author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

So I would have blogged on this earlier - like, a sort of running commentary on the wifi hotspots waiting for the intrepid traveler along the road from Boulder to Tempe - but I still haven't (re)made myself an interface to use from my web site, and PHPMyAdmin wasn't liking me much for some reason. I think it was suspicious of the networks from which I was connecting. Now, why it likes the one in the hotel is beyond me - but then I'm getting ahead of myself.
 
I left Boulder around 8:00 yesterday, having gone through the usual barrage of good intentions about cleaning up the house before I leave and really only managing to get around to cleaning out the fridge. Incompletely. (John, if you're reading this, the older of the two milk jugs really needs to be poured down the drain. Trust me on this.) Pulled up MapQuest directions and WiFiFreeSpot listings for my edification along the way. Ripped a whole bunch of CDs to my computer for use with my newest RadioShak purchase, a Headphone-Jack-To-Tape-Player audio adapter, just like used to be popular when CD Walkmen first came out. Stopped at Whole Foods for whatever I could remember was needed, mostly along the lines of drinks and snacks. Then hit the road.
 
It took something like an hour to cross Denver. I had meant to leave at 6:00 AM but I overslept, thus subjecting myself to Rush Hour Traffic. The long Simon & Garfunkel playlist I'd queued up helped, but, really. Had I known that I was destined to hit Phoenix rush hour the next morning, I might have just given up and turned around. Good thing I didn't know.
 
I took my first break in Pueblo. With the Colorado page of WiFiFreeSpot already loaded up in my browser, I went lookng for Solår Coffee. Discovered that the grocery store did not actually stock maps of Pueblo. Got good directions from the manager, though, and was in the right neighborhood shortly thereafter. It goes something like this: Take the 1st Street exit off I-25 and hang a right on 1st. Hang an immediate right on Santa Fe. Go left on 4th and park near 4th and Main. Solår Coffee is 421 N Main, in that big intimidating building that looks like a post office. It is, in fact, the "Historic Federal Building." The cafe is comfy, and the barrista was very kind to me. I had a nap on the couch when I should have been writing.
 
My next stop was going to be in Raton, but that's, like, wimpy. I'd barely been on the road an hour when I got there. But I took a ride down the I-25 Business Loop in search of Raton's single WiFiFreeSpot New Mexico listing anyway: PennyRich International Internet Cafe And Book Oasis, round about 2nd and Clark. (2nd Street is the I-25 Business Loop. Just go south on that until you cross Clark, and the cafe is on your right.) It appeared not to be open yet (it was just going on 2:00 PM) but I got a good signal just sitting out in my car in front. So I took advantage of that to map out my next stop: Las Vegas, New Mexico. (I also put the entire YesYears box set into Windows Media Player for my next playlist.)
 
Now, I could swear I've been in the Las Vegas Historic Plaza before. Seems to me John and I once stayed at the Knight's Rest Inn nearby, and then found breakfast in the Plaza Circle. You take the street west from the circle and that's where Second Tome Around, the next internet cafe on my list, was. The listing says something about Bridge Street but it looked like it was on West National. It's a tiny little used bookshop with a cafe in the back, and I never quite succeeded in connecting to their network. Well, I lie - I got connected for all of one minute, lost the connection, and never got reconnected. The tea was nice, though. I had the "purple sage earl grey green tea," and if that sounds like too many colors in one pot of tea, take it up with the New Mexico Coffee Company, not me, 'cause I liked it quite well. All three advertized flavors came through and blended well.
 
I tried walking down the street to the Plaza Hotel, another WiFiFreeSpot listing, but the "free" part of their wireless is for hotel guests only. For non-guests, it would be $10, a little steep for a five minute MapQuest hit I thought.
 
That was the last internet cafe stop I took. I lined up three Tori Amos albums to take me as far beyond Albequerque as that would go. It was 6:00 PM and I wanted to start making some real progress. Just past Albequerque my computer hibernated, and when I pulled over to deal with that, I discovered that the lunar eclipse had started.
 
I climbed up on top my car to watch. The moon was half obscured when I noticed it, and when about half an hour later it reached totality, the disk had taken on a pumpkin-like appearance, more orange than I was expecting. Me, I wanted a good ol' New Testament "moon turns to blood" spectacle, but I guess you can't be too picky. It was a lovely hour of skywatching, even considering the yahoos that pulled up nearby and left their freakin' headlights on and wouldn't turn them off even when I asked. Oh well.
 
I wanted to watch the eclipse begin to end, but I couldn't really afford the time. It was already 9:00 PM when I took off again, restarting the Tori Amos setlist and swearing I wouldn't stop until Flagstaff. Actually, I flagged a little short of Flagstaff and had a nap in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express. Then I managed to get to Flagstaff and turn the corner from I-40 W to I-17 S, and stopped again.
 
When I woke up at 5:00 AM, it was snowing. Snowing hard. From a privacy point of view, that was great, 'cause no one could see into the car. But from a driving point of view, not so great. Fifteen minutes later I was back on I-17 S, singing along nervously to the Talking Heads Sand in the Vaseline album, absolutely sure I was going to die. I survived by respectfully tailgating this truck that was tailgating this car that was tailgating this semi that apparently could see where it was going a lot better than we could, and we all just kept our eyes glued for dear life to the taillights of the car ahead, at 35 mph, for about fifty or so miles.
 
Eventually the snow lightened and turned to rain, and it stayed rain right up until I got stuck in (did I mention?) Phoenix Rush Hour Traffic.
 
So here I am now. The wireless situation at the Tempe Mission Palms is what I call "enforced sociability style" - the signal won't actually reach the individual rooms, so you have to do internetty stuff down in the lobby where you might actually meet people. I've already had a great chat with this gal who'll be on a panel tomorrow, and I was able to flag Alma down when she arrived too so we could decide when to have dinner. So that's all good.
 
All for now. More later, maybe. Then again, maybe not. We'll have to see, won't we?

Ok, so, I voted. The absentee ballot is back in its envelope with one box filled in per race and/or issue. I'll hand that sucker over on my way to taking my cat Uno to the vet.
 
Are you voting? (Say yes.) Good! Good citizen! You get a cookie. Are you voting early? (Say yes.) Very good! Your county clerk's office will thank you for not being part of the November 2 mob.
 
But wait - are you helping out even more by being an election judge or poll watcher? Will you spend that Tuesday driving fellow citizens to their polling places? Are you volunteering or temping at your county clerk's office?
 
Well, ya should. Really. The people in that office have been working 80 hour weeks leading up to this election. They have been scrambling to keep up with election and registration laws that in some states have changed as recently as last week. They are eyeing the months after election day with resignation, preparing themselves for the inevitable litigation to follow the vote. The least you can do is help 'em out in some way.
 
Not only is democracy not a spectator sport, it's also not a business/client relationship. Do your part to keep it running smoothly. Early/absentee voting and election judge service: Remove yourself from the problem and apply yourself to the solution!
 
OK, yeah, I'm done. Thanks for listening. We now return your to your regularly scheduled and less political NaNoWriMo blog.

So we're about seventy-five percent less crappy now. Cool beans.

I suppose I'd better start blogging about the novel now or something. Not sure I want to tonight. I think first I want to get my admin interface back up and running, so I can blog from the web page instead of from the PHPMyAdmin "Insert" form.

If none of that made a whit of sense, don't worry about it. Presumably you're here because you're also into that NaNoWriMo thing. If you do PHP and MySQL too, that's a plus, but certainly not necessary.

No, I can't adequately explain why I don't use an out-of-the-box blog manager like Blogger.com or Moveable Type. I could say, "I'm a control freak," or, "That would be cheating," but if you had to ask, those answers probably wouldn't cut it. In which case, I suppose, it would be best not to ask.

Again, stay tuned.

If you aren't using LYNX or another text-only browser, you will have noticed that my journal for NaNoWriMo 2004 looks like crap. That's because I have not yet created a set of stylesheets for it.

Those of you who are using LYNX probably haven't noticed the crappiness and I applaud you for your foresight.

More later. How much later? Who knows. Stay tuned.

So... yeah. NaNoEdMo. Um. We're going to have to revisit this concept in April, I think. See you then...

OK, I admit it. I am not, thus far, a very good blogger. Given the panic of getting the novel finished, there was no time to blog. But I would be a singularly abyssmal blogger if I did not at least journal the final days of the month and my pulled-out-of-my-backside win. At the very least, I should show off my "Winner!" .jpg, right?

So. Saturday I stayed up all night. Remember how I was going to stay up all night on Samhain and write straight until dawn? Apparently I wasn't serious enough. It takes a real fear of failure for me to get serious and fight the sleepies. That fear didn't really hit until Saturday morning. Even on Friday night I failed to pound out my quota, even with a quota of 7K per day! And Saturday I rather sabotaged, even considering the mixed blessing of a cancelled flying lesson (winds in excess of 28 knots at JeffCo).

I sabotaged it in a really yummy way, though. I went to the Redstone Meadery and tasted pretty much everything they had. That included the 2001 Reserve, best decribed as "the Port of mead." Then I went home and had a mead-induced nap. Word count at the time: 38,000. In trouble? Oh yeah.

So I got back to work around 8:00 and I stayed up all night, averaging about 1,000 words an hour but not necessarily many hours in a row. And I don't do that well. It helped that the rest of the household was up most the night too.

By 7:00 I had the novel up to its major crisis point and the sleepies were really starting to hit, so I went across the street to Vic's for a change of scenery and a bit more caffeine. I asked the barrista, "So what would you recommend for someone who's been up all night and isn't done yet?" He suggested something called a "depth charge." This turned out to be a shot of espresso dumped into a cup of coffee, and it was nasty. A bunch of sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla powder seemed to help. That, and a glass of orange juice, because I try to accompany my drugs with actual food.

I got the climactic penultimate scene written while at the cafe. There came a point where I was crying like a baby while typing it out, and I'm sure the gal at the table next to mine thought I was a basket case. It's usually a good sign that the story, however awkwardly told, is worth telling, so I was starting to get really excited.

I went back home to write the end of the novel. I cried some more. The surviving characters cried some more, and laughed a little too. I wrote the last line, checked my word count, and really started crying.

Barely more than 46,000 words.

Shit!

The rest of the day was spent frantically pulling extra scenes out of, like I said, my backside. And for the last 2K I wasn't even writing story anymore but background material and brainstorming.

But I did finish. And in time to watch Adult Swim, too. So, Yay! Chalk me up another NaNoWriMo win. One more rough draft to go into my compost drawer until such time as I'm ready for a revision... in... I dunno, how about March?

...and charging on. No time to say much more than that, because if I stop for tonight I'll be left with more than 8K per day - and I won't have time to do that on Sunday! So, on I go.

The characters are about to reach the midpoint crisis. The main character's girlfriend is suggesting a trip to the beach. It spelled trouble for Ranulf and Undine, and it sure as heck ain't a good idea for these kids either.

Addendum: I really should add a "current word count" field to the Nanoblog database table. That and a "which year's novel" indication so that I can reuse it from year to year. And I should actually use the "image" field I put in there...

[Ed. Note: Done. 2003-03-12]

[Ed. Note: Improved. 2005-08-21]

Back to the current word count thing:

I'm currently at 25,072 words. My next reward comes at 27,000 words, when I will allow myself more coffee. Then at 30,000 words I'll let myself have a forum break and then go to sleep. Maybe tonight I'll be able to fight off the sleepies.

37,533 / 7 = 5362, rounded up.

So I guess I'll say hi again about 5362 words from now, which translates to "before midnight, but only just."

We had a great turn out for this week's Boulder meet-up. Lots of chess, lots of Go, lots of chocolate, lots of noise. I got about 1100 words done in the midst of all this. It's starting to break up now (5:16 - and four of us have been here since noon thirty).

The plan for tonight is an Adult Swim marathon (a new Space Ghost Coast To Coast! "Tectonic plates have shifted" since the last time that happened!) and enough food to fool you into thinking Thanksgiving had come a week early. Bridget made pumpkin cheesecake with a gingersnap crust last night (I've had a slice - it's divine) and with the leftover pumpkin I'm going to make muffins. There will also be a field roast (vegetarian version of a roast beef, apparently), a veggie tray, and candied yams.

Sounds like fun, huh? Well, if A) you know where I live, and B) we're currently on speaking terms, you should drop by and join the party and help justify the lack of writing that will happen.

Laundry will happen, though. Laundry, but not writing. That ain't right. Something will have to be done about that.

This has nothing to do with writing, but a lot to do with one reason for the deplorable pace of the writing.

Saturday, I passed the FAA Private Pilot Knowledge exam. Not only passed, but aced. Got all 60 questions right. The proctor sort of goggled at the computer screen, then stuck out his hand for me to shake. Every third sentence out of him until I left was "Congratulations." My flight instructor said none of his students has done that well before. So you can imagine how delighted I am. Yeah! Girl power!

The only one not surprised by this outcome is my Mom. As far as she's concerned, it's just one more test, and with few exceptions I've always been an A+ student. I'm glad she wasn't worried. Me, all I have to do is look at the Gleim study guide's chapter on Federal Aviation Regulations to be astounded at how much crap I've managed to cram into my head.

What worries me is, how long can I keep it in there? I don't know whether in two weeks my checkride examiner will take it easy on the oral exam, seeing that 100% score, or whether he'll be suspicious and grill me hard to make sure I didn't cheat! My plan is to keep using the Sporty's "Study Buddy" and practice tests every other day or so until I've pretty much memorized the entire question base.

But it won't take up hours of could-have-been-writing time, at least!