My name, all illustrated-like.

But the last three days of fever and sore throat aren't the reason I'm dropping out of NaNoWriMo a mere 8 days in. No, it's much more prosaic than that: I have too much work to do. Work + active toddler + more work + housework = no time. Oh sure, I could something out to make time for writing. Let's see: sleep? Well, I'm already knackered all the time, and despite all my best efforts I seem to prefer sleeping as long as I can rather than dragging myself out of bed while my angelic offspring slumbers. So that leaves either work of housework. We know what happens when I do not clean the house (SPOILER: the cleaning fairy isn't real, and by the way, neither is the Easter Bunny) so that's out.

So I could cut out early from work in order to write, quit maybe the part-time freelance gig I added on a couple of months ago during a particularly worrisome point in our financial cycle, but therein lies a funny realization: I'm unwilling to risk insolvency to further my writing career.

Huh. When did that happen?

The depressing part, of course, is that this means I Am Not A Writer. Which in turn means I wasted a crapload of time wearing lots of black and cramming together enough bad metaphors to fill not one not two but THREE mostly-unfinished novels, the latest of which I was really excited about, damn it. Er, plus the one I'm supposed to be writing now, which I've been planning for the past two years, which is even more depressing when you think about all the other things I could have been doing when I was scrabbling down notes and marking articles on Wikipedia and generally being way, way too full of myself.

I don't know. I mean, I know failing at NaNo doesn't mean I can never write again, but it's a pretty good indicator of my commitment level. The way I look at it, I can either be willing to make sacrifices in order to be a writer, or I can quit whining about never having enough time to write. And I'm not sacrificing anything, am I?

Pros: Easy, low-effort, can vote naked or in pajamas.

Cons: No instant gratification, no "I voted!" sticker.

In general, though, I highly recommend the voting-by-mail system, and suggest to all who live in places which are not Portland that perhaps you should consider a change of venue.

That said, I'm horribly anxious about the election, and keeping my eye trained on Mahalo's Election Results page to see if I can use my mind-power mojo to bend the results to my will. So far it isn't working, but then again, the polls are still open. If you hear a voice in the back of your head saying "Don't be a jackass. Vote for Obama," well: you're welcome.

They love their hats, though, and people say things about how cute the two of them are when they wear them together. I maintain that they're cute anyway, but whatever.

Plus I got to update my Ravelry queue, and that's always a good thing.

I'm ridiculously excited. I've got all my notes bookmarked, copied into Scrivener, or saved. I've got a reference book lurking just to the right of my bed (it's a psychological thriller, this year's novel, which is an entirely new genre for me) and a bunch of back episodes of Cold Case Files at the ready. (Funny story: I realized before we decided to get rid of our cable that I had seen every single episode of Cold Case Files at least once, and could tell which case it was just by seeing the opening teaser. This cannot have done good things to my psyche.)

Want to know what else I use to squeeze 50,000 words out of my head in 30 days? I broke it down on Buzzverb for those following along at home. Whee.

Oh my god, this book rocks. It's got circus freaks! Sideshows! The Hilton sisters! (Not those Hilton sisters. The other ones.) It's like they wrote it just for me!

Er, and the kid likes it, too.

The pilot was good. Sort of cliche, sort of overacted (I've been watching eps from season 5, so obviously the cast and the writing is tighter), an annoying amount of soft-focus. Seriously, people: backlighting and a little Vaseline on the lens is not going to make your cast more likable. It will, however, make me want to punch you in the face. Funny how that works.

If I'd tuned in for the first episode, I might not have been impressed enough to watch it again, save for one thing: at the end, House is explaining to one of his underlings that he hired her because she's pretty, and that pretty girls who go into a demanding field like medicine are interesting because something's wrong with them. He starts asking all these inappropriate questions about whether she was abused or molested as a child, and she replies with an ever-escalating series of indignant denials. House just looks at her and says, quietly, "But you are damaged, aren't you."

The girl flees. I'm hooked.

Apparently that's what it takes to get me into a show: a deeply messed up protagonist with a thing for damaged goods. I'm so predictable.

This is the comp I did when I was messing around with ideas (and was testing out background textures - basically, this all started with a yummy leather texture I found on iStockPhoto). The original iteration had each feed item making a stripe across the entire screen, with the main content in a nice container on top of that. Which is one of those things that looks lovely and simple on paper, but turns out to be the world's biggest pain in the ass in practice. Yes, I know, it's all about z-index and what have you, but there were floats, and they were actively campaigning against me, and...wait, you totally don't care about any of this, do you? Especially because, once I finally got it to work, I decided it looked ghetto and nixed the stripe idea.

This marks my first foray into Yahoo! Pipes, as well...and it was, surprisingly, much less painful than I'd thought it would be. Sure, it's ugly, and I could probably have done it more efficiently if I had any bloody clue what I was doing...but it works, and isn't that really the point? I'm pulling in feeds from all sorts of different places, and spitting them into my sidebar all neatly styled and prettily updating, and I'm quite pleased with the result. Especially since I used PHP to handle the feed. Which I totally don't know! But I managed to hack my way through it without asking Not So for help, even once.*

Let me know if it looks funny to you. I mean, weird-funny, not funny-funny. Or maybe I don't.

*Full disclosure: I did ask Not So for help, but not about the feed/PHP thing. And I ended up not needing his help anyway, so it's totally like I did it by myself. Right? Right.

October 21st

Yesterday

Yesterday

October 19th

Yesterday

Yesterday

@flowersbyfarha I just saw your reply! And I *just* got a basket, but thanks anyway.

October 18th

Yesterday

Yesterday