Weekly Check-In

The NaNoWriMo isn't going quite as well as I'd hoped... it's already Day 4, and I've only written about 1500 words, less than I should be averaging each day; and the two hours every evening just isn't happening, I'm too tired by then to think clearly or creatively so I end up just reading or playing games all evening. Most of the writing I've done has been during breaks at work, and in the morning before coming in.

Hopefully, I'll be able to do some catching up over the weekend; I know last year I started on a Sunday and wrote almost three thousand words in that one day, so perhaps it's just the Monday start-date that's keeping the words down to a sad little dribble. On the other hand, I think I'm having issues with the manner in which I chose to start the story over, the scene itself is giving me a lot of trouble.

But I can't afford to rethink the beginning at this point, I just need to plow forward. As soon as I get to the next scene, it should flow a little bit better. I just have to keep plugging away at it, even when it comes in a trickle like this.

MOOD

I screwed up my meds... I allowed myself to run out of Seroquel, and kept forgetting to order more over the phone; so after going without for two days, I went to the pharmacy to get a same-day pickup, but I didn't have any refills left on the prescription so had to wait another two days to get a doctor's OK before they refill it. So four days without my mood-stabilizer, and I'm starting to feel it. I've increased the dose on my Zoloft in the meantime, since it helps me sleep and seems to keep me mellow, and have kept up my Wellbutrin regularly; but I'm not sleeping as much as I usually do, and though I wake up quite refreshed and don't feel sleepy during the day, I feel kind of stupid and brittle... much as I used to feel when I was younger and missed sleep.

But I will be getting my prescription this afternoon and can go back to my regular cocktail tonight; hopefully there will be no long-lasting repercussions to this little blip in the routine. I'd hate to mess up a combination that seems to be working so well.

And that's me for today. Ciao, belli!

Insanity, Thy Name is NaNoWriMo...

So, after much waffling on the subject, I decided to take part in NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month to the uninitiated) again this year. I am restarting the story I made up for last year's event, The Math Teacher's Dead, but in accordance with the rules I'm throwing out everything except the plot and characters and a handful of situations from the last draft and am starting fresh.

In creating my strategy for this year, I have tried to learn some lessons from last year: first, have an outline to begin with, don't just make it up as I go; second, make time every day, don't wait for empty days to write; and third, do not let myself get bogged down in editing and re-editing what I've already written -- onward and upward, devil take the hindmost!

My plan is to write for at least two hours every evening, then post my writing to a blog that I created for the purpose; I will not be allowed to go back and fiddle with the posted writing until the weekend, when I will allow myself a little editing. I already started my outline (that's allowed) a couple of weeks ago, and that will get me through the first week; I can tweak my outline a little more during lunch or idle moments away from my computer (it's in an olde-fashionedy paper notebook) in order to stay ahead of the writing.

Part of the challenge is going to be staying away from distractions... I'm not going to abandon FaceBook or Swellegant or JUB or my endless hunt for beefcake, but I am going to reduce those activities as much as possible without letting them lapse altogether. I mean, my FaceBook games can languish a bit with only minimal maintenance, it's not like I post here every day, I haven't posted much at JUB for weeks, and all my beefcake sites archive themselves so I can catch up in December.

So if you don't hear from me, you know where I'll be.

Oh, by the bye, here are a couple of pix from the Halloween party Caroline and I attended at Slide in San Francisco:


I decided at the last minute to ditch the wig and the sword (both were too fussy and uncomfortable/heavy, and I was feeling a little bit irritable on Saturday) and nobody asked me who or what I was supposed to be (though a lot of people asked me where the restrooms were and how to find their waitress... I guess I was exuding authority again, and people thought I worked there) so I didn't need a made-up identity.

And here's Caroline in her second costume (or rather her first, the one she assembled in spring and which inspired my costume, but then she wanted to be a fairy later), an elven huntress:


Caroline had a wonderful time at the party, people bought her drinks and she got all tiddly-giggly and flirted with the bartenders and the bouncers and some stray boys (all of whom had girlfriends), and received lots of compliments on her costume, particularly the very realistic ears. I didn't have as much fun as I had last year, the music was less accessible (less GaGa and 80s revivals, more rap and hip-hop) and there were far fewer cute guys and far more drunken girls in slutty costumes... the sense of fun just wasn't there. But it wasn't a bad time, just not as fun as I'd hoped.

So that's the news, and I had better be getting to work... in order to ensure two hours free in the evening, I am going to have to get to work on time and leave on time and try to not wear myself out in between.

Toodle-pip!

Introducing Godolphin, the Blue Wizard

As promised, here are pictures of me in my Lord of the Rings costume at the California Academy of Science... though after some reflection I decided that I was a Wizard rather than an Elf Lord, simply because the theme of the costume party was "Supernatural" and a wizard seems a little more supernatural in concept than an elf.

And so I made up a name that sounded LotR-ish (Godolphin is actually an old English family name, most notable for the extinct earldom created by Charles II for one of his cronies, but which only lasted two generations) and ran with it. Godolphin the Blue was a semifinalist, but not a finalist, in the Costume Contest... Caroline was also a semifinalist, though she had to practically mug the contest judge to get a semifinalist badge. As usual, whenever there's a straight woman involved, I am catnip and Caroline is anathema.

Here I am standing in the tunnel underneath the Rain Forest pond, which is a very cool display but didn't come out in the picture:


In the contest itself, taking a regal bow:


And riding a bronze Galapagos tortoise with Caroline (who was dressed as a fairy):


When I wore the costume to work yesterday, I left the wig off and just said I was a Prince of Gondor, which fit the look. I was the only one in a costume that day, as we hadn't planned a party and so nobody had felt encouraged to dress up... but that wasn't going to stop me! I paid too much for that outfit to miss any opportunity to wear it. Though I have to say, it isn't a very good garment in regard to temperature: when the room is warm, it doesn't breathe well, so I get all sweaty; and when it's cold, it doesn't keep me warm; and so on Friday when the temperature was going up and down all day, I got sweaty and then got cold, and it was very tiring.

Now tonight we are going to Slide, and this time I am going to be an elf lord, since I can carry my sword and have discovered which exact elven character I am going to be: Thranduil, King of Mirkwood, who is Legolas's father. A comfortably obscure character for whom nobody will have preconceived notions regarding his appearance... though in the cartoon version of The Hobbit, Thranduil is portrayed as being made of leaves and looks like a peevish cabbage.

Anyway, when more pictures are available, I'll be back to show them to you. In the meantime, have a spooktacular day!

Weekly Check-In

These last two weeks have been rather hellish. I've been down with this cold that just lingers and lingers and lingers... if I lose too much sleep, I display actual cold symptoms, but most of the time it's just fatigue and a numbed brain... and I've had it for over two weeks now. I know exactly when I caught it and from whom, Tuesday before last from a coworker whose desk I used after she'd been coughing all over it; and it has been making the rounds at the office, felling four at least besides myself.

One of the worst symptoms of this cold is a pervasive irritability that makes everyday annoyances feel like epic betrayals of human decency. Talking to Grandmother has been almost impossible, especially when she makes me repeat myself, or when she explains to me how to do something that I already know quite well how to do. And then at work, it's a strain on the temper all day long, being nice to people whom I would prefer to strangle with a barbed-wire garrote.

But it seems to be abating... I took another sick day yesterday (the third in the last two weeks, none consecutive) and spent the day in bed with the HBO series Rome. Nothing like some violence and sex and costume drama to soothe the savage breast. And over the weekend, I watched the entire Jeeves & Wooster series, which always makes me feel better... though I tend to spend the next few days thinking with an English accent and dropping words like quite and rather into my speech more frequently.

So now I'm trying to be well so I can go to my two Halloween parties without falling ill again. Tomorrow evening, Caroline and I are going to the California Academy of Science Nightlife Halloween party, to which I am looking forward with some enthusiasm, since I have been wanting to see the new Academy since it opened last year; and then on Saturday we're going to Slide, a rather nice little (straight) dance club near Union Square... we went there last year and had a lovely time, and are hoping to repeat the fun.

I'm a little irritated with my costume: an Elf Lord, though not any particular Lord of the Rings character... sort of a blend of Elrond of Rivendell (who I have recently discovered was half-human) and Celeborn of Lothlorien. So not only do I have to explain every time I tell someone about my costume that I am going to be a Lord of the Rings type of elf rather than a Christmas elf (as if), but then I have to fend off actual LotR fans with an explanation that I'm not going as any particular elf lord, but rather a composite character for whom I have not made up a name.

And then the elements of the costume have been disappointing and/or more difficult than expected. I bought an outfit along with a belt and sword frog from this medieval costumer in Ukraine, ordered it in May, and then didn't receive the outfit and frog until July, and the belt finally came on Monday... with dozens of emails between myself and the one (marginally) English-speaking Ukrainian at the costumers over the intervening five months. Here's essentially what it looks like, though I got it in summer-sky blue rather than red:


Then I decided to wash the tunic of the outfit, which was intensely scratchy (made of authentically medieval flax linen, and I think starched at that), and in the wash (cold water, gentle cycle, Woolite detergent) not only did it shrink a little, but one of the seams unraveled a few inches near the hem and the cuff buttons all broke apart. So I had to spend a good deal of time steam-ironing the fabric to stretch it to its original dimensions, and will have to do some stitching on the seam and either replace the buttons or rig up something with safety-pins to keep the cuffs closed.

Then I started working on the wig, which is very long (about fifty inches from the crown) and silvery white, and it proved more difficult than I had thought it would. I intended to do a braid at each temple drawn to the back, and then a stream of hair laying over the front of each shoulder and the rest hanging down in back. However, having never had hair (real or wig) of that length before, I did not realize that it would tangle inextricably down toward the bottom... so separating out hanks is impossible without actually ripping or cutting the tangles, which doesn't look very nice.

Then there's the sword, which really makes the outfit, but I can't bring it to the Academy and may not be able to wear it to work. But at least I don't have to worry about boots: I have three different pair to choose from... two pair are costume boots, with nice crepe soles but slightly cheap-looking, and one pair is regular women's dress boots in a quality BoHo style and thin leather soles. Much will depend on how far I'm going to have to walk.

Well, anyway, I am going to stop by the Halloween City store near my job during lunch today and see if I can get a more cooperative wig, perhaps one that is already styled in the elven manner (and brown, so that I can say, definitely, "Elrond, Lord of Rivendell") and maybe some ear-tips to sell the elf identity better. The whole purpose of the long wig was to cover my ears so I wouldn't have to do that, but the various failures and vagaries that I have experienced since trying to get down to brass tacks with this costume have made me uncomfortable with my concept.

I will of course post pictures as soon as I have them.

MOOD

This cold has sent my moods all flooey... I always get depressed when I'm sick, as one might expect; but I also tend to forget to take my meds when I'm sick, the morning doses in particular, as laying in bed all day throws me off my natural rhythms. And since my morning meds are the Wellbutrin that is more of a pick-me-up than a hold-me-down, I slip into depression that much more easily. But I expect to recover the balance my meds have been giving me, once the cold symptoms dissipate.

FITNESS

I still weigh the same, between 225 and 227 every time I get on the scale; but I do it less often than I used to, I've rather lost interest in my weight these last couple of months. And I'm not eating very differently from usual, no binging or starving, so I'm going to call this my base weight for the time being. Maybe I'll get more in a fitnessy mood in the coming months... you never can tell with me.

And that's all I have to say today. Have a lovely week!

Picture Post: Sur la Plage Deux

Picture Post: Sur La Plage

Weekly Check-In

I am so ready for the elections to be over... the ads are driving me nuts. When are we going to have an election reform bill that forbids expensive television and radio ads? I'd totally vote for that! Until I can vote in any way other than in person or by mail, all electioneering should be done in person and by mail... if I could vote online or through my TV or radio, then it would be appropriate to electioneer by those media.

But I suppose a lot of jobs depend on political advertising... if only the ads were clever and funny the way that ads for products are. There is one anti-Meg Whitman ad that makes me giggle, with a Pinocchio hat drawn on her and her nose growing, pointing out things she's said about Jerry Brown which aren't true. And there's a Carly Fiorina ad that absolutely slays me... it has all these rather dramatic claims about how partisan politics have ruined the state (neglecting to mention that Ms. Fiorina is herself a partisan) and shows dramatic Dorothea Lange Dust Bowl-type imagery, but it cites no actual facts, it's all insinuations and inchoate threats. Then it shows the most unflattering picture of Barbara Boxer in existence, which makes her look like an octogenarian dragon-lady, followed by a little blip of Ms. Fiorina (who is fourteen years younger than Boxer but looks much older) in flattering studio light approving the message.

The thing about these two super-rich CEOs running for office that I find kind of amusing is how they keep stressing that they have "real world" experience while the other candidates are "career politicians"... as if the political arena was not part of the real world, as if decades spent in government unsuits a person to work in government. Not only have neither of these women ever been involved in the political process before, they haven't ever before taken any interest in politics, with spotty-to-nonexistent voting records... how do they think they're suited for political jobs?

I almost want them to win the elections so they can get in over their heads and discover that politics and business are completely different animals. But I believe that between the two of them, the state would fall from being a bit if a mess to being a total disaster, and I don't think we can afford that just to teach these corporate overlords a lesson in politics.

MOOD

So, in response to the sleepiness I was experiencing, I reduced my Seroquel dose by a third; and though I did not feel sleepy all week, I felt a lot of other things I'd rather not feel: depressed, anxious, horny, irritable... usually in turns but sometimes all at once. So I went back to the full dose and my mood returned to "normal" (or as normal as I have come to expect), and my sleepiness returned. I wonder what would happen if I tried cutting the third pill in half? I think I'll try that next week and see what happens.

FITNESS

Whatever.

And that's me for the week. Have a good one!