October 27, 2003
Hey everybody. No, I'm not dead, I just took a day off. A day off from not just my web page, but the computer entirely. Consider it a moment of silence to remember October 26, last year. So Shorn and I had a nice day just relaxing at home, reading and watching silly things on TV. More specifically, he watched silly things on TV, and I sat and vaguely listened to silly TV, and read Local Custom. Yep, the whole novel, in one day (for the most part. I had gotten 35 pages into the book a few days before.) It's not that long of a book, or anything, and not a challenging read by any means, but it's been a long time since I've read a novel in essentially one sitting, so I'm proud. I think having the TV on helped. I have a hard time staying focused while doing quick reading. My mind starts to wander unless there is something else to pay attention to. The best things are movies that I have seen a billion times before. Star Trek TNG works, too. Sometimes, I will start to tune the second thing out, and just focus on what I'm reading, but that's usually when I start to slow down. My mind just likes doing two things at once.
You know, Saturday I was really excited about this time change, because I was looking forward to the extra hour of sleep. Seriously, that fact got me through the workday on Saturday. I even chanted to myself "An extra hour! an extra hour! I can stay up late! And get up early!" Since I'm neither a morning nor a night person (I'm a sleep person, plain and simple. And yes, it does cut into my social life and my productivity. Thank you for asking) an extra hour is a really big deal for me.
But now that it's all said and done, and that extra hour has been all used up, I don't like the time change any more. I don't know if this is on or off of daylight's savings time (I can never keep it straight) but I hate it. All day long, it feels so much later than it actually is. Here it is, 5:27 pm by my computer clock, and the sky is mostly dark outside. Suck.
I like the nighttime, because that's when fun stuff happens, but I really don't like the dark. Dark is scary, sleepy, cold, and it makes plants die. Light is happy, warm, and good for feng shui. My secondary reason for wanting a house instead of a townhouse (yard is primary) is because I want windows on more than one wall in every room. I like the rain and fog and hibernating of winter, but I'd be perfectly content to never see another 5:16pm sunset. So I want to revoke this time change. Think of all the sunlight that goes to waste shining down on sleepy-headed commuters. Why? Why, why, why?
On another vein entirely, I'm getting very excited about my NaNo. I can't wait to start writing this Saturday, even though the day is going to be busy, and I'll only have time to write in the morning. VSC is going to lend/give me her old laptop, and that will help. It is an old thing, and has a ten minute battery life, but it will let me sit and write in various places around the house, and that is worth a lot. I have a hard time writing on the computer when Shorn is at his computer, even though I shouldn't. He doesn't look over at my computer very often, he usually can't even read what's on the screen unless he leans over, and he won't read my work if I tell him not to. But it's just difficult to write when somebody else can see the screen. When I'm working on a big paper, I lock myself in the computer room, and banish him downstairs. It works well, because the loneliness is a great motivator for me. But I can hardly lock the poor guy away from his computer for the month of November. Having a laptop will allow me to lounge on the bed, in the same room, so we can chit-chat occasionally, but do our separated things in peace. And I can always move into the bedroom, or downstairs, if I need peace and quite or TV noise.
I have high hopes for this NaNo thing. I may not get a full 50,000 words, but I'm going to try. Even if I come up short, I'll have some material to work with, and the experience of trying to write like a lunatic.
And my last bit of news is that my new website is almost completed, and should be up any day now. I say that to give myself a deadline. As soon as I figure out what to do with the front page, I'll be ready. Promise.