Happy Advent!

Hoo boy. Long post coming up.

First off: I did not win NaNo. :( 42,618 was the final count.

*A big than you to everybody who commented and supported the frenzied author during the time of need, you're the best!! :) *


The weekend was ghastly. I went for 46 hours without sleep.

My second all-nighter on Sunday night did not go well. I decided to hole up in the pantry because my room doesn't really have a door and my parents would probably have heard the tapping at the keyboard.

The parents did not go to bed til kind of late so I sat up in my room writing notes on paper. Then I snuck downstairs with the utmost furtiveness and ensconced myself in the pantry.
I soon learned that it is very very hard to use a laptop without any other light in the room. I ventured forth in search of a lamp; failed to find one (this was about 1 AM). FInally I absconded with an electric candle-thing which worked passably. I also learned that it is almost impossible to read pencil by the light of the little flashlight I had taped to a baseball cap, miner-like.

Went out to get carrots, cheese and bread, and of course more coffee. I have come to simply loathe coffee, chiefly after the first all-nighter.

I kept banging away at the keyboard, engaged in a lot of sprints and word-wars on the NaNo forums where a small group of nocturnal peeps attempted to up the lagging word-count.

As I gulped down more coffee I had an occasional qualm about how much caffeine one can ingest before effects set in.... o_0

Around 4 AM I was dead, absolutely dead. I think I may have been falling asleep for nanoseconds between words. I believe I was beginning to hallucinate slightly. I left the pantry to go to the bathroom or maybe get some more coffee, I forget which. In the hallway I encountered my mom. She did not see me at first (I was so disoriented that I had turned into the wall believing that the hallway ran the other direction). She did however see the light coming from the pantry which I had failed to turn off. FInally saw me and made me go back to bed.

I got four hours of sleep and faced the next day with renewed energy (sort of). Went through school in a daze. Wrote crazily all Monday.
Around 3:30 that afternoon I had a rather brilliant idea to have another character come into the story. This did not boost the word count as much as could have been hoped however.

I degenerated into having one of my characters reminisce over how she did NaNo one time...got about ten pages out of that...every fifth word might have been spelled right.
Parents made me go to bed at 9:30 or so; truth be told, I was not unwilling, I was exhausted.

The story is maybe 75% complete at this point. I'm fairly happy with it, there were some rather nice scenes and quite a lot of side-splitting humor. I'm fairly attached to my characters. Won't have much time to work on it though :(


Other stuff: Yes, happy Advent! Can't believe it's so close to Christmas! The excitement is filtering through from Kendra, I think :P

Theatre news: I'm likely going to audition for Romeo and Juliet at CHS!!! I'm really excited. Auditions are December 14 and 15, the show is at the end of February. I'd love to have an acting part but I don't know if I can fit it i, I'd really like to do robotics at my dad's school and it's during the same time-window. Might be able to do tech or costuming or something though. I have to memorize some Shakespeare for the audition.

Weather: is awesome. COLD and sunny. It started to frost almost as soon as the sun went down yesterday, and there are rumors of impending snow at the end of the week! I love this weather, I ought to move to Montana or something :)

Hay bales: I had to move a 60-pounder today, and I had the brilliant idea of backing up to the trunk of the car (where it was) and rolling the bale onto my back, holding it by the strings.

Yahoo: I got yahoo IM, me address is bethie_forty_two :)

2012: Shardhana left a comment inquiring my views on 2012....a very thought-provoking subject, hehe. Let's just say I am attending "2013" ;) I don't believe it will be the end of the world, BUT I think there could certainly be unknown repercussions, for one thing I've heard about solar flares picking up then, who knows. I don't know if that could result in some form of EMP which might knock out power/communications, in which case we would be in rather epic trouble.
I'm not worrying about it too much. Would love to see the movie, though! :)