Oh, The Weather Outside Is Delightful

  Hello Dear Readers! I had to take a bit of a break for a while, and if you are wondering why you couldn't get in to read Insistent and Persistent the past couple weeks, I temporarily changed my privacy settings due to a breach. (Post coming soon: 10 Reasons Not To Friend Your Mother On Facebook--just kidding. But seriously, don't do that. Even if you get along well with your mother.)
    Without further ado, this is why I opened the blog back up and wanted to write today: I've been dreaming of a white Christmas since about July, and in Colorado, we rarely get a real white Christmas. "Real" being defined as snowing on the day or the day before, preferably overnight. This year, once again, it looks like I will be robbed of that dream once again, but on the plus side, IT'S SNOWING!! I wasn't sure if it was actually going to happen--but almost the minute the winter storm watch went into effect up here, it started snowing on my drive home from work.
    Funnily enough, it smelled like rain rather than snow, but there was also a smell of static electricity in the air. I never listen to the weather people when it comes to precipitation in Colorado--they have a nasty tendency to disappoint in terms of accumulation. But sometimes, they underestimate the storm and it dumps a few inches more than expected. As much as I hate scraping car windows and driving near so many crazy people (most of whom are from out of state and have never driven in snow before or just suck at it), I still love the snow.
    My cat (affectionately known as "the furball" received his Christmas present in the mail today--a catnip toy squirrel--another furball. He doesn't love it as much as I'd hoped, but he does like it, so that's good. (I'm hoping this might give him something to do during the day so he will consider leaving the furniture alone.)
    I got most of my shopping done online this year, for the first time. It is quite convenient. And I expect to still have money left over from what I budgeted, which means I may buy myself a rather sizable Christmas present... Or early birthday present. Or early anniversary present. Whatever. It seems like everyone is being a little lean this Christmas, compared with last year, but I think I've spent more than ever.
    I also get to go up skiing this weekend--hopefully this time I will not fall on my face again. Hoping to make great strides in my ski skills so that I won't have to stay on the Bunny Hill for the rest of the season.
    Aside from my blog, I have been getting the opportunity to write for real at work (real this time means I am actually credited!). I cannot tell you how positively tickled I am to be able to do that. I am probably spending way more time on it than i should be, but it's important to me. I want the stuff I'm writing to be good, worthy, sort of. All the other writers on the site are professional writers or journalists and have been for several years, so I feel like I need to write well enough so that I seem like I belong among that group. If you know me, you can find that stuff on Facebook. If you don't, you'll just have to wait until I decide to use my real name around here.
    Remember how I once said bad things happen in threes? I had one of those this past week. My brother got some bad news which meant I got some bad news; I got my FIRST EVER speeding ticket which I am still super-pissed about; and one of my co-workers was let go earlier this week. That one hit hardest. We're a small company, and whenever something like that happens, it affects everyone because we're all pretty close. I think what bothered me most about it was that it happened one week before Christmas.
    Not to put a damper on the holiday spirit, I discovered a new cocktail: gin and ginger ale. I received an excellent bottle of gin from a local craft distillery a couple weeks ago, and I was amazed at how clearly I could still taste the flavors through the ginger ale.
    I am also currently editing my novel that I abandoned the blog for during November. I made all the edits by hand, so now I am transferring all those changes to the document on my computer. Next step will be to revise it. What's the difference, you say? Editing: typos, spelling, grammar, syntax, vocabulary--the nuts and bolts of the writing. Revision: rewriting scenes, adding scenes, deleting scenes, removing or adding characters, etc--the heart of the story. I'm hoping not to do too much revision, because I think after going through it once now, it actually turned out quite well. But, we'll what happens when I really look at it with that in mind.
    Sorry for being out of the loop. I just had to recover a bit from my privacy scare before I was ready to come back here and start sharing again. I welcome you back, and I hope I didn't scare everyone away by changing the security settings for a couple weeks.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Sweet Exhaustion - Er, Victory

  What a rough month! Writing this novel was like pulling teeth! Truly a labor of love, I guess. Novel completed just a short while ago, with the final word count at: 50,748, based on Nano's word counter (MS Word is about a hundred or so words extra--though I have no idea where it could possibly be pulling them from...). Winner's badge now on the sidebar, and doesn't it look so snazzy ;)
    Surprises: My main character got married--something I never thought she'd do. She also ended up with the guy I didn't think she was going to end up with. I managed to make the best friend pregnant, instead of the main character like I usually do for whatever reason--it is an excellent word count padding technique when used appropriately, though. And I finished! This was the first year I doubted finishing, just a little, though I was determined to finish anyway, come hell or high water. I'm just a little surprised i finished because I had to write the last 25 thousand words within the last week alone because I had fallen so far behind during the earlier part of the month.
    In other news, work just got really busy! I felt like I've been hit with something new to add to my to-do list almost by the hour, and the to-dos I had at the beginning of the week are now being pushed further and further down the list. But, I'm always glad to be busy than unbusy! My boss hesitated to ask me to write a 1400 word piece (or rather, several of them) yesterday, and I was like, 1400 words? No sweat. I'm about to reach 50k on a novel. Now that I have, I no longer fear word count. I never really was bothered by it before--I only hesitated if it was a topic I wasn't too familiar with. But now, I really have no fear of it. 1000 words? Five? Ten, you say? Let me at 'em!
    I feel like I've become inordinately cheesy, and I'm going to blame some of the people I've been dealing with at work recently. Cheesy and clever are not the same thing, and I hope that because I'm able to recognize the difference, I will be able to strike the cheesy element down and continue with my previous quippy, sarcastic, and hopefully occasionally humorous tone.
    While I'm not counting my chickens on new winner's goodies from Nano this year, I'm hoping for something new that I will actually put to use this time. Free stuff is always best, but discounts are ok if it's on something I really want. I have not taken advantage of my winner's goodies too much in the past, and I'd like to do so this year, but only if it doesn't make me feel poor or irresponsible for buying something I don't really need...
    Also, getting better at skiing. I've been twice, and despite the cold and wind, I think I'm improving. I've been told I'm improving. However, I may have been told a few too many times, because the first day I went up, I did so great on the bunny hill, that I thought I was ready for a regular hill. Unfortunately I was taken up the highest damn hill they had open, and my overconfidence and decreased fear of falling got me going WAY too fast and I couldn't stop. I wiped out hard, broke my goggles, and got a nosebleed. I didn't break my nose or my leg or anything, and didn't get a concussion, I don't think, but that was terrifying. I think I better stick to the bunny hill a few more days before I take on another hill. (Also, icy conditions plus me as a beginner do not mix.) In any case, I don't think my fall ruined me. Just humbled me. It's the boyfriend/teacher's fault--he kept saying how good I was doing. And picked the large hill with the never ending chair lift ride.
    Anyway, Happy End of November to All, and to all a good night! And if you participated in no shave November this year, shave!

My eyes are killing me. 

A nap, perchance... 

Then again, hockey's on! 

What else is new with you? Did you participate in Nano? Did you win? 

Have you had unseasonally early snowfall in your neck of the woods? 

Whatever. Comments are open!

Skiing: A Review

I went skiing yesterday for the first time ever. And I'd like to share that experience since I don't really have much else to talk about today.
    First, I had planned on heading home Thursday evening, but I had a paper to write for one of my classes, so I thought I would have more success with it if I stayed at my apartment and headed up Friday morning. I wrote my paper, after several hours and much tribulation and effort, and sent it in to my teacher. I took my time a little more than I intended on Friday morning, but finally I got all my stuff together and headed home. I waited for my boyfriend, who's the skiing expert that was going to teach me a few things, to come pick me up to head up to mountains. He was late, as usual, due to bad traffic, as usual.
    Around 1:30 in the afternoon (bear in mind, the ski resort closes at 4pm), we left. We stopped to get Chipotle, so I wouldn't starve all afternoon after all that extra exertion that I'm not used to, and then we were really on our way. When we finally got there, it was about 3pm, giving him an hour, or so, to teach me the basics. We bought a lift ticket off of someone in the parking lot who was finished for the day--this is common practice, I gathered, but I felt somewhat guilty nonetheless--and we went to get in line for the chair lift. (Just my luck, the Bunny Hill was closed, so I had no choice but to go down a regular run with everyone else.)

Photo from the Road Up to the Ski Resort

    The second I got my boots locked onto my skis, I felt I'd made a huge mistake. I couldn't stand still because they kept slipping around, and I didn't think I'd ever be able to control my legs enough to get down the entire hill. I could barely move my feet to get the skis pointed in the right direction, and the ski lift was beginning to look terrifying. The chairs at least were chair level, so all you had to do was sit down. Mission accomplished. But on the long ride up the hill, the ground's distance below me varying from a few feet to nearly 20 feet, my anxiety kicked in and I started to cry. I had no confidence in myself at all that I'd be able to get off the chair lift once we got to the top, and I'd just keep going around and around until they stopped it and I could get off.
    My only frame of reference for the chair lift experience was movies and TV, and in those, the people usually jumped from the chair to the ground which was several feet below. I was afraid I'd jump and break an ankle or something, or worse, tumble back down the hill. However, I soon learned that my fears were completely unfounded and, in fact, ridiculous because when you get off the chair, the ground is right at your feet. You don't have to jump at all. You just have to get out of the way before the chair knocks you over. Crisis one: resolved. Except I did fall after getting off the chair lift. The only time that day that I fell accidentally. The other times, I fell on purpose so I wouldn't get going too fast and lose control.

Another Photo on the Way Up

    The next thing was getting down the run. The first part was very straight and not steep at all, so I felt ok. Not confident, but at least not terrified. I managed to get to the end of the straight stretch mostly unscathed and still standing, for the most part. However, there was a turn at the end of it, which was not only terrifying, but seemingly impossible.
    I won't go through every detail of the entire exercise of my first experience on skis, as this post would probably be twice as long, so I'll skip ahead. I finally made it about halfway down the mountain, though I walked across one part that was particularly ominous and steep, before the ski patrol people wanted us off the mountain since they were closing for the day, and they called a snowmobile to take me the rest of the way down the hill. This was probably for the best, as I would have been there another half hour trying to go by myself because I refused to go any faster than a slow skid.

All these were taken in the car, since I left my phone in the car, not wanting to break it from falling so many times.

     So, two panic attacks, about half a dozen falls, and over an hour later, I was at the bottom again. I skied for the first time, and rode a snowmobile for the first time, both in one day. I was pretty pleased with myself. Despite my terror, the unpleasant wind, and the fact that I am sore pretty much everywhere today--in muscles I had no idea I used--I think I'll be heading back up to the mountain. The season is pretty much over now, but there's always next year. But when that time comes, I will definitely be going on a day when the damn Bunny Hill is open.

Fear: check. No broken bones: check. I think it's safe to call that a success.