Well, this just figures. When I want to be awake, I fall asleep, and when it’s time to get ready for bed, I’m wide-awake. I really need to get tired. I figure writing this blog entry is just the trick to boring myself to sleep.
So, I’ve been busy…when I haven’t been falling asleep like a narcleptic, anyway. I’m about halfway done (finally!) with the baby blanket I’m working on for my niece–only to realize that all the 8 pink squares I just finished have two more rows than they’re supposed to. Gah! And I’m terrible about ripping out knitted work. I always rip out way too much and then end up having to redo everything.
So that’s just terrible.
Also, just now, I’ve been trying to find some sort of writer’s group for Jim. Well, maybe myself too, but truthfully, mostly for Jim. Jim’s more interested in publication than I have ever been. I did find a local one–turns out he even knows someone who is part of that group–but the site for said group is woefully outdated. I have my doubts.
But, seriously, if he doesn’t submit some of his stories soon, I’m gonna do it myself.
What else is new? Oh, I’ve been trying to introduce myself to podcasts. Yeah, I’m so out of it. I’d never listened to one before. I decided to try it because Jim and I usually have the TV on when working on our respective hobbies (his is usually painting Warhammer stuff), and it’s not like our hobbies allow us to actually look up to see what’s going on on the TV anyway. So far, I’ve listened to a couple from the hppodcraft site that Ruth had recommended on her blog, but alas, the one I downloaded to my MP3 player was very short and didn’t carry me very far throughout my knitting. But I can see where a longer one would do the trick nicely.
Beats TV that I can’t focus on anyway.
It’s also making me think of taking a stab at audiobooks. Jim’s still doubtful (“I quit story time when I was kid,” he says), but I don’t see the difference between listening to one of those and listening the TV. Oh, except that we won’t actually MISS anything by not looking up. And today, when we went to the library, I did find audiobooks there. So maybe I won’t have to buy them. And I’m all about the free stuff.
Although all the audiobooks I saw were Danielle Steel books. Ew.
Anyway, I was at the library today because the Geek Girls Book Club chose to do American Gods for August, and I’ve decided to join along with it. Maybe a dumb idea since I’m still planning on doing overtime and working on that blanket along with reading A Feast for Crows, but hey–do I tell you how badly you spend your time? No. I don’t.
Okay, yeah, I’m being dumb, but I hope I’ll have a good time doing it.
By the way, not a good time = showing up at Phil’s house covered in cat pee because Emmy was having a choking fit and our vet’s emergency facilities are in a town TWO HOURS away. I was livid–and then I learned that this might be a common thing down here in southern Illinois. Seriously makes me think that relocating might be a good idea.
Okay, I’m sufficiently bored now. You probably are too. Now we can all go to sleep. Preferably, not in cat pee.
Hey. Things are okay. I’ve been trying to keep my mind off sad stuff and keep focused on everyday things. Mostly, I’ve been keeping myself busy with work. Last week, I worked a lot of overtime, more than I normally do, mostly because I want to fill up our savings account. I want to save up to move into a bigger place next spring, as well as try to replace all our tires before winter, since they’re all almost completely bald. Yeah, if it rains even a little bit, we start hydroplaning. So it’s kind of becoming an issue.
Gremlin isn’t helping, though. About a month ago, he had that bladder infection that wiped out almost half of our savings account. Well, this past week, he started peeing in the bathtub, which is supposed to be a red flag that the infection isn’t gone. So, yesterday, we whisked him off to the vet. 10 minute visit, a little bottle of medicine, $150.
This cat is costing me more than even my cat who died of pancreatic cancer did. Geez.
But better $150 now than a bazillion dollars later. Also, it would kill me and Jim to see Gremlin in that much pain again. But it’s still hard because right now, we’re doing our best to save money with only my income. We’re actually doing fine, but I’m desperate to get the savings account back up so we have a nice net to fall back on when emergencies happen. Jim’s quitting smoking is helping a lot, and I just froze my Warcraft account.
No, Warcraft isn’t a lot of money. But it’s dumb to spend $15 on something I almost never play. And I would play it again as a way of cheap entertainment, but since Cataclysm came out, I found I can no longer do dungeons on my laptop. The game overheats it. Recently, I’ve found that this is becoming an issue even during regular game play. So until I get a desktop, which I don’t see happening for a very long time, my account is frozen.
Although I might try to play a little bit before the official freeze date.
Besides, that $15 could go towards yarn. I’ve been getting more into crafting hobbies, anyway. Oh, and by the way, it turns out I will not be doing those 5 scarves for work. (Don’t even get me started on why.) I’ll finish the third one up because it’s almost done anyway, and I’ll still give it to some charity because I’ve always wanted to make stuff for charities, but right now, I’m knitting a baby blanket for my niece Amber, who is due next month with my soon-to-be great-niece, Lily. After that, I want to wrap up the Lego Pirate Ship blanket for Jim, which has been hibernating FOREVER, and then make him a crocheted D20. I’ve already bought the pattern. Phil has expressed interest in one as well, so I’ll probably make him one, too.
I’m a little wary, though, as I’ve seen picture of others’ crocheted D20s, and most of them look kinda…sloppy. Not like the picture. And I’ve never made anything “stuffed” before, so I’m already at a disadvantage. But we shall see. Knowing me, if it comes out looking overstuffed or understuffed (as just about EVERY SINGLE ONE I’ve seen has been), I’ll rip it all out and start over. I can be a bit of a perfectionist that way.
After the crocheted D20s, I’d like to crochet a blanket for my great-nephew Isaiah (my niece Jasmine’s little boy), but I can’t seem to find the pattern that I want to use anywhere. I had this PERFECT one for little boys, once upon a time, and I always wanted an excuse to make it, but it seems to have gotten lost with all the moves. Argh.
Actually, I’ve been wanting to make that same blanket for my nephew Seth, too. Grr, I really need to find that pattern!
What else is new besides work and crafts? Oh! I finally finished A Storm of Swords, book three in the Song of Ice and Fire series. It took me forever because I can’t seem to stay awake these days. But it was fabulous. I’ve been chatting more and more with Jim’s friend Ben on Facebook about it because, truth be told, we don’t really know each other, but we DO both really love these books. Jim’s all happy that I’m talking to some of his friends; I’m happy that Jim has another friend aside from Phil who isn’t an asshole, heh.
Okay, admittedly, the friends that I have met–the ones that Jim actually considers friends, anyway, not the ones he pretty much has to deal with because of other people–haven’t been assholes. But trust me, if you’ve heard some of Jim’s stories…he’s known a LOT of assholes. No wonder why he wants to stay home and be a hermit all the time now.
Speaking of being a hermit, I must return to my hermit-hobby of knitting and continue working on Lily’s baby blanket. I need to get that done within the month. This week, though, I don’t plan on working nearly the amount of overtime I did last week, so I should (knock on wood) be able to stay awake long enough to get some work done. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Because, frankly, I’m just too tired to do it myself these days.
Everyone keeps asking me how married life is going. Usually, I answer, “I haven’t screwed it up yet!” Then they laugh and walk away.
Here is the truth: Married life, so far, is so awesome and amazing, it’s beyond words.
I know what you’re thinking. I’ve only been married two weeks, right? Well, I will have you know that with my first marriage, I knew something was wrong within the first week. By five months, I was already considering divorce. But I hated the idea of divorce, so I pushed on. I pushed on for twelve freakin’ years.
Just a note: It’s probably not a good idea to marry to someone that you hadn’t seen in seven months because he joined the military. Military is good about giving you discipline and all that, but it does change you. By the time I realized this, it was too late. I was married to a man that I no longer knew.
But forget all that. That’s old stuff. The other night, I started to tell Jim about how I had been worried, but everything is different with this marriage–this is what marriage is supposed to be. I was about to say more, but he stopped me. “I know it’s different,” he said, smiling. “I’ve never seen you so happy. It’s very reassuring.”
I’m hoping the first couple of weeks are an indicator of things to come.
Speaking of being happy, this reminds me of Melme’s last post. She mentions that currently, she lacks the desire or energy to do anything she usually enjoys, and I joked about it being depression because I was like that through most of my adult life. It is one of the signs of depression. I don’t think that’s Melme’s case–I hope it isn’t–but I know it was in mine. And I realized the other day, I must be happier because now I want to do EVERYTHING. Now, I want to do so many things that I don’t have time to do. I remember several years back, moaning on my Myspace that I had lost interest in all my old crafting interests, but it wasn’t like I had replaced them with new interests. I simply wasn’t interested in anything.
But now? I just tried writing out my current obsessions, and it got so confusing, that I’m going to have to put them in a list format for readability:
Crocheting the Lego Pirate Ship blanket. This one, believe it or not, is actually nearing the final stages. IT IS HUGE.
I just started knitting a scarf. Hello, knitting, how I’ve missed you! How this project came about: We have something called a “DAP” at work, which is a personal goal. We will be rated on it, and it will count towards our yearly review. They said it can be anything; our company wants to emphasize the importance on self-improvement of any kind, and that can be outside of work. In fact, they encouraged it being personal. Some people chose weight loss; many chose to read more books; me, I said that I have a hard time completing projects, so I wanted my DAP to be to complete 5 scarves by the end of the year. Then, I’ll donate them to charity. People seem to think my DAP is a cool one, and I cannot lie: I’m exited about it.
All things related to A Song of Ice and Fire series. I’m finding it harder to put the books down. I’m still only on A Clash of Kings, but when Phil was over, I kept sneaking away to read it. (Well, I also snuck away for a nap. I’m not very sneaky; Jim and Phil knew exactly what I was doing.) I’ve also become a huge fan of the subsequent HBO series, Game of Thrones. I’m loud enough about it that I got an IM from a co-worker the other day, asking me about it–and have managed to convert him into a fan too.
Learning to sew. I can’t sew, but I do have Sewing for Dummies that I keep flipping through, while eyeing my unused sewing machine, trying to figure out how that monster works. I already know I want some nice, heavy curtains for my bedroom. Also, sometimes, I sneak and watch sewing videos. I think I’m good at sneaking about this–I’m pretty sure Jim has no idea.
Cross-stitching. I WILL conquer the shaky hands and the permanent blur in the left eye! I WILL.
Websites! Ah, an old love of mine. The problem? I don’t have the software I used to have to create images. (I used to have Dreamweaver for actually creating websites, but I don’t need that–I can code by hand, even though it’s been a while.) I really want to update the look of this blog. Also, Jim and I have an itch to take my other URL, chaoticspring.com, and do some stuff with it. Except for that, we’ll need some contributers who are good at writing genre fiction. We already have a couple people in mind.
Getting back to writing. Not unrelated to the last bullet point. I don’t know how well I would do at genre fiction. Heck, I don’t know how well I’d do at writing. I’ve always been complimented on my writing, but my stories were always just me working through my own issues. (Unsurprisingly, I wrote a lot about women in unhappy marriages, heh.) But now, I’m SO happy, I’m stuck. And I don’t know if I have what it takes to write anything other than literary fiction. But I want to try.
Gaming. Okay, more Jim’s thing than mine. But his and Karac’s Marvel game recently (and abruptly) ended, so Jim has mentioned to me that he would like to run a Deadlands game–and he wants me in it. And, honestly, it wouldn’t hurt for me to be a little more social, get to know my new husband’s friends better. Jim’s shooting for the fall, I think, but this time, I’d like to actually flip through the books prior to the game starting so I have an idea what it’s all about.
I also woke up thinking about how I needed to finish leveling Alsana to 85…and how I would like to try my hand at Jim’s XBox games. But you see how, with the size of this list, and the mandatory overtime we’ve had all week (including a divisional Saturday yesterday), I haven’t had time to do much with any of them.
Speaking of having no time, I really need to get this day started. It’s already after 10. I’m sure Jim would like to be up by now, and I really need to do laundry at some point, too. Preferably, before Game of Thrones!
By the way, if anyone else is looking for a short series to lap up, I highly recommend Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Oh my god. OH MY GOD.
I figured I should post now because 1) I feel like posting, and 2) Jim is still asleep. I have an easier time concentrating if Jim isn’t around while I’m writing.
A couple of things. One, I’ve been having some off-the-wall dreams. Yesterday, I slept until 11:30 (!) and had a dream about killer bubbles. Trust me, it was way more eerie in the dream. Upon waking, though, I was like HA. Funny. Then last night, I had a dream that Jim and I were too broke to go on our honeymoon because I had found out that I owed the government a bunch of money after doing my taxes.
Okay, that dream was brought on by the fact that over the weekend, I was pushing off doing my taxes because I kept thinking, “Well, I shouldn’t owe money” (I’ve never owed money) “but WHAT IF?”
Luckily, I’ve already paid for some of the honeymoon stuff up-front, so HA. No matter what the taxes come up as, it’s already done. Yup, the first week of May, we have a room booked at the hotel of our choice and tickets for two awesome-looking shows in Branson. At first, I was ehhh about the idea of going to Branson for our honeymoon, but now I’m stoked. Yeah, I said it. STOKED. We wanted something that wasn’t too far away and not too expensive. We nixed anything anything that involved going outside of the United States (too expensive), Florida (too expensive, too far, too typical, and we’ve both been there), and any place which would involve driving through areas where we would feel obliged to visit with family members. I love my family, but seriously? No visiting any family on our honeymoon. That’s our rule. The honeymoon is all about US.
Also, I should mention, no Internet, so you all will get a break from me the first week of May. Now, I have brought up the subject of possibly bringing the laptop with for writing, since we both find writing enjoyable on its own, and it’s not like we’ll be tempted because (for some reason unknown to me) our laptop’s wireless capabilities quit working a while ago. Jim’s balking at the idea. He’s really for no computer at all. But I think we need other downtime things to do when we’re not reading, swimming, or having lots of loud, rambunctious, newly-wedded sex.
Hey. You were thinking it. And you know we’re gonna be doing it. Why deny, friends, why deny…
Anyway, like I was saying: Jim and I are getting excited about going to Branson. The hotel we got was our top pick (smoking room, indoor swimming pool), the shows we’re going to see look great, and I’ve already discovered there’s something called the Victorian Village I want to check out while I’m there. And I’ve already decided I’m blowing my diet while we’re there because I am not dieting on my honeymoon. If I have to start over when I come back, then so be it.
Oh, I forgot to mention that–I’m on a diet. Started last week. Not nearly as bad as I thought I would be, which should clue me in as to how much of my eating was mostly just stress eating and not eating because I was hungry. And Jim’s been good. See, at first, it was hard because Jim would request that I get my (new) favorite chocolate stuff (marshmallow 3 Musketeers), knowing full well that it was my favorite, and while I can easily avoid most foods, that is hard for me to resist. Anyway, I had to have a little chat with my man. His view: “You’re really not that big. I don’t see why you can’t eat this.” My view: “You are blinded by love. The scales say I AM that big.”
Seriously, for a skinny guy, Jim has a very skewed vision of weight. I have gained forty pounds since I moved to Carbondale in 2003. Forty pounds is a lot of weight, especially considering that I’m barely five feet tall. But Jim just doesn’t seem to see it. He hasn’t noticed that twenty of those pounds came along after he and I started dating, either. In fact, he’s always complimenting me on my body.
(Aside: I sent Jim this picture via text on Friday night while he was at game, and he texted me back that I was the prettiest girl in the world. If I were the type of person who said squee, I would do it then. But I’m not, so I won’t, and don’t you do it either–I want to punch all squeers in the face.)
Back to my point. This skewed vision he has of weight, it’s not just me. He doesn’t really seem to think people are fat until they reach something like the 400 pound mark. Unsurprisingly, Jim isn’t much into thin women, lol.
Anyway, I reminded Jim that 1) I’m well on my way to becoming diabetic–look at my health thus far–and 2) he had an uncle who died because of obesity. I hope I’m not saying too much here by admitting this (I’ll edit this post if Jim does mind), but Jim blames his uncle’s wife for it. His uncle was constantly trying to lose weight, and she’d mess up his diet by giving him cakes. One could say that his uncle always had a choice in the matter, but still? Shitty thing for his wife to do.
Anyway, when I reminded Jim of that story, things changed fast. Jim went out and bought soups for all my meals (that is in part because of my tooth extraction), but he made sure they were all both vegetarian and low-calorie. When we stopped by McDonald’s earlier this week, he didn’t even ask what I wanted to drink; he made sure I had water. And, again, because of my tooth extraction, he asked for them to put it in a coffee cup, since I can’t drink from straws right now.
As a result? I’ve already lost 6 pounds!
Okay. So, there are other things, things more interesting than my diet, which I know is of no interest to anyone but myself…once upon a time, I had mentioned possibly going to Gen Con. Jim hasn’t mentioned it at all, so I’m not sure we’re going. My thought is that we’re not because we’re doing our best to knock out the credit card debt. Our goal is to have it gone by next year. Once it’s gone, Jim is going to quit his job and just go to school full-time. Poor guy–taking 5 classes and working 4 days a week while co-running a game with Karac is wiping him out.
And on that note…our Werewolf game is postponed indefinitely. It was supposed to run on Saturdays, but both Jim and Karac keep getting scheduled to work on Saturdays. That, and Jim usually needs to catch up on homework then. It’s really too bad because I think I’m really going to like it, but hell, I like just having Jim to myself on Saturdays, too. (Although, Phil, if you’re reading this, you’re always welcome to come over. Just don’t mind the mess.) But my guess is that we’ll pick it back up during the summer.
That’s okay. I can wait. Because right now, I have this to read:
A Game of Thrones
That’s right, A Game of Thrones. Oh my god, guys, a fantasy writer that knows how to write. I will neither hide nor deny it: I am a writing snob. Before you go thinking that I have no right to be a writing snob, I have to point out that my blog-writing is vastly different than my fiction-writing. And while there are lots of good fantasy stuff out there, most of those writers are good story-tellers, which is not the same as knowing what to do with the language. There is a difference.
By the way, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just telling a damn good story. In fact, I think our society needs it. But I personally love it when I have a writer that knows how to use foreshadowing, alliteration, imagery, all that good stuff that does more than tell a story, it plays with the reader’s imagination…SIGH. Love it.
Anyway, George R. R. Martin knows what he’s doing. I’m impressed. We just bought the first book a couple weeks ago, and Jim’s has already started on the THIRD book. Have you seen the size of these books? Jim is single-handedly the fastest reader I’ve ever known, surpassing even my mother, who, I have to say, it pretty damned fast when she wants to be.
So, yeah. Read them. I’m really excited for the HBO premier in April because (gasp!) I think I actually have HBO! (I’m not sure. I don’t really watch much TV, so I’m not sure what all I have, but I’m pretty sure Jim said we have HBO.) On that note, I’m going to leave you with a trailer to get you all excited:
Bleh. This week. Bleeeeeh. And this weekend won’t be much better. Tomorrow, I go in to work overtime, then hustle home to pick Jim up and apparently go to his mom’s house for pictures before going off to his sister’s wedding. By the way, I did not know of this picture thing until I got home from work today. Which means that ironing I was pushing off until tomorrow will need to be done before I go to bed tonight.
And I’m very, very tired.
Jim, typical man, doesn’t worry about anything. I think I hate this about men. They never seem to prepare for anything. I’m pretty sure that Jim only has an idea of what he’s wearing tomorrow, and I would bet that Jim hasn’t even considered that whatever he’s wearing will probably need to be ironed.
He should be glad he’s out. I’m feeling cranky right now.
Cheerier subject: Jim came into extra money. Nothing major. Eighty bucks. But tonight, he told me that since wasn’t money we had budgeted to anything, he wanted to buy me a gift with it. He really wants to do this because I’m always doing this for him, and he rarely has the extra money to reciprocate. So I’m supposed to think of something that I want in that price range.
Sigh. I can’t think of anything. Nothing in the eighty dollar price range, anyway. And I’m so weird about people buying me gifts, anyway.
New subject: A Game of Thrones. My curiousity sparked when Kyle and Zach were raving about it on our message boards. Then, at the (one and, so far, only) Werewolf game we’ve had, I saw that Phil was reading it. I think he said he had borrowed it from the Boyscout. Or maybe Ben. Who knows? All I know is that all Jim’s friends seem to be raving about it as well, and I figured a dozen geeks can’t be wrong. So I picked it up over the weekend.
I haven’t gotten very far into it. When I was younger, I used to blaze through books. No more. Now, I can only read a few chapters before I get antsy and need to get up and do something else. Also, Jim started to eyeing the book while I was reading it. He tried to be subtle. He originally declined when I offered to let him read it for a bit. Finally, he gave in. He was just too interested. Besides, he knows that if he waits for me to finish the book, it will take forever. I always read several books at a time, and often, I’ll put down whatever I’m reading and go days, even weeks without picking it back up. So he’s been reading it, mostly. And loving it.
Like I said: A dozen geeks can’t be wrong.
Okay. I suppose I should get to that ironing. It’s weird to think that Wendy’s wedding is already here. It makes me nervous because I know that means ours is right around the corner. Frankly, I’m ready to just elope and get it done with. I want to be married already; the whole “ceremony” part of it makes me anxious, even though I anticipate it will be short and sweet. And, honestly, I don’t think my nails can take any more stress.
My throat. Oh my god, my throat. I cannot tell a lie: When I saw that IDOT was reporting that the roads were “partially covered” with snow and ice, that the road next to our apartments still looked messy, and that schools were closing, I was relieved. I was relieved because I could call in for inclement weather. Because of the sparse amount of sick days I have left, had yesterday’s snow not occurred, I would have had to go to work today and probably talk on the phone (I’m on the list to back up the phone people this week) and it would have been torture on my throat.
Instead, Mother Nature decided to work with me. Still, a girl cannot live on luck alone. I told Jim to please bring home medicine because I am not going to get a break like this again (it’s supposed to be in the 50s next week) and I’ve got to get over this.
So does Jim, by the way. He’s also suffering from some of it, although he never seems to get anything as bad as I do. Either that, or he is and is just being all manly about it.
Anyway, it seems like every winter, all I do is complain about being sick and about snow and about being sick of snow. I’m sick of complaining. So, instead, I’m going to suck on this throat lozenge that doesn’t taste great but totally numbs my mouth and type about something else.
Like…D&D. Yeah. We haven’t played in, like, two months, people. And I thought we were going to start back up this Saturday, but as it turns out, yet another person at Jim’s work was fired, so Jim is going to have to work Saturday. Again. I guess it’s just as well. I tend to forget how everything works if I take even a little time away from D&D, so I probably should take a couple of days and reacquaint myself with Natalia’s character sheet.
What else? Oh! Jim has a new addiction. Farscape. Funny because the idea of getting the first season belonged to yours truly. Now it’s me how half-watches it, while Jim watches episode after episode.
(To be fair, I only half-watch everything. Right now, I’m half-watching Angel, which is one of my favorites. I simply have a hard time sitting still and only watching TV.)
But I have my own new addictions. Mine is coming in the form of a book, Unholy. I’m plowing through it pretty quickly–well, as quickly I get through books these days, anyway. “Are all the Forgotten Realms books this good?” I asked Jim. Then I remembered. “Oh, wait. Homeland. Nevermind.”
Not that Homeland was bad. It was just…not as good. Maybe it’s because I found Drizzt a tad boring for my tastes. He seemed kind of wooden. To be fair, I don’t really connect with the characters too much in The Haunted Lands trilogy either, but focus there is more plot than anything. In the books with Drizzt, they had more time with him, more time to pay attention, so I had expected more character development, to really like the main character. Or, hell, I’d even take really hating the main character. But it just wasn’t there. Drizzt was “blah.”
I’ll probably eventually read the rest of The Dark Elf trilogy, too, though. Maybe it gets better. If anything, I’m sure more exposure to evil things will prepare me for Jim’s game.
Speaking of Jim, I’m going to get off the computer. My man should be coming home soon. Hopefully, with medicine.
You know that big, gigantic snowstorm, the one that’s hit pretty much all of the midwestern United States? Yeah? Well, it’s hit pretty much everywhere but here.
That doesn’t mean we’re not feeling the effects though. We were warm enough to get rain yesterday, sure, and a few degrees lower, we would have been in trouble, too. We were lucky. However, by feeling the effects, I don’t mean rain. I mean that our other offices in both Illinois and other parts of the country shut down and calls were routed to our office–the type of calls, I might add, we were not trained to handle. When they announced this yesterday at work, we were all pretty freaked.
I managed to get lucky. I was never put on the phones. In fact, I don’t think many of the phone units were even put on, and the ones that were put on reported that there weren’t many calls. And you know why? Because everyone is trying to survive the snowpocalypse, not call their insurance company. HA.
Anyway, I got lucky, but it’s one of the few times that I have been. Sure, I don’t work in a phone unit anymore, but it seems like when anyone from the written unit has to get on the phone, I’m one of the first people on.
But that was yesterday. Today, I didn’t go to work, but it had nothing to do with weather–it had everything to do with a really nasty headache I developed last night after I got home from work. (I blame it on Jim’s smelly hamburger. Okay, I really doubt that actually caused it, but I noticed that my head started pounding and I felt nauseous when I was cooking it, so naturally, I connected the two.) It wasn’t just a regular headache. It was the kind where your whole face hurts. Jim wasn’t feeling great either, so we opted to stay home.
When I woke up, I found that I had gotten an emergency email from work advising that our office would be open while the others would be closed, and that, once again, their calls would be routed to our office. I’m not surprised, and part of me feels bad that I wasn’t there to help out–yet, the other part of me is really glad I stayed home. That would be the LAST thing I needed on top of the monster headache.
So because my “day off” was mostly sleeping and moaning about my head, I don’t have a lot to report. No pictures of monster snow mounds because all we got were some ice patches. No cool craft projects to report on because I was too exhausted to do that, either. What little work I did on my priest on Warcraft didn’t come until later this evening, after my headache eased up.
So here’s what I did do, once the headache subsided a bit: Bake cookies for Jim (he hit me up for them as soon as he saw I was starting to feel better, heh), work a very little bit on Alsana, and finish reading Runaway. It’s about time I finished that book, as I started reading it per my old roommate’s recommendation a couple years ago.
I thought about doing a review on Runaway. And maybe I will. But right now? I’m still pretty exhausted and, honestly…I’m just not feeling it.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a bad book. And it’s certainly not a genre I dislike. It’s literary fiction, which I do love. I don’t need plot heavy stories to make me happy; honestly, I admire anyone who can find and create stories using the everyday stuff, especially if they convey meaning through literary “tricks” such as metaphors, foreshadowing, etc. I like when you have a story on the surface and something a bit deeper right underneath.
So, I love that stuff. And I know that Alice Munro is supposed to be THE SHIT when it comes to this stuff. But, with the exception of a couple of stories, I just found it lacking in…something. I haven’t put my finger on it yet. But when I do, you all will be the first to know.
For now, though, I think I’ll take my second bath of the day (I always take a lot of baths and showers when I have headaches) and read Unholy, which I am excited about. It’s a bit more plot-heavy than I like my books these days (lover of literary fiction, remember?), but you know what? It doesn’t pretend that it’s really there for anything but plot, and plot, it does really well.
It does make me miss our D&D game, though. Here’s hoping we pick it back up soon. Assuming, of course, that both Jim and Phil feel up to it. It seems like we’re all getting sick or having something come up at some point or another these days.
Oh, well. Off to the Bath-mobile!
(Just had a mental image of a tub on wheels. Not a happy sight.)
Jim has written over 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. Those of you familiar with the contest knows that means he’s “won.” I put “won” in quotes because there is no tangible prize for completing this task. But there is something to be said for having a sizable amount of text to work with when you want to write a novel, of doing what you set out to do. I mean, c’mon–how many people say they want to write a book someday but never actually do it?
Jim’s excited and (deservedly) proud of himself. I’m proud of him, too. And yet, for some reason, I get credit. Here’s what I mean: Last night, Jim told me that there is something called a “Shout Out” on the forums on NaNoWriMo’s website. He told me that he thought I’d be interested in what it said. So I logged in today and took a peek. Here’s his entry:
I win. I wanted to take a second (even if no one reads this or cares) to thank my lovely, perfect, gorgeous, adoring fiancee. If she hadn’t put me up to this, I would still be whining about WANTING to be a writer. I’ve gotten the majority of a decent novel finished now, and if it hadn’t been for her (and this competition) I wouldn’t have doodly squat.
Thank you Spring. You’re my light, and my world.
Awwww. I’ve got the sweetest man in the whole world. Anyway, I’m just glad that Jim did it. I wanted him to see that he could. And now he knows. Rumor has it, that’s half the battle.
I would really like to play Warcraft now, while my Internet isn’t total crap, but I thought I should stop by and say hi.
Hi.
I forewarned everyone that the blog posting would slow down during November while Jim participated in NaNoWriMo. That, at least, was a November event that we had expected and was preparing for. Also, there was a wedding. What we didn’t expect was Jim’s nana’s wake, both of us getting sick (pretty routine for me, rare occurence for Jim), us missing the wedding, stress of my own at work, and the death of one of Jim’s old gaming friends. These events have slowed us down.
Poor Jim has been coping amazingly well with a lot on his plate. Admittedly, the stuff that’s been happening affects Jim more personally than they do myself; it affects me only in the way that I hate seeing my man suffer. And, as you can imagine, all this has really put us back on our D&D game, but that’s life. And, apparently, that is also death.
What I find really sad about the death of Jim’s gaming friend is that I had heard that she had wanted to drive down from St. Louis to play with the guys in their Friday night Marvel game but couldn’t because her health was declining. I suggested to Jim that he see if the other guys were willing to take the game to her. Jim thought it was a great idea and was going to talk to the others about it. Never happened, though, because she died within the week of the suggestion. Instead of having the next game with her, the next game was cancelled because about half the group was attending her visitation.
Although Jim wasn’t very close to the girl (he knew her because she had dated one of his friends), I think in some ways, this death shook him up more than his nana’s. Yes, he was close to his nana, but he also knew that her death would be sudden because of what she had. And, I hate to say it, but we expect that of older people. But this girl was only 22 years old.
So Jim’s been kind of “off” and edgy, worried about his friend who had been dating-but-not-dating the girl (“it’s complicated” is what Jim told me), but still, in the midst of all this, he has managed to pump out a shit-ton of words for NaNoWriMo. Maybe it’s given him something else to focus on.
In fact, I know it has. He’s been very excited by the way his story has been turning out, although he’s worried that it’s not something everyone would want to read. This is the impression that I’m getting: Jim thinks the story idea itself might sound dumb or uninteresting, but he’s actually executing it very well and it’s turning out good. He told me something to this extent while describing his book to me in the car. This allowed me to go into my diatribe about how, damn it, people should not dismiss a work based on a mere summary. You can have a dumb idea, but if you have the right person writing it and writing it well, I think almost any dumb idea can be pulled off and turn out really good. I just think it takes skill.
Now, I say that people shouldn’t dismiss things just because it sounds dumb. I must also admit that I do this with movies ALL THE TIME. Just last night, I said to Jim, “I watched something called Let’s Go to Prison and I liked it? Are you SURE?”
(Oh, yeah. For those who don’t know me or don’t know me that well, I ALWAYS forget what movies I’ve seen, and whomever I’ve seen the movie with usually have to remind me. And, no, it’s not uncommon for me to ask those people if I liked the movie.)
(Also, I still don’t believe I liked anything called Let’s Go to Prison, but Jim insists that I did.)
At any rate, I plan on reading Jim’s book as soon as it’s done. I imagine that he’s got a lot of cleaning up to do, since NaNoWriMo is about quantity and not quality. I’ll wait until Jim says it’s ready. Luckily for Jim, my background in creative writing means I have a lot of experience dissecting stories and knowing what works and what doesn’t.
Unfortunately for Jim, it’s way harder for me when I’m close to the writer. But, damn it, I’ll try my best. Because that’s what Jim’s been doing all month.
I was checking out Jim’s word count. Hot damn! Check it out.
By the way, Jim is not 20, like his profile says. I don’t even know why he has that. I might be older than he is, but I am not that much of a cougar, thank you very much!
