And we're back. During the break, you were talking about....

Note to self: driving on Thanksgiving weekend is sort of a bad idea. Not a horrible idea, like polio, but certainly not as good as the idea for the polio vaccine.

But we survived, as did Sophie. She was quite popular among limenal's family and caused very little trauma to herself or others. I think her favorite part was being able to run free in a huge manor meadow. I think my favorite part was when she was upstairs and could look through the balcony and see us, but couldn't figure out how to get to us simply by going down the stairs next to her. Oh, poor Sophie and your lack of spatial relations.

Highlights of the trip included:

• Lanie's uncle: "I guess it's just one of those movies that you either love or you hate."
  Me: (with genuine nonjudgmental shock) "Wow, I don't think I've ever met anyone who hated Amelie."
  Postscript: They supposedly only like romance movies, a la "Sleepless in Seattle". I guess Amelie was too quirky of a romance.



• The battle of the annoying dark grey SUV's in the toll booth lane. The bigger car in front of us did NOT want to let the smaller guy sneak in, and they ended up hitting each other. So, the lane sneak-er's attempts to save time by cutting in line, and the beligerent self-righteous fool's attempt to keep their place in line ahead of them were both foiled since they ended up having to pull over on the side and exchange insurance information. Suckas. Of course, I nearly gotten taken out by a green minivan while we drove by gloating, but we still ended up okay.



• Tastykake chocolate frosted donuts. A dream. I wanted to bring back a whole box but MelRo didn't take me to a 7eleven as promised, which also birthed my new favorite phrase: "I'm sad at you." It's when you're not exactly mad or angry or wounded or hurt, but the person's actions or lack thereof did make you sad.



• At approximately noon on Saturday, I crossed the 50,000 word mark on my novel and two of those words were "The End". I will be posting the last couple chapters soon. My characters haven't left me alone one bit, but I'm forcing myself to hold off on revisions a couple weeks. I might get started around xmas. In the meantime though, I've written a novel. I can cross that off my lifetime to-do list.

Overall I enjoyed the Thanksgiving (pronounced THANKS-giv-ing) weekend and I like hanging out with MelRo's family who are quite accepting of my presence. Also, the thanksgiving dinner itself on Thursday was tasty, but I miss my cornbread dressing and canned cranberry sauce and having leftover turkey on sandwiches for the next three days. I think I might make a sequel to thanksgiving this weekend -- hopefully the turkeys might even be on sale.

last chance to wade through the rough

The official icon declaring my status. I join the elite 2,000 other people who wrote a novel this month, and the thousands more who wrote more than they ever thought possible, even if it wasn't quite 50K.

I posted the last bits on writerraymond. It will only stay up for a few days. Shortly I will be either deleting the journal or just editing all the entries to be private. I might keep the journal around for various writing projects in the future or just hold on to it for next year or who knows what else.

If for some reason you'd prefer this massice document e-mailed to you as a word or word perfect document, I'll gladly oblige, but then I might start hounding you for input. Just a warning.

Otherwise, get it while it's fresh, so you can say you read it in the rawest form. I really am going to try and get it cleaned up and publishable and then send it out. I dreamt over the weekend that I sold it to a publishing house who sent me a sample copy as an incentive to sign the contract and the feeling of holding a book in my hands where the words were written by me was surprisingly overwhelming. I should capitalize on this opportunity while I'm the least bit motivated and I have something with which to work.

Special thanks to folks on livejournal who've been reading along and/or offering encouragement.