Last-Minute Time Management

[dragonlady7]

8:30 am: awaken and read funnies with Z. Brew coffee, eat a pizzelle, putter around in slippers as Z prepares to depart for work. Cheerful chatter; check email & livejournal, read posts. Eat sugar cubes instead of putting in coffee, as bitter coffee is good but straight sugar is much more of a pick-me-up. (Also, who can resist sugar cubes? Why did I buy those?)

9:00 am: Z departs for work. Sit in living room, open laptop, chew nails, resume where left off last night at 40,300.

9:23 am: 41k.
Finish coffee, wake up desktop, put music on (Conal O'Grada's Top of the Coom-- modern traditional Irish flute music), use gnawed stumps of fingernails to idly and distractedly scrape coffee-sugar residue from teeth: start blogging.

9:45 IM with Z about the Thank Gosh It's Over party. ("Who's Gosh?" "I don't know. Some dark and evil deity to whom we must sacrifice?" "I hope not.") Notice my jade plant is flowering-- wtf? I've had it six years and it's never done that before. I didn't know jade plants ever bore flowers.
Stare out front window of living room at snow falling on cars. Think about finances. Move to papasan chair. Now have excellent view of fishtank in its new location. Watch Alexander flare at the other fish: Mai Tai doesn't care, Gibson freaks out and hides behind the tank heater. Worry that Gibson might hurt himself. Realize the tank's been set up that way for over a month now and he hasn't yet so he's probably fine. Admire how butterfly-like Alexander looks. 41,250 and one character keeps inserting her foot into her mouth uncharacteristically. Tap ineffectually at wordcount meter: surely I've been sitting here long enough, it should go up on its own!

10:24 42,007 words. Album is over and desktop's monitor is absentmindedly drawing pictures with iTunes' Visualizer mode. I am hungry. I am also dismayed by how much retarded shit is spewing out of characters' mouths. Oh well! No time for edits. Must wait at least another hour before lunch. Eat a yogurt anyway, laugh at Al trying to terrorize Mai and being ignored. Think: I should get to count my blog entries in my wordcount. I'd be done and then some!

11:02 am: 42,783. Mail arrives; postman rings bell to signal delivery of some sort of priority mail package for Z. I carefully avoid looking at the return address in case it's a lavish gift for me. Also recieve St. Andrew's Day card from eccentric friend Liesl. I love that. If it weren't for the fact that my cards say Merry Christmas on them I'd send them out as Saturnalia cards. Perhaps next year. (I considered getting a Kwanzaa design but thought it might offend someone.) Also, CD ends. Must think of something else to listen to. Am not yet desperate enough to put entire 28GB iTunes collection on Shuffle, as that 28 GB contains a great deal of Only In Special Circumstances listening material. Settle on some wildly inappropriate (and yet somehow, perfect) Squirrel Nut Zippers.

11:23: 43,027 Everything's hazy, everything's crazy, everything's up in the air / My gal says she loves Prince Nez, but I really don't care! Regardless of external factors I seem to be on track for 1k an hour, which means I could finish this if I had absolutely nothing else to do. I have had to turn my back on the fishtank because Mai Tai is too cute. And 1k an hour seems like a lot! But then, I have 7k left. Whoo boy.
11:28 Return from a checking-email-and-lj excursion with the rumination that I simply must post an mp3 of Squirrel Nut Zippers' Hell here. Note to self: Do that later.

12:01 pm: 44,387 words. Phew, progress at last. Now I can afford a lunch break. Have moved on randomly to listening to Antonio Vivaldi's collected works from various albums in my possession, but I'm not really listening. It is cold today. I had intended to eat something in particular for lunch but I forget what. Oh yes: Bagel. I will post this and start a new one: surely this is long enough now. Is it frantically boring yet? But it gives me focus.

Comments

[spacellama.livejournal.com]

I can't wait for more updates. I'm living vicariously through your Nano success, since I flunked out of Nano early on. :)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Heh, we've got 11 more hours to determine whether it's really success or not!

Am working on part II: The Afternoon. Preview stats:
wordcount: 45,893
fishes fed: 3
snowflakes stared at: uncounted
online field trips to reference sites: 4
ridiculous nicknames concocted for fishes: 3 ("mai-mai!", "gib-gib!", and "Poo!")
fish responding to nicknames: 0
fish responding to real names: 0

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

Woot! You'll make it.

-another flunked-out loser.