1690 Words Down, 48310 To Go

As you can see from the fancy-dancy progress meter in the sidebar, I'm 3.4% of the way done with my NaNoWriMo writing. The goal is 1667 words each day, so I'm a tiny bit ahead with 1690 today!

On the downside, I'm writing really slowly: only 440 words per hour. I'm spending way too much time wondering what exactly to write, or deleting a sentence and re-wording it. This is not how NaNo is supposed to be. This is supposed to be a quickly written first draft, no Internal Editors allowed. So I need to stop editing even as much as I'm doing (which is only half-assed editing, since I know I'm not supposed to be editing during NaNo), and I think I need a more detailed outline that covers what to write for the next day.

So maybe I'll go outline a bit before heading to bed...

And here's a shout-out to my two friends who are also doing NaNo this year. They haven't posted today's numbers yet; I wish you both 1667 words! :)

Pro Obama, Anti Raptor

My household is a pro Obama, anti raptor household, and we are announcing such this Halloween!

(Don't get the raptor? See comics Velociraptors, Substitute, Search History, and the xkcd store. :))

Magic or a Body, Take Your Pick

For NaNoWriMo, I was going to write about some story set on Cresaea again this year. But I couldn't think of a story I really wanted to do right now — I'm feeling more like a magic-related story, and there's no magic on Cresaea.

Then, last weekend while falling asleep, my brain thought, "What if anyone could have magic, so it's not only 'special' or 'talented' people, but in order to get magic, you have to give up your body?" So that's the premise behind the world I'm writing about this November.

I'm still exploring the implications this premise of magic would have on a society. Many things are still in flux or undecided. I have a very draft-y plot outline and world-building notes, but mostly I'm going into NaNo less prepared than I'd like. Hopefully it works out anyhow! Wish me luck. :)

NaNoWriMo, Attempt 3

My first year of participating in NaNoWriMo was in 2004. I got to 19,292 words by the end of that November. In 2005, I made some character notes and had an idea for the story, and I even blogged that I wrote something like 4,000 words, but that text file is nowhere to be found now. :( I didn't even try to participate in 2006 or 2007, after the dismal failures that were 2004 and 2005.

So this morning, I got an email from my best friend from high school, asking if I was going to do NaNoWriMo this year. I hadn't really thought about it, and I didn't have a story idea, but this year it sounds like a fun and silly challenge again. I spent the day at Barnes & Noble, reading books on writing. I'm still not sure what I'll write about, but I have two more weeks to come up with something...

JIT Mochas

JIT Mocha

I like mochas; just ask my wallet. But I get free coffee at work, so I'm not buying as many mochas as I used to. Yet I miss my mochas...

So, I tried to come up with a way to satisfy my mocha cravings while still taking advantage of free corporate coffee (which tastes better than the Kool-Aid here). I really don't care for ghetto mochas. Instead, I came up with something that I still find tasty, even if it's not quite the same as a real mocha.

I present to you the JIT mocha! (JIT stands for "just in time," if you're not in computer science.) You've got the coffee in the mug, and the chocolate Hershey's Kisses in your mouth, and they mix "just in time" as you sip the coffee. If the coffee's hot enough, the Kiss melts right away, making it a very rich, chocolately experience.

So now you know. :)

A Kitten By Any Other Name

So after a week's worth of brainstorming and debating and rejecting names for our kittens, we've come up with a scheme both Forrest and I are quite pleased with.

As you might recall, our college cat was named Alexis by her previous owners but we called her Lex. Lex is also short for "lexer," a computer science term. So we were considering pairs of names for these two new kittens that similarly paid homage to geekiness.

The top pair of names in the running for the past several days was Amy and Glory (both characters from Cryptonomicon, a thoroughly geeky book). We both liked calling Amanda "Amy", but I balked at using the name "Glory" for Meryl. Without spoiling things, let's just say that unpleasant things happen to Glory in the book. So after some more debate and character list research, Forrest came across the name "Mary," a supporting character in the book.

We realized that this pair of Cryptonomicon names was actually perfect: the names were suitably geeky; they sounded like normal names to non-geeks; and, best of all, they could both be just nicknames for Amanda and Meryl, in the same way that Lex was really just a nickname, not a full name change. (It's unfortunate that the spelling of "Mary" doesn't more closely mirror "Meryl," but we're not willing to spell it "Merry." Or we could just say that the nickname for [meɹɪl] is [meɹi] and not worry about it. ;))

So, the kittens are still "officially" Amanda and Meryl. But for everything but paperwork, they'll be Amy and Mary to us.

Unrolled Roll of TP

Amy vs the TP

Amanda Amy is working her way up to exploding toilet paper. Today, Forrest caught her unrolling the roll in her deviousness. Or maybe she was just saving us from the clutches of the Evil Toilet Paper. The world may never know.

Our Two Kittens Move In

Kittens in Their Bed

We picked up our newly adopted kittens this afternoon! For the first few minutes of the car ride they were inquisitive, but about five minutes in they started wailing. We felt so bad, but there wasn't anything we could do for them and they weren't actually being harmed, despite their vocal protests to the contrary. Interestingly, they both settled down after another five minutes of us not rescuing them from the car. Perhaps they decided crying wasn't getting them anywhere, so they might as well wait it out? Dunno, but they definitely settled down for the rest of the drive.

In our house, our bedroom and bathroom have a door at the end of the hallway that closes it off into a "suite" separate from the rest of the house. The bathroom and hallway seemed like the perfect section of the house to let the kittens get acclimated to their new home without overwhelming them with the whole house at once.

Kittens in a Towel

This plan appears to have worked well. They've already run themselves through two complete cycles of crazy-energetic play followed by exhausted napping. We're hopping they finish up this third cycle of play and get some more rest by the time we go to sleep. :)

You can follow the Cuteness Developments in detail by watching my Flickr set for them. If you want to see any photos with me or Forrest in them, you'll have to be logged in to Flickr as "friend or family."

Addendum: Meryl Mary apparently didn't like my representation of events, preferring to speak for herself. So she hopped up here on the laptop to tell you directly:

oooooooooooooooooooooof===[[[[[[[[[ppppppppp-============== =========================================================== =================7mmmmm666666666666666666666666666666666666 666666666666666666===========

So now you know.

Kittens!

Three Sister Kittens

Forrest and I have been wanting a cat for a while now. Last weekend we went to Cat City to drool over cute cats. But they only had two kittens, who were quickly adopted. So this weekend we went out to Homeward Pet, which had closer to a dozen kittens!

Homeward Pet won't let you adopt just one kitten if everyone in the household works full-time; you have to get two, so they can keep each other company. I had been leaning toward this logic anyway, and Forrest was convinced without too much arm-twisting. It's hard to say no to more cute kittens. :)

It didn't take us too long to gravitate toward a cage with three white-tummied brown mackerel tabbies. The three sister kittens were very friendly to us and playful amongst themselves. We decided we would adopt two of them, and we let the employee know our decision. Unfortunately, their policy is to call landlords of all renters to make sure it really is okay for them to have pets. This is a good policy, but on the other hand, it kept us from our kittens. How dare they.

Amy, Formerly Known as Amanda

Despite finding three different numbers to contact our landlords, we were unable to reach them. The Homeward Pet employee left voice messages at each number, but said she couldn't mark the kittens we wanted as "pending" until the landlord called back. We were sad, but understood. After muttering to ourselves that no one else had better steal our kittens, we left.

Later in the evening, though, Homeward Pet called us back to say the landlord had returned their call and okay'd the kittens! It was already after normal business/adoption hours, so we scheduled a time tomorrow afternoon to pick up our kittens. Very exciting!

We're not all that hot on the kittens' given names, so we want to rename them. Our last cat (back in college, before the landlord changed the pet policy to disallow cats) was named Lex, short for Alexis but also short for lexer. If you have a suitably computer-y or otherwise geeky name, we're accepting suggestions. :)

Update, August 9th: Suitable geeky names have been found!

Work Motivation, or Lack Thereof

So if you search for what employers can do to increase employee motivation, you'll get a list that includes:

• money
• opportunity for growth
• leadership opportunities
• responsibility
• recognition of performance

Why do so few of the search results for work motivation talk about what I feel is a key motivational factor? Namely, giving a shit about the thing you're working on.

Feeling like the product you're working on is subpar and not likely to improve is a real drain on motivation. :(

I don't want to talk with people about what I work on. If they're not familiar with it, I have no reasons to recommend that they learn about it or try it. If they are familiar with it, I have to agree with all their complaints about it and then some.

I need to work on a different product...