Beware the wall of text!

I should probably post here more often. But since I haven't posted for a few months, here's a recap!

In October, I got to go to New Mexico for work. I went there several years back, and fell in love with the food there, particularly stuffed sopapillas. So I insisted that we go out to a Mexican place one of the nights we were there, and I got my stuffed sopapillas. Om nom nom.

Also in October, Jeremy's first novella, "Kensei," came out for e-readers! It's bundled with two other novellas as Cobalt City Rookies from Timid Pirate Publishing. All three of the novellas feature teenaged super hero protagonists. I have, of course, read his novella several times, and I finally got started reading the other two recently. So far, super awesome!

We spend November working on our novels for NaNoWriMo. This was the fourth year I attempted it, and once again, I did not finish. This time, it was because my laptop died a week before the end of November. Though I ended up buying a new laptop on Cyber Monday, and had it two days later, it was really a disheartening blow to my potential progress. I'd still like to finish the novel, but I haven't gotten back to it yet.

I also had the big EtsyRain holiday show in November, which was excellent! This was the first year the show was in McCaw Hall, and the new venue was spectacular! My sales were also great, and the new item I debuted, wrist warmers, proved quite popular.

A few weeks later, I sold my crocheted crafts at GeekFest, which was put on by Seattle Browncoat Charities. It was a ton of fun to finally do a show where I didn't have to try to explain things like Cthulhu. :) Also, Jeremy got to see Kirby Krackle, ended up buying all of their music on his phone while listening to their show, and then playing it for me. Yay, nerdy music! (Granted, we had seen the lead singer from Kirby Krackle about a week previous, which was part of the reason that Jeremy went to see them play at GeekFest.)

We spent Christmas proper in Seattle, but then left a couple of days later for a grand tour of the Midwest. We flew to St. Louis and spent one night there. The next morning, we loaded up the car with my mom and youngest sister, and drove to Kansas City, where we spent two nights at my middle sister's brand new house, which I refer to as the mansion. It has an indoor pool. That's really all that you need by way of explanation. I managed to pull a muscle in my leg from either swimming or going up and down the stairs the first day (possibly both), but I still went ice skating on the second day, which really didn't improve my leg any. But it eventually got better. We also got to watch Inception, Return of the Jedi, and Les Miserables while we were there.

After our two nights in Kansas City, we returned to St. Louis for another night, and did karaoke in my mom's living room. Because she found a karaoke machine at a yard sale for like $6, and it worked. The music selection was a bit slim, but that just meant we got to pick out ridiculous songs and sing them. Someone should have taped me and Megan trying to sing all five parts on a Spice Girls song. :)

We drove down to Carbondale for New Years Eve, where we played a ridiculous amount of Cards Against Humanity and hung out with my good friends there (except for Thor, who was sick). We went to lunch with my former boss's widow the next day, after I took Jeremy on a driving tour of Carbondale. I was a little surprised at how well I remembered how to get most places... but I guess I did live there for nine years!

Finally, we drove back up to St. Louis and stayed at my mom's for one more night, where we broke out the wine and played a wine-themed version of Monopoly. Much to his astonishment, Jeremy won the game after Mom and Megan decided to give up.

So now we're in 2013, and though I don't do resolutions or anything of the sort, I do at least have things in mind that I'm trying to do, like trying to budget and spend more carefully this year. I'm also trying to write more frequently (daily would be ideal) and keep my blogs more active. :) On the crafting front, I should probably figure out something new to start making this year. At the moment, I'm doing a bunch of custom work for friends and family, and then I need to restock all of the stuff that sold out at my shows. So it might take a while before I can start on new things. Or, depending on how some of the custom works goes, I might start making these things for my shop!

The weekend recap, now with 50% more content!

Despite being sick for the whole weekend, we had a lovely road trip around the Olympic Peninsula. We spent Friday driving around the southern and western sides, debating whether to stop in Aberdeen after I found out that Kurt Cobain was from there. Then we stopped off part of the way to Forks to look at the ocean, where I managed to cleverly fall off of a slippery tree trunk and skin my knee. We continued on to Forks to be ridiculous tourists. I was able to get a subtle Team Jacob shirt, while Jeremy got a slightly less subtle Cullen shirt, and also a funny "Tsunami Evacuation Plan" shirt. Because really? Tsunami? Bad times.

Eventually, under cover of darkness, we made our way to Neah Bay, where we were going to stay for the weekend. I say "under cover of darkness," but what I really mean is "on a really twisty road, while it was pitch black out." This involved a whole lot of squinting at signs, and hoping we weren't going to drive into the ocean. It all worked out in the end. :)

We spent Saturday finishing up our NaNo novels, since we had no TV, no internet, and no phone signals. Amazing how much you can get done with the distractions gone. I finished around 5, and Jeremy finished later in the evening, so I worked on a bunch of eyeball cat toys while he wrote. :)

Sunday, we managed to miss the turn we were supposed to take, which meant that instead of driving along the twisty coast road, we ended up on the twisty lake road, on the south side of Lake Crescent. Totally beautiful. :) We finally got to civilization in the form of Port Angeles, where we had phone signals and wi-fi! :) Wandered around a bit till I started feeling more sickly, and then headed back toward Seattle.

We got to pick Black back up on our way home, and got all settled in to the apartment to do more internet things, eat Chinese food, and play Rock Band. And it was good. :)

The noveling continues

I'm just shy of 40,000 words on my novel, and am well on pace to finish my 50,000 words by the end of the month. Of course, last night was when I got the first glimpse of just how much will be unwritten by the time I get to 50,000 words, as I have just started tapping into the fictional history part of the novel. I want to write pages and pages of history for this world that I've made up, but it really doesn't have a place in the narrative portion of the story.

I think that there are parts of my novel that will get yanked when I sit down to edit it, and maybe then the history can be worked in. But I think that what I'm really looking at is a whole other book for this fictional history... and of course, that's what my brain is stuck on right now. *sigh*

In other news, Jeremy and I have stumbled across a vast cat conspiracy. Whenever we are getting ready to go out of town, one of the cats gets sick. First it was Delilah, then it was Gabe, and now it's my new kitten, Black. :( I'm taking a short lunch today so that I can leave work early and take him to the vet, and Jeremy will bus straight to the vet from work. I have, of course, been freaking myself out by looking up what his symptoms might mean, and finding all sorts of gloom and doom. Hurrah for the internet, right?

Seeing as there are only 2 more cats who could possibly get sick to continue this trend, and only one more trip for us after this weekend, I'm hoping that our conspiracy is not real. I'm also grateful for the fact that we've managed to juggle the finances sick cats and Christmas shopping pretty successfully, and that D and Gabe are both better now.

Think good thoughts for my kitten, if you're so inclined. I would be thrilled if I get home to take him to the vet and he's already healthy again...

It's been a week...

And by that, I mean that it has been not a great awesome week, but also not a hugely crappy week. It's been some of both. Therefore, it's been a week.

1) Nearly ready for the EtsyRain Holiday Show tomorrow. Come out! Buy stuff! Get your Christmas shopping done! :)

2) I'm about 1,900 words shy of my personal goal for my NaNo word count. I managed to pound out 4,000 words on Wednesday, but then wasted about 45 minutes of potential writing time last night because I couldn't make myself write the next scene. I had ended the previous scene with this over the top, dramatic monologue, and I just couldn't help but think that whatever I wrote next would sound trite. I have to get to it, I know, but I needed the time to NOT have that monologue taunting me.

3) Cats seem to be doing well. *knock on wood* Gabe is eating again and seems a little less needy. He still hates us at pill time, and has not been enjoying his isolation chamber (a.k.a. the bathroom) during the day, but we want to be sure that he is, in fact, eating, drinking, and doing other things that cats ought to be doing.

4) We have plans to go to Forks, Neah Bay, Port Angeles, and Victoria (B.C.) next weekend. This will mark the first time that we get to use our passports. YAY! :) We are doing the totally dorky Twilight tourist crap, but staying in Neah Bay because I've been wanting to get out there for a while. It's going to entail a lot of driving, and I will. not. forget my camera. Mandatory!

Brrr...

Even though the sky is solid blue today, and the sun is shining brightly, it's still a wee bit cold in Seattle. I meant to grab a pair of my arm warmers today, since I opted for a short sleeved dress over jeans, but our morning rush meant that the arm warmers stayed in the drawer instead of coming to work with me. Luckily, it was only really bad this morning while I was at UW, and just now when I had to run out for quarters and lunch. Ah yes, my thrilling day. :)

I have been doing little other than writing recently, which further contributes to how thrilling my life has been. But Jeremy has begun brainstorming on his character for my upcoming Vampire game, so I'm getting to toss a few ideas back and forth with him when we aren't both frantically working on our novels. I didn't expect that anyone (other than Katie) would get me much on their characters until December, when we start the game, but everyone has at least given me a small taste of their upcoming characters. Amusingly, after Katie and Megan were chomping at the bit for me to get them the character quiz, I haven't seen ANY answers yet. :)

Our plans for the next few days involve writing and gaming, in addition to my show on Saturday. I may not get to participate in the gaming, but I'm hopeful that I can at least divert my attention from the novel for a little while. My brain needs a rest every now and then! :)

Hmmm...

A lot to recap, so let's just dive in.

1) Gabe, one of our two elderly cats, spent nearly a week at the vet. He was meowing a lot on Monday night, but he does that occasionally, so we thought little of it. By Tuesday, he was having enough intestinal issues (as evidenced by the litterbox) that we thought it wise to get him to the emergency vet. They weren't able to find anything for certain, but advised us to keep an eye on him. As I was feeling poorly on Wednesday, I stayed home, and tried in vain to feed him several appealing dishes. Since he wasn't eating, and since we were getting ready to go out of town, we decided to take him to his regular vet, which also offers boarding for cats. So they checked him out and agreed to board him, while running some tests as well. The tests ultimately ended up being fairly inconclusive, but Jeremy picked Gabe up from the vet last night with a shaved belly and a bag full of medicine. Gabe seems to be mostly back to his usual self now, except that he slept the entire night curled up by my side. Jeremy is off work today, so he's going to keep a close eye on Gabe's eating and litterbox habits. We're hoping he is over his sickness, whatever it was.

2) We spent Thursday through Monday at the Edgefield in Troutdale, Oregon, for Ambercon NW. The Edgefield is super awesome--we made spa appointments for shortly after our arrival, so we were nice and relaxed by the time the gaming began. I got to meet a lot of people I had thus far only heard stories about, as well as a lot of other cool people. I ran three games and played in four games, and was generally exhausted by the time my head hit my pillow every night. In related news, soaking in a hot tub-like pool apparently causes fingernail polish to unadhere from your fingernails. What I didn't lose in the pool proper came off in CHUNKS yesterday morning. :(

3) As a result of the above two factors (the cat and the convention, not the nail polish falling off), I've fallen a bit behind on my NaNoWriMo word count. I had a few hours to write yesterday morning, and I finally think I know where my story is going. Now I just have to actually write it all out. I did discover this morning that I can write (by hand) on the bus, so long as I don't have a big backpack on my lap. Time to switch back to my usual purse, I guess. :)

4) I've got a craft show on Saturday at the home of Kay, along with several other local artisans. If you're interested in attending, drop me a line, and I'll get you the evite. I'm surprisingly well-stocked already, though I do have a bag of catnip eyeballs to finish up before the show. Sometime...

5) Awaiting word on whether I'm traveling for work next week. If I am, having my weekend compressed means I'm going to be running around like a madwoman all weekend. If I'm not, I might actually manage to squeeze in a night at the studio next week. Ooooooh. :)

Weekend update and more!

So Friday night was karaoke, and Jeremy and I had agreed in advance that we would sing "A Whole New World" from Aladdin together. It was apparently very good, as he had several people come up to him afterwards and tell him it was great. One person told me the same. :) I also had a lot of people tell me that I did "Stupid Girl" by Garbage really well, which is funny, because I signed up for it, and then googled the lyrics because I couldn't remember how it went. (Yeah, they put the lyrics up when you do karaoke, but if I don't have some vague sense of the lyrics before I start singing, I do miserably. Rock Band is proof of this. :) )

Saturday, we watched a couple of horror movies with part of our usual D&D group, in lieu of actually gaming. The first movie was Phantasm, which was pretty laughable to me. I find that I'm just really not that impressed with older horror movies, and they don't tend to scare me much. We followed that with Slither, which I had seen before, but no one else had. I love that movie, mainly because it stars Nathan Fillion. It's also spectacular as a comedy-horror.

From there, we headed to Denny's for the NaNoWriMo kick off, where I proceeded to write 2,200 words in about 75 minutes, a fact which stunned Jeremy and Nate. Apparently, I write fast. :) Of course, I make no claims as to how good it was, and I'm probably scrapping over 2/3 of it when editing time rolls around.

After sleeping like a rock, I had I Heart Rummage on Sunday afternoon, which was a good show for me. I sat next to Susan of This Charming Candy, and ended up trading a pair of arm warmers for two bags of her lollipops. So far, I've tried tangerine-clove and coconut-caramel, and I'm definitely loving the slightly more grown-up flavor combinations. In my bag for today: vanilla cardamom. I don't even know what cardamom tastes like. :)

My current NaNo word count is now up to 5,424, which is about 424 words ahead of where I need to be. Rock on! :) The story is shaping up pretty well, though it keeps going in directions I wasn't quite expecting. I wrote a ridiculously overdramatic scene between a father being sent to fight in the Great War and his thirteen year old daughter last night. Truly over the top. I love it. :)

Now if I can just kick this cold in the next, oh, 48 hours, I'll be set. :) We're off to AmberCon NW on Thursday morning, and I do not want to be sick at the convention!

Lollipops by thischarmingcandy.etsy.com.

Gearing up for NaNo!

Because I sometimes think I am more than a little crazy, I've decided to take a shot at doing NaNoWriMo this year. For those unfamiliar with the acronym, it's National Novel Writing Month, which means I'll be attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.

I've avoided doing NaNo in previous years because November is a BIG month for craft shows and sales on Etsy. And it may very well turn out that I get a few days into November and realize that I'm not going to be able to do it. Looking at my calendar for November is daunting. I lose 4 days to ACNW. I lose 4 days to craft shows. I lose 2 days to flying to and from Kansas. I lose 3 or 4 days for our Thanksgiving excursion. All totaled, that adds up to probably 13 days that I will not get to write, leaving me with 17 days that I can write. Most of my weekends are completely shot.

But I've agreed to try, and try I will. This will be Jeremy's fourth year of doing NaNo, so obviously he's my big source of inspiration for it. He, however, has a slight advantage over me, in the form of more days off work, and partially clear weekends. He also often writes during his lunch break, and can write on the bus. I can't write on the bus. :( (At least I can crochet on the bus!) I may try to squeeze in writing before work and during my lunch. But by and large, I've got a couple of hours in the evening on just over half of the nights in the month. Eek!

My novel is a little hard to explain. The working title is "Daughters of the World's Fair." It blends some history with some supernatural elements, primarily fairies. It will probably end up being a young adult novel, since the protagonists are 13 year old girls. It's based around the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, but is set in 1917, with only a few brief scenes in St. Louis. Needless to say, it's a bit complicated. Cuz that's just how I roll. :)

I'm sure I'll be taking time to make blog posts all through November, but don't be surprised if a lot of them are word count posts, reporting on how many words I've written and such. I'll probably be posting most of that elsewhere, though, so if you're really interested in following my progress, let me know. :) I'll try to keep this blog a little less about the details and a little more about life in general. Just not a lot about crafting for a while, since I won't have a whole lot of time to do that. :)

Clockwork journal by redharp.etsy.com

Today's movie: "Near Dark" (1987)... despite the fact that this movie was available at Splash Page (the gaming shop in Kirksville), and despite the fact that one summer, Jed, John, and I tried to watch every vampire movie known to man (and some that shouldn't have been known to ANYONE!), I have never seen "Near Dark"... that's terribly annoying... perhaps I'll add it to the list of movies that I need to see... :)

The secondary movie, however, is "Lost Boys," which is a wonderful movie... both Corey's (Haim and Feldman, for those unaware of 80s movie stars), and such great lines as "Chill out, Edgar!"... what's not to like? :)

My other comment for the day is that I'm happy it's finally decided to get cool out, but a little warning might have been nice! :) There's something wrong about running around in shorts and T-shirts one day, and feeling the need for quilts and such the next! But around here, you can never be sure how long the cool weather will last... it might be in the upper 70s this weekend, according to the forecast I read this morning... craziness!

And I've decided I'm probably not going to do NaNoWriMo this year either... I read through some stuff, and it looks like I would have to write close to 2,000 words a day, EVERY day... I'm not sure I can come up with that much writing... I might try to do something of the sort, but I doubt I'll make it...

Jess mentioned this the last time that they did it... I was interested then, but didn't have the time... I'm still interested, but I'm not sure whether or not I have the time... I probably do have the time, but it would be at the expense of other things that I enjoy doing... so I have to decide whether or not it's worth it...

On the one hand, I would love to be able to finally write a novel... and the work load at work should be lightening pretty close to the beginning of November...

On the other hand, I like just sitting around and watching movies or running TT when I get home from work...

*sigh*... decisions, decisions, decisions...

I suppose the other thing I would have to do if I were to do this is come up with an idea for my novel... I would actually rather not do a vampire novel, if it's Vampire: the Masquerade related... and I'm not sure I could write vampire stuff that isn't terribly tied in to the World of Darkness... since I've been reading, living, and breathing it for far too long now! But I don't think I have many non-vampire ideas... :(