Category Archives: Bandwagons

Bandwagons

Friday Feast No. 115

Appetizer
Approximately how many hours per week do you spend reading other blogs?

    A total of three, maybe. I have a long, long list of blogs I frequent. I don’t spend alot of time at each one, but it takes awhile to get through the list.

Soup
Your community wants everyone to give one thing to put into a time capsule. What item would you choose to include?

    An iPod Nano, so the Future People can laugh at our bulky, primitive “technology” while they download music directly into their brains. That’s right. The future will be creepy. George Orwell taught us that.

Salad
What is the most interesting tourist attraction you’ve ever visited?

    I met Johnny Cash’s mom at the Johnny Cash museum. That was interesting. I was very young, though, and didn’t appreciate it at all at the time.

Main Course
If you could give an award to anyone for anything, who would it be and what would the award be titled?

    The Mary Poppins Award, to my sister-in-law. We tease her about being “practically perfect in every way,” but I really am in awe at how together she is. She’s a stay-at-home mom who homeschools three children, and still she has a clean house and makes dinner most every night. And she volunteers. She’s the mom I try to model myself after.

    But I worry about her, that she doesn’t reserve enough time for herself. So the prize for the Mary Poppins Award would be a housekeeper and a week alone at the Miraval Resort. Obviously, Oprah would be involved in giving the MPA. So my sister-in-law would probably be getting a car and some pretty, pretty baubles as well.

Dessert
What do you think your favorite color reveals about your personality?

    That I’m indecisive. I can’t settle on a single favorite. I like purple and pink. And blue. And brown.

The Friday Feast is a weekly meme intended to “feed your mind by asking thought-provoking, mind-stimulating questions.”

Bandwagons

November? Booked.


I signed up to do National Novel Writing Month a few years ago, but I … uh … I just didn’t do it. I wrote for a few days, then we went on vacation and I never picked it up again.

I don’t have any vacations planned for November (but I do have a birthday and a baby), so I won’t have any excuses (ha!) for not finishing.

Anyway, I’m going to give it a shot.

Here, for the uninitiated, is what I’m talking about (courtesy of the good folks at nanowrimo.org):

How NaNoWriMo Works (in Ten Easy Steps)

1) Sign up for the event starting October 1, 2006 by clicking the Sign up Now link at the top of the site.

2) After creating an account, log into it. Click “Edit Profile” in the top tab, and tell us about your writerly self. Then head to the “My NaNoWriMo” section and add a photo, choose some writing buddies, and pick a home region. This tells our computer which NaNoWriMo Regional Lounge to offer you in the forums, which local events calendar and photo links to show you on the Local Events page, and gets you CC’d on emails pertaining to any wild novelist gatherings going on in your area.

3) Begin your novel-planning procrastination by reading through all the great advice and funny stories in the forums. Post some stories and questions of your own. Get excited. Get nervous. Eat lots of chocolate and pamper yourself in preparation for the fiction-fueled escapade to come.

4) On November 1, begin writing your novel. Your goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, local time, on November 30th. You write on your own computer, using whatever software you prefer.

5) This is not as scary as it sounds.

6) Starting November 1 you can go to your My NaNoWriMo page to post excerpts of your work for others to read, and update your escalating word count.

7) Write like crazy for thirty days. If you write 50,000 words of fiction by midnight, local time, November 30th, you will be added to our hallowed Winner’s Page, and receive a handsome winner’s certificate and web icon. The adding of your name to the Honor Roll of Winners requires that you send in a version of your novel in text format (scrambled for security) to our site to be counted.

8) This is not as scary as it sounds either, and we’ll post step-by-step instructions on how to upload your novel to our team of superpowered computational robots (flown in from Germany every year) starting in mid-November.

9) Win or lose, you rock for even trying.

10) That’s it! If you have any questions, just check out our FAQs. And best of luck in November!

50,000 words? Easy as pie. A novella. No sweat.

Wish me luck.

Yikes.

Bandwagons

Friday Feast No. 114

Appetizer
Name a song you know by heart.

    “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”

Soup
What will you absolutely not do in front of another person?

    I prefer not to use the bathroom in front of anyone else, but sometimes Poppy makes that difficult.

Salad
How often do you use mouthwash and what kind do you like?

    Very, very rarely. But I like the minty-fresh kind.

Main Course
Finish this sentence: I am embarrassed when…

    I am embarrassed when discussing my bathroom habits.

Dessert
What was the last food you craved?

    Nachoes. The answer is almost always nachoes.

The Friday Feast is a weekly meme intended to “feed your mind by asking thought-provoking, mind-stimulating questions.”