Moove over Grooler, meet the Hawaii Chair.

So I am trying to think of things that people give to the thrift store. Clothes, books... old exercise equipment.

Google led me to the Hawaii Chair. Ellen Degeneres has known about the Hawaii Chair for years, so I guess this is nothing new, but today was the first I had heard of a chair with a motorized oscillating seat.

Click Here to see.

Sometimes

Sometimes, people who are given a little bit of power abuse it. They lose sight of the big picture and focus on the pixels. No one cares about pixels. The pixels are just dots.

EDIT: and sometimes, I make stupid posts. Like this one. It irritates me when people don't come out and say what they are trying to say, so I'll say it.
My cousin's English teacher marked her WAY down on a good paper because the computer formatting wasn't correct.
It's not a formatting class, it's a COMPOSITION class. And the composition was good.

Sometimes, life isn't fair, I guess.

Six or seven hours we will never get back.

Soul Pancake asks; What are three movies you wish you had never seen?

Spencer says:
Bridge to Terabithia- because we saw the movie before we read the book. We were not prepared.

The Go-Getter- It's nothing againsZooey Deschanel, who also has a role in Bridge to Terabithia. He just did not like this movie.

The Dark Crystal- Because he had to take his younger brother to see it in the theater.

My three:
I have to agree with Bridge to Terabithia

There will be Blood- I kept waiting for Daniel Plainview to redeem himself.

SuperSize Me- because I thought the movie was contrived. I liked the idea, though. I love a social experiment.


Novel update:
13,948 words. I'm pretty happy with a couple characters. Also, over 1/4 done!

I'm a stranger in a strange land.

My novel is really coming along. Over 9000 words! My goal is to finish on the 22nd in Newport, be done with it for Thanksgiving.

It is set in Albany, in the present, which poses a small problem- I don't know that much about the town I live in. I have used Google a lot today to discover the seedy underbelly of Albany, Oregon.

One of the thrift stores in town is run by a family who started their own church about 40 years ago. They also have rooms for rent for the homeless. I read tales of the family taking half of the residents' food stamps for rent. They would go shopping with the benefit cards and come home with two separate grocery orders, one for the family and one for the residents- steak in the freezer for the family, watery chicken soup for residents.
Sour grapes? Maybe. But an interesting story. The brother and sister who run the mission have been married more than 5 times each, according to anectodal internet evidence. The sister performs the weddings, since she is an ordained minister in her own church.
There have been two suspicious fires at buildings the mission owns, and insurance was collected.

Intrigue! In Albany!

I don't know if any of this will find its way into my novel, but it wouldn't surprise me. It's awfully juicy.

Eight things about the first two days of NaNoWriMo

* First of all, I have been surprised at how easily the words flow from my mind to my keyboard. I have sat with hands curled above the keys for twenty minutes, waiting for inspiration to strike, when blogging- before giving up and writing a haiku. Noveling is fun!

* If you work with more than one computer, you need dropbox. It's a free data hosting service that stores your files and lets you access them from any computer. If both of your computers are hooked to the internet at the same time, files saved to your dropbox will update in real time. This has been very helpful over the past few days, and I am sure it will come in handy over the next 28.

* Mennonites won't take oaths, because to them, an oath is a promise to tell the truth, which implies that a person isn't bound to be honest without an oath. Intriguing.

* I like writing at write-ins. Tomorrow there will be one in Albany, as opposed to Corvallis, where there was one tongiht that I skipped. I'm looking forward to going tomorrow. I like the cameraderie.

* There is a state-wide write-in scheduled for the 22nd at the aquarium in Newport, and I want to go. I would like to finish my novel there.

* I think that one of the reasons I am doing so well (I have over 5,000 words already, the challenge is to write 50,000) is that I have learned to just get words on the screen. When I blog, sometimes, my aim is just to get something typed so I can hit the publish button and get to bed. I rarely proofread or edit. I think this skill (or non-skill) helps me. After all, I am not aiming to write a finished product here, I am aiming for a "shitty first draft" (thanks to Anne Lamont, author of Word by Word, for permission to write the SFD)

* It is surprisingly exhilirating to create.

* I must apologize in advance that for the next month, my blog is my red-headed stepchild. Anything remotely interesting I come across is going into the book.

Things I learned this week- 3419 words down edition!

This week, I went on a learning spree! Here's what I learned:

*I learned that bees pee. Or at least that is what I think I learned. Perhaps a devoted CBL reader who has knowledge of such things would correct me if I am wrong. Or perhaps she won't, if it is grosser than pee.

*I learned that in Canada, you have to rent your shopping cart for a dollar, similar to the way we rent luggage carts at the airport here in the U.S.

* I learned that even if your porch light is off and you have no Jack O Lantern, children will come to your door at 9:30 on Halloween.

* I learned that those kids can't tell the difference between candy bought this year at the store and candy collected last year by my daughter.

* I learned who Madame Defarge was. There was an hour or so when I thought I would be her for Halloween.

* I learned a whole lot about the history of wool felting. It goes back to the Neanderthals! To think, men were shrinking their wives woolen sweaters in the washing machine all those years ago.

* I learned that Ikea has a terrific breakfast. Spencer's flight was delayed about an hour and a half, so Madison and I decided to kill some time at Ikea. When we got there at 9:30, the store wasn't open, but the cafe was. I ordered the Swedish panckaes and Madison ordered bacon, eggs, french toast and potatoes. Each of our breakfasts cost $1.99, and drinks were 99 cents more. Not only was our meal cheap, it was really good. The coffee was really, really good.

Today, I went to a write-in for NaNoWriMo. We met at a cafe in Corvallis, and then moved to a bookstore a couple hours later. I was worried that it would be difficult to just write with a bunch of other people around, but it was actually quite easy. The first chapter of my book just spilled out of me. I had a great day and writing was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to write more tomorrow!

Happy Halloween!

Madison was a gypsy.Spencer was a gypsy, too, and I was a pirate. We went to my frined Pam's house for a pretty neat Halloween party. Pam has a forest at her house. She built a door to her forest, which she calls the Narnia door. Behind the Narnia door, trails are lined with candles- some on the ground, some in trees. There are small houses behind the door, and a stage and a place for a fire. Pam and her band played music while the rest of us enjoyed the break in the rain. Pam's husband made caramel apples on a stick- but the sticks were the handles of disposable razors. The razors were still attached, but he did tape over the blade.
There was a bedside commode willed with water and apples for bobbing. A pack of tarot cards was laid on a table with a bundle of small twigs to burn for smoke. Watermelons (!) were carved into creepy Jack-O-Lanterns, and severed human limbs were tucked here and there.

Spencer by a tree full of candles. I think this looks like an album cover.

Happy Halloween!

I take a bite of a Soul Pancake

Soul Pancake is a website created by Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office, Rudy from Sahara) to explore the state of modern faith and creativity. Wilson is of the B'hai faith, which I have always found to be a nice faith because it is so inclusive. B'hais believe everyone is right.

Each day, maybe more than daily, Soul Pancake poses a provocative question which users answer. I am totally stealing this question and the image, and I hope they don't mind.

Are you a hypochondriac?

I am the opposite of a hypochondriac. Hyperchondriac? I prefer the term Illness denier. I am quick to dismiss symptoms. I have a wait-and-see attitude, and I am a firm believer in the tincture of time. I don't do self-exams. If I suspect something is amiss in my body, I just look it up on the internet and treat it with ibuprofen and/or gatorade. I am certain that I will not die of swine flu.

That is not to say that I think my attitude about my health is the correct one. In fact, I think it borders on weird, and it may not be the wisest of tacks to take. I have a little guilt because I am not a panic-and-call-the doctor mom. I took Madison in for all her check ups and immunizations and an occasional earache. Since she had an ear infection at every visit, she had a series of ear tubes and eventually had her adenoids out. I don't think that's my fault. I now know that chronic ear infections are a part of Turner Syndrome.
But I do wonder if I should have worried more about her size. If she had been diagnosed earlier, we could have started growth hormone treatment earlier, and maybe she would get an extra inch or so of eventual height.
Bah, that's crazy talk. Her first pediatrician was a geneticist, and he didn't suspect it.

Plan B.

Tonight was the NaNoWriMo kick off party, in Corvallis. I am so glad I went. Here's how it went down:

The invitation said the party was from 6-8, so I showed up at 6:05 to a room full of people, who were nearly done introducing themselves. I found a seat in the corner and introduced myself. The next lady was on her 8th NaNo, and she was recently contacted by an agent who asked her to do some editing on one of her older novels. Intimidating. The gal who introduced herself after her is on her second NaNo, she "failed miserably" last year. I missed the names and accomplishments of the other 15 people there.

Then, our leader Ellen started the icebreaker games. First, we had to write down where we were going to send our "inner editor" for the month of November. I said rehab, because my inner editor is a fat smelly drunk guy. We all read our various editor purgatories, then voted on the most evil place and the cushiest place. The winners got stickers. Stickers are a hot NaNo commodity. Only the coolest novelists have stickers.
Then we found the least and most organized novelists in the room. Since I have no outline, no names for my characters, no setting, no real "plan", I was co-winner for least organized. We each got a pack of index cards. I told Ellen that I already have index cards, but she wanted me to keep them because you can never have enough. Also, Madison was with me and she was coveting those index cards.
Then, we offered up our orphaned plots. We shared novel ideas that we hadn't quite fleshed out yet and made them up for adoption. I shared my "plan b" plot about a wealthy elderly woman who writes a letter to the world about her ungrateful family and pins it into the lining of a fancy coat (Perhaps a cashmere Norm Thompson coat?), which she donates to a thrift store. The buyer of the coat finds the note, and in turn writes her own story, which she hides in a donated item and so forth and so on.
And they LOVED it. They voted it the best plot.
So that's the novel I am going to write.

My "plan a" novel is still inside me, but it is so complicated that I think it will take about 11 months to get it untangled and ready to write for next year.

I forgot!

I have been making a daily post to my blog every day since April,without fail, unless I am out of town. Last night I forgot all about it, and here is why:

Every morning, I make a plan. I check my Google calendar, which I couldn't live without, to see if I have any girl scout stuff or ESA stuff or soccer stuff or library books due and what bills I need to pay. Then, I think about what is going to happen after school/ work: How is my daughter getting home from school? How long will we be home in the evening- do we have somewhere to be? What shall we eat for dinner? And recently I have had to add my television programs to the equation.
So last night, my plan was to do my blog before Glee.
But, no Glee, due to the World Series. My whole plan unraveled. I got sucked into reruns of The Office, and the The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and I went to bed early at 9:00.
I totally forgot to blog. Weird. Usually, it nags at me.

Anyway. Tonight I am going to a kickoff party for NaNoWriMo writers in this area. I'll get to meet other people who will be writing novels in November. I am going to take the camera and high expectations that I will meet creative people that inspire me and that like to be photographed. I am also going to keep my ears open for good words. I need to enrich the old vocabulary, I think. If you hear any, let me know. This morning, I heard "jingoist." It's a winner.