November 03, 2003

 Happy Birthday to Me!!!

    Today I am twenty-eight.  I have a midterm to take, and I really should go to my night class tonight.  Despite all these things, I'm feeling pretty good this morning.  Twenty-eight has a nice sound to it.  Twenty-eight, twenty-eight, twenty-eight.  This is good, I like this better than twenty-seven.

    Also happy day-after-rain day.  Technically, it rained on Halloween, but the first earnest rain was last night.  We got to fall asleep listening to the tinny sound of the rain gutter, the muted splashing of puddles on the patio down below our heads, and the occasional howl of the wind through the trees.  I love the rain--it is very comforting to me.  It makes me think of my little apartment in Arcata, and also of the apartment I grew up in, in Walnut Creek.  The Walnut Creek apartment had a corrugated tin roof over the back patio, and the rain used to echo off of that, just loud enough so that I could hear it in my room.  It wasn't until I moved out that I realized that most people can't hear the rain like that in their houses, and that fact made me really bummed.  In Arcata, I moved my futon so that my head was under the window, and I could hear the rain beating against the glass.  (That was nice and soothing, but also drafty.  Probably contributed to my first season of the Humboldt Crud.)

    Days like this always make me feel like going native, so today I am decked out in my finest flannel, hemp jewelry, and bandana.  Interesting, looking at that blog entry, I've also been thinking of giving up coffee again.  These things must go together.  It's funny that I always start missing Arcata when it starts to rain.  In a lot of ways I was miserable when I was up there.  I was lonely most of the time (although I think being in a long distance relationship will do that to you, no matter where you are.)  My apartment had a crappy heater, and I was cold most of the time.  My car leaked rainwater into it unless I parked it with the left side facing downhill.  The entire town was afflicted with a wet, hacking cough for the entire winter.  But even with all that, I loved it, and I'd go back in a minute, if I could get a job up there.  I've even found where I want to live.  I'd bring Shorn with me, this time :)

    But I'm here, now, and life is pretty good, so I don't have too much to complain about.  I can satisfy my Humboldt county longings by writing about characters from there.  Speaking of which, after two days writing my NaNo, I've concluded that I can actually do this thing.  I think I'm just going to go ahead and order the t-shirt.  Over the last two days, I have written 5822 words.  That was 2198 words the first day, and 3624 words yesterday. I need 1667 words a day to finish in 30 days, 2000 words to finish in 25 days, or 2500 words to finish in 20 days.  I'm shooting for between 2000-2500 words per day, so I'm going pretty good.  And it is a lot easier than I thought it would be.  I can write pretty fast when I'm not worrying about editing.  Best of all, I don't even think that my novel is crappy so far.  It's probably a little boring at this point, but I've just met these characters, so it will take a while for them to come to life.

    And, on that note, I'd better get back to the grind.  I don't have any words at all for today :P