TGIO 2009

TGIO...that's NaNo speak for Thank God It's Over. November, that is. I won again this year, barely. I dropped way behind in week three and had to play massive catchup on the last weekend. Here's my stats graph (in words per day):

Yeah, I made it. Yeah, it's a complete mess. The story's not done - I'm thinking the first draft will probably be around 80k - but I can't bring myself to go back and look at it. It veered so far off course so many times that I think it's going to take a baseball bat to get it to submit.

Still have a few homework assignments left, but the semester is almost over. Today is the last day of the penultimate week, and the week after next we have finals. I still have to do two more homeworks for Software Engineering, two more for Database Systems, a homework, a group project, and the final for Internet Programming, and a worksheet and the final for Economics.

Marie and Dan are coming down to the house this weekend (yay!). They're going to stay over Saturday night and we're all going to the S&W range on Sunday. Mm, cordite therapy...

NaNo Recipes

It's that time again - NaNoWriMo! I'm two days behind, but not doing too badly. Of course, NaNo always means the conundrum of, "I want dessert, but I don't have time to make anything involved, like a pie." So I'm collecting quick recipes for good treats. Right now I've got a breakfast bread in the oven, but I won't post the recipe until I see how it comes out. Over the weekend, I made these:

Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Muffins

2 cups flour

3 tsps. baking powder

2 tbsps. sugar

3/4 tsp. salt

1 egg

3 tbsps. butter, melted

1 cup milk, warmed

2 tbsps. cocoa

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Melt the butter and add it to the warm milk. Stir the butter mixture and the egg into the dry ingredients and whisk until just blended. Add the cocoa, the chocolate chips, and the vanilla. Whisk until the cocoa is not entirely blended for a marbled look. Bake 20-25 minutes. Makes ~12 muffins.

Book Cover

There was a new feature introduced to the NaNoWriMo site this year, where you could upload a cover image for your novel as well as posting a synopsis and excerpt. I didn't get around to making a cover because I was too busy writing, but now that the writing bit is over, I found time to be a little graphic-creative. This is the first version of the cover; there is also a second version, which is similar but a little bit simpler.

Fleaing

The letdown is here...no more NaNo. Granted, I haven't really written since Thursday anyway, but now it's really, officially over. I have signed up for NaNoFiMo, but am not sure I can really squeeze another 30k out of this novel. I'm gonna try, but...well, we'll see.

Craig and I went fleaing yesterday for the first time in several months. We're still determined to collect and refurbish as many guitars/bass guitars as we can get our hands on. There were no electric guitars at the Holyoke flea yesterday, but there were a couple of small practice amps. We picked up a nice 30-watt (ish) Peavey for $30, after the guy selling it said that it would be $30 if I bargained, but $35 if Craig did. It's in good shape and has a really nice sound. I like it better than my own Crate! But now we've got two amps to practice with, meaning we can actually play together instead of taking turns.

In the interest of procrastinating as long as humanly possible on a semester chemistry paper last night, I found a tab for Def Leppard's Promises and began learning it. I chose it because (a) it's a song I like and sing well and (b) it has an easy second-guitar line so that Craig, who is just learning guitar, can play it too. I'm still not sure how I rate as a teacher, but he did great. That was probably his experience on bass talking and not my teaching skills. I'm excited about this song - I love jamming with other musicians more than pretty much anything else in the world.

The chem paper did get done, by the way. Three and a half pages. Research and writing together took me less than two hours, and it looks good! Hey, the teacher has admitted that this is not his assignment and he really doesn't give a shit, so I'm pretty sure it's an A, heads or tails. We're heading fast now for the end of the semester. This weekend was my last chem assignment (the paper), my last i5 assignment, and my last Data Structures assignment. Just one to go, for Visual Basic, and it's already half-done. Yayyy!!! Finals are coming!!!

Oh, and happy December, everyone. We got some shitty icy-type snow last night. Wasn't any good for playing in, but at least the back porch was white for a few hours.

The Finish Line (Numerically)

I get to say it again - I did it! This time, though, I'm referring to NaNo. I made 50,132 last night. Yes, on Thanksgiving.

The novel's not finished yet; I'm guessing it will end up around 60k or 65k, but we'll see.

“Casey,” I heard a voice hiss, and was startled to see someone appear suddenly by his side, with no warning. The man was several inches shorter than I was, with greasy black hair that hung in his face. “Hey, Casey.”

Casey stood up straighter, clearly trying to get as far away from the guy as he could, the look of disgust on his face very thinly disguised. “What, Larry?” he asked shortly.

Larry looked up then and caught sight of me and Marielle, and flinched like someone had slapped him. Without saying another word, he ducked away from Casey and slunk out of the room. His gait was strange, weaving back and forth in a very deliberate pattern.

Casey’s face held comic disdain. “Oh, dear Larry,” he said with a dramatic sigh, and made a show of brushing off any part of him that might have been near the guy. He obviously liked to be sparkling clean all the time, possibly to the point of obsession. I wondered idly what would have happened if Larry had actually touched him, and laughed to myself at the resulting mental image.

“What?” asked Marielle, and Casey grinned.

“What?” I asked back, confused, then realized I must have laughed out loud. “Oh, nothing.”

“I know, Larry’s worth laughing at,” Casey said. “One of these days someone should teach him to shower. I keep telling the boss to hire a dog trainer, but he keeps saying no.”

It was a cruel thing to say, but I laughed anyway. Marielle didn’t; in fact, she was looking distinctly unhappy.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked her, patting her arm. She flinched away from me, and I frowned. “Do you want to leave?”

She hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”




Wheeee!
In other news, the Turkey-Day pies were a big success. The apple recipe turned out great, so I made it again for the party at Mom's on Thursday (after borrowing a couple of pie pans from Kathy, since I left my good glass one in Keene). I got a little creative with the pumpkin pie, too, breaking tradition to add a layer of chocolate on the bottom.


The chocolate ganache that I used was from a recipe for black-bottom cream pie, which is chilled instead of baked, so the chocolate layer stays on the bottom and doesn't mix with the cream layer. A pumpkin pie, however, has to be baked (and for a long damn time), so the ganache melted. What ended up happening is that it mixed just a little bit with the pumpkin filling, not entirely, so there was a nice layer in between the two of chocolatey-pumpkin. It was really tasty...and the apple pie got finished for breakfast. There is no better breakfast than leftover fruit pie!

Pie and T-day

Made 47,905 last night. Wanted to make 48k, but I got pretty close, so no big deal! After that, I was planning to make 50k tonight, but it hasn't quite worked out so far.

After getting out of bed at 11:15 this morning feeling like I'd just come out of a coma, I had to make coffee and ingest said coffee before I could even think about making pie. Then I had to find my pie bible. It turned up on top of the fridge (I would never have found it if Craig hadn't pointed it out). Crusts alone took a couple of hours, then I put together the filling and finished making the pie for the get-together at Kathy and Ron's place tonight. It's baking now, and as usual, I'm having a fight with the oven. Hopefully this one won't burn, or at least won't burn as badly, as the last one did.

I'm excited about this particular pie, though. There was no recipe in my book for a basic double-crust apple-cinnamon pie, so did I find another book? Look up a recipe online? Nope, I wung it! (Winged it? Wang it? ...that last one didn't sound right.) I put cinnamon in the crust and nutmeg in the filling, plus a little bit of lemon juice. I also didn't have any plain white sugar, so I made the crust with some packets of Sugar in the Raw that I found in the cupboard and the filling with brown sugar. I'm thinking the brown sugar will probably caramelize in the oven and make a nice thick filling...in which case, should I not have added the cornstarch? Ugh, I hate second-guessing myself. I'll just have to report back on how it comes out.

Likelihood is that I won't get to blogging tomorrow, so I'll say it now: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy your turkey (or tofurkey, if you're one of those).

Day Twenty-Five

Last night's wordcount: 45,091. Yes, 2,500 words over my goal! I don't have a specific goal for today/tonight, just that I want to hit 50k as soon as possible. I want to finish early. I can do it.

I can't post an excerpt, though, because everything in the last 5k has been essential enough to the plot that I would give things away. Yes, even though I haven't posted the whole story. Perhaps because I haven't posted the whole thing.

Day Twenty-Four

Last night's count: 41,038! Today's goal: 40,008 42,500. Yay, getting ahead!

In front of us was the counter, where a crowd of customers were ordering, paying for, and receiving various drinks. Through a large open doorway to the right was a room with scattered tables and chairs, and a sofa at each end. Out of maybe fifteen tables, only two were empty. Fin and I got in line at the counter, and I looked up at the blackboard hung near the ceiling. The Coffee Bug was written across the top, and various pastries, coffees, teas, and specials were written beneath the name in neat, cramped handwriting, with various colors of chalk.

Arbitrarily choosing a coffee from the list, I used the time we spent standing in line to look at everyone around me, carefully inspecting each male face to try and guess which one was Billy.

“Is he here?” I finally asked Fin, who as usual looked something between bemused and stoically calm.

“Not yet,” he said.

“You didn’t even look!” I accused him.

“Don’t need to,” he said. “I’ll know when he’s here, don’t worry. We’re not going to miss him.”

I fidgeted my way to the front of the line, paid for my coffee, and then got in the line to pick it up. By the time Fin and I had claimed what was now the last empty table in the other room, I was beginning to think that perhaps coffee was a bad idea, since I was already so jumpy.

“He’s here,” said Fin, seemingly out of the blue. I whirled around in my seat, but a hand on my shoulder pulled me back to a normal sitting position again.

“What?” I demanded, annoyed.

“He doesn’t like to stick out,” Fin explained. “Don’t make a big deal about it.”

I glared at him in frustration, but couldn’t really say anything. I had no idea who this guy was or what he was like, and I didn’t want to screw up the meeting. Gripping my paper coffee cup so hard I nearly squeezed the coffee out all over the table, I sat and stared determinedly at Fin while we waited for Billy to come sit with us. The minutes seemed to take years until finally Fin looked up and smiled at someone behind me.

“Hey man,” he said. “How’s it going?”

Day Twenty-Three

Last night's final count: 38,005. (It shows up as partly today's work in my NaNo chart, because I posted it at 12:30am, but I consider that yesterday.) Today's goal according to the 1667-words-a-day calendar is 38,341, but I'm already well past that, so I changed the goal to an even 40k. If I make that, I'll have Monday complete tonight.

I also posted that cool little counter widget - see it up there on the top right? It takes my word-count data straight from the NaNo database, so if you want to know where I am RIGHT NOW, that will tell you. (Provided you press ctrl F5, because sometimes it's a little reluctant to update.)

“Why do you think he’ll be helpful to me?”

“He was helpful to me,” he said simply, and didn’t elaborate.

I wasn’t convinced. “About what?”

Though I wouldn’t have quite called it a death glare, the look Fin gave me told me I should shut my mouth immediately if not earlier. Wondering what I’d poked my nose into, I faced the seat in front of me and didn’t say another word.

It must have been pretty serious, I thought to myself, to bother Fin so much. I’d been impressed more than once by how calm he was no matter what was going on around him, whether he was pulling me out of the pond after I’d been attacked by crows, or explaining himself to me in the cafeteria after my friends had been so mean to him. The thought of something awful enough to alarm Fin scared me.

I risked a quick sideways glance at him through my hair, but he looked completely calm once again, like nothing had ever happened. I was reminded of a pond when a rock has been dropped in – it ripples, but once it stops, you would never know there had ever been a rock. Of course, you’ll probably also never see the rock again. I had dropped that rock in with my eyes closed, and now I wanted to know what it looked like, but I didn’t dare go searching for it.

Day Twenty-Two

Yesterday's word count: 35,304. Today's goal: 36,674. Almost to the 3/4-point! (That's 37,500.)

I got my packet from UMass today. The majority of it was useless information about living on campus, but there was also essential information pertaining to fees, classes, orientation, and so on. Every time I look at that red-and-gold folder on the floor I can't help but grin.

Also, although I don't expect anyone else to be as excited as I am, my one-year anniversary with Craig was yesterday. I'll have to post a photo of the picture-frame thingy I made...when I take one. In the mean time, here are some other interesting pictures, since I finally installed the software for my computer's memory-card reader and offloaded everything that was on my camera, which is all the pictures I took over the summer.

A tractor seen in Deerfield:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_2230.jpg

I Kant...park, apparently:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_2240.jpg

A true ham car (on the way to NEARfest):
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_2241.jpg

Palm trees in Northampton:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_2245.jpg

Craig at the outdoor range in Northampton:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_2246.jpg

Me at the same range:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_2266.jpg

With the 7mm magnum. My shoulder hurt for a week after firing that damn thing:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_2270.jpg

No tailgating:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_2286.jpg

OCD Happy

I just hit the end of a chapter at exactly 33,000 words, at exactly 9:00am. This makes my OCD side extremely happy. The unfortunate part is that it also makes it harder to get going again, since writing another word will make the count no longer even. Then again, I really want to hit 35k today.

So I guess I lied about not posting any more excerpts. I wrote a paragraph I just love for some reason, and want to put it up somewhere. Here it is.

My phone rang just then and I answered it, even though I knew it was only my alarm. Distinctly uninterested in watching Jen work her boy magic, I had set it to go off at noon to save me from an awkward situation.

“Hi mom,” I said, loudly enough that they would both hear me, and started sidling away. “What’s up? Oh, really?” I continued to fake a conversation until I was out the door and well away from the building. When I reached the edge of the parking lot, I took a quick glance over my shoulder to be sure they weren’t following me, and broke into a run. Some part of me felt inexplicably guilty for doing what I’d just done to Fin. I knew Jen wreaked havoc on boys, and I probably shouldn’t have handed her one I was actually friends with; at least, not if I wanted to stay friends with him. Wishing I could undo what I had just done, but knowing it was already far too late, I went to lunch by myself and tried to drown my guilt in pizza.

Finally, Good News

I did it I did it I did it!!! Sorry to shout in your virtual ear, but I'm too excited not to. I got into UMass!! The really awesome thing? That's not even the best of the news. The BEST of the news is that I got invited into Commonwealth College, which is UMass's honors program for super-awesome students.

I had hoped that would happen but figured it probably wouldn't. Hey, self-deprecation worked out: I got a great surprise! I'm not in the Computer Science program yet because I don't have all the pre-req's, but the admissions counselor I talked to told me that would probably happen. So next semester I'll take Calculus I and Assembly Language, then take Calculus II over the summer. I'll make some friends among the faculty of the CS department, get my current programming professors to write me a letter of recommendation, and everything should work out.

*does the happy dance*

Also, I hit 30k in my NaNo! 30,102, to be exact. Today's goal: 31,673.

I Stand Corrected

It turns out that my claim to December being National Novel Editing Month was incorrect; NaNoEdMo is, in fact, in March. December is National Novel Finishing Month, NaNoFiMo. Thanks Michelle for pointing this out!

Geeky Blogger Networking

Hey everyone, go check out my guest post on How Not to Write! People are saying it's giving them lots of laughs.

The Waiting!

UMass finally got my transcript from PUCE (after I spent an hour in Tim's office doing mental troubleshooting - figures). The status of my application on their website tracker has changed from "complete application" to "under review." Now the nail-biting truly begins! Any day now I'll find out...and thus find out where I'll be living next semester, what job I'll have, what classes I'll be taking, and all sorts of other somewhat life-changing things.

Keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm trying to keep mine out of my mouth, and trying not to check the website every half an hour.

Yesterday's word count: 27,030 (exactly 2,000 words written!). Today's goal: 28,339. The Helpdesk has been busy this morning, so I haven't gotten any writing done, with the obvious exception of that which you're reading. On the other (really awesome) hand, though, I only have one class today. Matt came down with the flu yesterday, and so cancelled my 2pm and 6pm classes, leaving me with just chemistry at 4pm. Time to get things done...or sleep.

Day Sixteen

I've hit the half-way point! 25,030 official word count on Saturday the 15th. I'll cheer for myself since I can't hear the rest of you from here.

I've gotten wind, however, that my excerpts are disturbing some people. Apparently they are causing "wondering" about me. While there is always some amount of the writer in the writing, I wouldn't really call my novel a revealing psychological portrait of myself. However, I think I'll stop posting pieces of it, at least for a while. Perhaps until it's done.

Today's goal: 26,672.

Take a Break? Never!

I'm taking a break from writing...to write. At least I'm writing something different.

Catching up with a day's missed word count is a little more of a struggle than I expected it to be. I've reached 22,518 as of a couple of minutes ago, but my progress is slowing down. I really want to get through the last 800 words today/tonight, but it's amazing how much effort a half day's wordcount can be when you've already done a couple of thousand and you're not in the middle of an inspiring scene.

I'm not one of those writers who can say "This scene is boring me, so I'll skip it and write the next one, and come back to this later." Some part of me demands of some other part of me that I write everything in order. (It's the same part that demands that I fix grammar and spelling errors, even though that's kind of against the rules of NaNo.) My inner Editor is too obsessive-compulsive to let me concetrate on anything else, like writing productively, until that typo staring at me is corrected. Fortunately I type fast, so it doesn't hold me up too much.

This is the point at which I should say "Time for a break!" and go do something ELSE else, that's not blogging, that actually requires me to get up and change my position and surroundings. However, it's raining and cold and dark outside, and I'm entirely uninspired to do anything but remain inside where it's warm and dry. Training myself to actually take breaks while I'm working on something is pretty difficult. Whether it's a novel or a programming project, it seems more productive to sit and stare at the screen and produce nothing than to walk away, even though theoretically I know otherwise.

So here I am, sitting and staring at the screen and producing nothing but whining, bloggable drivel and complaints.

In other news, though, UMass finally got my PUCE transcript. Now it's back to the waiting game. I have my fingers crossed!

Day Fourteen

For the first time, I've actually gotten behind on my wordcount. I didn't write at all on the 12th; just didn't get to it. I'm playing the frantic catch-up game in all my classes, so I spent the day doing homework. I finally got my VB midterm done this morning (it was due Tuesday, but I got an extension). HW07B for Data Structures got finished yesterday (on time! Wow!), and I'm taking my chem exam next Tuesday (which was originally more than a week ago). I also need to start and finish two homeworks for my server class, which the prof says are the most important ones of the semester. Of course.

Last night's word count: 20,708. Today's goal: 23,338. I'm less than a day behind. Hopefully I can catch up this afternoon.

As far as UMass, they are still giving me a hard time about my application. I finally got the business with the fee sorted out, but now they are insisting that they can't look over my application until they have my transcript from PUCE. Since that has to come from Ecuador, one of the slowest countries in the world, I'm worried that it won't get there in time. I have to reply to UMass by December 1st to tell them whether I'll be going. It's November 14th and they're refusing to look over my application. Talk about getting down to the wire. I've emailed Tim and PUCE, my advisor, the admissions officer at UMass, and their dean of admissions (who hasn't seen fit to reply to me yet.) In short, I've talked to everyone I can, and now all I can do is just sit and twiddle and hope that transcript comes through ASAP.

Day Twelve

Last night's word count: 18,317. Today's goal: 20,004.

I need a place to put these awesome little NaNo image thingies! So here they are. Like you hadn't figured out already that I'm a participant.

Day Eleven

By some miracle, I am still on my word count. That miracle is, I believe, known as "having a laptop." Since I refuse to write by hand in favor of using a computer, having a portable version translates into the ability to write...well, anywhere, really. On the couch, in various houses, in random parts of campus, in the kitchen of my dorm while making dinner, or in the car on the way home from Vermont (I wasn't driving, I promise).

Last night's wordcount: 17,018. Today's goal: 18,337.

I've also been offered the opportunity to write a guest post for http://www.hownottowrite.com/. I'll probably make an attempt, even if it turns out to be a shameful one that I wouldn't actually send to anybody and end up trashing. After all, I have procrastination to get to!

I stopped, turned around, and jogged the other way. There was no way I was going to try to wade through them; somehow I doubted they would move. I’d just have to take the long way back.

As I reached the edge of the pond and came around the last tree into the parking lot, I was startled to see Fin. He was walking toward the path, but stopped when he saw me.

“You don’t want to go down there,” I warned him. “There’s crows, lots of them, and they look mean.”

He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“You know? Then why are you going that way?”

He shrugged. “I was curious.”

“About what? Have you never seen a crow before?”

“I’ve seen a lot of them, actually,” he said. I was inching away from the head of the path as he spoke, not wanting to encounter the huge birds again. I hoped he would take the hint and either let me go or walk with me. I didn’t want to be rude by just walking away in the middle of a conversation, but I really wanted to be elsewhere at that moment.

“Um. Are you a birder?” I guessed.

“Nah, not my thing,” he said. “Just crows.” He didn’t explain further, but he did finally start walking away from the path. I followed quickly, unsure what else to say but glad to be getting away from the pond and the woods.

We walked in silence for a minute while I worried about various things. I had no idea what he was thinking, and after our conversations in class, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.

“Have you always attracted crows?” he asked suddenly, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“Huh? Oh, um, no. I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean, there was this one last week, but before that, no.”

“Recent,” he muttered to himself, nodding like he had confirmed a suspicion. Then to me, “What happened? With the last crow, I mean.”

“It flew into my window,” I answered, shuddering at the memory. “It was dark, I guess he couldn’t see it or something. It…” I left it there. The rest just sounded completely nuts, which I probably was. This conversation undoubtedly meant nothing.

“What?” he prompted, but I shook my head.

“Nothing.”

He turned and stared at me as we walked along, and I stared back, wondering if this was a no-blinking contest like the kind I used to have with Marielle in third grade. If it was, I was going to lose; I’d never been good at them.

“Hm,” he finally said, and faced forward again.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head and clearly imitating me.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “If I don’t talk, you don’t either?” Usually that would get people to protest – and to start talking. Not this time.

“Yup,” he said amiably.

Well, I told myself, I could be just as stubborn. I didn’t say another word except for “bye” for the rest of the walk.