That place is deadly to the budget! They have so many good deals.

I went to get all new shelving, a bedside table and a lamp.

I came home with the shelves I wanted (planned and a better priced set than I'd looked at originally in the catalogue), a CD/DVD tower (planned), a nightstand and then I went kind of crazy: tea towels were only 49 cents each and on down the list of household things I needed. Came back with two overflowing Ikea bags (the kind you can hang on the handles of their big carts).

They've got so much more stuff than I thought they did.

I'm staying more or less on target this year, with a current wordcount of 14913 words. According to the website guidelines, the suggested wordcount at the end of the 9th was 15000 words, though sometimes I'm writing less and others more.

In other news, I do not recommend leaving pyrex on a hot stove element. It makes a very pretty and noisy explosion when it breaks (and a heck of a mess to clean up).

I made it to over 5,000 words. I've managed to catch up on the story, although its' not exactly going anywhere just yet. The main character is still writing the school paper she was writing at the start of the story. Thing is, there's a lot of backstory to set up and the paper seems to be working as a way to get it out there without just "telling" it to the reader (although I'm not sure this story will see the light of day outside of my harddrive).

Orange Skittles taste just like orange flavored tic tacs.

At work they've started playing Christmas carols already. Not even the malls have started that yet to the best of my knowledge. November 2nd is far too early for Christmas carols I think. Everyone will be tired of them by the time Christmas rolls around - especially the staff who have to listen to it all through their shifts.

On the NaNoWriMo front, I'm still badly behind, having yet to break 2000 words. I'm at 1978 words and counting at the moment. Not sure how much more I'm going to get written tonight.

I'm really struggling with my story idea this year. I'm only nine hundred words in, and plodding slowly. I'm sure I remember last year being right on target, if not a little ahead of the game on the second day. Not sure if this is a bad omen for actually meeting the goal of 50,000 words for the story. It's just not flowing yet.

623 words into the story. Behind on the first day. Not a good sign for this story, but I'm too tired to push on tonight. Hopefully things will progress a bit better in the morning (and maybe there'll be an answer to a couple of the questions I ended up posting to the forums).

Figured out an intro to my story and started writing it this morning. 183 words in.

Signed up for NaNoWriMo again this year. Unlike last year though, I have no clue what I'm going to be writing.

My copy of season two of Forever Knight arrived this morning. Now if only I could shake this cold and get some energy back.

Been on a cooking jag lately (if cooking is the right word).

So far the grand total is:
A rice pilaf with fried veggies
One apple pudding
One apple pie
A pasta and veggie dinner (didn't realize before now that with a few changes my fried veggie dish goes well over pasta as well as rice)
Nine freezer bags of plums stored away
Six bags of apples the same.

Planned:
Ten pounds of apples into sauce
Another ten pound bag to be frozen (yet to buy)
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Orange-Date muffins

The planned items will have to wait for my next day off though.

Broke down and ordered FK season 2. I've been thinking about doing it for a little while now, and Amazon dropped the price again, so I took the plunge this morning. What's more, it's shipped already. It'd be nice if the arrival was just as quick, but seeing as I took the cheap route in shipping, I don't think so.

This is making the rounds: http://magicdistrict.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/text-adventure/ I found it on gryphonrhi's LJ and it is too, too funny.

I finally got an updated prescription for my glasses and am now discovering a new form of hell. That of new glasses.

( Hidden rant )

I've never managed an exact drabble of 100 words before, but I got one tonight. Haven't done anything from my arda100 challenge in a while either.

Lost Without Him
Endaewen
G
The Silmarillion
All the characters and settings belong to J.R.R. Tolkien and the Tolkien Estates.
#1. Loss
20/100
100
Luthien Tinuviel
Written for the Arda100 LiveJournal community, the Doom'n'Gloom prompt set.

( The Drabble )

Over at my book blog All Booked Up, I got offered the chance to do a giveaway of a bookshelf. If it's something you're looking for, go over and check out the rules post. I've got to say, I'm tempted by the shelf myself. If I had a proper corner for it, I'd buy one.

I've really been focused on All Booked Up for the last little while, because things have been going well there. I've gotten several offers of books to read lately, too.

why do I always end up getting into a show after it's over?

This is a definite trend for me.

Highlander: re-runs on Space
Forever Knight was the same.

Now I've gotten hooked on Stargate. Oh well, the seasons are only $20 each, so a better deal than either of my other two shows.

Over at my blog All Booked Up I review the books I read. In the past couple of months I've started getting offers of books to review, and I've gotten a couple of them already, but they were e-books (not a complaint btw). This morning, I got my first hardcopy book for review. It's Curse of the Tahiera, a fantasy novel. Now it feels "real" that I'm reviewing books for people.

Now if only that book I was offered from Penguin would turn up...

ETA: And, guess what... The book from Penguin, Defenders of the Faith by James Reston Jr. did come. This was the first review offer I got.

I'm fairly certain it was on LiveJournal that this happened.

Some time ago (perhaps a year or two at most), someone mentioned/recommended a book on medieval life to me. I'm sure it was in the comments, but perhaps not on this journal. Something's telling me it was on a fic post.

Anyway, the book was on medieval hunting methods IIRC. What was the book? I know at the time it was not available to order new through my preferred store. Now I'd like to search again, and I can't remember what the book was (well, that and I just bought a book I think it could have been).

Does this look familiar to anyone?

I've added a new essay to my Tolkien page: Divine Aid in the Lord of the Rings

In it, I examine (if briefly) whether specific events occurred on their own, or with divine aid.

Strawberry season may be officially over, but U-Picks are still going moderately well (at least based on what I saw today).

For the first time in years (I'm not kidding, it has to have been over a decade) I went out to pick my own strawberries. Even though the sign said that strawberry season was over, the folks at the farm were sending people out to find what they could. No assigned rows, just find what you can.

The weather was hot! I'm fairly sure that by the time I quit that if I'd stayed out any longer (say, to finish the bucket), I'd have ended up with heatstroke/sunstroke despite the hat. I managed to avoid sunburn though. Personally, I think the dust from the field in combination with the sunscreen was impenetrable by the sun's rays. I certainly almost needed to scrape it off when I got home.

I'd gone with two friends. One got about ten pounds of berries, the other twenty. I was somewhere in the middle with thirteen or fourteen pounds. Either way, it was one and a half of the four liter ice-cream pails. I also bought rhubarb, blueberries, raspberries and a bag of green beans.

Of course, now I'm too tired to actually prep the stuff to freeze. I did get a strawberry-rhubarb pie made though, and it was delicious. I'll do the rest tomorrow: wash and freeze the strawberries and the blueberries, and blanch/freeze the green beans. While I made the pie my two friends cleaned and bagged their berries for the freezer.

All in all, it was a fun day.