…of NaNoWriMo 2006. So far Tallahassee has 15 winners, 20% of this year’s participants. Not bad!

…of Hurricane Season 2006. Thanks to El Nino it was a relatively normal season, no where near what was expected, and we can all be thankful for that!

…of November. Starting tomorrow the all-too-real realization that the year is almost over, that Christmas (Yule, Channukah, Kwanza, etc.) is just around the corner, and a sense of undeniable urgency settles over everything.

 

In thirty-one days, will you look at this past year as an overall success or failure. Well, if you can look back then it wasn’t a total failure: you’re still here. However, were there more ups than downs, or vice versa? Did the downs teach you anything of lasting value? Were the ups enough to sustain your spirits, leaving you with fond lasting memories? What will you do differently the next 365 to improve the next monumental reflection?

Apparently I’m being maudlin today…

* * *

I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions, especially not the trite, pithy ones of ‘lose weight, exercise more, be a better [insert familial position here]’ that so many people seem to make and then lose about three weeks in. Occasionally I’ve stated some New Year’s Intentions, but I don’t even think I’ll bother with that. Usually I consider my birthday a better time for fresh-starts; after all, that’s when *my* new year begins, but the last two birthdays have been shadowed by the spectre of health problems, test results and irregularities that I find myself not exactly looking forward to 31 with any excitement.

Sure, there are things I want to do, things I want to accomplish, some sooner than later, things that I want to celebrate, to laugh about, even some worth crying over I’m sure (good with the bad and all that). Instead of resolutions or intentions, I think I’m going to work on putting one of those 101 in 1001 lists together, because I like lists and goals and to-do sort of things that I can cross off when finished. Like last night when I could cross off the ‘cutting’ portion of the event tokens project. The ‘drilling’ portion will be taken care of tonight, after the dress rehearsal for First Friday I think. Then maybe this weekend I can cross off the gluing and maybe even the painting bits.

That’s what I like, crossing things off of the list, seeing what there is to do. Granted, a list of 101 things will still have plenty to do for quite some time, but having almost three years to do it puts it in perspective.

But not in the manner of twenty-something indie rockers, more in the manner of aging rockers from the 60s and 70s who, having survived the drug years and touring time after time, rock a little slower now, but still rock. Because y’all, I’m so freaking tired! (and all without the drug years and touring)

Last night was one of those super-productive balls-to-the-wall nights where you (I) just go from one task to the next on fast forward until you (I) can finally collapse onto the bed and sleep not long enough.

I stayed late at work (off the clock) to run the copies of the program pages front and back in quick time, then took Mom home after swinging by FedEx for a quick drop-off, dashed home at around 6:20pm, took out the ham I’d sliced and casseroled the other night to come up to room temperature and preheated the oven. Next I booted up Teddy (the desktop, come on now, keep up) while gathering the dark clothes for a load of laundry. Started the first batch of cover backs printing, walked the laundry down to the next building and started the wash.

Twenty six minutes later I had finished with the program back covers, and started on the inside covers. These took longer, and more ink. Good thing I stocked up! Plus I mixed the orange-mustard glaze for the ham and started the sweet potatoes steaming, and had dinner of leftovers from the previous night (what I cooked is actually for the rest of the week… I work ahead). Since the printer was taking it’s time, I also layed out the fabric for the sofa cushions and cut the second set of top and bottoms.

After tossing the clothes into the dryer and feeding the printer more paper I peeled and dressed the sweet potatoes, mixed up the sauce for it, and put it in the over which the ham had recently vacated. More paper in the printer and, oops, I guess I misjudged how much more I could get out of that black cartridge, time for more ink! A full tank once more, the printer happily ‘lines’ along, I delete a few dozen emails, and I go retreive my laundry from the dryer.

I admit that it’s still not hanging in the closet, but for now folded in the basket counts as done. And all of the above was done by eight o’clock.

As Gilmore Girls started I had thirty-three more color parts of the cover to print (having run out of colored ink less than 30 from the goal plus the nine that were trashed on the inside imprint) so I set that to go and grabbed the finished covers, plunked myself into my chair, and folded, and folded… and folded… Now, here’s the curious thing. I can fold four cardstock covers at a time with virtually no slipping or funny angles, but when I moved on to the insides, on 20# bond, I couldn’t at least double the number folded at a time without odd discrepancies in size and straightness of line.

By the time House ended I had finished folding over 350 pieces of paper and moved on to collating the insides into the cover. The printer was finally allowed to rest again, this time for the night and tomorrow night’s dinner was cooling on the stove. Ten minutes before 3 lbs. began I could move onto the final step: saddle stapling. I had borrowed such an animal from the office and finished up about ten minutes after eleven. Of course by that time I could barely move from the repetitive stress, but hey, they were done! A final count just to make sure I had 170 finished programs and into the box they went (extra insides just in case included).

It was still another 45 minutes before I made it to bed, since there were emails to check and delete, the NaNo forum to peruse and a message to send out to the WriMos. Two days left to NaNoWriMo 2006 and Tallahassee isn’t looking bad at all!

Okay, just typing all of the above makes me even more tired, lol, tonight I have a similar agenda, though. Knitting while ANTM is on, and making something green to go with dinner, but otherwise I will be cutting and drilling the wood pieces for the Yule tokens. Vroom Vroom!

(i.e. I couldn’t make this up if I tried)

Mom: (to bus boy/host–we’re not really sure)
Could you please check on our orders? We’re feeling a little like a red-headed stepchild since other people who arrived after us are already eating.

Bus Boy/Host–we’re not really sure:
Sure thing, I’ll go check.

Jason:
Wha? You shouldn’t have said red-headed stepchild.

Me:
It’s an expression.

Jason:
I know, but he might not considering he’s probably younger than I am.

…not too long after, BB/H-wnrs arrives with two plates, our waitress arrives with two more, there are five people at our table?

BB/H-wnrs:
They were just putting the finishing touches on it.

Waitress (to Andrew):
You’re food will be out in just a minute.

Andrew:
Great, mine’s going to be the one tampered with.

 more time passes, our waitress finally makes another appearance at the table, bringing the extra sour cream for Kara and the extra BBQ sauce for Mom

Mom:
How much longer will his food be?

Waitress:
Oh, I thought it had already come out. I’ll go check.

Various people at table:
You thought wrong.
It didn’t sprout legs and walk out on it’s own.

Waitress (after coming back with Andrew’s dinner):
I really thought it had already come out.

 Mom asks for her purse, which was sitting next to me, pulls out some singles and watches for the helpful little dude that is *not* our waiter; she snags him on his next pass around the room

 Mom:
I’d like to give you this tip because you’ve been more helpful to us than our actual waitress. 

BB/H-wnrs:
Oh, thank you.

Us Kids:
(looking down at our plates)

Mom:
Could you also send a manager over, I’d like to tell him the same thing.

BB/H–wnrs:
Okay, Sure.

…a little while later…the manager walks up

Manager:
You wanted to see me?

Mom:
Yes. I just wanted to say that the food tonight was absolutely wonderful, but the service sucked.

Manager:
?

Mom:
It took forever for our waitress to actually come take our orders and it wasn’t until I flagged down the guy in the red shirt, the one who came to get you–

Manager (murmurs a name we don’t fully catch)

Mom:
took our drink orders and got her to come over that we got any service. Then we had to ask him to check on our food because our waitress wasn’t coming by.

Manager (splitting hairs):
Then the service didn’t suck, he’s part of the service staff.

Mom:
Well, he deserves a pat on the back and she, well, deserves a kick in the other place.

Kids:
(crickets)

Manager (being very smarmy and unconcerned):
I’ll go pass that along then.

Jason:
I’m not happy with the way that went.

Me:
Yeah, he was pretty smarmy about it.

Mom (shrugs)

Jason:
No one order refills or send anything back, no telling what will happen to it now.

we continue to eat, things are going fine, until I something unfamiliar amidst my rice, veggies and orange chicken.

Me:
That was a french fry.

Jason:
A what?

Me:
A french fry in my rice and stuff! It’s okay, it was just unexpected.

Andrew:
That’s okay, there was some chicken in my fries.

laughter

Mom:
I, I don’t want to know what’s in mine, I’m just eating it.

Jason:
Probably some red hair.

I about choke on a mouthful of rice, Jason looks smug and Andrew chuckles. Mom looks up in confusion…

Mom:
What? Oh!

Seriously, I cannot make this stuff up if I tried. We decided that Mom should probably stay away from this Applebee’s for a while, instead she should frequent Ruby Tuesday.

Cheers!

Which is the answer to all things inconceivable. Seriously.

So it’s Thanksgiving and, in our family, that means dinner and movies. Andrew had gotten into town Wednesday and came back to the office with Mom. We chatted about lots of geeky computery things and then I asked what movies we were going to watch. I offerred to pick them up since I had two dvds to turn in at Blockbuster (yay for the total access stores… seriously: best. thing. ever. being able to return the mailers for free rentals) so I picked up his requests: Click and Lucky Number Slevin.

I’ll get to what I thought about each later. First, though, we ended up watching Chronicles of Narnia through on-demand. Not bad, I thought they did a really good job of the cg overall, and of course I knew the basic storyline. But we’re sitting there, I think we’d just finished eating while the movie was on (oh, yes, we are a product of the television generation. Sit around the table and talk to one another? um, no.) and Andrew was asking something along the lines of ‘why didn’t they just’ or ‘how did they manage’ or some other implausibility when Mom comes up with the best. line. ever.

“They walked through a wardrobe, Andrew.”

And really, if you think about it, it works for everything else.

Somebody did something stupid and thoughtless? They walked through a wardrobe.

Can’t figure out how your keys ended up in the refrigerator instead of your purse? They walked through a wardrobe.

Boss wants to know why your work didn’t get done? They walked through a wardrobe.

That’s all there is to it. Every implausible unexplainable just plain confusing thing now has an explanation: They walked through a wardrobe.

That line got used a few times, as I’m sure you can imagine, over the course of the (glorious) four day weekend. It really was one of the best holidays ever, and now it has past, all but a distant memory. Only one thing could have made it better, but we’ll not dwell on that drought shall we? Le Sigh…

As to the other movies. We watched Lucky Number Slevin while Mom went and had her post-turkey nap, and followed it up with Click. Um, yeah. Click was, well, it was an Adam Sandler movie. Not necessarily on par with the Happy Gilmore-esque films but neither was it Spanglish either. In fact, I’m not sure I actually liked it. Lucky Number Slevin on the other hand, that was pretty cool. Mom would have hated it because it jumped around way too much (this is, after all, the woman who didn’t like the Matrix because she couldn’t keep up who the who, what and when…) but I joyed in the snappy dialogue and circuitous speech patterns. It’s like the writers for the Gilmore Girls (the Palladino’s, not the current team of writers) got really dark all of a sudden. Whee!

I actually did not bring home leftovers, instead going back the following day for a late lunch. Last night was post-Thanksgiving Turkey Gumbo. Mmmmmm. So very yummy.

But today it’s back to the daily grind, work and projects after. I’ll be swamped for the next two weeks at least with all my projects and so forth. The sock-gift is done, the sweater-gift is at 30% and the scarf-gift is about the same. The other gift items are at negative whatever… I need to make a list, but I won’t be posting it here 😉 too many eyes that might see what they shouldn’t lol

So apparently there’s a thing where you go to this site and pull up the list from the year you turned 18 (1994 for me) and bold the ones you loved, striking through the ones you despised. This sounded like fun to me, so I’ll play!

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