Crybaby

This was my first Thanksgiving away from home in a long, long time. In fact... I'm not sure if I've ever spent Thanksgiving away from home. Huh. Thankful for new experiences!

Anyway, if not at home, where does one spend Thanksgiving? Most of our extended family is three thousand miles away. A bit far to travel for only a few days. So we settled for three hundred miles. Pensacola. Pensacola Christian College, to be exact.

Some Pros and Cons of Thanksgiving at PCC -

+ We got to see the place where my brother is going to be spending the next four/five years of his life. It's an extremely structured yet extremely friendly faith-centered college that'll suit Ben well. Good food. Neat sports center. Nice teachers. Do-able study programs. Good food. Nuff said?

- We got to see the place where my brother is going to be spending the next four/five years of his life. Without me there, reminding him to act like a civilized person. I'm starting to panic.

+ Good food! I know I mentioned it - I'm not that spacey - but they truly do have good food. Ben's gonna get chubby. That doesn't really belong next to a +sign, but with good food, ya can't complain.

- At the alumni basketball game, their mascot, the Eagle, threw candy while I was zoned out. I cried 'cause I got hit in the eye with, ironically, a crybaby (sour gum). Alyx cried* because she didn't get any candy and didn't find any in my hair**.

+ The environment was incredible. Awkward eye-contact was made less awkward because everyone smiled. Getting lost wasn't a problem because there was always someone there to start to give directions, realize I wasn't understanding a word, and offer to go out of their way to walk with me. 

- Skirts. For three days I had to wear skirts. Blech.

...Holy cow, Thanksgiving is gone already? *goes to turn on radio*...

Christmas music.

Okay, I'm done now. How was your Thanksgiving?

~Charli Rae |Job 39:19-25|
*Alyx would like me to say that 'crying' in this case means less tears and more whining.
**I tend to lose things in my hair. Breanna once found a lollipop (with a wrapper, of course).

NaNoWriMo Strategy - Week 1

--get hyped up on leftover Halloween sugar.

--forget that you missed the first two days. they were well spent.

--hole up in little corners wherever you are. seriously. nobody cares what you're doing in those little corners.

--listen to Irish music.

--get frustrated 'cause you're a perfectionist and everything has to be just right before you move on and the whole quantity-over-quality thing isn't clicking at all.

--be satisfied with the way that you are and remember that you're not writing this book to win a challenge but to maybe publish one day and that better writing now is going to save you a lot of time later.

--then get frustrated again because you remember you're supposed to be saving time now and write better later because it would be so cool to win this challenge.

--get a massive headache when you realize math is somewhat involved with writing when you're trying to figure out how far your characters can travel in one day while going about 2.5 miles an hour.

--now that you're doing math anyway, calculate that you're not writing anywhere near enough to finish in a month. maybe half a year, if you're lucky.

--decide that math sucks. it's now telling you that for the entire seven days you've been writing, you've just barely managed two days of what you're supposed to do.

--let out a huge, dejected sigh and tell yourself that week two will be better.

~Charli Rae |Job 39:19-25|

NaNoWriMo

November's a month for doing things. Some people do No-Shave November (or, for girls, No-Makeup November). But since I have the fortunate inability to grow hair on my face and I don't wear makeup in the first place, those dares don't really mean much. So I've decided to participate in National November Writing Month, instead. For those of you who don't know, it's a challenge to write 50,000 words in thirty days.

'Cause I'm so dedicated to my writing and won't have a problem finishing a whole book in a month.

*cue insane laughter*

Yeah, okay, that said, I have no idea why I'm attempting NaNoWriMo. In fact, I'm really not. I'm doing the youth version, which has a flexible goal. The standard, however, is 30,000 words, which is perfect (in the loosest sense of the word) for me. A Maiden's Touch has 20,000. Add the youth goal and it'll be a whole novel.

Eventually. I have very low hopes of sticking to the thousand-words-a-day thing. Ha.

~Charli Rae |Job 39:19-25|