It’s that time of year — when it’s cool to be a witch (or demon, or ghoul, or vampire, or whatever other-worldly critter rocks your world). It’s also less than 24 hours to NaNoWriMo…

I’m all set! I have notes prepared for almost all of the cameo appearances, names chosen for my 3 main characters, and 14 chapter outlines — which is somewhere around half of what I expect my novel will wind up with, although I still don’t know how it ends. Theoretically I’ll be figuring that out over the next 30 days — or perhaps I’ll hit a 50K wordcount long before the end of the story, and need to participate in NaNoFiMo. (I rather suspect that will be the case, so I’ve already registered at NaNoFiMo.)

And now for something completely TMI…

They say hard work never killed anyone, but it sure does give a body lots of aches & pains. I got 97% of the compy-room project finished yesterday! The only remaining work is taking 2 boxes to the garage, and sorting out a few small piles. But my compy-room is totally clean, dusted, vacuumed, and looks really nice! (Well, except for the yucky fake-wood paneling, but I can’t do anything about that.) And I found my electric coffee-mug heater and plugged it in, and it still works! So the compy-room is all ready for NaNoWriMo, yay!

While iSurfing at work, Geoffrey found this totally hilarious rag on ST:NG written by Wil Wheaton (who played Wesley Crusher), and I almost whizzed on the captain. Now, I really loved ST:NG (it started airing just after I turned 18, and I was highly idiotic idealistic at the time, so it was perfect for me), but in retrospect, it wasn’t the Best TV Writing Ever. I almost spewed coffee laughing at this part:

Wesley says, “you mean that space, time, and thought aren’t the separate things they appear to be?” Deadheads everywhere put down their bongs and cough out, “Duh.”

And even if you disliked the Wesley character, you gotta feel for Wil Wheaton. There he was, an awkward teen struggling to do a good job that many adults couldn’t have managed, but disliked by Trek fans everywhere. So this was damned funny, too:

Yeah! Suck it, jerks! Wesley was right, bitches, and you wouldn’t listen to him! Woo! Go Wesley! Go Wesley! It’s your birthday! It’s your birthday!

Since Mari is the huge Wil Wheaton fan, I’m sure she’ll find this funnier than anyone else I know, but still…it’s worth reading if you ever loved or hated Wesley Crusher.

I’ve never really understood the concept of “spring cleaning” since most of my intensive house-cleaning and -organizing efforts get done in the fall & winter (when it’s not so pleasant to be outside). Last night I embarked upon the rather forboding task of intensively cleaning my computer room. I’m chagrined to admit that when we moved into the townhouse 13 months ago, I piled about a half-dozen boxes in the corner “to be sorted out later” — then promptly ignored them. Over the last year, assorted stuff “to be sorted out later” has been piled atop those boxes, until there was a very untidy small mountain of stuff. The cats (especially Michiko) have enjoyed using it as a jungle gym.

Currently that corner is completely empty!

And now for something completely TMI…

Woo hoo! I started my NaNoWriMo novel outline last night, and so far I have the start of a character list (including cameo appearances) and the first 5 chapters outlined. I’m terrible at writing action sequences, so this should be interesting since there’s a lot more action than dialogue in the first 5 chapters — which, incidentally, all take place on the same day.

One of the fun things about NaNoWriMo is the “Dare” thread in the forums. People post dares (suggestions) of things to include in your novel, and you take what you think will inspire and/or amuse you. Here are the dares I’ve chosen to include in my novel:

• Include the line, “You learn more if you don’t knock.”
• Somewhere in your novel, there are seven goats sitting on an island.
• At some point in your novel, have a character seriously consider how to kill a person using cutlery and/or kitchen implements that you wouldn’t normally consider to be deadly weapons.
• Have a cat follow the main characters around EVERYWHERE.
• Include the line, “All in all, I think the world needs less ethics and more fire.”
• Dare: have a character carry around an old chicken bone at all times.
  Bonus Points if s/he constantly gets questioned about it.
  Double Bonus Points if s/he has no rational explanation for it.
  Triple Bonus Points if s/he refuses to talk about it
  Quadruple Bonus Points if s/he does not allow anyone else to touch it.
• Give youself a cameo in your novel.
  Bonus Points if you include your friends.
• Use the Buffy the vampire Slayer quote, “I laugh in the face of danger…and then I hide until it goes away.”
• Use the word defenestrate in a sentence in context.

Yes, I’m going to give ALL my friends (with their real first names!) a cameo appearance in my novel. This means 1 or 2 sentences, basically a bit part…however, if a character seems really compelling, they might get a smidgen more of a part. We’ll see what the muse decides when the time comes.

I’m already having lots of fun with just the cameo characters. Since my novel is set in a vaguely-medieval fantasy world, and the plot revolves around a good king who’s just liberated his kingdom from a years-long conqueror and must now rebuild his shattered land while simultaneously pursuing the truth about a woman who may or may not be his long-lost only child who was kidnapped 20 years before, there will be lots of opportunities for minor characters to appear. While I don’t want to give away a whole lot, I will mention that Mari will be an Imperial Princess from the Empire of Kyuet. *snicker*

I will not join any NaNoWriMo LJ communities (aside from the NaNoWriMo icon community that I already joined, to get oodles of icons to amuse me and to annoy others).

I will not join any NaNoWriMo webrings.

I will not join any NaNoWriMo chat groups.

I will not spend more than 15 minutes a day at NaNoWriMo forums.

I will not Google “NaNoWriMo” to find cool websites devoted to the insanity that is NaNoWriMo.

I will not re-read No Plot, No Problem! — the book by the founder of NaNoWriMo — more than 10 minutes per day.

Instead, I will write (by hand!) a novel outline, and a shopping list of the snackies & caffeinated beverages I will require to successfully complete NaNoWriMo. And if I can manage to follow these mantras (at least until I have my 50K wordcount completed), I will reward myself with one of those huge, nifty NaNoWriMo coffee mugs.

I’ve just had my first frustration this year with NaNoWriMo, and hopefully it will be the last!

It started out very simply, really. I just wanted a cool wordcount widget graphic in my sig on my forum posts. The graphic looks like this:

I mean, how cool is that? And after NaNoWriMo starts, it will have my wordcount total and daily average wordcount I need to write, and such. (I love this kind of stuff. If I knew programming, I’d make tons of stuff like this. With lots of purple.)

But, of course, the forums don’t use the regular HTML brackets I’m used to. They use [] instead of <>. Okay, no problem. I just change the brackets, right?

And now for something completely TMI…

When I was at Lyse’s place yesterday, we had the most hilarious conversation. Or at least I thought so! *smirk*

I told her that I was going to the local NaNoWriMo “midnight write” gathering, where people get together at a coffee shop shortly before midnight on October 31st, and then start writing their novels en masse at 12:01 am on November 1st. She said, “But you don’t have a laptop!”

I couldn’t resist. It would have been like a cat letting a mouse saunter up to it and tickling its nose, without pouncing upon the mouse and chewing it into little bits. I replied, “Lyse, there’s this thing called ‘paper’ and this other thing called a ‘pen.’ People write with them. People have been writing with them for centuries now! Without a laptop, even!”

Yes, I know I’m evil. Tee hee!

Apparently spending a few hours with Lyse yesterday caused my brain to go wonky, as on the way home I heard a Dixie Chicks song on the radio and was overwhelmed with a compulsion to get the entire album. Ack! I’ve been contaminated by country chick-rock! I’ve listened to “Not Ready To Make Nice” about 6 times now! And it’s all Lyse’s fault (since she’s the only person I know who regularly listens to country music).

I’m going to go listen to all 3 of the My Chemical Romance albums now, to try to cleanse my poor little brain.

Do people not supervise their kids east of the Rockies or something?!

From Wisconsin to Indiana to Minnesota to Texas, there seems to be an epidemic of unsupervised (and greedy) little boys!

How long, exactly, does it take a kid to (first) figure out how to get inside one of these devices, and then to (second) act on that idea? I’m sure it’s a lot longer than is appropriate to NOT be supervising a young child! And people wonder how kids get abducted by strangers these days…

I hope those kids all got spankings. But the way parents are today, it was probably just laughed off. (Somehow I doubt those parents will be laughing in the future, when their not-so-little-anymore kids are getting in trouble because their parents couldn’t be bothered to supervise them properly, teach them right from wrong, and require them to be responsible for the consequences of their actions.)

And it’s really sad that these stories are being reported as “cute human interest” news items, rather than “irresponsible parenting” news items.

As planned, I went to Lyse’s for some house-cleaning today — I’d hoped to get the whole house done, but only had time to get the main floor done. Still, her kitchen & living room are very cheerfully tidy now. And I even managed to get a couple loads of laundry in, between bouts of mopping, vacuuming, wiping windowsills, & taking out the trash…and between breaks for coffee & ciggies. I also found $10.66 in the pockets of jeans in the laundry pile — Lyse insisted on calling it the “Battle of Hastings cash.” (Freakish history geek that she is.)

Sunday evening, Jenn made manicotti for her household & mine, and somehow Robert & Geoffrey wound up collaborating on making dessert. They both like tapioca (ew!), and got into the food coloring — so now there’s blue tapioca in my fridge. Jenn dubbed it “Smurf sperm.” Even if I liked tapioca, I wouldn’t have eaten it after hearing that. And somehow Geoffrey came up with the idea of calling the manicotti “soylent pasta,” which amused me to no end. Mealtimes at our place can be just a little surreal… *grin*

And now for something completely TMI…