Bye-bye car

Its finally happened. My car died a glorious and smoke filled death. It didn't go silently either. I think it wanted to end this way, it was tired. (I'm just glad I didn't drive to the camping party of the week before. A car with a destroyed engine wouldn't have been a good thing-not on a longish drive like that.) After I got home, I had it towed and its going to be living in a junkyard with other little worn-out cars to keep it company.

So, for the moment, I'm without a car. It won't be too bad though. Fortunately for me, Brad and I work at the same place...so I can have him give me rides to work, and I don't even feel bad for asking. (Boyfriends are good that way.)

Then later this week, I'll be off to the bank to see if I can get a loan. My credit isn't perfect, so I'm hoping its good enough. I don't want a huge amount, so that'll be helpful. I haven't looked at cars yet-but want to see what I can get, and find something in that price range. If the bank won't give me money, I'm sure I can find a car dealership that will. I know they're kinda hurting for sales right now, so its totally a buyers market. I'm not going to get a brand new car though-I don't want to spend that much on one. I'm crossing my fingers that I can get something in the $5000-$6000 range though. That would give me something nice. Yay! (Though I can't complain about my last car-under $2000 and it lasted a little over 5 years.)

What a wonderfully bad thing!

I just got sent a link to Pandora. And I'm hooked. Its the most fantastic thing ever! No more hauling my ipod and its charger to work. I can just type in whoever I feel like listening to, and it'll play them and all sorts of other artists for me. My wishlist of cds is growing at a frightening rate. Yay! If you haven't check Pandora out yet, try it. Very very cool.

And speaking of cds, I got the 9 cds I ordered to use up my free ones saved up from BMG (they're shutting down and moving to some other sort of cd club thing). Putting them on my computer is a whole lot harder now that I can't just have iTunes pull up the playlist. All that typing. Boo!

Sad thing...I've run out of storage room for my cds now. I've been stacking them on top of the tower thing. Funny part...I didn't think I'd ever fill it up. =) I think I'm going to purge some of my books, and fill a piece of a bookcase with overflow cds. Either that or I have to buy more furniture, and my apartment is getting full.

I've decided on tacos for my Saturday party. Yay! I'm going to be a complete nut, and make up some party cds for it. A nice mix of various Latin stuff, goes so well with tacos.

Brrrrr....

Last Saturday was Mel's 30th birthday party (I gave her a hatchet for her birthday). Camping. In Northern Minnesota. And while I can't complain too much, it was a bit colder and windier than I would have liked. (I can't complain because my parents and brother were also camping-in Wisconsin-and they got snowed on.)

It was a lovely party though. Lots of fire, and there was plenty of fire-poking opportunities. Yay! Along with a beautiful, soft, and friendly doggy to play with. And stuff to eat.

Fortunately for me, I didn't drive. So I was able to sleep on the way home. Then go home and sleep some more. And later, a little more sleep.

I still haven't unpacked, and my apartment is getting really bad. (Since I haven't put things away from my trip to Green Bay for scrapbooking fun the weekend before.) It has to be done though. I can't stand looking at it...just need to force myself to be home and all by myself and pick things up. Especially because I'm having a party on Saturday. Wheeee! Its a good thing I volunteer for things like that-it really makes me force myself to clean up a bit.

Now I just need to decide what to do for this party. I'm thinking taco bar of some sort. Rather than grilling-more prep work, but less work when the party is happening. And I like tacos. I'll have to look through my cook books, maybe there's a better something to do also. But first clean. Blargh!

Happy May 5th!

Somehow it doesn't have the same ring as Cinco de Mayo. One sounds like a great celebration, and the other like a crazy person telling you what day it is. Amazing how a different language can make its sound so much more cool.

For those of you who might not know, Cinco de Mayo is the date the Mexican army defeated the French. (Not Mexico's Independence Day.)

To make this holiday even more absurd....its not even really celebrated in Mexico (at least not nationally-there are some regional little parties). Its mostly celebrated here in the US.

All that aside....Happy Cinco de Mayo! Just like St. Patrick's Day (where everyone is Irish), everyone is Mexican today. So grab a taco, and a margarita the size of your head, because I certainly will. Its time to Fiesta!

I wanna rock and roll all night...

And on with more fun stuff from me.

Today's scent trial is Snake Oil. Its supposed to be exotic spices and vanilla. And on the reviews for it were fantastic. However, on me its merely ok. It smells nice, but not something I'm overly excited about. I'll use up my sample size of it, but probably won't buy a larger bottle. Unless it changes a lot. (Rumor has it, that if you leave it sit for about 6 months or so, it gets different. So that's what I'll be doing.)

Last night saw me at happy hour. Unfortunately for me, I had just eaten salad for lunch and didn't have a good base for my drinking. After two beers, I was really feeling it, so I had some dinner there, and drank another two. Hee hee! Good thing I had someone along to give me a ride home, and then a ride back to my car. At least I didn't end up spending a big chunk of money to do that. Yay!

I've also been working my way through SeaQuest. Perhaps you remember it, a rather campy and lame submarine show from the 90s? I loved it at the time it was on, and felt like revisiting it. In this case, it started off pretty good...not as crappy as I thought it would be. But quickly turned south. By the end of Season 1, it was downright ridiculous. I'm through the first couple disks of Season 2 and it just keeps getting worse. But not so bad that I won't watch it. Though, I am glad that Netflix only has Season 3 available as a watch it online sort of thing. Without internet at home, I'll just have to miss out on it. Darn.

Let's do the Time Warp again...

My lack of remembering to blog skills have won again!

Rather than try to cover the last few months...I'll just pretend there wasn't a big time lapse here. Yay me!

On Friday I went to a new-to-me restaurant. Smalley's Carribean BBQ in Stillwater. Its awesome. Not only is it decorated in a carribean pirate motif, but the food is good too (the mac 'n cheddar-loaded with bacon and chilies was fantastic). And then there's the drinks. Mind-blowingly awesome. The best drinks I've ever had in my life. It was pure heaven. So I'm going to be dragging everyone who visits me there for quite a while now. Starting tonight. And I'll be back there again Friday. Mmmm....tasty drinks and food for me!

I've been trying out different oils from Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs lately. So I'm going to share my thoughts on them too. Ha ha! You will read them and like it! I never thought I was a perfume sort of person. Turns out I just needed to find the right stuff.

Today's Scent is Black Rose (found in Rappaccini's Garden). I'm not a big fan of flowery smells. But this isn't a little old lady perfume. Its smells like an evil rose, corrupted and a bit sinister...without being overpowering. There may be a bigger bottle in my future of this one.

Check me out! I can type!

I hadn't realized how long I've gone without posting anything.

Apparently I've been busier than I thought or something. Yay! Or maybe it was all the beer I've been drinking.

Today, I'm sporting some shiny hair. Got it dyed and trimmed last night. And I look fantastic! Yay me! Talk about an ego boost. Everytime I get it freshly dyed, I have everyone at work telling me how good it looks. I always think it looks like My Little Pony hair. Which it does. Good thing I like ponies.

I had time last night to run into a Barnes and Noble and pick up a couple of new books. I immediately read one when I got home. Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book. If you haven't read it yet, go buy it, or get it from a library. Its so good. Really the best thing I've read in a really long. I knew it would be good, all his work is...and I really knew it would be good with its shiny Newberry Award. But, even with all that it still completely blew me away. I didn't get home until late-ish last night, so it was close to my bedtime when I started reading it. And I just couldn't put it down. At least not until my eyes started crossing. So I took a little nap-and woke up to finish it before work. I don't think I could have come into work without knowing what happened to Bod.

Yay for Mr. Gaiman! I really need to make an effort to buy the rest of his books that I don't have. His books are always so very well written and make me think. For the most part, I read a book and toss it aside-and could read it a year later and not remember anything about it. His, I remember. I find myself thinking about them.

I've been making progress in getting back some skill at piano. I only had a couple of bad times with my hands hurting. (The last round of it-last week-was bad enough that I'm being careful.) Its hard to make myself stop when I want to keep playing. And I want to keep playing because I'm getting into the "fun" songs again. Rather than the easy-peasy ones. Still have a lot of wrong notes, and stopping to find the right ones, but its coming along. Yay!

I was a bad girl and ventured into the gardening section in the store...and as a result I have two new plants to kill. Yay! So far neither one has shown signs of death...so perhaps I've run into some more that enjoy my particular brand of neglect. (I picked up an orchid and a palm.) To go along with that-I was in my spare room yesterday, and saw my Christmas cactus actually has blossoms started! Yippeeee! It has never bloomed since I bought it, in fact I thought it looked like it was dying-leaves have been falling off. I'm definately ready for spring to come, and I can plant my outside boxes. I'm looking forward to more tomatoes than I can possibly eat, and perhaps some nice fresh herbs or peppers. Yummy yum! Not to mention all the pretty flowers.

Look out! Its the Evil Tonsil of Swollen Ouchiness!

Run! Run for your lives!

So far its just one that horridly swollen...the other should be following along soon. Yippee. And just in time for my learn how to use the new software training trip that starts on Monday. (Unless I manage to drown the germs with the mint tea I'm shoving down my throat-when I get home I'll see if a mouthful of Drambuie will help out.) Timing is everything. =P Oh well, at least its Cincinnati I'm going to, and not somewhere super sunny and full of fun things to do. I won't be missing a whole lot if I end up holing up in the hotel room.

On to more exciting things. Did a second trial with my waffle maker. Only this time used one of those mixes. They tasted ok, but the batter was Way too runny. Next time I won't add all the water they say too.

Yesterday I finally watched Talledega Nights, or something to that effect...the Will Ferrell NASCAR movie. I wasn't really wanting to watch it, but I won it in a Christmas party game. I'm generally not a big fan of his...so I went into this movie thinking it would be a big crap fest. Going into with that mind set seemed to have helped. It wasn't completely awful. It wasn't a great movie or anything like, but was fairly amusing...a bit stupid...but that's what it was supposed to be. It might have been the fever...but it even made me laugh a couple of times. I'll have to give him another chance. Or at least watch him when I don't feel good.

I also started watching the BBC adaption of The Buccaneers (which is Not about pirates-I didn't think it was, but figured I should clarify that here). I never read the book, but so far the show is quite good. Looks like there isn't going to be a happy ending, but if I remember correctly Edith Warton wrote that book, and she wasn't a fan of happily ever after. I should have the second (last) disc of it tomorrow. And like most BBC stuff, its a beautiful show.

I'm so glad that Netflix has a lot of BBC available. Its so consistently better made (and better stories) than most American television. I also really like how they don't just keep dragging shows out so much further than they need to be, just because its popular. More of the miniseries sort of stuff there. Which is nice.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Rainbows, rainbows everywhere! Rainbows, rainbows, in my cupboard!

Yay! Between Christmas and my birthday (which did Not happen this year...nope...just a figment of someone else's imagination), I got two more settings of my wonderful Fiesta dishes. And my rainbow is complete now! Wheee! I now have a set each of red, orange, yellow, green and blue dishes....my flatware has purple handles. It truely is a thing of beauty and so me.

Christmas also saw me with a Belgium waffle maker in my hot little hands. I promptly tried it out the next day. This could be a bad thing...but oh so good! They really are just too easy to make, and so very very yummy. It isn't even bad to clean out the waffle thingy.

I was very surprised to see my fallen tree (well, its not fallen over any more, but it sounds nicer to call it a fallen tree) still had water in its stand when I got back. I was away for 4 days, so I was expecting it to be a dried up crispy dead thing-like usual. That meant I didn't have to take it down right away. Yay! I think its trying to make up for its attempt to break everything.

Got my hair done last night after work. Its fantastic! So shiny and what a lovely shade of red! Yay! This cut is fabulous and I love it. Its been tamed back into the same cut I had last time. I'll be keeping it this way for a while. Wheee!

Hope eveyone has a lovely and safe New Year's Eve! I'll be rocking out to Paul and Lorraine at Charlie's tonight. But I plan on leaving before midnight. I just can't stay up that late, plus I'll be able to avoid the majority of drunken fools who are driving when they shouldn't be.

Wreck the halls with falling trees....fa la la la laaaaa...

That's right, falling trees. Which, by the way, make Big Messes. In other words, my Christmas tree (which is quite large this year-reaches up to the ceiling-and my ceilings are fairly high) decided to take a little nap.

Fortunately for me, it lasted through my Christmas party on Saturday. (The party was great fun.) Sunday afternoon, it had enough standing around and very slowly tipped over. That was a new one for me, I've never had a tree fall down. Of course, you'd think that there had been an animal or kidlet climbing in it-or pulling on it...but you'd be wrong. It had also been up for over a week, so its not like the branches relaxed and pushed it away from the wall-and I didn't have it in the stand at an angle. So its a mystery to me why it fell over-other than just being tired. I still haven't picked up the ornaments that fell off. I did put the tree back up though-this time at an angle in the stand-pointing towards the corner-so if it decides to nap again-it should just lean into the wall. I also anchored it to the wall. We'll see if I managed to foil its evil plans. I'm tempted to take all its ornaments away and force it to wear ugly old socks instead. Cause I'm that sort of person.

On a brighter note-I believe I finished most of my Christmas shopping...now I just have to hope that the delivery dates are right, and I actually get the presents before I need them. My cards are still sitting in a stack. Perhaps this year they'll be New Year's Christmas cards......again.....Hmmm...that seems to be a bit of a habit of mine. I'll bet the stuff I have to box up yet and get to the post office really don't make it in time. Yay me!

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

or something. Bit icy out there today. A little snow has finally come, and its really sending the message home that there's Not Much Time left.

Over the weekend I was very brave and actually went into some stores for the Friday sales. It wasn't horrible, and that really surprised me. (I went before once and it blew in all possible ways.) I bought a few presents for other people...and something very big for me. Now I am rather poor. And also the happy owner of a keyboard. Yay! I can re-learn to play pianoy stuffs. I don't have the full 88 keys like a real piano, I've only got 76, but they are full-sized ones and have the touch sensitivity stuff (plus you rarely need all 88 keys anyway)...so I can control the volume by how fast I hit the keys. Its been years and years since I played with a piano, and I've remembered and am able to play a bit better than I thought I would...but I have a long ways to go to get to where I was. It'll be an interesting ride though. I did find that I don't have all my old music at my place like I had thought. Some must still be at Mom & Dad's. Pity. I'm going to have to make Mom look for it now, since I don't want to wait until Christmas to get it back. I really could use some of the stuff they have there-I only took the harder stuff with me, and I just can't play it now. Luckily for me, the keyboard came with a book of easy little songs to play...so I can fool around with those.

Whooosh!

That's the sound of this last weekend shooting by. It was full of fun things. Yay!

Mom came over, and rather than just sitting around and maybe watching some sort of crappy little movie I pick out from Netflix, we did things...mostly driving back and forth between my place and Stillwater (which isn't that far away).

Friday night we went out with some people that I work with, to Acapulco's (in Stillwater). I always like the Tex-Mex food.

Then Saturday we went to a Holiday Market thing, and bought some nice hand painted glass stuff, all with flowers and pretty things on them. Some I'm going to keep for myself and some are for presents. I got the lady's card who paints them. She sells them so unbelievably cheap, she just wants to get enough money from them to buy more materials and keep painting stuff.

Then we went to the Victorian Christmas at the Old Courthouse in Stillwater. The building was neat. And we we got there a brass quartet was just finishing playing. I wish we had been there earlier and could have heard more of them. Made me wish I was playing in one. That was always my favorite part of band, when we'd be working on small groups. We'd have the best players in it, and would be playing fun chamber music. I miss that. After that, we wandered around a bit doing a little shopping in Stillwater. Then back home.

At home, we cooked lunch. And afterwords I amused her by showing her the noises I could make with my wonderful whistle. She even recognized some of the songs. Yay! I'm getting better. Then it was time to play some games.

And back to Stillwater again, to hear Paul & Lorraine and eat. I was happy with that. I knew Mom would like to hear them, but she's already talking about going back again. To hear them again, and to hear other people there. It was really fun. She liked sitting at the pretty table, looking at the beautiful old room, having a tasty beverage or two and something to eat. We stayed through the first two sets, which surprised me. She's not a fan of sitting around for very long in one place, and gets chair butt really fast. I didn't expect her to last that long.

Sunday involved exciting things, like soup and cleaning off the patio. Wasn't that nice of me, to let Mom use the snow shovel to scrape frozen wet birdseed off the cement? I sure know how to show people a good time. I also let her put away the Halloween decorations. She let me pick up the mushy tomatoes that were still out there.

Sucess!

I foiled the plans of the evil Sims and resisted their calling from the spare room. (They sounded rather like the Tech pep band taunting the goalie...there was a steady Aaaaaaamyyyyy coming from that room...soft and creepy.) I even went in there (that was the room that needed to be picked up yet), I taunted them...walking close to the computer. I even picked up their disk. Only to giggle madly and put it away. Ha ha! Take that you dastardly pretend people!

I managed to resist the new set of dvds I got in the mail from Netflix, and another disk of Torchwood was in there. Mmmm....Torchwood. They wanted to be watched. Perhaps tonight they'll get lucky. But I wouldn't count on it, I have Things to do yet.

I'm back on caffiene again...hopefully only for a bit-I do try to limit how much I drink of it. But this whole dark out when I get home from work is just killer. Makes me lazy and feel like I should just go to bed. So last night was Mayan Chocolate coffee stuff. The fake kind that comes in the little tins-that you just have to add water to. It was yummy and sugary.

Then this morning, I opened up the Spiced Plum tea I picked up from the grocery store. Its sold looseleaf and is one of those bulk things where you can scoop out how much you want. I'll be going back for more. It my new very favorite thing. So good. The best tea ever. I want to buy them out of it, and ignore all the other teas I have at home.

Curls, Curls Everywhere! Curls, Curls, In my Hair!

Yay! Since I haven't blogged about it yet, I figured its time. About a week and a half I chopped off all my hair. Well, technically Shari, from Design Affair chopped off all my hair. And to my surprise, this time it turned curly!? What's up with that? I've never had curly hair in my life! (She did tell me that happens to some people when they get older. I refrained from crying cause I'm turning old. It was hard.) So, now its a lovely shade of red again...instead of that icky natural color, and curly! Wheee! Its cut to about chin length, with layers and fun stuff. And I can do Things with it again. A little gel and let it be curly...a flat iron and make it straight...or some sort of mysterious thing and flip the ends out (which sound way too hard for me). I absolutely love the cut. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the haircuts that flappers had. Which makes me very happy. I really feel like I should go do naughty things and hang out in a speakeasy. Hee hee!

I've been working on getting some Christmas presents together for people. Making ornaments and stuff like that. So far this fall, my obsessive tendencies have really come out. First was the whole crocheted dishcloth thing. I now have 43 of them. (Which is ok, its not like they go bad.) Then I made 3 crocheted bags. This week so far, I've been making lace angels, 17 of them...and I ran out of lace. I'm not planning on buying more though, even though I have lots of the other bits that go into the angels...cause how many do I need? (And they're made out of stuff that mom had sitting in her garage...I'm trying to use it up.) Oh, and the count on dangley beaded ornaments is at 3 right now. I had to stop with them, I bruised the palm of my hand-my wire clippers are rather dull and I was using a thick wire on them. I have other wire clippers, but it involved getting up and finding them.

Then something bad has happened. Sort of. I was at a Goodwill last weekend. And I bought something I shouldn't have. The deluxe version of Sims (the first one). I started playing with it on Monday night. That game is a horrible time warp. I've made two people so far...Hunca Munca, and Peter Piper. Hunca is boring, apparently I didn't set her personality right. Peter is much more fun...plus he managed to burn down his kitchen already. I don't think I'm going to play with Hunca anymore. In reality, I shouldn't be playing with any of them...I have other things to do. It has really cut into my sleepy time. So no more Sims this week for me.

Must clean and try to get ready for Christmassy fun times! Yay! That will be fun for me too. For some strange reason, I don't mind cleaning...even though I don't do it much. Its more of a satisfaction thing, when I see how nice it is. One room to go, then I can start on the floors.

I'm a quitter!

I've decided to give up on the attempt to write a novel this month. Its just not going to happen. I managed almost 5,000 out of the 50,000. I don't have the time to do this right now, and it would have been a struggle to make it happen if everything had been going right. Since things have not been going right, I came to the decision that I need to focus on other things, and not even see how far I can get. I can always do this on my own some other time...just pick a month and do it myself.

I've had a bit of a lingering cold/cough for the last 6 weeks or so (since I was on vacation). This weekend it came back and then some. So another trip to the doctor, and heard more gibberish about this just having to run its course. But at least this time I insisted that they give me some medicine and now I have so super cough syrup that actually keeps me from coughing. Yay! (Well, at least most of the time.) So that should help with the rib damage that it caused...it'll at least have a chance to heal. I've never hurt my ribs before...its not pleasant. I don't recommend that.

Help help!

More Nano posting! Yay!

I've fallen horribly behind on my schedule of how many words a day I need to write in order to get my 50,000 in time. In fact, as of this morning, I'm about 7,000 behind where I want to be. *sigh* It probably doesn't help any that I'm doing this in sort of drafts...this first run through, I want to just get the basics of the story out, and then go back an fill in details and descriptions. I was hoping to have the story done by the middle of next week, but unless I spend almost all weekend working on it, that won't happen.

I'm having a very hard time forcing myself to write when the words are struggling. Especially when I'm at home and there's all sorts of fun things to do there. (Its not fun writing when its a forced thing.) I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to catch up very well. I've gone so far as to ban myself to my room with the computer in it, thinking that would help. Not so much...there's closets in there. Closets full of neat stuff. A quick break to look for something, or get up from the chair turns into hours that are lost. I think there's some sort of black hole time warp in my apartment. I honestly don't know where the time went.

Tonight I'm going to start setting timers. So long writing...then a few minutes of doing something else. Like laundry. Which is not fun. But to make up for that, I get to go see Paul & Lorraine play Friday and Saturday nights. Whee!

Mmmm....Cardboard

Started my book for nanowrimo. (Yet another nano post...get used to it, its going to be occupying me all this month.) So far, its veered off the path I had started it on. Bright side, I think I came up with an idea for it to dash back to where its intended to go...and have it match up. In fact, its a rather brilliant idea...if I do say so myself, brings in a lot of continuity and motives.

Sad side, I still have no name for my main character, I'm not sure if she even has one at this point. I haven't got a clear idea of who she is yet, so all the dialog is very wooden, and the characters are all cardboard...and there's no emotion in it all. In fact, its a decent idea that's being ground down into a pile of crap. But that's ok, I went into this intending to write a steaming pile. The whole idea isn't to create something good, but just to create something. The nice thing, is I won't have time to go back and edit it as I go...that can come later, after its all written. Though in reality, I'll probably never do anything with it. I'm not intending to show this to anyone, just prove that I can do it. Its all for my own amusement. Its a good thing I'm easily amused.

I am a bit worried about my hands being able to take the abuse though....that's an awful lot of typing, after putting in a bit over 3000 words last night, my hands were aching and I couldn't get to sleep. I can see pain killers will become my friends this month.

Adventures with Whistles

As promised, a UPS box was waiting for me when I got home on Friday. Inside was my shiny new tin whistle. I've been playing with it a lot since then. I've progressed to make fewer horrid screeching noises out of it. (I knew my neighbors were going to love it!) Its quite different and harder to play than I had thought it would be. It'll take a lot more practice to get it under control. But, its do-able! And so much fun! The problem I'm having with it right now is that I used to play brass instruments...and with them, volume is controlled by how hard you blow. (Ha! Sounds so dirty.) And your embouchure controls the tone. With the whistle, tone is controlled by your breath. So far, I haven't been able to hear any difference in the note by changing the embouchure. Its turning out to be great fun. Once I master this one, I'm planning on getting more whistles in different keys. (They're made to play in one key-you need a different whistle for a different key.) Keys of course meaning which notes are sharp or flat. Should I turn out to be proficient in whistles, the ultimate plan is to try out a lovely wooden flute. Whistles being my gateway instrument to the flute. (I'm a touch afraid of the flute...it will be so very different from anything I've played.)

All this whistling (I probably put in about 9 hours of it over the weekend) has put a damper on my attempt at nano though. Well, I still could have made time to write more...but it just wasn't a priority for me this last weekend. I had better things to do...things like watch tv (the winner of everything I watched was Tin Man-I saw the first two parts-if you haven't seen it, go find it-its brilliant), take naps, read books, curse at the fact that I hardly got any trick-or-treaters, spend hours taking apart the treat bags I had assembled for them, play with yarn and eat candy. I think I'm going to put most of the blame on the candy though...I'm sure it put me into a sugar coma of some sort where all I was able to do was lounge about. It wouldn't have had anything to do with my laziness or habit of procrastinating with everything. Nope. Couldn't be that. So far I have a grand total of 3 words. Ha! Even worse...it isn't even 3 words that are going to stay, just a little reminder to me of what I picked to write about. (I've been tossing ideas around for a few days, and finally just picked one and will be going with that.) Since I'm sure you're curious now...my three words are Sleeping Beauty Sucks. I've always hated that bitch and its time she got what she deserves!

Oh, back to the tv....I watched the opening of the Legend of the Seeker show. It was crap, I didn't like it...but I sat there continuing to watch it. For some reason, I was taking delight in how horrid I though it was. Then during commercials I was reading the book its based on. So, its a step above the tv version of the Mists of Avalon...which was so awful I couldn't watch it...but still a waste of time. I haven't quite decided if I dislike because its veered so far from the book (I wasn't expecting it to follow the story all that well), or if its also just bad tv. I'm going to have to keep watching it until I figure that out. I'm not a huge fan of the books, I have most of them...but after the first 3 or 4 it really started getting old...the story was just dragging on and there's no end in sight. (Rather the same as Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series...started out fantastic...but just didn't have the staying power for me.) With both of them, I feel like I should read them all, just because I have put in the time reading a lot of them (I read almost all of both of them), but I find myself just not caring what happens to any of the characters in them. Maybe I'm just not a fan of the "big" epic stories.

Things that go Bump in the Night

Halloween has been sneaking up on me this year. I have the treats, but completely forgot about a pumpkin and haven't put up my decorations yet. I'm going to try to get that all done tonight. Along with getting some food cooked and frozen. (And freezing more food is on the schedule for tomorrow night.) Because, starting midnight on Friday, I'm going to be starting my silly little book I'm going to attempt to write. Not to mention playing around with that whistle that is on schedule to be delivered Friday. I won't be willing to cook with all those other things to do. Eventually I'd get sick of oatmeal and start picking up prepackaged food...and I really should be eating up the meat from in my freezer-I need to make room-in case I get a deer this year. (I don't do the hunting, but if they get enough, my dad and brother give me one.)

Last night, I started doing a bit of reading of mythology stuff and fairy tales-just in case I can't think of something original to write my story about-I figured if I'm completely stumped, I could do a retelling of one. I came across the Pandora story. Its never made any sense to me at all. I think something got lost somewhere in that one. The whole thing, is that the gods made Pandora to punish man. She was supposed to be decietful and all the bad things that we women are. *big eyeroll here* All the gods gave her "gifts", and along with that, they gave her a box filled with all the evils of the world...and for some reason hope was in there. Why would hope be in the box of bad stuff? See...doesn't make sense! So the story goes on, that her curiosity got the better of her, she opened the box, and the evil escaped. She saw what she did and closed the box quickly, leaving hope the only thing left in there. Well....if that's the story...then there shouldn't be any hope in the world...right? Its still in the box! Arrrrrghhh! And WHY was it in there?!? I had to yell at the book after reading that. I've never been happy about that...but now, in my old age, it appears to make me furious.

I'm also toying with the idea of doing a retelling of Sleeping Beauty for my book. I was never happy with the way the "bad" fairy was protrayed. I tend to identify with the "evil" people/creatures in those stories. The "good" guys always seem so boring. What's the fun of being beautiful and kind and obedient and all that. Its our flaws that make us interesting. I just can't make myself cheer for some cardboard character.

NaNoWriMo! Eeek!

I believe I did a silly thing yesterday...perhaps even sillier than buying a tin whistle to irritate my neighbors with. (Though I'm sure they're used to it...after all I hit my snooze button for about an hour every morning...I hate getting up.) I signed up for NaNoWriMo. Now, I never really had an urge to write a novel...and haven't really written anything since college. Add in that I'm trying to make a bunch of my Christmas presents, and learn to play that whistle....probably not the wisest decision.

So far, I've been trying to think of some way to be able to have enough story in me to write that many words...and have it still kind of go together. My good idea is to start with a normal story...when I run out of things to say...kill them all off and turn them into zombies. As far as a starting point...I'm toying with the idea of starting with one of my crazy dreams. (Last night's involved stepping into an alternate reality by climbing up the inside of a wall.) Its still an awful lot of words to write. Perhaps it'll turn into generations of zombies. Ha! Actually...that's rather amusing to me...maybe I'll do that. Hee hee hee! Still not sure where I'm going to carve out the time to do this. Granted I don't do much....we'll see how it goes.

Other than that...the swelling in my ankle has gone down some. Wheee! It probably would have disappeared a whole lot earlier if I hadn't been poking at it. It didn't hurt enough to make me leave it alone.