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Monthly Archives: November 2011

50,006

30 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by SaraS in NaNoWriMo, Writing

≈ 5 Comments

Hey, look at that:
Final Word Count

50,006 words. And it is still November! So I get to say that I “won” at NaNoWriMo. So I can put this on my site:
Winner's Badge

No comment as to the quality of those 50,006 words though. Plus, I’m not really done. I’m still sort of in the middle of my story. More writing to do before I even get to the revising / rewriting stage. At the moment, I’m pretty tired of my characters, so it will be nice to take a few days break before coming back to this and continuing. And I plan to continue at a more reasonable pace.

I do have more thoughts about the overall NaNoWriMo experience, but…that will have to wait too. Definitely not happening tonight!

Black Friday Insanity

23 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by SaraS in Rants

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

holidays, shopping

OK, so I’m not really a huge shopping fan. My mom still tells this story from when I was in high school and my sister had just started college. She was home for Thanksgiving. The day after, we all went to a mall to do some shopping. It turned into a nine-hour endurance test. I ran out of things to look at and was getting bored, but they were still going strong. So I bought a book (probably from B. Dalton – remember them?) and found a relatively comfortable bench and read until they were finally ready to go home.

This was all way back when the day after Thanksgiving was a big shopping day, but before stores started opening at ridiculously early hours. This article at Wikipedia claims that the term “Black Friday” has been in use for the day after Thanksgiving since 1975, but I really don’t remember hearing that term much back in my high school days.

Anyway, where am I going with this? Nine hours in a suburban mall was enough to scare me off shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Getting up at four in the morning and waiting in line to race around to get the best deals? No thanks. Not going to happen.

Now I do like shopping for fun things, and I can’t claim to be put off the materialism of buying stuff. I like shopping for backpacking gear, outdoor/camping gear, dog stuff, and electronics. Shopping for clothes at REI or Bob Wards is fun. Getting packages from UPS is fun. Shopping in a billion little mall stores full of “trendy” clothes, not so much. At least not for me.

This year, it seems that some retailers are going even further and opening at midnight or late Thanksgiving night, like around ten. I think this is appalling. I feel bad for all the employees who have to catch up on sleep all day on Thanksgiving so that they can work all night. Whose idea was this, really? Wasn’t opening at four AM early enough?

I pretty much agree with this Target employee who started a petition to push back the opening to 5 AM.

I think it is pretty sad that things are at a point where opening at 5 AM is now the REASONABLE alternative. I mean really. Yikes.

Again, I’m not some anti-consumer-culture person here. I like shopping for certain things. I like getting expensive new toys when I can afford them (I just got a new Kindle Touch last week after all). But really. Why ruin a really nice, fun holiday that is all about food, friends, and family (and football for some, but I don’t really care too much about that personally) by opening stores at 10 PM or midnight?

Various Overdue Updates

18 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by SaraS in NaNoWriMo, Remodeling, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Various Updates

I have really been neglecting my blog lately; I have a feeling Ally is going to come after me soon if I don’t post something!

What can I say? Things have been busy. So some random updates here…

NaNoWriMo

I am still mostly on track. So far I’ve written 27,481 words, so only 22,519 to go! I’m mostly on track, although I haven’t done my daily writing allotment yet today (Friday). Its been a long day, so I may just take a break tonight.

For the most part, I’ve managed to write just about every day of the month, although on some days I didn’t do very much. I think on my worst day I only did around 400 words. Most other days I came close to or surpassed by goal by a small amount.

As for the quality of what I’m writing. Well, there are some parts so far that I like, and I still think there is a worthwhile story in here somewhere, but there are also large patches that I know are going to need to be changed or cut completely when I go back and edit.

Now that I’m so far in, I’m finding it a little more difficult to shut off my inner editor and just write. Yesterday was particularly annoying…I’m really not happy with what I wrote at all. I think I am going to try going in a slightly different direction from this point.

Fortunately, I’m taking vacation days next week, plus the long weekend for Thanksgiving. So I should have the time to crank out the words and finish by the end of the month!

Gadgets

Somewhat related to books, although more about reading them than writing them…a few days ago I got a new Kindle Touch 3G. I went with the pricier version with 3G so that I would still have the option to download books when I’m not connected to a wifi network.

This was an upgrade over my old 2nd generation Kindle. The nice thing is, it only cost me $9.99! Okay, that’s not exactly accurate. I had a $100 visa gift card that has been sitting around unused for nearly a year. I also had $30 worth of Best Buy “reward” gift certificates. So I used all that to pay for it and only had to shell out $9.99 of my actual money.

So far I like the new Kindle. It is much lighter and sleeker than my old one, and I like the fact that I don’t have to listen to loud button-clicks when turning pages since it is all done via the touch screen. It will definitely be lighter next summer when I take it backpacking. Also, even though I got the 3G model, you can also connect it to a wifi network when available, which seems to transfer books more quickly. My old one did not have that option.

Just for kicks, I generated a Kindle version of my novel-in-progress to see what it would look like in that form. Here’s a picture:

my draft on a Kindle

My draft NaNoWriMo Novel on a kindle

I find it kind of cool to see this. I’ve also tested out reformatting it as a paperback novel and it comes out to about 107 pages. Somehow the words look different when presented as an actual book.

Of course, being busy with NaNoWriMo means I haven’t really had time to read much with the new Kindle. I read a few pages of a book I started before November and one short story. That’s about it so far.

House Projects

I am really behind on posts about recent house projects. A few weeks ago, Renee took out these big ugly sliding door in the shed (it was really just a piece of plywood pretending to be a door), reframed the opening, and installed a nice, real door and window. It looks great! I have a bunch of pictures to the process that I need to organize and write about.

Then she’s been working to help Carolyn and Ally redo their living room / dining room with new lighting, a new half-wall room divider with columns, new insulation in the attic, and paint. It turned into a pretty big project (all starting from just one new light fixture). It isn’t quite finished, but I think they are pretty happy with it so far. The plan is to work on painting tomorrow. I think this whole thing will be done in time for Thanksgiving dinner!

Again, I’ve got plenty of pictures – I just need to find the time to get them organized and write a post!

It was Totally the Cat’s Fault!

09 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by SaraS in Cats, Dogs

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

danger cat, rat terriers, vet bills

It all started with a cat learning how to use the dog door and ended with an expensive vet bill. Well, that may be bit of an exaggeration, but not much.

Pippin has been slowly checking out the dog door for coming into the house. He likes being out in the backyard, and he likes his luxury kitty apartment, but sometimes he also likes to come in the house. He expresses this desire by using the barbecue grill as a stage; he gets up there and yells and yells and yells until we open the door for him.

Then he just stands there for a minute, as though he isn’t really sure he wants in or not. He just wants the option to come in. Once he is in, he hangs out for a while before sitting at the back door and yelling again to be let out.

He sort of reminds me of this.

So we started encouraging him to use the dog door instead of just yelling. I’m not sure whether or not this was really such a good idea, but file it under “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

He might have figured it out anyway since his cat apartment also has a pet door installed, but it is a smaller, lighter one. The dog’s door is big to accommodate the standard poodles and it has two flaps to better keep out cold air. Still, once he got the hang of of the kitty door, it seemed likely that he would figure out the big dog door too. He’s certainly watched the dogs go in and out often enough.

Distracted by the Cat!

So Monday night we decided to run over to Noodle Express for a quick dinner. There are a few quick tasks we always do on the way out the door to make sure the dogs don’t get in trouble. The most important one is to lock the kitchen trash can in the bathroom to keep the dogs from getting into it. They are very good at knocking it down and having their own personal doggy feast. Usually they like to drag all the trash into my office to munch on. I’m not sure why my office is such a great place for trash eating. Darwin’s crate is in there, so he has to sit there and watch them chow down right in front of him, which always struck me as sort of mean on the part of the other dogs.

Anyway, we started getting ready to head out. I grabbed a coffee mug and a glass off my desk to put in the kitchen (just in case), intending to put away the trash next. On my way to the kitchen, I saw Pippin outside the dog door, standing up on his hind legs and poking at the door with his paw. Apparently all the time watching the dogs run in and out was starting to click. You could almost see the wheels turning in his little head.

We both stopped what we were doing and watched him examining the door. He didn’t try going through just yet, but he was definitely thinking about it.

An Express Exit from Noodle Express

We were getting pretty hungry for dinner, so we left Pippin to continue figuring things out and we headed on out to dinner. Ordered our usual rice bowls (I think they recognize us there) and two slices of their terrific chocolate mousse pie.

I’m not sure what made me think of it, but about halfway through dinner, I said “Did we put away the trash?”

Renee looked up from her rice bowl in horror and shook her head.

“Oh crap.”

We quickly realized that Pippin had distracted us during our normal pre-leaving tasks.

We got “go” boxes for the rest of our rice and had them package up the mousse pie to go. Renee drove like a maniac to get home. I hoped that the dogs hadn’t had time yet to notice the unguarded trash can.

When we pulled into the driveway, we knew we were in trouble. No dogs in the window watching for us. That was never good news.

I hurried in to the house. Sure enough, the can was knocked over and trash spewed all over the dining room carpet. Abby was in the bedroom; she doesn’t usually get involved in this. Strangely, the usual suspects (Sirus and Myka) were not in the room. Cricket, on the other hand, was standing right in the middle of the mess.

Not Innocent Dogs

These dogs are not innocent in matters of trash

Despite her small size, Cricket is not innocent when it comes to trash. I used to have a lightweight plastic trashcan, and she could grab the bag in her teeth and pull the whole thing over. I switched to a heavier metal can like we have now and she couldn’t do that anymore, but she could still sometimes get on her hind legs and grab at any items up near the top. She’s probably the one who taught the poodles to even notice the trash can in the first place.

Sirus and Myka were out in the backyard for some reason. Maybe they had eaten enough and just weren’t interested. Or they were startled out of their feast by Pippin actually coming in through the dog door, for he had finally managed to do it. I looked in my office to see if they had hauled any trash in there, and saw Pippin sitting comfortablely on my desk. He had also left a light paw-print on the lid of my closed laptop.

Here’s Where the Story Gets a Little Scary

We cleaned up the mess (the vacuum was more than Pippin could take and he bolted back through the dog door) and tried to relax the rest of the evening, but we were concerned. The trash had contained two quart-sized bags of old gorp leftover from our summer backpack trips. Peanuts, raisins, dried cranberries, and M&Ms. All things that aren’t good for dogs.

Sure enough, at three in the morning Cricket got up and started vomiting. Cleaning up dog vomit is never pleasant, but this was especially awful smelling puke. We stewed for a few minutes. Could we wait till morning, or should we just accept the cost of going to the emergency vet clinic? She sat uncomfortably in the bed and shook, not wanting to lie down and relax.

We decided it was emergency and got up to take her in. I was still on the phone with the vet clinic when she threw up bloody bile in the kitchen. Definitely an emergency now.

It was $95 up front at the emergency clinic. After a quick exam, the doctor said they would do an x-ray to check for any foreign objects, then provide some sort of charcoal treatment to bind up the rest of the trash and keep her from absorbing it, and then set her up with IV fluids so she doesn’t get dehydrated. We had to leave her there. We went home and went back to bed, although I really didn’t sleep all that well.

Cricket stayed at the vet hospital all day Tuesday. They told us she vomited again in the early morning (around 7 and again at 7:30). They didn’t want her to come home until she had kept food down for several hours, so she had to stay there Tuesday night as well. They told us we could come visit with her, but we figured that would just get her stirred up and then upset her more when we had to leave her there again.

Darwin wasted no time taking advantage of his sister’s absence; he tried to squeeze into her spot on the bed. This was OK at first because he curled up small. As the night went on, he sort of uncurled and stretched out and hogged a large portion of the bed.

Did She Learn Her Lesson? We Sure Did!

Finally this morning she was ready to come home. Apparently she was actually pretty good in her kennel and did not bark and cry as much as I would have expected. The doctor did say she started yapping at her when she didn’t get as much food as she wanted.

She was happy to see us when we picked her up, but then turned her head away to shun us. She was very angry that we took her to that place and left her there. She seems to have forgiven me more quickly than Renee; I’m not sure why. Maybe she expects less from me?

It would be really nice if Cricket learned a lesson from all this and would stay out of the trash from now on. After all, getting into trash just leads to bad things like vet clinics in the middle of the night, IV fluids, and sitting in a kennel all day. Unfortunately, I’m sure she has made no connection between the trash and the hospital stay. If she had the opportunity, she would do it all over again.

Hopefully we’ll do a bit better at staying vigilant when it comes to dog-proofing the house on the way out the door.

On a final note, I do know that the other dogs enjoyed some of that gorp as well. I’ve found plenty of evidence when poop-scooping the backyard, mostly in the form of undigested peanuts. But they seem to be doing OK and suffering no ill-effects, at least so far (fingers crossed that it stays that way).

NaNoWriMo Update – Starting Day 3

03 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by SaraS in NaNoWriMo, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Just a real quick update this morning before work. I’m two days in to NaNoWriMo and so far things are going pretty well.

On day one, I wrote during my lunch break and then again in the evening. I hit 2474 words, which is more than the daily quota of about 1667. So this felt like a good start.

When I actually started writing, I ended up taking my first couple scenes in different directions from what I had originally planned (not that I had really planned much; I really wasn’t sure how to start the story until I sat down and started writing), and I introduced a few characters that I hadn’t really anticipated before. I’m not positive, but these characters may lead to a subplot (or play a role in the main plot). I was really afraid that when I started, I’d run out of ideas in the first ten minutes, so I’m thrilled that my brain seems to be generating new ideas on the fly, right as I type.

Yesterday was a little more difficult. I took dogs on a walk during lunch time, so that used up that time (Myka and Darwin liked being a higher priority though). I had to do most of my writing in the evening, after we came home from the Day of the Dead parade. So I didn’t really have time to start writing for real until about 8:30. Then I somehow got hung up writing a scene in an airport (again, not something I had planned before). I haven’t actually flown in a few years, so my airport memories are a bit hazy. No idea if this scene is any good or not. I didn’t go much over my quota this time, but I did at least meet it with 1658 words. And my character is still sitting on an airplane, so I’ll have to finish up that today.

On another note, I’m very happy that so far it has worked to write on my laptop in the living room. I spend all day in my home office for work, so the last thing I want to do during non-work time is sit in there for a few more hours. Besides, Renee and all the dogs are in the living room, and I like being near them. I’ve discovered that with a pair of noise-canceling headphones and some music I completely block out the TV and can focus on the writing.

The first day I went with some older heavy metal music (Iced Earth). Last night it was Flogging Molly. It seems like fast music works the best for me so far.

That’s about it. I’m not sure what time I’ll write today — probably after dinner. Hopefully I’ll keep discovering new characters and story lines as I go!

Image

Photo of the Day: Clark fork late morning

02 Wednesday Nov 2011

Tags

rivers

Clark fork late morning by SaraS
Clark fork late morning, a photo by SaraS on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Clark Fork during a brisk lunchtime dog walk with Darwin and Myka today.

Posted by SaraS | Filed under Outdoors, Photo of the Day, Photography

≈ 2 Comments

Image

Photo of the Day: November Snow

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

Tags

Snow, Winter

DSC_0161 by SaraS
DSC_0161, a photo by SaraS on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Snow in the backyard on the first day of November. At least it waited till October was done!

Posted by SaraS | Filed under Backyard, Photo of the Day, Photography

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