I haven't updated lately, although I meant to write about what a transcendent experience it was to be at the sold-out TCU/Utah game a few weeks ago. I showed up with my signs for College GameDay, ate a giant burger at Dutch's, drank warm beer and then cold beer given to me by the guy who was my editor when I was but a young reporter at the college newspaper and then another cold beer given to me by a former professor. I fought the lines for the bathroom--sometimes I wish I could pee like a guy--and watched TCU kick the shit out of Utah. It was good, and the fans were so noisy and everything was so great I almost wanted to cry.
But anyway, enough waxing poetic there. I've been mostly keeping up with the National Novel Writing Month that is November. I'm about 34,000 words into what needs to be a 50,000-word short novel by 11:59 p.m. Nov. 30. I didn't really start with much of a plot, except I'd have a reporter who gets laid off and gets a job at a horse stable, and I've gotten that far. I don't know what else to really throw in, so I'm making stuff up as I go along, under the careful watch of the wonderful Kate, who's a great coach. Maybe I'll actually do a triathlon some day. She'd be a great coach for that, too.
(Hey, Kate, tonight I'm going to go running for the first time in . . . well, a very, very long time. You should turn your whip that direction, too.)
Thanksgiving is this week, and it's so nuts to think about the holidays with my parents nearby. They're about 50 minutes away, which is just mind-blowing. My parents buy me like a week's worth of barbeque and send me home with leftovers, and this time I'll see them without the vacation days and flights to Reagan.
Winter and the holidays were always my time to be in Virginia, to be riding the Metro around D.C., to be walking around in the cold from museum to museum, iPod on and hands in pockets. I knew when I was at home (I refer to everything as "at home," it feels like; my apartment, my parent's place, Dan's apartment, etc) in July that I'd miss Virginia. I miss the gray skies that hold the possibility of snow. I miss the fat squirrel who lived behind our first house and the fat rabbit that lived behind the second one. I miss driving around to the Bloom grocery store or the Safeway, and I liked the church our family went to there, since there were windows to look out and see the trees through.
Since I was a sophomore in college, holidays always meant Virginia. I spent summer vacation and spring breaks there, too, and I did spend two brief Christmases in Tampa when I was in grad school, but they're pretty firmly linked with Virginia in my mind.
This holiday will be fantastic, no doubt. But at the same time, I won't have the luxury of stepping completely, totally away from my responsibilities as an adult to go home anymore. When I was halfway across the country, there was no chance of an editor calling me to do something or of me worrying about getting something in the mail. My parents are close, now, and their new home is, too. I just won't be able to get away from my home, either.
I love Fort Worth, I sort of think of it as an adopted home, but I am antsy.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Fast Goals
The goal of the weekend was to go big and go fast.
I started that with a Halloween party on Friday night, and let me just say I don't think I've ever been that drunk. I was drinking everything in sight, tequila shots included (because has tequila ever hurt someone before? of course not), and it all ended rather badly in the guest bathroom of the hosts, whom I'd never even met prior to that night. I'm blaming the Jesus costume. I thought I could work miracles.
That said, I did have a lot of fun before we got to the part that I totally don't remember. I don't know how I got the bruise on my forehead or the one on my arm, and I don't remember anything after the guest bathroom, but I am glad Dan was there to haul my drunk ass home and deal with more nonsense there. When we go out to a party, we usually decide beforehand whose turn it is to be designated driver, and I'm glad he was there and available for duty.
I felt horrific most of Saturday (ooh, the hangover, my mortal enemy), thanks to my gung-ho attitude Friday, but I got everything out of my system in enough time to get to the second half of the TCU homecoming game. (Go Frogs!) My parents were there, so I had to pretend that I had a peaceful, wholesome time the night before, but they had to leave early to drop my sister at work. I met up with them after the game when they took me out to dinner at the Flying Fish for catfish fillets, and I explained to them that I would be doing NaNoWriMo and both were enthusiastic. I didn't tell them I was posting everything online because, again, they need to think peaceful, wholesome thoughts about me.
Crystal was pushing me to go out that night, but I was feeling queasy again after dinner so I settled on the couch to watch several episodes of SciFi's The Invisible Man on DVD. This show was, hands down, my favorite show when I was in high school. Well, ok, it was tied with ER, but the first season of this show was everything a dorky girl could dream of. I didn't much like the second season, but I ordered the first one on Netflix and have been reliving it the past few days, feeling like I'm 17 again, which is a pretty righteous age to be.
I stayed up until midnight, and decided I may as well start with the NaNoWriMo challenge. As previously mentioned, all of it will be posted online because I need other people prodding me to get things finished. I spent an hour and a half writing last night, then a few hour-and-a-half sessions doing the same throughout the day. I'm trying to log as many words as possible as quickly as possible because I know how I lose attention for these sorts of things so quickly. I also know that once work starts up again on Tuesday (I took a four-day weekend) that I'll get bogged down with the usual writing, trying to make word counts to fill our ever-slimmer paper.
Tomorrow night is a write-in, in which people from the area who are participating in NaNoWriMo meet up and sit together and work on their projects. It's at the Flying Saucer, a bar, and I'm thinking I may be up to drinking alcohol again by that point. I'm going to try to focus on being fast and furious with the novel and not with my drinking this time around.
I started that with a Halloween party on Friday night, and let me just say I don't think I've ever been that drunk. I was drinking everything in sight, tequila shots included (because has tequila ever hurt someone before? of course not), and it all ended rather badly in the guest bathroom of the hosts, whom I'd never even met prior to that night. I'm blaming the Jesus costume. I thought I could work miracles.
That said, I did have a lot of fun before we got to the part that I totally don't remember. I don't know how I got the bruise on my forehead or the one on my arm, and I don't remember anything after the guest bathroom, but I am glad Dan was there to haul my drunk ass home and deal with more nonsense there. When we go out to a party, we usually decide beforehand whose turn it is to be designated driver, and I'm glad he was there and available for duty.
I felt horrific most of Saturday (ooh, the hangover, my mortal enemy), thanks to my gung-ho attitude Friday, but I got everything out of my system in enough time to get to the second half of the TCU homecoming game. (Go Frogs!) My parents were there, so I had to pretend that I had a peaceful, wholesome time the night before, but they had to leave early to drop my sister at work. I met up with them after the game when they took me out to dinner at the Flying Fish for catfish fillets, and I explained to them that I would be doing NaNoWriMo and both were enthusiastic. I didn't tell them I was posting everything online because, again, they need to think peaceful, wholesome thoughts about me.
Crystal was pushing me to go out that night, but I was feeling queasy again after dinner so I settled on the couch to watch several episodes of SciFi's The Invisible Man on DVD. This show was, hands down, my favorite show when I was in high school. Well, ok, it was tied with ER, but the first season of this show was everything a dorky girl could dream of. I didn't much like the second season, but I ordered the first one on Netflix and have been reliving it the past few days, feeling like I'm 17 again, which is a pretty righteous age to be.
I stayed up until midnight, and decided I may as well start with the NaNoWriMo challenge. As previously mentioned, all of it will be posted online because I need other people prodding me to get things finished. I spent an hour and a half writing last night, then a few hour-and-a-half sessions doing the same throughout the day. I'm trying to log as many words as possible as quickly as possible because I know how I lose attention for these sorts of things so quickly. I also know that once work starts up again on Tuesday (I took a four-day weekend) that I'll get bogged down with the usual writing, trying to make word counts to fill our ever-slimmer paper.
Tomorrow night is a write-in, in which people from the area who are participating in NaNoWriMo meet up and sit together and work on their projects. It's at the Flying Saucer, a bar, and I'm thinking I may be up to drinking alcohol again by that point. I'm going to try to focus on being fast and furious with the novel and not with my drinking this time around.
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