Here We Go Again

So it's October 1, and Nano is supposed to be officially opened today, but there's nothing there yet. I'm so sad.

Sometime in the second week of July, Mel and I went outside of our chateaux and began to plan our new nanonovels. This year I'm doing something different. There will be no more Seven Part 4... which was potentially about Snult finding a hord of dragon eggs.

Instead we're writing space opera. Yes, we. We're writing the same book, though 50 years apart. My main character, Ofelia Clovelly, is a New Historian on a colony ship called The Hope on a 20 year journey to a new planet. The Hope is the first of two ships (the other called The Crosby) that plans to set up a thriving colony on a distant planet. Unfortunately, The Hope Colony disappears and the only one on Earth who seems to care is Ofelia's distant relative Viola.

That's where Mel comes in. She's writing Viola's story and search for the lost colony... and I'm writing how the colony got lost...

Oh, but it gets more complex, because Natalie heard about the fun, and is joining in. She's writing the faux history perspective of Earth.

At the end of November, we should have 150,000 words and then we'll see how to weave them together and voila, a best seller.

Or that's the plan, anyway.

Things don't always go according to plan. Just ask Ofelia.

For Nano updates - just click on my Nanolink to the right.

Too Darn Hot!

Just thought I'd let everyone know that it is really hot today. Like 100 degrees hot. Seriously. Yahoo weather said 98, but the Weather Bug program says it's 107... but was 111 about 30 minutes ago. Either way, that's aweful.

Back To School Night is tonight. I've got to go find something to eat to get my energy back up. I slept through my alarm this morning, and only woke up when it turned off a half hour later. That's scary. Need to stop going to bed around midnight.

Quilt Shows and Football Games

This weekend I headed over to the Long Beach Jewish Community Center to "volunteer" myself to help with Mom's quilt show. She was treasurer and so most of my time was spent sitting in a chair trying to pretend that I wasn't guarding the stash of money. I did get a chance to "white glove" which means I donned white cotton gloves and volunteered to turn over the quilt edges to show the back of the quilts if anyone wanted to see. I spent a few minutes picking threads off my mom's quilts... because if I was going to show my quilts to hundreds of people, I'd have done that BEFORE they were hanging and being looked at.

After the quilt show on Saturday, Liz and I headed over to Ken and Annelisa's for the football game. They had a TV set up on the back patio... though it took a few hours for the sun to set and the glare to go away. We had some of Ken's yummy sausage and Annelisa offered her clam chowder... though I didn't take her up on the offer.

The first half of the game was pretty gut wrenching... as we were actually losing for the first time in a very very long time, but we creamed them 45 to 13.

I've got the oogily boogilies.

So we go into the computer lab this morning and some of my students say "Miss Mathis, there are ants on this computer."

I say "Squish them or move." So they moved. Later I went to take a look. There were a few ants trailing in under the moniter stand, so I move it, thinking maybe a kid stuck a candy wrapper or gum under the stand and that's what the ants were after. Nope. We're talking full on colony. Thousands... with tons of tiny little eggs and larvae. Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. And of course all the students want to take a look, and we've got 5 minutes until the bell rings.

So I let them out a few minutes early and called the secretary and told her. I REALLY hope they take me seriously when I said there was a MAJOR ant problem. I've been feeling phantom ants all day long today.

I always new I were a genus.

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Holy Thunder Batman!

In case you're not in SoCal, yesterday's weather was truly awesome... as in full of awe... as in thunder all day long. This is not typical weather for California. It was freak of nature kind of weather.

Though it did allow me to prove my theory... if Omouse carries an umbrella to school... it will not rain on her. From about 7:00 am to 7:10 am it didn't rain. And then suddenly at 2:30, the rainclouds broke up and the sun began to shine.

On a completely different topic, I didn't go to choir last night, as Liz and I got food poisoning on Monday night from Charo Chicken. Not going to get delivery from there again.

There was one moment where I told Liz that I was starting to feel oogie again(I was sick last Weds.) I said, "it's kind of like a low throbbing stomach pain, that will turn into a sharp pain for about a minute before switching back to dull throb."

Liz said, "I don't feel any sharp pain just... oooh, wait a minute. Ugh. There it is."

I started laughing, and she started laughing. "Don't make me laugh. It hurts."

Which of course made me laugh harder.