things. you pack those things. The NEXT day you realize that you need those things which you have just packed, and you don't have a friggin clue which box the things you need are in. It doesn't matter what that thing it is. It could be a silver collectors spoon your great-Aunt gave you that was given to her by P.T. Barnum in 1912 or the Ziploc bags. Even if you haven't used that thing or even looked at it in years! The day after you pack it will be the day that Antique Roadshow comes to town, or you decide to take a sandwich for lunch.

The law of inevitable needing.



I can feel the stress rising like a barometer. The roommate is out of town (She had the chance to go to DRAGON-CON for pretty much FREE!) I'm on my way out the door to meet the cable guy at the new place, and the movers come tomorrow.

At least tomorrow night I will be enjoying my inaugural night in the new house and hopefully all that will be left is a car load or two of miscellaneous bits.

By next weekend the move will be 100% complete and we can start focusing on our housewarming/Halloween party that we hope will go down in history (and not in flames)


Wish us luck!

Moving, Moving, Moving

In 36 days, I will be moving, again. This will make the third house-shift in twelve months and then I am done!

 

It’s my own fault really; I cursed myself. As a former military-brat, I was used to moving every six-months-two years and the idea of having lived in a single apartment for more than four years had my fingers itching for box tape and indelible markers. By the time my roommate and I found a place we both agreed would be acceptable, I was nearly in a fetal position crying “ready to move, ready to move, ready to move”  

But then we had (unknowingly) made the fateful decision to move into a complex managed by a woman who I am convinced is an actual psychopath. At the very least, she is a pathological liar.

"Two-bedroom with washer and dryer hook-ups on the first floor? Yes we have those."  LIE

"Available for your move in date? Yes" LIE

"Actually, the one I thought had hook-ups doesn’t but we’ll have one in 45 days." LIE

"The one that is coming open is going to need a lot of repairs." LIE

In the end, we had to move into an apartment without hook-ups for three months and then move into a second apartment-on the second floor- and our apartment ended up being a three-bedroom. Which Miss-schiz gave us for a two-bedroom price. For the inconvenience

To make things worse, the above examples are just the move-in related lies that we have caught her in. There have been so many others.

Now we are at the end of that lease and my roommate and I are ready to run for the hills into any available apartment.

But we don’t have to!   

As it turns out, a co-worker of a friend of my roommates will have a rental-house with a vacancy at the exact time of our lease’s expiration. AND there’s a yard with a fence, and a pool and two parking spaces right out front and it’s not a mile-long walk down/up a hill to take the dog out or check the mail. 

So in 36 days the lease will be up and we'll be done! and I will never move again...for at least 3 years.

I’m so excited!…and I just can’t hide it! 

Please, don’t start singing that song!

NO! Really. Please! Don’t!!

Okay…. I’m going to go pack now. 

Dear Windows Vista. I think it is past time we parted ways. I never really wanted you in my life in the first place. You were just there. The creepy OS I had to put up with until something better came along. And now it has. I am leaving you for windows 7. Don't bother backing up your things. Just get out. 

It's not me. It's you.