See, I was completely going to do 8K words this weekend. But between this blog, my WoW blog, the freelance job that might come up again this week (please?) and the rest of my life, I was running behind to begin with.

Then…he came along. And oh my gosh I haven’t had a weekend like this in a LOOONNG time.

I spent the whole weekend with him.

I went partying with friends…

I saw new species of weird, walrus-like men…

I was chased by giants…

And for the first time since February…

I levelled!

Anyway, remember that it’s not you, it’s me.

Maybe next year?

And I’m doing NaNoWriMo, where I’m writing a 50K word novel by 11/30. I’m logging about 2K words a day now.

And I picked up and completed a Freelance job this week, which may be an every other week deal for a short time.

And I have all those plates spinning, plus a half-dozen projects going on at work at any one time.

So what could POSSIBLY bring all those plates crashing to the ground?

By the way, I love my bangs

Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack, baby! The WoW level cap has been pushed up to 80. Step aside, projects…I have Winterskorn to kill!

This pic was taken at work by the lovely Coworker S after I picked up the game at lunchtime. You’ll see there is absolutely nobody in the picture. That’ll get worse in about a month where you’ll probably be able to shoot a cannonball down the middle of the advertising side of the building and not hit a soul.

Ain’t nothin’ gonna to break my stride
Nobody’s gonna slow me down, oh-no
I got to keep on movin’

NB: If you care about my adventures in World of Warcraft, clicky clicky the “World of Warcraft” blog link in my gray menu bar to read my musings on this crazy game that is more addicting than bejeweled, texttwist and minesweeper combined!

NaNoWriMo on the other hand has been a lot harder. I have no idea how I did this years ago. Things were looking pretty grim for me at the beginning of the weekend. I had let five whole days go by without adding one word to my story. I was facing the necessity of writing 10K words in one weekend to catch up. I was considering quitting because I was too far behind.

Then I took a breath and broke out the calculator.

To reach 50K in 30 days, you should write 1667 words a day. I’m aiming for an average of 2200 a day, which will still get me to 50K with time to spare.

The “novel” (if you can really call this that) is about a group of people who play an online game and meet in person. It is not autobiographical. I’m having fun developing the various dork characters.

And I’m on the fence about CookieCam. This place is so teeny…

I see two possible scenarios:

1) If I don’t lose my job the first week of December CookieCam will be a limited-night engagement and probably streamed live. I’m looking at picking up a freelance job for about 5 or so hours a week, and I also have an application in for holiday work at my local Disney store*. Time is going to be limited.

2) If I do get laid off (nobody is safe) then I’ll have time to do CookieCam during the day while I’m being paid severance and looking for another job. I’d probably get a bigger audience that way!

*Trying to squirrel away money while I can in anticipation of future layoffs.

I’ve written over 7600 words in the last two days, and to finish by midnight 11/30, I’ll have to do 2952 words tomorrow and Tuesday. In reality, I feel as if I can finish tomorrow after work. It’s the home stretch, cats and kittens.

In other odd developments, I’m not worried about work tomorrow in the least. If you take into account the fact that when I DO worry about work, everything turns out fine; then tomorrow should really suck. But I’m motivated to go in and start tying up loose ends of current projects and reigniting stalled ones.

Plus, I’m off to the gym tomorrow before work. Ambitious thing, aren’t I?

I just hit the 40,000 word mark on my crappy novel, Tumble Dry. For padding’s sake, I just had the main character (whose name I changed from Anne to Meg) find out that her newly outed lesbian sister and her boss (Anya, which was too similar to ‘Anne’ for both names to stay) are girlfriend and girlfriend. I have to write 10,000 words in 4 nights. That boils down to 3,333 a day if I don’t write any more tonight. Once I finish, I’m going to put it away until January. Then I’ll edit it and put some of the better scenes up here for you to peruse.

I went to the gym today for the first time in months. I did a difficult 23 minutes on the treadmill, a difficult 5 assisted chinups, and a difficult 48 stomach crunches. It was the first time I had brought my iPod, SirenSong, along for the journey. It was a lot nicer than wearing the Sony DiscMan in a bulky pouch around my waist. And my exercise playlist was fun!

As I excited the Y, “Naughty Girl” from Beyonce came on. Which, of course, was the impetus for a slinky dance down the walk in front of the building. Nobody was around, anyway. I hope.

The Black Friday Photo gallery is up at Ofoto now. You won’t need to sign in. And below, I leave you with a shot of Mom and I on Thanksgiving night, planning out our Black Friday strategy.