NaNoWriMo '10

So NaNoWriMo starts in 2 days. Er, one day. Sorry; working nights effs with your brain's ability to know what day it is.

I won't have a computer until the end of next week at the earliest (probably a little later), so it looks like I'm going to be writing by hand for the first little while. This will likely slow me down a lot (since I write way slower than I type and I have no way of playing the music I need while I'm writing), but I think it should be ok. I already have the notebook I'm going to use and a 5-page step-by-step outline. I don't know what person or tense I'm going to be writing in yet, but I guess that will come to me.

(unrelated) My God, am I hungry.

When I get my new computer, the keyboard is going to be smaller than I'm used to, so that might slow me down... but, I was reading things on the NaNo site today and it seems like a lot of people write their daily quota (1667 words) in two or three hours of solid writing daily. It would be great if I could do that because now that I'm working nights, it won't be a problem for me to put that kind of time in while I'm at work. I'll be able to type some here and write some out long hand, and it will be brilliant. NaNo is going to rock this year - I can feel it.

(unrealted) My tooth is killing me.

I also have the cover art pretty well worked out in my head. (Somewhat) Unfortunately, I'll actually need to take a photo for this one, which means I'll need to acquire/borrow a good camera, then go out and buy the materials for a mini studio (wax paper, bristol board, display board, duct tape) and take it, then load it onto my new netbook and use Inkscape to finish it off. So, time consuming, but it will look awesome.

MY WEBSITE HAS FINALLY BEEN LAUNCHED!

After a lot of years of agonizing over various things pertaining to my website (design, content, etc.), it's finally all finished, and, if I say so myself, it looks AMAZING. Lincoln did an amazing job helping me improve my designs then converting them into working code I am very, very pleased.

Now, of course, it's on to other things: getting A/G out there to the public, designing other websites, sitting down and writing 200 Pages and the other one. For right now, though, I'm seriously tempted just to kick my feet up and declare all done and refuse to do anything productive for the next month at least. Alas, that's not quite how it works. I'm going to do some quick PR, then it's back to the grindstone for me.

At Risk of Sounding Like a 5 Year Old

I hate my job. I hate everything about my job (by the way, I got a new job). I am a telemarketer selling lawn care, which means my profession is annoying people during their dinner. At the end of every day, I get a stern look from my boss which suggests that whatever I've done, it's not good enough. I'm dreading going back tomorrow.

Also, today has pretty much sucked. The reason I'm working my awful job is that I can't get anything else. My entire family is broke. As a result, what I've eaten today is 1 pancake (bad idea, because I shouldn't have dairy), 1 potatoe, 1/4 of a can of salmon and one chocolate bar. I'm stuck at my mother's office, because I was stupid enough to come in here today (I spent ALL DAY yesterday working for free for my gran, which I don't mind doing, 'cause she deserves it), figuring I could get some of my own stuff done. I did get a lot of my own stuff done, but over the course of the day, my office has been disassembled, because, apparently, my dividers don't need to be held up by anything; we're just going to wedge them between my desk and the filing cabinet on the other side. Yeah, that won't look stupid at all.

Then, around 7:00pm, my mum had to run to take my dad to see my grandma, because my grandma isn't well and was convinced she lived somewhere other than where she does. My mum was gone a couple of hours (I should mention that this office is pretty much in the middle of nowhere) and now that she's back, they're probably going to be another two hours rearranging the office furniture.

I call this the game of How retarded can we make our office look? We're going for a new record, I think.

Okay, I think I'm done whining.

In other news, I've finished my edits to Aigaion Girl a second time, but I need to change the cover art slightly (I adjusted the margins at the suggestion of my family and ended up with an extra 8-10 pages), which I'll have to do from the computer at home... which means I have to download Inkscape, but that's not a huge deal.

Also, I posted an article on Devereaux Court and worked out the content for my website.

Yawn, Stretch... SLEEP

Let me see.

Worked out with Rhiannon yesterday, and took Loki for his long walk. Oh, that was the other thing I did...

I finished the thing I was working on for my cousin. The thing that REALLY NEEDED TO BE DONE RIGHT AWAY... the thing that was the cause for a 45+ minute conference call, during which website guy interrupted every possible chance he got, with something irrelevant to what we were working on, or something we were going to be discussing later. I finished that yesterday. It looks really good (if I do say so myself). I emailed it to my cousin and website guy at 4:30, half an hour before I said it would be done. I still haven't heard anything back from either of them, or gotten any indication that they even received it.

Also, last night, while Rhiannon and I were *finally* making the pie we've been planning to get to all week, I bit my tongue. Really, bloody hard. I couldn't talk for a huge chunk of the night. I can talk now, but it hurts like hell, and I kind of sound like a semi-deaf person who can lip read but isn't sure how English words are supposed to sound.

Today we went to take pictures of our work out path, so we could put them in our little work out books, and record what we've been doing. I'm sorely tempted to put my before and current (not quite after) pictures up on here, but I won't, because I'm only wearing underclothes in them and somehow, the idea of putting half-naked pictures of myself on the Internet doesn't really seem like the best on ever. I do look damn good, though, and it is a big change.

I worked a lot of Aigaion Girl today, too. I wrote a chapterette from the perspective of Death, which went over fairly well, and now I'm 730 odd words into the final chapter. I really wish I just had the energy to sit down and finish it.

I suppose I should run. I had pizza at sevenish, but I'm pretty hungry and I could use something cold and fizzy for my poor punctured tongue. Since no interwebz at home, I'll have to actually shut my lappy down to do that.

So here I go. Wish me luck.

Motivational Ruffles, and All That's In Between

'Evening, Blogees.

I came into the office today to work on the identity guide for my cousin's business (I'm on my laptop, as my work station still has no Internet). Since I last mentioned said business, the logo has been redesigned by the website guy, aka, the bane of my existence. He's not really the bane of my existence; he's just a guy who went to college and assumes that this means he knows more about everything than us sad, uneducated people, who got our experience by designing magazine ads. At my cousin's request, I emailed him with what I have done so far for the identity guide (which he insists is absolutely vital), and asked if there was anything I needed to add before converting my svgs into one pdf. He responded with a fairly rude email, saying I had disregarded his instructions, and that a whole bunch of things I had included didn't need to be in there (these are things that every other visual identity guide in the world seems to have), and not to finalize anything until everyone had had a chance to look at it. I replied (and copied the reply to my cousin) as politely as I could, and asked a bunch of questions - basically, if I'm not supposed to do X, then what should I be doing instead? My cousin just wrote me back and told me she would let me get pointers from him. UGH. Whatever. I'm not dealing with it until tomorrow.

My mum and I walked to the store, got a bag of chips (I usually don't eat chips. God knows what we were thinking), and came back to the office to eat them. On the back of the bag, there was a story that started with:

At the age of 10, I lived with my family in the Fisher Housing Projects in Detroit, Michigan. By today's standards, we were considered poor.

It goes on for four paragraphs about this random kid stealing peaches from someone's backyard, then another two paragraphs about how he learned his lesson, and why self-control is great, and things to remember to help you demonstrate self control in everyday life. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone or something.

Last night, my mum and I watched the first three episodes of Dollhouse. She's completely addicted, just like I knew she would be.

A few months ago, at my brother's request, I brought V for Vendetta home from the office (I keep my movies at the office, to prevent the exact thing that ended up happening). He didn't watch it that night, but my mum and I and one of my other brothers did. The next night, that brother and the youngest one asked if they could borrow it, and I said yes, if they put it back on my shelf when they were done. Because I'm an idiot, I didn't check to see that they had put it back until last night, when my youngest brother asked if he could watch Once Upon a Time in Mexico. He insists that since both of them watched V, it isn't his fault that it didn't get put back. The other one insists that he watched the movie with my mother and I, after the youngest one watched it, so it's my fault if it didn't get put back. This is especially annoying, because this is the second copy of that movie that I've loaned out, only to have it disappear on me. My first copy is currently residing on my friend's uncle's shelf - unless, of course, he decided to lend it to someone else.

Tonight, I'm going to the casino with my mummy. I have $10 that I can spend, which I'll split into two $5 bills. Hopefully, if I go with my mum, the guard won't feel the need to ask me my middle name and have me spell it, while glaring at me and making it obvious that he thinks my ID is either fake or not my own. I should probably go work out now, since afterward, I have to heat my bathwater, clean up and get changed. Thank God it's not hair-wash day.

I didn't work out yesterday because I didn't feel like it. That's a dangerous habit to get into, especially because that makes it the third day in four weeks that I've missed, and this time, there was no good reason for it. I should work twice as hard, but I probably won't.

I think that's everything. I think. Oh, 5:55, time to make a wish. Alright. That's done with.

I missed one thing. I've started working on the final chapter of Aigaion Girl. As happy as I am to have nearly completed my... fourth book (likely the first one that will ever be published), it's a little bittersweet - and I feel an inordinate amount of pressure to get the ending perfect. I've been looking forward to writing this ending, but now I'm terrified that my readers are going to hate it. Eeek.

Okay, I really do think that's it. And I really do have to go work out. Right.

I.N. Out.

Logo Designs

Today, my cousin and I got together over Skype and designed the logo for hew new business. She is very pleased with it and I am very pleased with it, which makes me, oddly enough, very pleased.

I'd love to know why everyone can't work like this. Now, it could be because we grew up together and are therefore on the same wave-length, but I think it's more likely that we were both just raised well by are parents, and so manage to be honest, thoughtful and courteous, without being hurtful or being push-overs. If everyone who needed stuff designed could just sit down for a few hours (it took us just under three), even online, and say "yeah, I don't like that font" or "this is good, but could you make the green look a little less like pea soup?", or whatever was on their mind, my life (and their's) would be a lot easier.

Anyway, it's been a fairly productive day, so I'm feeling pretty good. Once everything is in place, and I have permission, I'll put a copy of said logo up (actually, there's a good chance I'll link to her site, because her business is really cool) for your viewing pleasure.

I think that's it for now... a long rant about Facebook is likely to follow.