Month: November 2006

Question to Californians

I realized yesterday that during the entire campaign season, I hadn’t seen a single sign, commercial or mailer for the Senate race (unless you count the “Please make your entire ballot look like this” cards that various groups send out). Hadn’t heard a radio ad. Hadn’t even received a robocall. Nothing for Feinstein. Nothing for Mountjoy. Nothing opposing either of them. If I hadn’t read the sample ballot, I wouldn’t have even know who the challenger was.

I can only infer from this that, at least in the LA/OC area (since we get the same TV stations), the race was presumed to be a slam-dunk and both candidates decided to focus their campaigns elsewhere. Either that or I really wasn’t paying attention.

(Similarly, in our House district only the Democratic challenger posted campaign signs, and the incumbent Republican still won handily. But then, this district has run Republican since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.)

Did anyone else see any serious CA Senate campaigning?

Catching up

Friday night: mad dash through Nanowrimo. Still nebulous, not much in the way of direction. Still behind a day.

Saturday morning: laundry. (Yay fun.)

Saturday afternoon/evening: Went to katyakoshka and David’s wedding. Got to talk with the bride, got to finally meet the groom, got to hang out with sekl and non_seqvitvr. I heartily approve of a wedding where the bride marches down the aisle to the Masterpiece Theatre theme.

Sunday morning: Was going to work on Nano (now two days behind) but ended up reading Callahan’s Cross-Time Saloon instead.

Sunday afternoon: Went to see The Prestige. v. good. As we walked in, we saw that they were running The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. After the first movie, figured what the heck? Got tickets for later showing. Dropped by Jamba Juice, then Barnes & Noble (finally picked up our own copy of the Temeraire series), then a couple of clothing stores (alenxa found a dress). Re: movie: I was very impressed at how seamlessly they managed to match the look of the film. I couldn’t remember which eye got the original film, and which eye got the shifted CGI copy… and I couldn’t tell. Of course, after the first few minutes, I wasn’t looking! Afterward went to Cheesecake Factory for the first time in… well, years, come to think of it (unless you count take-out cheesecake). Dinner conversation was mostly about our respective stories, mostly in veiled references, though it actually helped me crystallize a number of things about my story… including where it was going!

Sunday night: Mad writing until way too late in the morning… and forgot to update my word count until after midnight, so it looks like I skipped two days. Grrr.

Work today, then most of the evening madly typing, with a break for Heroes. As of when I started this entry, I’m officially 126 words ahead of goal. Of course by the time I finish, it’ll be after midnight, so I’ll be 1500 words behind…

Edit: Realized that the numbers didn’t add up, and the progress gauge above doesn’t measure what I thought it did. I thought it measured your word count against the count you should reach by the end of the day to be on track to 50,000 at the end of the month. It actually measures the count you should have reached by the beginning of the day. So I hadn’t actually caught up, and I’m still ~1200 words behind. And I don’t think I’ll have time to write ~2900 words today.

Word count: 8922

Nano

I’ve decided to break nearly a decade of writer’s block by joining NaNoWriMo. Technically I’ve written quite a bit — 250 posts here on LiveJournal, 1000+ posts at K-Squared Ramblings, hundreds of articles about Flash comics, the Alternate Browser Alliance website, etc. But aside from some Literary Guild projects back in college, I can only think of two works of fiction that I’ve finished since 1996: one short story and one short-short story.

Part of the problem is just getting started. I’ll have an idea but decide it’s not worth writing about, or I won’t have any ideas at all. I started a couple of fanfics, but they petered out when I realized I had a setting, but no plot.

I still didn’t have any ideas for Nanowrimo. I figured I’d just start writing and see what happened. Maybe it’ll be total crap, maybe it’ll be 50,000 words that I can chop down to a decent 10,000-word story. I started a day late, but managed to get 1150 words last night. I’m still trying to nail down the genre, when/where it’s set, the main character’s background. I have no idea where it’s going. But it’s two pages, and I made myself write description and narration instead of just dialogue. (That’s always been my Achilles heel with writing — I tend to fall back on dialogue and end up with something that looks like a script in prose format.)

Word count: 1150

Halloween Roundup

I think the time change drove people temporarily insane earlier this week. People unaccustomed to driving home in the dark clogged the streets in the evenings from Monday through Wednesday. As a result, alenxa and I didn’t get home until 6:40 on Halloween.

We walked in the door. I immediately turned on all the lights so that it was clear someone was home, then grabbed a large bowl and emptied bags of candy into it. Meanwhile Katie put the finishing touches on her vampire costume: the gloves, cape and fangs that she hadn’t worn on the drive home. We were hurrying, because we could hear a group of trick-or-treaters below, collecting candy from our downstairs neighbors.

Footsteps tromped up the stairs, and the Vampiress was ready. They knocked on the door next to us. No one answered. (Our next-door neighbors had moved out on Friday.) They knocked again. No answer. And they went back downstairs. We heard one of the kids suggest trying the other door, but they didn’t.

I wrote up a “Use Other Door →” sign and taped it on the empty apartment.

In the end, we got a grand total of two groups knocking on our door. Anyone want some extra Skittles and Tootsie Rolls? (Sorry, the Twix bars stay!)