What I Really Want for Christmas Is . . .

. . . this camera. (Hey, Sue, can you pass this idea on to Mum? She was asking what I'd most like.)

All I Want for Christmas . . .

... is The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne on dvd. Alas, it does not exist on dvd. But if somebody were to say, dub the copies they'd taped off tv onto a fresh vhs tape and send it to me, I would be ever so happy. Hint, hint.

Body Parts

I just started reading From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, and it's already made me laugh several times. Here's a funny quote from page 4:

Crutches, wooden legs, artificial arms, steel hooks, caoutchouc jaws, silver craniums, platinum noses, were all to be found in the collection; and it was calculated by the great statistician Pitcairn that througout the Gun Club there was not quite one arm between four persons, and exactly two legs between six.

. Heh.

Not Dead

Just very busy with end-of-term projects.

Drawring

Things I learned in drawing class:

• I like figure drawing better than still lifes
  
• naked women are easier to draw than naked men
  
• nipple piercing on a man = very sexy
  
• genital piercing on a man = kind of creepy
  

That's not all I learned, of course, just what comes to mind after today's class.

Carrying Weight

Warning: Before reading the following quote, ensure that you have swallowed whatever might be in your mouth, and put down anything you are holding (especially if you happen to be a woman).

A pair of D-cup breasts weighs between 15 and 23 pounds--the equivalent of carrying around two small turkeys.

(From "The Physics of . . . Bras," Discover 26.11 (November 2005): 18-19)

There was also something about the momentum generated by running and the possibility of generating enough force to break a clavicle. So next time some guy says how wonderful boobs are, strap a couple of turkeys to his chest and make him run on a treadmill (or just do the turkeys and see how long he lasts).

Crushing

It's been a long time since I've been on this side of a crush with no idea of how the other person feels. It's strange, and alternately wonderful and very, very horrible.

Well . . .

I have absoutely no enthusiasm for my NaNoWriMo novel. Bleah. I haven't entirely given up--I'm one-fifth of the way through, after all. But I'm not going to kill myself. I have to do my homework first after all (and maybe play the odd video game and read--gotta de-stress, you know).

Now, back to my regularly scheduled homework.

Words, Words, Words

Saturday, for no particular reason other than that I was having fun and forgot and then when I remembered I was too tired, no words got written on the new NaNovel. Alas. I'm not too worried about catching up, except that I'm starting to wonder if this novel is a steaming pile of . . .. Anyway, I like bits of it so far, but other bits are not very good (and those, mostly, are the ones re-creating bits I'd already written long, long ago). I very nearly said "Sod it" and gave up yesterday, thinking I could more productively spend my time revising already-written stories and sending them off to pubishers. But, I decided to give it another go. I am, as you may know, stubborn as all get-out. (Must remember to look that up and see where it came from--"x as all get-out"; is it even hyphenated?)

Yesterday, despite a very fun trip to a craft/antiques fair with my surrogate family, I managed to write. I didn't make the 2000-word goal, but I did exceed the 1,667-word minimum, so that's okay. I wrote 1,834 words, mostly in one big rush of frantic typing right before bed, and have now cracked the 10,000-word mark by a whopping 84 words. Yeah. Now I just have to catch up for Saturday.

More NaNo

So I managed 2013 words today (well, yesterday technically), and now have 8250 words of crap. Yee haw!

I'm an Allosaurus

See here.

Find out what dinosaur you are here.

(Links to the Natural History Museum (London) website.)

NaNoWriMo: So Far, So Good

Well, day 3 and I'm still in the game. I wrote 2,104 words today, for a total of 6,237. I don't anticipate too much trouble keeping up with it until Monday. Mondays and Wednesdays are going to be the hardest.

Victory is Mine!

(And also the name of the main character in my NaNoWriMo story.) (And also my name, if you translate Nicole somewhat loosely.)

But victory is truly mine, despite only getting 94.5 percent on my Visual Culture midterm and merely 98.5 percent on my Computer quiz (one reason for this abysmally low score can be found here; another reason, I discovered, is that I completely missed one blank even though I went over my test before handing it in--and it was the crop tool, too!! I know the *&^%$ crop tool; I use it all the time!) . . .

Where was I? Oh, yes. Victory is mine for I have attained a goal I thought unreachable! I got 10 out of 10 on my Illustrator assignment! Yes, I have achieved a perfect mark. Yay!



Click for big, as usual. It is, in case you are wondering, an Illustrator re-creation of "Orpheus and Eurydice" by Edmund Dulac--you can see the original here (you have to scroll waaay down, and it's a graphics intensive site, but a cool one).

NaNo Update

So far I'm hanging in there. Only 28 days to go . . .

I did 2015 words today (the last 750 of them in approximately the last half hour) for a total so far of 4133 words. Yay, me!

Woo Hoo!

Okay, I'm doing NaNoWriMo. For now, at least. I wrote the first 2118 words of The Stolen Child (that's including the title and chapter headings). And I discovered that the latest version of Word now has a running word count right at the bottom of the page (you used to have to go to Tools --> Word Count). So. That's all I was going to say. 2118 words. Not a bad start (in case you have forgotten from last year, to write 50,000 words in 30 days, one needs to write at least 1667 words every day).

Not Sure About NaNo

For the last two years, I've successfully participated in National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). I'm not sure I'll make it this year. I'm not even sure I'll try. With part-time work and full-time school, I've done almost no writing. It would be good to get back into it, but I'm not sure I should. Anyway, I'm really sleepy right now, which may be affecting my decision-making brain functions. I'll see how I feel a little later. Maybe I'll try to have a nap, though I also need to get some essay research done, and get ready for Wednesday's classes.