NaNoWriMo 2007

So about four years ago I started to hear little things round the internet regarding this National Novel Writing Month. It's been happening every November since 1999, and the gist of it is that people from all over the world sign up to write 50,000 words of a single discrete fiction piece between November 1st and November 30th.

If you do the math, you will notice that that is an average of 1,666 and 2/3 words per day. Every day. For a month. Now, if I write 2,000-3,000 words of fiction in a week, I consider myself productive. A 10,000-word month is pretty decent, and a 20,000-word month is something I don't even aspire to. So it was always a good thing that November, being the month of my birthday, has had a week of vacation in it every year since I found out about NaNoWriMo. If 50,000 words sounded crazy in a regular month, it was doubly crazy in a month minus a week in Paris.

This year, I thought I was OK for excuses because even though I'm not going on vacation, I do have a deadline in early December for a research-heavy feature article for the History Channel Magazine. Somehow, though, I managed to call to myself a gauzy wisp of an idea in the shower yesterday, about ten hours before the official start of NaNoWriMo, and that evening I signed up. Two hours before midnight I still didn't even know who my characters were, but I sat down at 12:01 am and started winging it.

So far today I have written almost 3,000 words. I am not the kind of person who writes 3,000 words in a day. Words trickle from me as though physically squeezed by the Gorgonic editor in my head. Today though, the editor is locked in the closet, because it doesn't matter if the words are any good. It only matters that they are words.

Misc: Google Envy

So I Googled my husband yesterday, because sometimes I do simpleminded things like that to pass the time, and it turns out the Mike Hagen with the most hits these days is this guy:

http://www.strengthteam.com/home.htm

That's right: a weight-training feats-of-strength ministry. It's almost as awesome as the time Gregory Peck played him in 1957.

He is also an photographer-adventurer, at least one lawyer and an electronics company in Kansas City. And a minor character in a Star Trek novel, but that one's really him.

By contrast, the most popular Kathy Monahan after me sells real estate in Toronto.

Misc: Fun at Work (History Buff Edition)

Last week someone wrote on the whiteboard in my department:

No Justice, No Peace!
Free Paris Now!

Today I came in and discovered an addendum:

(done 1945)

Knitting: It's Hortense!

Finally, she makes her debut:


This is her best side:

And here is an aerial view:

The pattern didn't include horns, but she looked sufficiently like Barney the Purple Dinosaur that I needed to draw more of a distinction. I made them thus:

CO 5 st
1: knit all
2: purl all
3: ssk, k, k2tog (3 st)
4: purl all
5: ssk, slip st back on left needle, k2tog (1 st)
Break yarn and pull through loop.
Fold in half and sew to head, open side down. Shape with fingers into a crescent.

Now, to begin the three additional dragons I have contracted to make for the various associates who have fallen in love with Hortense. I'm going to be an expert before long.

Misc: Happy Anniversary!

Dear Mike-

Seven years ago today was our Big Fat Geek Wedding at Disney World, and it set the tone for our "Happy," "Dopey" and "Goofy" marriage. I love you for your humor, your kindness, your blue eyes, and your toy collection. I love that you can watch Superman II as often as I can read Murder on the Orient Express, and that a typical Saturday night consists of us doing those things in adjoining rooms and not feeling weird about it. I love that you want puppies more than you want children, and I'm sure we can work out the pug vs. golden retriever question, eventually. I love that you support everything I do, and I especially love that you support my learning hapkido with particular gusto because it reminds you of Emma Peel. I adore you; I bless the day we met; and I forgive you for the snoring, I guess.

Misc: Fun on the Street

So I saw a milk truck idling in front of a bodega in midtown. It had a bunch of cows painted on the side, as you might expect from a milk truck.

Only here's the thing. None of the cows had udders. They were boy cows. Steers, when you think about it. Yet the truck was unmistakably carrying milk and not beef.

I wonder if someone got offended by the udders and insisted that they be painted out? I can't think of any other reason not to put cows on a milk truck.

Knitting: Dragonslayer

Waaaay back in January I made this dragon from Knitty. The pattern calls her Norberta, but I made her in purple with green spines and I thought she looked more like a Hortense, so that's what I called her. Unfortunately, she turned out too loose -- so loose that her stuffing stuck out of the holes in her head. Trouble is, I'm an arch-anthropomorphizer, so I can neither destroy nor discard anything with which I have endowed a personality. And I had already named her Hortense. So she sat in the corner with no face for months, waiting for me to either come to terms with her flaws or harden my heart sufficiently to do what needed to be done.

Last weekend, I decided my heart was hard enough. Sort of. I took out Hortense, stood her up on the sofa with my yarn cutter, and explained that she had no quality of life there in the corner with no face, and it was time to undergo surgery that would make things better for both of us. I had to reassure her very emphatically that I would knit her again even better in order to make the first cut. At least she couldn't look at me reproachfully because she had no face.

So I took her apart. It was awful. There was a point of black despair when I thought I was going to end up with a bunch of two-inch scraps of yarn. My husband, seeing how het up I was, thought he would make me feel better by telling me I was a dragonslayer now. It made me cry instead. But in the end, all was well. I managed to salvage most of the yarn and now that I'm using 4s instead of 6s, I don't need as much anyway. I've got her back, belly and spines done, and now I just have to work on the legs and wings.

But it was a very eventful time.