Poor little Nanowrimo and other babble
I should be going to bed right now, but instead I will type. I should be working on Nanowrimo, but unfortunately I have 25.5 hours to write 15,000 words. I won the last two years, so on some level I’ve decided it’s OK to lose this year.
It’s weird, too – I stalled out earlier this month at around 15,000 words, stopped writing for 4 days, and then in a glorious burst of the English language tapped out a bunch and leapt ahead. And, uh, then Thanksgiving vacation happened. And working full-time (I was fortunate (?) to be underemployed these 2 years past). I am sorry, snarky vampire story, you will have to stay at 35,000 words for the time being. It’s been fun to write, and I’d like to keep going with it, but not at the crankin’ nano pace, I’m afraid. I’ve also spend the last month itching to finish a painting, but not feeling justified in spending the time to work on it when I have all this writing to do. D’oh!
I really do like Nanowrimo, though. The write-ins are great, they make me almost feel like I have a social life! I feel like a lot of the people that go to them are of the “creative and weird people who Get Stuff Done” types, who I need more of in my life. I also think Nanowrimo as an exercise is really useful and productive as well. It helps to blast away that idea that there’s something wrong with writing crap, or something wrong with trying to write without the inspiration. If nothing else, it teaches you that one’s writing muse is most likely to visit when one is *gasp* writing! I know I had plenty of times when I sat down and had a hard time getting into what I was working on, and so my characters just chatted trivially back and forth and did trivial things, and then all of the sudden these things were leading to plot-affecting things that were interesting and tied into other things and ultimately felt like quality writing. And there’s also the fact that even if no quality writing occurs, crap writing does, and crap writing is so much better then no writing. It’s a whole lot easier to edit an awful novel then no novel at all. And even if it is a giant pile of dung, who’s to say it can’t be sculpted into an adorable poo-pet and sold for millions?
Hmm, other things going on…I decorated for Xmas! Woo! As I continue to rock the purple $1 Target tree. I’d like to find some caroling to do this year, as I am a sucker for singing badly. I’ve got shopping about 1/2 done at this point, was hoping to be done by now but that would require more effort than I am capable of. I’m super tired lately, but I’ll just blame that on my mild tendencies toward seasonal affective disorder. Must remember to make more attempts to go hike and walk and stuff on the weekends, so I can absorb sweet delicious sunlight.
Oh yeah, we went to Santa Fe for Thanksgiving break. It was dry and fabulous and we looked at art and ate things and hiked and I rocked the continental breakfast waffle machine and such.
And I am super tired, I hear beds are all the rage for sleeping now.
Chipotle, why hast thou forsaken me?
For the past few years, Drew & I have participated in Chipotle’s “Dress up as a burrito to get a free burrito” on Halloween dealio. Pretty sweet, considering all you need to do is have some tin foil on your body to be considered dressing like a burrito. We heard recently that they were going to start charging $2 this year, but we figured that’s still worth it . Albeit, we’d only be hitting one Chipotle, rather then trying to do 4 like in years past. Mind you, their burritos don’t work nearly as well for leftovers, especially when it’s 3-4 days afterwards and you’re still trying to crank through that last burrito.
Anyhow, I decided to look up more about the different promotion they were doing this year, only to be surprised that you’re not supposed to dress like a burrito this year, but instead as a processed food, in order to get your $2 “Boorito.”
First, I’m very curious to see how many people unknowingly show up dressed in their tin foil and are quite disappointed to not be getting a free burrito! Albeit, Chipotle has no obligation to do the same promotion year after year, but it seems to have gone on enough years to be a bit of a tradition, so it’s surprising that they’re changing it now.
I’m also not a fan of how “processed food” has become a catch-all phrase for all that is unhealthy. Technically, any food that isn’t eaten completely raw has been processed. Meaning: the cheese, meat, and tortillas used in making Chipotle burritos are processed, so technically I could still wear tin foil and be a processed food and get me a $2 burrito. Hmm…
Then again, I’m still sick, and may be too much of a bum to leave the house, even for a $2 burrito. I’ll just convince Drew to bring 2 costumes and go through the line twice!
I be illin’, etc.
I hate being sick. Then again, I doubt anyone actually enjoys it. There are all different tiers to being sick, and much like Dante’s Inferno, each has it’s own sort of misery attached to it. I’m not even that sick, just the standard sore throat/stuffy nose/headache/fatigue. And I’m *hungry*. I’m never hungry when I’m sick, it’s really weird. In fact, the return of my appetite is generally the sign that I’m getting healthier. No such indicator this time around, I guess. I already missed a shopping date with a friend yesterday, and by the looks of it I’ll be missing a super sweet Halloween party tonight. Tomorrow is another super sweet Halloween party + Nanowrimo launch party, and as much as I’d like to go, unless I have a sudden recovery, the fact that it starts at 10 pm might inhibit that from happening too.
I’m doing Nanowrimo again this year (whereupon I try to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days). This is my 3rd year – the first was successful, and the second still sits untouched since Dec 1st. That fact that I churned out 50,000 words doesn’t matter so much if the vast majority of it is pure drivel! Anyhow, I’ve got a vague idea for this year, was hoping to get an outline done but we’ll see about my level of ambition.
You know what makes me super sad? The fact that there are no Lindt stores out here. Even when the one in Richmond disappeared, I could still head to DC or Charlottesville to get my fix. But alas, no such solution here. On a related note, I’ve been trying to get all my Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving. Last year, we wound up at a mall the day before Xmas, and it was seriously traumatizing, so I’m trying desperately to make sure that never happens again!
And on a final note, I have a super sweet new phone! I’ve had one of those “Upgrade your phone for free!” coupons from AT&T for awhile, and decided that, rather then get one of the free phones, I’d throw in some money and get an Iphone. Was gonna just get an Iphone 3 at first, but then I got swayed by the fact that I could get a refurbished Iphone 4 for $150. After doing some research and discovering that there’s not difference between new and refurbished Apple products (and the fact that 4 hasn’t been out that long anyhow), I got it, and it is shiny indeed! At this point, it’s functioning mostly as a game system for me. Angry Birds and Plants VS Zombies are helping me through my period of sickness! And I love the fact that there are so many games for just $.99. My next step will be to figure out how I can make some Iphone apps. This is mostly because I want to get my first Nanowrimo novel, a Choose Your Own Adventure type book, playable on an Iphone. I am a sucker for having as many markets for my products as possible!
Oh yeah, and on a final note, this is me as a zombie in the Denver Zombie Crawl this year!
Adventures in Zombieland
So earlier today, Alysia and I ventured forth as zombies to the Denver Zombie Crawl. This is my 4th of this sort of event – the first three I did back in 2005, 2006, and 2007 in Richmond. Kinda pooped out on them for a bit, I suppose, thus the 2 year gap. It’s bizarre to see how these things have evolved. The first year I’m not even sure there were 100 people, and we walked Carytown as an alternate to the original planned mall, after hearing that law enforcement there might not be too happy with us showing up at said mall and would act accordingly. Big contrast to now, where it seems like these zombie events more often then not take donations of some sort of a charity.
Anyhow, the Denver Zombie Crawl was huge. They were going for a world’s record, and there were zombies by the thousands out. I had no clue that the gathering would be this big. Great for people watching, though! I did a sort of resurrected person from the 80′s theme, and while my costume wasn’t nearly as stunning as some of the other stuff there, I was pleased, especially compared to other costumes which seemed to have a perfunctory blood smear on the face and that was it. I also paid specific attention to my face, as it is rather important to appear that you’ve been feasting on corpses at some point recently if you’re to be a convincing zombie. Once I get ahold of a picture, I’ll post it.
One upside to the smaller zombie walks/crawls is that they bring out the more dedicated zombie impersonators. At the Denver event, there were waaaay too many people breaking character! This also tended to correlate with how good or bad of a job they did at zombifying themselves up. I for one am a big fan of moaning at cameras! So we do 1/2 the crawl, then step into a bar for a drink + appetizer. When we go in, we’re one of a few zombies there and the place is a little under 1/2 full. When we leave, the place is packed, mostly with zombies. After that, apparently still being hungry, we got ice cream cones, and thusly got photographed by someone while eating said ice cream cones. Admittedly, I mostly got ice cream for the joy of being undead and licking an ice cream cone, but lucky for me it was rather tasty ice cream (pumpkin pie flavored, yay!).
And here’s where this zombie crawl became awesome. Unlike the Richmond ones I’ve done, the zombies lingered. They were everywhere, all over 16th street. Chasing and shooting each other (there were zombie hunters there, along with “targets” (people who wore Xs who wanted to be attacked). And lots of photo-taking. I felt like I was at an anime con for the undead, it was pretty sweet. And how I longed for a boom box so I could play “Thriller.” Next year, that seems pretty much like a necessity.
Remnants of the zombie crawl shall cling to me for awhile, this is because I am really bad at removing eye makeup. I know there’s probably cream or something to help me with that? I’m not really sure, since I don’t wear makeup very much. In any case, soap and water has done about as much as it’s gonna, and I’m just stuck having a case of the ole spooky-eyes for the next several days. I’ll probably finally get it all off around the time Halloween rolls around, whereupon I will dress like a raccoon and apply the eye makeup all over again.
Incompetency. Or, WYSIWYGs are the Devil.
I don’t like WYSIWYGs. This is because the “I” stands for “isn’t”. The specific ones that cause me angst these days are the ones designed for CMSs and email builders, which supposedly allow non-coders to build fabulous looking pages and emails with no knowledge of code whatsoever. And this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, if WYSIWYGs were nice and paired down to the basic necessities of “add a link” and “add a picture” and “stick an ordered list here” and other really simple choices to help fill out the content of an already nicely designed site. Or, if in the case of the disgusting behemoth WYSIWYGs like TinyMCE(AKA the in-browser Second Coming of Frontpage), the content editor simply ignored all the superfluous buttons and stuck to what is safe.
But no, they have stacks and stacks of mostly unnecessary formatting, all sitting there just itching to make whatever you’re trying to build just a little bit uglier. And the problem is that those who do not know the evil of a WYSIWYG think it gives them power to create mighty, complex, and beautiful layouts. Then, when their beautiful layout turns to gobbledygook, they hand it off to someone else to fix. Incidentally, content editors who either know some html or are willing to learn are awesome. They’re more likely to know better then to dump table into table and format text over and over until there’s approximately 123127836 nested span tags, then try to “fix” the formatting mess by copying and pasting some stuff from MS Word. What really bugs me, though, are those who treat the idea of using HTML like an upper manager treats the idea of using a copy machine. Faked incompetency is crap.
If a text editor is really necessary, stick a simple one in there that inserts the HTML tags for you, like the “html” tab on this here WordPress text editor. What I’m really hoping is that this is just a temporary technological gap, and it’s just a matter of waiting until either someone makes a WYSIWYG that actually works properly (hah!) or writing basic HTML becomes as common as cursive used to be.
Attack of the Wandering Salesman
So it was about 4:30 or so, and I was sitting at my computer at my new job doing whatever work I happened to be doing at the time. The door opens to the right of me, and a preppily-dressed guy walks in. This is abnormal. Firstly, because no one at this job dresses close to preppy – thus far, it’s jeans-casual unless there’s a client coming in. Also, the sign outside of this door informs whoever is at the door that the entrance to the office is down the hall. In fact, this sign is probably there to keep people like this out.
Anyhow, he starts talking to me, and at first I’m waiting for him to mention being lost, so I can give him directions. Soon enough, however, it becomes quite clear that he’s quite intent on selling me coupons for some car wash down the street. He’s on a roll, and I’m just sitting there being confused that I’m sitting at my desk at work being harassed by a car wash salesman.
He ends his shpiel, and I inform him that I usually just wash my own car. He then informs me that I’m a “strong independent woman” and asks if there’s anyone else in the office who might be interested. I explain to him that there isn’t, and he looks about ready to disagree with me when my project manager comes out and boots the guy away with a firm “No Solicitors.”
What I don’t get is the “strong independent woman” comment. I mean, I’m too cheap to take the car through a carwash, and I know how to operate a hose. I don’t get the gender stereotyping of washing cars – if anything, when I think of “people washing cars”, I just think of all those random groups of kids at the side of the road selling car washes to raise money for their school or church or whatever. And for that matter, to continue down that fuzzy gender path, wouldn’t washing a car be pretty similar to me washing some gigantic pan or tupperware dish or something?
Then again, maybe I’m missing the point altogether. Obviously I was meant to be super complimented by his comment and immediately start flinging dollars at him to get those precious car wash coupons. D’oh!
A mish-mash of minute updates
So I woke up in the middle of the night last night with some of the worst muscle cramping in my calf ever, it still hurts right now. Need to look into how to avoid Charley Horses and such.
We’ve got visionary dreams of biking to Golden today. However, I have cramps. And Drew works from 7:00am – 12:00pm today. Soo, we’ll see if that works out.
I have a “You’re earned a phone upgrade!” card, meaning that mayhaps one of these days I shall actually achieve said phone upgrade.
My elbows hurt. This is because I’m back to working full-time in front of a computer. Which I am complaining about via typing on a computer.
Pak’ma’ra painting is still slow going. Curse you, persnickety clouds!
Salami Day was a raging success. I made over $13.00 in Google Ads clicks that day, woo! Need to redesign the site, it’s mildly craptacular as it is now, and it wants to be better then that.
I have a super-sweet new rice cooker. It slow-cooks, too! Will soon make more beans then you can possibly imagine.
Why it’s best to delete all Craigslist-related emails with poor grammar
So I found a lot of sushi plates on Craigslist for $35. Twenty single serving roll plates in three different styles, plus a bunch of bowls for soup, salad, and sauces. For $35! I’ve been wanting to have something more appropriate for serving sushi, so I emailed the person. I get a one sentence response. Or rather, a one line response, containing 2-3 sentences, nothing punctuated or capitalized. The post in Craigslist was written just fine, strangely enough. I’m generally wary of dealing with people that can’t write a decent email, but I really wanted the sushi set. So I wrote back, suggesting we meet at 10:30 today, and she writes back giving me her phone number and the intersection to meet her at. I still wasn’t sure *who*, given the only thing besides the intersection and the phone number in the email was this chunk of text: “should be fine, i’ll have somer meet you”. Somer? Is that a person? Is that “someone” typed incorrectly?
So I get there just before 10:30. Glad to make it on time as it’s a 45 minute drive from where I live up to Boulder, where this person is. I park semi-illegally at the intersection – poor parking options as the intersection is just on the edge of a campus, and there are students everywhere. I don’t see a person obviously standing around with a box of dishes, and she never gave me a description of her car (I did give her a description of mine, though), so I call her number at 10:35. No answer, no indication of who the phone number even belongs to in the voicemail (which is a default voicemail that just repeats the phone number). I say I’m at the intersection, leave my number, tell her to call me. After 10 more minutes of sitting there, I give up and go home. It’s been several hours since that point, and still no word from her. So much for my sushi plates.
Apparently I need to remember the lesson of “Never deal with illiterate people on Craigslist.” I can handle semi-literate – a few misspellings happen (myself included here), and some people really do type like they talk – but in general, I have the best luck with people that type like me. I was once getting rid of some aloe plants, got a bunch of responses, and picked the one who wrote her email pretty much how I write emails. She was prompt, nice, and I ended up having a several minute conversation about plants with her. Also useful is people with emails that are job related. If they use a work email, it means they’re capable of showing up on time for a job, meaning they’re capable of showing up on time for you. Maybe the fact that my sushi person was using an AOL email address should have also clued me in, oh well.
My search for cheap and fabulous sushi plates continues on, I suppose.
Procrastination Station!
I’ve been wanting to go on a bike ride for awhile, but I keep finding reasons to not do it! I want to paint too, but I keep getting distracted! As soon as I start working again, I’ll suddenly *really* want to do both of these things. But as of right now, when I’ve got time stretching out empty in front of me, I’m all like “I’m gonna play on the internet and read instead!” I’ve been reading 2-3 books a week though, which is better then my previous hobby of “I’m gonna play video games all day!” Oh, silly free time.
8 days until Salami Day. Gotta figure out something for that. Either buy a couple tubes, and Drew & I can have a salami extravaganza, or find people that want to go out and get salami with us. Or find people who want to have a home salami celebration. I’ll get Drew to bug people at his work.
Got a fabulous pair of late-90s sorta wide leg pants from the thrift store recently, haven’t figured out if I’m gonna sew stuff to them or wear as-is. Finished sewing my ill-fitting bright blue Hostel Loki shirt, it is now a better fitting bright pink and blue shirt. Should take pictures and post them at some point. My vinyl corset’s zipper pooped out on me, got a new zipper to replace it only to realize that a.) vinyl against fabric puckers awfully and b.) I didn’t get the sort of zipper that separates at the bottom. So, need to go back to Hancock and get a new zipper, then figure out how to sew it right. If I’m feeling really ambitious, maybe I’ll do some hand-sewing. We shall seee.
I really want to sew me a petticoat. Or a tu-tu. I’ve never owned either, and that could be fun both as club clothing as well as to wear under skirts to make them floofier. I *think* they’re supposed to be easy to sew, and I’ve got a giant pile of old netting just begging for me to try it out. Skirts are usually the things least likely to get screwy for me. I’ve more or less accepted that 1/2 of all things I sew end up like crap, but the odds are a bit more in my favor for skirts.
I was going to buy a pair of shoes from JC Penney with a $10 off $25 coupon, but we played Axis & Allies for 2837489374 hours on Saturday and ended up not finishing until the mall closed, and the coupon expired that day. D’oh! What’s unfortunate is that I played America in a game where America can’t even attack anyone until the end of their 3rd round. And in a game where each round takes about 2 hours, the wait gets quite tedious, especially as this game day was held at a location that didn’t allow you to bring in any food or drink, and only sold candy bars and chips in the vending machines. Not even pretzels or granola bars! My teeth were already melting from the 24oz Dr. Pepper I had, they didn’t need any more melting! I did also play China, but they were teeny. Apparently I need to try playing one of the several 2 person A&A games Drew has, might be more satisfying.
I really need to buy a coat. My current one has tears and stains, no good at all. What I want is a fabulous London Fog trenchcoat from Macy’s, I’ve just got to fork over the $100 for it. I also want an awesome rice cooker, of the sort that you can also use to slow cook things, one that keeps your rice fresh infinitely long. Which also looks to be around $100. You know, while I’ve got this really great non-existent income flow right now, all of the sudden I want to blow my slowly dwindling savings. Oh wait, I do have some income! A few people bought Salami Day t-shirts. Not enough for me to get a check yet, but it’s progress. Google Ads have seriously slowed, which is too bad.
Anyhow, I should make myself go bike ridin’. Or Reich Biden. Toodles!
Feed me, Seymour!
So I use LJ to read blog feeds. And I had a new one to add. However, you can only create new feeds if you have a paid account. Which I no longer have, as I just don’t use LJ nearly as much as I used to. As it is, the majority of my LJ posts are grabbed from my WordPress blog. I should probably start using another feed reader, one I can actually add new blogs too. I know there’s still plenty of people that post on LJ, and I wonder how tedious it would be for me to add all of these people’s journals as feeds to a feed reader. Thing is, then I miss reading the friends-only posts. I wish there was a way I could just add my friends feed to a feed reader, and magically have me logged in. Or I can just check both LJ as well as a feed reader, it’s not that big of a deal, I’m just all about being super efficient.
Efficiency! I’m so proud, I have finally achieved a state where I can go infinitely without showering. Nevermind, that sounds gross, let me reword it better. See, for the longest time, I would feel gross and awful if I didn’t shower every single morning. This is a pain, though. It means less sleep on days I need to get up early. I also don’t get that dirty every single day, and I really hate that if I wake up too late for a shower, I’d just feel awful the rest of the morning. It was psychological, and needed breaking. It was a big pain at first, but I have acclimated myself now to being able to get up and throw on clothes and leave without bathing, and to not feel like I’m super gross for doing so. It usually makes more sense to shower at night anyhow, since I can wash off after I’ve done something super sweaty/dirty, rather then waiting for the next morning to do so.
I’m applying to be a part of a sleep study. I would disappear for 2 weeks into a lab, and get paid around $2,500. It’s not like I’m doing any other work right now! Looks like there’s a lot of testing to see if one qualifies though.
Pretty sure I’m headed to another Drupal meeting tonight. I’m growing bitter with Drupal, though. I mean, I know I’m asking a lot of it in what I try to do sometimes, but it’s just not very well organized. I just use WordPress for blogging, so it’s not like I’m stretching it’s limits very much, but it’s so nice how easy it is to upgrade things. Just a button click, and it’s taken care of. Magical! No such simplicity in Drupal. It’s all “download this, then dump this thing here.” And this is why Drupal shall never have the market share that WordPress has. There is a way of simple module upgrades, but it’s command-line interface. Which is fine for most developers, but this sort of thing helps guarantee that Drupal will make little headway into the non-developer world.
Boy could I use some pizza right about now!
