So, there's this thing called NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every year in November, people all over the world participate and try to write a 50,000 word novel in the course of a month. I've known about it for a few years, but this is the first year I attempted it, and I'm happy to report that I successfully finished - with an entire day to spare, I ended with 50,412 words!
The novel is actually pretty horrible (no one every said you had to write a GOOD novel in a month), though I hope to one day go back through and edit it and turn it into something halfway decent. I'm not sure why, other than just for personal satisfaction. The book is a coming-of-age story told from the perspective of four different teenagers during their Sophomore year of High School.
In other not-as-exciting-news, John got injured at our hotel room when we ordered room service for breakfast and the jar of jelly he tried opening had a glass shard stuck to it and he sliced his thumb open. It was really pretty bad, and obviously ruined the meal. We're hoping to get compensated for the price of the room, but there was no manager on duty while we were there and apparently there won't be one until Tuesday. I found this pretty surprising, as when I worked retail there had to be some sort of manage on the premises at all time. *shrug*
I've also been slowing building up my equipment in the office, which is incredibly boring to you, I'm sure, but exciting for me. A while ago, I purchased a tablet/pen off of woot (easier to do photo editing with it). Then about a week ago, I found a good deal on a drobo (for the non-geeks: it's a box that I can put hard drives in will automatically back up everything I put on it onto other hard drives in the box - which means it's pretty useless if you don't have more than one hard drive, but if you DO then you have a pretty failsafe method of storing data), and a coworker showed me a great deal on 1 TB hard drives, so I got two of them.
Then, during Black Friday, I found a great deal online for a 22" LCD monitor that had all the specs I was looking for that they say you should have for photo editing, so I ordered that, too.
Finally, I got a second power cord for my personal laptop ($20 off of ebay instead of $100 directly from toshiba!), so that I can keep one up here in the office, and one down in the living room so it's easier to move around the house. yay.
Even though I found a lot of great deals, I've still spent a lot of money on this geekery, which is money I had been planning on putting towards the wide angle lens I really want, but that can wait until next year. It's really more important to me that I don't lose any of my photos than it is for me to be able to take wide angle shots.
There is, also, a great sense of satisfaction that every room in our house will now be used on a regular (perhaps even daily!) basis. Ok, so the guest room is only used as John's closet and the dining room is mainly used to make wine, but hey, at least they're being used, right?
I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving!
