Regina Noctis

I just woke up from a very weird dream.

I was leaving work, and I was the only one leaving, for some strange reason. It was dark out. And I suddenly realized that it was Friday, BayCon Friday, and I had to get to the hotel. But I had nothing packed. After all, it was January two seconds ago, and here it was suddenly months later. Of course I wasn’t ready for BayCon.

I needed to get home and pack for the weekend before heading to the hotel, but for some reason I didn’t want to take my car. So I called a friend, and the friend agreed to give me a lift. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realized the friend was . He was being very sweet and understanding and kind. No sign of the often acidic boi I know.

Home wasn’t home. It wasn’t the little two-bedroom apartment I share with . Instead, it was like the house my folks bought when we lived in Oklahoma. I had the entire upstairs to myself, two bedrooms and a bathroom. I wound up shuttling back and forth between two rooms, trying to find all the things I wanted to take with me to con. I couldn’t find most of them, and then rememembered where those things were… in a plastic bag in the back seat of my car, which was sitting at work.

I decided I’d just grab a single change of clothes, and I’d walk over to my car from the hotel later. After all, my car was only a couple blocks from the RedDoubleLionTree.

Then Tycho drove us to the hotel, and I discovered that BayCon was not going to be at the usual place. It was some strange hotel shaped like a ziggurat in a section of town I’d never seen before.

I went to check in, and I discovered that, instead of having a normal room, for some reason I’d been given a suite. The best suite, on the top of the ziggurat. The Emperor Suite. So then I was worrying about the cost of the thing. And on the way up in the elevator, I remembered that I wasn’t positive that I had any of my staff committed to work at the con. So as far as I knew for certain, I was the only Kinkajou. Which made me worry even more about the cost of the room, since I didn’t want to pay 3/4 of the cost of it by myself.

By the time I got to the top floor (it took a while, the place was huge) somehow Tycho had transformed into Gideon. I complained to Gid about the fact that I wasn’t sure I had a crew, or anyone to stay in the room with me, and asked him if he wanted to stay in the suite. Meantime, even though there were only two or three (the number varied) gigantic suites on the top floor, we spent forever wandering down miles and miles of corridor in order to find it.

Gid never gave any kind of an answer to my question, and disappeared after I stashed my one lone change of clothing in the room. I headed back downstairs. In the lobby, I ran into one of the last people I ever expected to see… Jen, ’s ex-girlfriend. She wasn’t being herself. She was sweet and kind, and very touchy-feely. She wanted to hug on and cuddle with every single person she saw that she’d known before her move to Minnesota. When she ran into me, she rather latched on to me. For some time while I was wandering around the hotel, anytime I stopped still for more than a couple of minutes, she was attached to me like a barnacle on the hull of a ship. The only time I got a break was if she saw someone else she’d known years ago, but she always came back to me. I was getting thoroughly irritated with it.

A group of us, including the barnacle, got involved in some kind of plot that I don’t remember to well now. It all boiled down to us being the crew for some sort of mission that we originally thought was going to be into space, but later turned out to involve time travel as well. We were going to be the crew of some sort of experimental ship, the plans for which had been sent back in time. And despite BayCon being the home of sci-fi, fantasy, and roleplaying, all of that was real and not a gamer fantasy.

Then, during some sort of publicity stunt to impress the fen at the con, there was an accident. I was actually in the audience rather than directly involved with the thing. But several of our “astronauts” were involved. I saw the crash, watched their bodies flying through the air and smash into the ground. Tycho, someone I never saw before but knew in the dream, and I went running out to the scene of the accident. When we got there, the three I’d seen crashing into the hotel grounds were completely destroyed. And I do mean completely. All that we could find, mysteriously untouched, were large cardboard signs that they’d been wearing around their necks. Each sign had the name of one of the victims on it. , Jen, and . Tycho, stranger-I-don’t-know-but-did, and I all stood around, clutching the cardboard, in shock. And then the signs were taken away from us, and taken off to be hung in the hotel lobby as a part of some memorial. Every time I thought of the loss of GreatHarlequin and KaliDream, I got depressed. But then I’d remember Jen and get too irritated by the memory to cry.

The rest of the dream, everyone was moping around. And those of us who remained for the mission were at a loss, trying to figure out how we could still go on it without the three that had been lost. The crew had to be a group of people who knew each other, apparently, and of certain personality types, or it wouldn’t work. And the mission was vitally important, a matter of life and death.

I was leaving one of the fruitless meetings and ran into Sylvan. He gave me a hug, and I was finally able to cry over the loss of Harlequin and Dreamy, without the irritation of Jen.

And that’s when I woke up, and said to myself, “What the hell was that?”

I just finished playing a round of Alter Ego.

Even though it’s 6:30 in the morning and I should get some sleep, I want to play with it again.

Might even give it a shot at playing male this time, and see what the events in that are like. Hehe

My mom sent me a link to a report filed with the UN in January of 2000.

It begins like this…

Ramsey Clark: Report to UN Security Council re: Iraq

January 26, 2000

Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom to the United Nations

Dear H.E. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, KCMG,

A delegation of U.S. citizens from twenty states has just returned from Iraq. On January 17, we observed in Baghdad the 9th Anniversary of the beginning of the January 17 – February 28, 1991. U. aircraft flew 110,000 aerial sorties against Iraq, averaging one every 30 seconds, dropping 88,500 tons of explosives, the equivalent of 7 l/2 Hiroshima bombs.

This was by far the most intensive bombardment in history. It killed tens of thousands of people, injuring many more. Medicines and medical supplies were exhausted. It devastated water systems from reservoir, pumping station, pipeline, filtration plant to kitchen faucet as well as urban sewage and sanitation systems nationwide. Food production, processing, storage, distribution, and marketing facilities were widely destroyed. Poultry was nearly wiped out by loss of electricity and lack of grain. Animal herds were decimated. Fertilizer and insecticide plants and storage structures were destroyed. Communications systems, telephone, radio, TV, were shattered. Transportation was badly battered. Vital industries were attacked everywhere. Electric power was knocked out across the nation in the first 24 hours of the assault. Petroleum production, refining, storage and distribution from well to service station were attacked across the nation.

The combined effect of this vast destruction of essential goods, services and industries with the most comprehensive economic sanctions of modern times, first imposed on Hiroshima Day, August 6, 1990, has caused more than a million and a half deaths.

It goes on, and gets much worse. While I’m aware of a number of atrocities committed by our own government and by the UN, this is just disgusting. It makes me ill, and angry.

Yes, Saddam and his regime are a bunch of psychopaths. But how can we claim we are any better, when we are so firmly a part of such an act of genocide as outlined in this report?

Over a month after my birthday, I finally had the gourmet birthday dinner.

The food (a different selection from the original picks, since they were having a problem getting the stuffed capon) arrived on the 14th, and languished in the freezer until tonight. I’ve been dying to try it for ten days, but I kept my hands off. Yay, willpower.

It was worth the wait. I think that this may have been the best combination of things from Haute at Home that I’ve had yet. And in spite of the menu being a much smaller one than I normally have (Dinner is usually for 6-8, and this time it was for 4,) the dinner party was great. It was the perfect combination of people. I had a truly great time.

Sara brought three bottles of wine. Chardonnay to go with the appetizers and first course. A red called Amarone that I’d never heard of before, which is produced in Venice, and it went perfectly with the main course. And a dessert wine that was a little anti-climactic after I hauled out the Glög, but would have been good otherwise. She also brought a couple of gifts. She was very proud of herself for not paying any attention at all to my usual don’t-give-me-anything attitude. And the handmade blank book with hand-pressed paper is beautiful, so I didn’t really object.

We started in the living room, with the tartlets that we’d ordered from Haute. Prosciutto and fig chutney tartlets, smoked salmon and wasabi caviar tartlets, walnut gorgonzola tartlets, and duck and peach compote tartlets. They were all so good, it was hard to decide which I liked best, though the consensus of the rest of the party was that the prosciutto ones were the best. As good as they all were, though, the company was even better. Conversation was liberally lubricated with chardonnay, and it was one of those talks where you just can’t stop grinning, and laugh outright often.

First course was a Venetian ham, spinach, and ricotta tart in a crisp puff pastry crust. Even the non-spinach-eaters really liked it. I loved it. And there’s still half of one of the three medium-sized tarts in the fridge. Dinner for another night. We moved into the dining room to eat (which meant I finally got to use the smoked-glass dining room table for something other than a Talisman game, yay!) We polished off the chardonnay, and had to keep reminding to take it easy while attacking his tart. He did succeed in getting a couple of good, loud thunking sounds while eating. He was cutting into the tart so enthusiastically, the glass plate would rise up on one end and then smack down on the glass table top. Silly boy.

Then was the main course… Cajun duck and pepper gumbo and saffron risotto. The soup was peppery, just a little hint of a bite that built over time, and very rich. I couldn’t even finish one bowl. None of us except Locke could.

The only downside was the risotto. It had been formed into eight rounded shapes, vaguely ball-like but with a flat bottom. I followed the directions for heating them, but some of them remained frozen in the middle. We ate around the frozen part, but it would have been better if they heated all the way through. Next time, I know.

The red wine was a perfect compliment to the soup. I’m not usually fond of red wine, but this had just enough body to go with the gumbo, without the heavy tannin flavor I’ve often found in reds. I’m not very fond of the rather bitter taste of the tannins usually in red wine. Of course, I haven’t usually had reds that have been allowed to breathe before they’ve been served to me by various friends who are red wine aficionados. Maybe that’s what made the difference, since we did let this one breathe before we served the soup.

Sara had heard me talking about Glög for a month, and I had half of what I’d made for the birthday-dinner-that-wasn’t left, so I’d frozen it. I pulled it out and heated it gently, so as not to boil off the vodka in it, and there was just enough for four goblets full. Perfect. The flavor had actually improved even more in the time it had been sitting. And Locke wants me to make it just to soak raisins in for a month at a time, then coat the raisins in chocolate and sell them. He said he’d buy them. And hell, if they were available on the market, I probably would too. The little raisins had soaked up Glög and become something sublime. I think that they were the best part, after I’d finished drinking the drink and took a spoon to them.

Then it was time for the dessert we’d gotten from Haute. Nipples of Venus. They were based on the candies from a scene in Amadeus, and came with a copy of the movie on DVD. A soft chocolate center with a cherry in it, surrounded by brandy-soaked almond ganache in two colors, and a small drop of chocolate on top. They did look rather like nipples. And were so rich that we could only manage to eat one or two. Haute claimed that the things fed four… and there were 24 of them in the box. We’re going to have Nipples around here for days.

And the talk over the Glög and dessert! I haven’t had so much good conversation, so much laughter, in some time. It was the perfect little dinner party. It was the best night I’ve had in a very long time, and I needed something like this. I had knots in my shoulders and back that I’d been carrying so long, I didn’t even know I had them anymore until I relaxed during dinner tonight and the knots left. I can honestly say that it’s the first truly good, happy night I’ve had since ended things between us.

Which is more good news. Because I know how I work, after a breakup. Once I achieve a night where I can truly enjoy myself, the pain of the ending is over. It won’t be back. I can feel the difference, just like I have all the other times. Like the weight of the world is suddenly gone from me. It feels so good now that the last of the residual heart is gone, and the longing for something dead and gone is over.

Hey, …

SLOW DOWN!

I knew it was going to be one of those days as soon as I got up. The moodswing had swung.

I headed for the shower shortly after I got done pounding on the snooze button on the alarm. I could hear and her girlfriend talking quietly in the kitchen. Nothing new or surprising. Thursdays are one of Dev’s days off. I’ve gotten accustomed to hearing them in the kitchen, or music playing quietly enough that it doesn’t wake me.

Today, for no reason whatsoever, I was irritated that they were there. I could feel the desire to growl about it coming on, so I just stepped into the bathroom without a word. I figured it was better to go drown my mood than take it out on them.

When I got out of the shower, they were gone. I hadn’t heard them leave the apartment, but then, I don’t hear much over the sound of the shower. I can’t claim it was because of the usual noise. I was in too foul a mood to be singing opera while showering. Though it’s possible that belting out an aria or two would have improved my mood, I suppose. Being loud sometimes does that.

I discovered, when I stepped out of the bathroom and the apartment was empty except for me, that I was irritated that they were gone.

Obviously, it was going to be one of those days.

I spent much of work doing my best not to snap at anyone. It was difficult. I failed to avoid it a couple times, but I got a grip right afterward, apologized, and explained. Since my normal work persona varies between quiet and joking, everyone was willing to accept the explanation and the apology. Me being cranky at work is a rarity. And if I am in a bad mood, I usually just go silent and throw myself into work, expend the energy there rather than growl at anyone.

When I barked at ‘Tini after he offered to pick me up a drink when he went to McDonald’s for lunch, I decided that it was time to just shut up for the night and glower at the computer screen while processing, rather than try to put up a front. Granted, his offer was badly timed for me. I was in the middle of fighting with a copier that I’d been in the middle of using. It ran out of toner, and when I tried to fill it, the toner bottle wouldn’t slide into place. It wasn’t until after I’d been fighting with it for twenty minutes that someone deigned to tell me that the copier didn’t take the same toner as the rest of the copiers in the office. Amazing the way gossip will spread through that place in three nanoseconds, but three months after we got the two newer copiers (that look exactly like the old ones, thank you very much) only three people in the office knew that they didn’t take the same toner as the rest. And two of those were out to lunch at the time that I was fighting with the damn machine. Trivia bounces all over that office, but if there’s something that you need to know, you’re lucky to find out about it only a little too late rather than a lot. It’s a problem I’ve run into again and again there. I’ve taken to asking, if I’ve been out on vacation or called out sick, whether anything changed while I was gone. I do it as soon as I get back. I got tired of getting hotsheeted for “errors” that weren’t errors before I left. Some rule would change, something about our procedures would change, and it seemed I was expected to somehow mystically divine this since no one would bother to mention it. It’s been one of my pet peeves there. One of the many pet peeves there.

It was a fairly short night, and that’s a good thing. I came home with the intention of playing the game I’m currently hooked on (and the reason I don’t post much right now.) But my computer and I had an argument. It decided, without warning, to terminate the game. And I’d been doing really well on the mission I was playing. When I went back, of course the game hadn’t autosaved like it was supposed to. So, I had to start over, and just gave up a few minutes ago when it became obvious that I was about to go bankrupt. Whatever I did right the first time around, I wasn’t succeeding with repeating that.

So now I’m sitting here, glowering at my computer screen at home. All in all, I might as well have not left work. My mood has not improved, nor has my ability to make the damn machines around me work today.

And just to bring things full circle, Dev’s girlfriend stepped out of the bedroom just now, headed for the bathroom, and I got irritated that she was there and awake. And when she went back to bed without a word, I was irritated that she was gone.

I should just go to bed. Maybe sleep will improve my mood.

Oh look, one of my Calvin and Hobbes collections. I’ll read some of this, and THEN sleep. Calvin and Hobbes cures everything.

I love the Masterpiece Theater series I, Claudius. I love the books it was based on. I used to claim I was named after Livia Augusta, the wife of Augustus Caesar. So, of course, I had to take the quiz when I saw it on ’s lj. And I didn’t cheat to get the result I got, either. I answered the questions as honestly as I could.

Which I, Claudius Character are You? created by
Shiny Objects

The entire day and over a thousand dollars later, the car is home. The tow to the mechanic was $50, and the car repairs ran $979.79 in parts and labor.

I just drove it home. It runs beautifully. But hell, it wasn’t running strangely up until the moment it died. Even when the idiot lights came on, it ran beautifully.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much. The car’s a 97, and in spite of its age, it has run smoothly all this time. This is the first time it’s had to go into the shop for anything more than oil changes, inspections, and basic maintenance visits. All in all, it’s been a very good car.

It’s just the timing on this whole thing. Of course, this had to happen when the checks I’d written for the things that needed paying all cleared at once, and left me with too little money to even cover the cost of the tow. It’s a good thing I’d just made a deposit in the bank, and that the towing company takes checks. By the time they can cash the check, the deposit I made just before the car died will have posted.

And now, the only sleep I’ve gotten today has been when I fell asleep in the middle of a movie while waiting for the mechanic to call me back. I got something in the neighborhood of two or three hours of sleep. I’m very, very tired now, and my head hurts. I think that I’ll go fall asleep for a while longer.

I heard something from a co-worker that I didn’t want or need to hear. It’s not good news, and I want to talk about it and can’t. Thanks, blabbermouth co-worker.

After work, I climbed into my car and discovered that two idiot lights, that had not been on when I went to lunch, were now making their presence felt. Brake light and battery light. I don’t know the area where I work, wouldn’t have known where to take the car, especially in the middle of the night. And wouldn’t have had a way to get home after dropping the car somewhere, even if I did know the area around work. So I drove the car home, cautiously. I didn’t see anything wrong with the way it drove. It just had the idiot lights on. And I remembered the way the car has been randomly locking the doors all by itself lately. I figured it was a problem in the electrical system and I’d deal. The power locks triggering the way they had been certainly seemed to indicate a short.

Apparently, it was more serious than that. I made a stop to deposit some money in my bank account, since it was down to $45.00 after rent and my newly-hiked-up car insurance payment. And just as I reached the intersection a block or so from the apartment, the car died. I couldn’t get it started again. And let me tell you, being stuck out on the road with a dead car at 5:30 on a Saturday morning is NOT my idea of fun.

Eventually, a cop came along. He was going off duty, but he called in to the station (not that it was that far away. I broke down about half a block from the local cop shop.) Another officer drove out, and used his car to push mine to the parking lot of the strip mall right next to where I live. Now I just have to hold out long enough to get hold of the mechanic before I fall asleep. And hope that I can get a hand from my mom, since I know that this is going to be more than I can afford, with the other bills that are due.

I am so not happy right now.

and I were watching the movie Fear tonight, before she headed back to Fremont. She’d never seen it before.

We were at the climax of the movie. The killer is stalking the heroine, in the Chamber of Fear. Angel and I are both on the edge of our seats, chain smoking.

As the killer and heroine confront each other, there’s a huge crash from the front door of the apartment. Angel and I look at each other.

“I don’t have a fucking weapon!” Angel yells, puts out her cigarette, and bravely runs for the bathroom to hide.

I jump out of my seat, and walk carefully over to the front window. I part the blinds to look out at the landing of the stairs and the front door. Nothing there, except the shoes that the neighbor kids left in front of our door. Again.

“There’s nothing out there,” I call to Angel.

“There was some fucking thing out there a minute ago!”

I look from Angel to the closed blinds and the front door. I look at Angel. I look back at the front door, and realize from the position of the dead bolt that didn’t lock it when she left to take her girlfriend home.

Angel charges from the bathroom into my room, and I remember seeing a metal rod leaning against one of the bookshelves. I reach over and grab it, not taking my eyes off the front door. I wouldn’t put it past our luck for there to be something out there. Strange people have been known to accost both Angel and me, separately, at various times, and always the first moment we’re out of Dev’s sight.

I get hold of the metal rod, and try to pick it up, but it doesn’t want to come. It seems to be stuck in something. I give it an almighty yank, and have a serviceable and fairly heavy length of metal in my hand to use on whoever is out there.

Angel peeks out my door, and I wave the rod at her to show that I’m armed, and start heading for the door. Angel comes sneaking down the hallway from my bedroom behind me. She has the pair of wrenches that were in my bedroom. She completely missed the two knives, short sword, long sword, and staff also in my bedroom.

I step around the corner of the couch to head toward the door. Angel steps up to the corner of the couch to back me up.

And in unison, we say, “It was the fucking coat rack!”

Across the bottom of the door, the rather unstable coat rack that left behind when she moved out has fallen over. The crown of it has hit the storage boxes Dev had left beside the door. That was the godawful crash we heard that sounded like it came from just outside the door.

We spend the next half hour laughing our asses off. Every time one of us starts to slow down, the other sets them off again. I’ve fallen over sideways on the couch. Angel is barely managing not to fall on the floor.

Poor Dev walks in just as it seems we’re starting to calm down, and that sets it off all over again. We started cackling once more. I had tears in my eyes, and my sides hurt. After we explain the whole thing to Dev, she sits down on the couch and proceeds to help us be unable to stop laughing. I’m leaning against Dev’s shoulder because I don’t have the strength left to sit up straight. Angel is crouched on the floor, making high-pitched sounds and trying not to snort.

Angel has gone home now. But if Dev and I are found dead in the morning, now you know… the coat rack did it.

Karma. It’s a bitch.

Sara finally did it. She finally convinced me to get up in front of people and sing. I haven’t done that in a long time, not since the sudden onset of extreme, nearly panic-ridden stage-fright out of nowhere. I didn’t used to have that. I used to be up on stage, in plays and musicals. I used to be in various choirs and chorales, and had solo parts. But then, one night before the final performance of a musical I was in, I had a sudden attack of extreme stage fright, to be getting up in front of a big group of strangers. It was nearly paralyzing. I haven’t been able to bear the idea since. For a while, I couldn’t even perform in any way in front of people I knew.

Then Sara got addicted to karaoke. We started going every Thursday. Even though I didn’t get up there and sing, I still had a great time at the Creekside, singing along at the table, making smart-ass commentary, talking about whatever in between songs. In my own way, I got as addicted to going there as Sara is. If work was too busy for us to make it, it was a big disappointment.

Sara, Virginia, , , Synthia, … they’ve all attempted, at various times, to talk me into getting up there. Before them, , , , and spent an evening doing karaoke at the Daybreak and trying to talk me into getting up there. At first, it was a flat no. Eventually, I began toying with the idea, looking through the books, but by the end of the night, I still hadn’t put in a slip for a song, with either group.

Then Misdev put in a slip for all of us as a group to do “Loveshack.” I discovered that I’d gotten past my stage fright enough that I could be up there as a part of a group. I had fun, and had only the smallest amount of nervous energy from it. A little shakiness in the beginning, but then I settled down.

I still refused to get up there when I wouldn’t be able to hide behind a group.

I had no problem making a fool of myself. When Sara and I started going on Friday nights as well as Thursdays, we encountered a group that had a bunch of excellent performers. They were a friendly bunch, and we struck up a conversation with them. When Sara was up front doing “Me and Bobby McGee,” on of the guys from the group went up partway through the song and did a little back-up vocals and dancing behind her. So, when one of their group went up there, Sara and I, along with the guy that came to be called “The Boy with the Pretty Voice,” went up there and we were backup dancers. We were goofy up there, stumbling around attempting to do something at least somewhat synchronized without any prior practice. By the end of the song, we actually had it together. For some reason, that was fine, but singing wasn’t.

Sometimes, I don’t understand me.

Last Friday, a couple was doing “Summer Nights” from Grease. Sara and I were at our table, singing along. We’d been doing so much enthusiastic backup vocals by then, people would ask us as soon as they were at the mike to help them out. So we did. When I hit the high note on Summer Nights (the woman up front was having difficulty with it) Sara turned to me. She pointed a finger at me, and shook it. “That’s it! Next week, we’re getting up there together and singing that song!”

And this week, we did. Right after Misdev did “Vogue” (which I persisted in referring to as “Vague”) and the group of us, without Synthia, were her backup dancers. Sara and I sang “Summer Nights.” Sara Travolta and Olivia Newtron Bomb, as Kathy, the karaoke DJ, announced us.

It was so hard not to laugh. Sara was trying to carry off a deep male voice, and was being so over-the-top about it, that I was constantly on the edge of a fit of giggling.

She has now informed me that there’s no backing out from here on in. I have to get up and sing every week. She’s already chosen the next duet we do… “Somewhere Out There.”

It seems that I now karaoke, no matter what I think about it.

And sometime, we gotta get Locke down here to join us.

Seems I’ve attracted my first “hate it” vote on Bloghop.

While I don’t, and probably will, never understand the “love it” votes, or the “good” vote, I do understand this one. After all, as I’ve said before, this journal is a monumental amount of whining and online quiz results.

Though, thank you to whoever gave me the good votes. I may not understand that reaction, but I appreciate it all the same.

I should have chosen a different one of the various plots kicking around in my head for this damn NaNoWriMo thing. Why in the hell did I have to go with this one, considering where my feelings are? This is just exacerbating things.

I need to take that and pour it into the writing, that’s what I need to do. Incentive to get my daily word count in and get the damn thing finished before it drives me nuts.

I’m hoping that this will kickstart my desire to write again. Starting with when I began seeing Lynx, I stopped writing. Then, it was because I was spending every moment I could with him. At the end of those weeks, it was because I was too upset to write. Since I began to put it behind me, the desire just hasn’t been there. I’ve sat down to make a start on something, and just stared at the blank page until I gave up in frustration.

Maybe forcing out something, no matter how crappy it might be, will get the wheels turning again.

I joined NaNoWriMo tonight. And got the thing under way. If I can keep going at the rate I set tonight, I should get the 50,000 words before the deadline’s over, despite the late start.

Of course, I didn’t have to think of a concept for the novel. I’ve had a number of things kicking around in my head for a while now. This was a novel idea that occurred to me years ago, but I never actually started writing it. We’ll see how this thing goes.

It’s really difficult to turn off the desire to edit as I go along. I can sometimes, for short pieces, manage to write first and worry about editing later, but I generally have a strong desire to go back and fix things before I’m done writing. Can’t do that for NaNoWriMo, however. This should be a challenge.

It should also be a challenge to get in the word count for the days I’m going to be out of town. I’ll have to go a bit above the number I set for myself tonight for a few nights before and after to make up for the fact I’ll be away from this clunky old machine of mine for four days. But it should be do-able.

Besides, I’d like to actually achieve the goal before Hell Week sets in at the end of the month. There’ll be no time for writing then. It’ll be back to the get-home-just-in-time-to-get-enough-sleep-in-order-to-do-more-work thing for me then. What fun.

But I’ll take advantage of having relatively light nights (only 88 files tonight… and it’s a sign of how slammed we’ve been that 88 has become “only.”) This week and next shouldn’t be too bad. I should be able to cover a decent bit of ground for these two weeks.

This is so wrong! And my sides hurt from laughing so much!

http://www.e-studio.dk/matrix_cow.wmv

I’m feeling sad and weepy. And very, very alone. Which is patently ridiculous. I was just at karaoke with some friends on Friday night, and had a bunch of people over here at the apartment for movies and margaritas. And then they went home, and this mood struck. Hell, it actually struck before they all went home. In the midst of sitting in the living room with a bunch of people, watching a movie, I was feeling alone. Might have had something to do with being around couples cuddling and smooching, while I’ve no one to cuddle. Probably is exactly that.

But it’s still a stupid thing to feel when you’re sitting there with a bunch of people.

I can’t even blame the smegging thing on PMS. PMS hasn’t been a part of my life in a couple years.

Hell with this. I’m going to go read more Discworld.

Long night at work. Long long long night at work. Well over a hundred files we processed, and processed completely. The bosses have stopped letting us eliminate the final two steps so we can manage to get out a little earlier. We are back in the land of 12 hour or more shifts.

Last time I checked, you’re supposed to stagger after you’ve gotten to the party going on at your place, not when you’re just approaching the door.

Of course, by the time I got home, it was over. The only tangible mark that anything was even supposed to happen is the person I don’t recognize snoring away on the couch. Of course, it might actually be someone I know… just hard to tell in the gloom out there.

Tomorrow had damn well better be a light night. Maybe even non-existent. Two files, and then karaoke. Or something.