Today, My flight was being served by an obviously gay flight attendant, who seemed to put everyone in a good mood as he served us. A we were about to descend, he came on the loud speaker and said "Captain Marvey has asked me to announce that he'll be landing the big scary plane shortly, so lovely people, if you could just put your trays up, that would be super." One extremely pretty brunette refused to, stating that "In my country, I am called a Princess and I take orders from no one." To which the flight attendant replied, without missing a beat, "Well, sweet-cheeks, in my country I'm called a Queen, so I outrank you. Tray up, Bitch." Nicely done, Mr. Happy. MLIA


So far, I have finished two questions for Medieval Europe Jeopardy.

I've also managed to read 25 pages of MLIA.

1. I went to breakfast this morning with the express intent of working on my last two lesson plans while I was sitting there eating, so that I could make sure that I actually, you know, ate today. Instead, my good friend Chris showed up and we ended up spending the next two hours gossiping. Needless to say, those unfinished lesson plans are still staring at me. Watching me. MAKE IT STOP.

2. I got a 100% on my ed psych final with minimal effort. I think I studied a grand total of one hour for the exam, and I finished the thing in half an hour. (Though, to be fair, it *was* all stuff I'd spent all quarter discussing in my methods class, so it wasn't like the material was all completely new to me or anything.) I finished the class with an A-.

3. Re: work this weekend - Yeah. Not looking forward to it. Weekend before finals and the first couple days of finals week are the worst days of the quarter to work - and I'm working tonight, Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday mornings. *headdesk*

4. In another illustration of my fine-tuned procrastination skills, I started watching the 2009 adaptation of Wuthering Heights on YouTube. I like it so far, though the structure is a little different from the book.

5. I go home Wednesday night! I have six lesson plans and eight reflective journals due for one class on Tuesday, a paper on Wednesday, and an analysis of my presentation DVDs due Wednesday evening. And then I'm done! *happy dance*

1. Since being home, I have finished a lesson plan, one of my numerous instructional technology assignments, and read 100 pages of Pendragon. (I'm on the 8th one, for those keeping track at home.) I feel very productive.

2. I've pretty much given up NaNo as a lost cause. I do want to finish this story, though, but it's going to be a side project that I might work on from time to time when I need a break from Shards. If nothing else, I made it further than last year. Today I sat down and made a list of books I want to read for my research for Shards. Western's library has a nice selection of books about Victorian society and I'm very excited to explore them.

3. So. Much. Food. I haven't really stopped eating since yesterday. We have the snacks my parents bought, the snacks my grandma brought up with her yesterday morning when she drove up from Portland, leftovers...green beans and sweet potatoes are my favorite.

4. The other thing there is no shortage of in this house? Football. If there's a game on, we're watching it. After being football deprived pretty much all quarter, it's glorious.

5. I celebrated Black Friday by sleeping in and then eating a lovely and wonderful home-cooked breakfast. I win.

I am thankful for...

-My trip home last night being completely uneventful.
-My dad making it out here from the East Coast.
-Having somewhere to come home to for Thanksgiving.
-My friends putting up with me, even when I'm completely unpleasant to be around.
-My lovely and warm sweater =)
-My relatives who are here spending Thanksgiving with us.

I survived the surprise lesson plan, essay, extra hours at work, Yule Ball, essay critique, and two presentations I had to do over the past week.

I've got all my things packed, and now I'm cleaning like a madwoman. I leave campus in two hours in a carefully orchestrated transportation feat - bus, train, ferry, car - basically, virtually any form of transportation you can think of aside from airplane, motorcycle, or bicycle you can think of, will transpire in the five hours between the time I leave and the time I arrive at my house.*

Bring on Thanksgiving. A long weekend sounds wonderful right now.




*Assuming Amtrak doesn't kill anyone, break down on the tracks in Ferndale, or come obscenely late, as it has been known to do.

Today when I was at work I looked up from restocking biscuits to see two bros run at each other and leap into each others arms in a very enthusiastic hug, as one guy lifted the other into the air. I made eye contact with a customer, we both shrugged, and he said, completely nonchalantly, "Bromance."

Easily the highlight of my day.

NaNoWriMo has hopelessly stalled. Everything for all five of my classes decided to smack me in the face all at once - this weekend was pretty hectic, to say the least. I worked double shifts Friday - I worked a shift at 6:30 in the morning till 10, then had to be back at 4:45 for a shift that ended up lasting until 9 because we had 350 extra people in for a conference. Saturday I went to Vancouver with my lovely and wonderful wife, B, where we ended up getting lost in a parking garage, among other things. When we got back into the States I had lots of homework waiting for me - a paper and a lesson plan, among other things. I worked Sunday, did more homework. We had a wind storm come in Sunday night that blew the power out, but luckily the battery on my MacBook was fully charged so I could finish the thing in the morning. (My professor ended up pushing the due date back to Wednesday since none of us knew what we were doing, so my paper is undergoing extensive rewrites right now.)

Anyway, I'm at around 11,600 words right now. I definitely plan to keep writing to see how much I can get - at the very least, I've already surpassed my total from last year. Things aren't getting any less hectic for me, though. I have that blasted paper to turn in for critique tomorrow, a critique I'll have to do of one of my peers' papers, three lesson plans to write, and two presentations next week alone. I leave for Thanksgiving Wednesday night, come back up here Sunday morning, and the Monday after Thanksgiving I have one last presentation. And then it's a sprint to the finish, and I still need to find someone to cover my lone shift Thursday of finals week so I can go home, because I have no finals and that would be the only thing keeping me here that week. How annoying.

I register for winter quarter Friday morning. I'm really keeping my fingers crossed that I can get all of my classes. The schedule I want is this, but there's another section of my educational psych class at 8am if I can't get this one. (GROSS.)
Sec. 450 Intro to Middle Schools TR 8:00-9:50
Sec. 425 Developmental Reading, Writing, and Learning TR 12:00-1:50
Educ. 302 Educational Psychology II TR 2:00-3:50
Hist. 313 History of Ancient Rome MWF 1:00-2:20

I've also been thinking a bit lately about my rewrite of Shards of Memory. Which I haven't really had time to start yet, given school, work, Harry Potter Club (Yule Ball this weekend!), and NaNo. But I've been making a list of things I'm planning to research before diving into it. Most of it has to do with Victorian culture and society, but I've also got a few other things like medieval Italian merchants, Catharism, and the Wars of the Roses. Plus I need to reread my copy of The Romance of Tristan & Iseult when I'm home over Thanksgiving, just as a refresher on the legend. (My retelling sort of shifted a few eras, haha.)

And before I leave you all, B and I have drawn up a little workout schedule for ourselves so we actually go to the gym like we mean to, and here is the shiny new playlist I made today in honor of the occasion:

This may be detrimental to my plan to finish my paper tonight.

Yes, I realize I sort of did this yesterday. But I'm working on being more optimistic, so I'm going to do this, anyway.

-I made a joke at work this morning. I saw the grill cook pause for a moment, and then he suddenly busted up laughing as the sarcasm sunk in. I knew I liked him.

-The sun is out for a second straight day. This makes me very happy.

-I got my rubric back for my oral interpretation. I got an A-, and apparently my projection is very good. And she also went over the final presentation, and I'm actually feeling like I can do it. Which is good.

-While I'm still feeling mildly stressed, for the first time in awhile I'm not feeling it threatening to overwhelm me. This can only be a good thing.

-Did I mention the sun is out?

I've been doing research for my paper on the role of law in education and for my lesson plan on the Spanish-American War all day. But I'm determined not to let this get me down, because today is a Good Day for the following reasons:

-The sun is out for the first time in about a week. My roommate and I have had our blinds open all day, so the room is the brightest it's been in awhile. And just walking around campus is great, because it's one of those sunny, brisk fall days that I love.

-The zombie apocalypse has come to Western. I still have yet to see any of my male friends today, but I'm sure that wherever they are, they're happily shooting zombies with Nerf guns. (Or they're already been nommed, in which case they're chasing humans around.) And this brings me great joy.

-I'm much more excited about my lesson plan than I should be. We have to use a theatric strategy of some sort, so I'm thinking I'm going to do a role play in the style of Survivor.

-Harry Potter Club tonight. We're watching the second movie. And there will be food.

I pretty much love working brunch. Which I know sounds a little weird, because those are the longest shifts and it's the weekend, so wouldn't I want the weekend off? But all the same people work brunch, and most of them also did brunch last year, so we all know each other and how we work, and joke around with each other and everything. Like, the grill and I are basically perfectly in sync, because the three of us worked together last spring, when I started working brunch. And plus, it's my wife and my twin. What could be better?

For my class today, I had to do an "oral interpretation". Basically, I had to find something that had something to do with adolescents and read it. I decided to read "7 Things" by Miley Cyrus. I heard a collective groan from my peers as I informed them of this, and this one guy kept snickering while I read it, which made it hard for me to keep a straight face...yeah. On the plus side, I've been feeling slightly more comfortable in front of groups of people. Which is good because, um, this is sort of what I want to be doing with my life. (It's interesting, really. You've got a bunch of people who want to spend, potentially, the rest of their lives talking in front of people, and then she has to fight to get us up there to begin with.)

I register for next quarter's classes a week from tomorrow. I'm hoping to take three education classes and History of Ancient Rome. Hopefully I'll be able to get into the classes, first of all, and get at least a B on my final presentation for 410, second of all. Because without that B, I'm not in the program anymore. And it's going to be filmed again. No pressure, right?

Yule Ball is starting to come together. A few people went shopping for decorations on Saturday, we're getting music and food together, and now there's an actual Facebook event. Next Saturday, guys. I'm so excited! *happy dance*

I'm woefully behind on NaNo. I'm not thinking about it, though. I'm going to press forward and not think about it. But yeah, I definitely fell behind over the weekend when I was running around shopping and trying to get homework done.

9006 / 50000 words. 18% done!

So, jessica_shea made a post about her favorite characters. So today I thought I'd post about my favorites.

1. Dracula from, well, Dracula. There's just something so sinister and yet seductive about him that sort of stuck with me. Not only my favorite villain, but one of my favorite characters.

2. Mina Harker from Dracula. Come on. In a Victorian novel, set in Victorian London, written by a man, she still kicked all of the men's butts. I rest my case.

3. Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is one messed up dude. A lot of the things he does are completely disturbing. And yet I've always had this weird fascination with him.

4. Becky Sharpe/Rawdon from Vanity Fair. Deliciously evil, Becky worked the system with ease with a combination of beauty and brains.

5. Gollum/Smeagol from Lord of the Rings. I love morally ambiguous characters. I think Gollum is a winner here.

-Canceled classes. My class yesterday morning was canceled so we could go do field work, work on our lesson plans, whatever. I saw approximately half my class in the library yesterday morning at 10, which is when our class usually is, to meet with groups to work on lesson plans. (My current one is a cooperative learning assignment on world religions.) My one class today was canceled because my professor is at a conference or something. And my teachers in society class has been canceled all week because my professor has H1N1. So, basically, aside from tutoring and work, I have a four day weekend.

-Caramel apple candy corn. This stuff is amazing. I bought it on Sunday when I went with J, N, and H down to Haggen to score some cheap Halloween candy. I'm amazed I still have as much as I do.

-Storms. I know I won't be saying this in an hour and a half when I'm down at the bus stop waiting for my bus downtown, but I love storms. It's been gray and windy and sort of rainy all day, and I love it.

-Taylor Swift's new songs. If you haven't gotten the Platinum edition of Fearless yet, you should. Because all of the songs are awesome. Especially "Untouchable" and the piano version of "Forever & Always".

-Pendragon. It just keeps getting weirder and weirder. I was finishing book 6 on Saturday night in the coffeehouse and J had a fun time watching my face. Though, I might be enjoying it more because I have three friends who have either read it or in the process of reading it, so I actually have people to discuss it with. I'm about a quarter of the way through book 7 right now.

3047 / 50000 words. 6% done!

NaNo for me started at midnight. I was sitting at my desk, listening to the (very loud) music coming from the dance right outside my dorm room window, and then, suddenly, something magical happened: at long, long last, the clock turned to midnight, and the feelings of jealousy in watching my fellow NaNos' blue bars go up all day were dissipated. Because now it was my turn.

I wrote 1056 words in about half an hour, looked at the document, then added 10 more words, just for giggles. Because as I discussed with the lovely and wonderful fishgirl5 on Facebook before work yesterday morning, 1066 was an epic, epic year and it was really only fitting to let it be displayed on my NaNo profile for at least a little while. I went to sleep since I had to work yesterday. But since I woke up an hour earlier than usual thanks to the time change, I pounded out another 500 words yesterday morning before chugging some coffee and heading out the door.

I showed up at work, brimming with excitement at my shiny new novel opening, the snarky new adolescent characters I get to spend the month playing with. Of course, I also soon realized that I was just a tad over-caffeinated, a fact that I made my wonderful and long-suffering coworkers well aware of immediately, and which made them fear for their lives. What followed was a very crazy and insane four hours that I won't go into because it'll merely bore you to tears, but just know that over 100 people in the first 10 minutes isn't normal, especially when the trend continues for another solid hour after that. (I spent a lot of time running around. A lot.)

There was a brief interlude where I partook of crappy dining dining hall food in celebration of surviving that intense shift, made a Haggen run for some cheap Halloween candy, then returned to my room where I was a good little college student and studied for my psych exam while managing to fit in another 1500 words, ending yesterday at just above 3000.

And for those of you keeping track at home, so far I have consumed one cup of coffee, am about to start on a cup of tea, have worked the word "wench" in once, and have promised Anna to work in a William the Conqueror reference. And now, I'm going to write some more. Hopefully your novels are all going well. Many words to all of you!

11 and a half hours left until the glorious month of November starts! *happy dance*

I do have the basic plot sketched out. I've decided that this should be sufficient and I don't need an outline. So I'm mostly winging it.

Good luck to everyone else doing NaNo!

I've decided to jump on the Friday Five bandwagon (thank you, seeyouupside =P) so today I'm going to give five reasons I love college.

1. Things like boy bands, Disney, and nap time are suddenly cool again. We have Apples to Apples nights in the lounge, people walk around the dorms wearing footie pajamas, and I've definitely participated in a few Disney movie nights and singalongs. And I've also lost track of how many times I've heard people walking around singing "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" in the time I've been here. (However, I can tell you how many times I've done singalongs of that song in the dining hall. I believe the count so far is three.)

2. Professors tend to be much more relaxed than teachers in high school, and the majority of the upper division classes I've taken have been smaller than any of my high school classes. It's totally normal to be on a first name basis with your professors, and if you stop by during office hours just to chat, that's cool, too.

3. Harry Potter Club. Coolest. Club. Ever.

4. Running around with Nerf guns to kill the zombies? Completely acceptable. And, in fact, expected.

5. Have I mentioned the ninja squirrels yet? Because we totally have them. And you should be jealous.

Very long day today. I had to be up at 6:15 this morning for work, which was incredibly slow. I pretty much cleaned everything known to man and when I ran out of things to clean I decided to organize the temperature logs by date since they were all out of order. When I finished that, I had successfully killed twenty minutes and only had to suffer through 15 more minutes of my shift.

I had only the one class today, and it was only an hour, which was nice, because I had some extra time before I had to hop on a bus and go to tutoring. I had a nice conversation with my supervising teacher and my student (who is from Taiwan) about how messed up the English language is.

As soon as I got back to campus it was time to go eat dinner. We had a theme dinner tonight for Halloween, and it was funny seeing all of my managers dressed up. I saw a cheerleader and a chicken, among other things, though I think my favorite was Thomas the Tank Engine. Then I had to dash off to the library, where I met someone from class and spent two and a half hours writing a lesson plan - a discussion of Korematsu v. United States. (History majors are exceedingly cheerful people, I've found. So far I've done lesson plans on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, British imperialism, and now the Japanese internment, and I anticipate doing one on the Black Death very shortly. Really, the only way not to go insane with this stuff is to be enthusiastic and cheerful about it. Mass amounts of death due to bacteria transported by fleas? Epic win!)

I did watch some Grey's, after calling home to confirm the dates on my train tickets for Thanksgiving. I'm thinking I'll be going to bed soon, since I got five and a half hours of sleep last night, I've been running solely on adrenaline, and I anticipate a phone call from work very early tomorrow morning, as has happened every Friday. (My manager really likes trying to get me in to dish up desserts. Since this is done in the basement, this job seems very sketchy to me.)

I also managed to brainstorm some ideas for my NaNo. I'd like to try to form them into something semi-coherent before Sunday (i.e. outline), but if I end up winging it...well, it's NaNo. I can always edit later. =)

I'm now trying to catch up on my flist. Which I happen to be about two weeks behind on. I'm slowly getting there.

And now I'll leave you off with this gem from Harry Potter Club's Death Day shenanigans festivities on Wednesday. (Apologies for the crappy quality. I forgot my camera so I had to make due with my phone.)

I was thinking last night. Which probably was a terrible idea, given my mental state at the time, but whatever.

I've been tweeting about this, but I haven't yet mentioned it here, but I've basically decided to go back and edit the first book before I finish writing the second one. Because to my logical brain, this is what makes the most sense to me, and is probably the reason I keep getting stuck.

However, while modifications are being made, the reincarnation idea remains. Because it's sort of the most important part, and brings up some interesting questions of free will that I want to dwell on.

One of these modifications may or may not include throwing Italian merchant city-states into the mix. Because, obviously, medieval warfare and Victorian literature and culture are not enough.

So. Word count update, then:

0 / 75000 words. 0% done!


Naturally, this is completely separate from NaNoWriMo. Which I'm getting really excited for.