Mental Meanderings

Checking In - Just because I can. :-p

Well, when it rains it pours. (If only it would rain.) lmfao

Bare with me, I'm in a strange mood and I suspect it's caffeine related. Had a bottle of diet coke today and haven't had coke in over two months. This could get scary. It's just gone midnight but my brain and fingers are still flying.

Anyway, just incase anyone still checks my blog I figure I might toss another of my particularly rare, at the moment, entries out there to give you an update. Begging lots of forgiveness for not keeping up with my favorite member blogs. I keep saying I will but then always seem to be doing everything else instead.
<---- See My Favorites Over There

The Kids
They keep growing up. Isn't that just the strangest thing? Every time I turn around they look and act older. I can't believe Kaylie will be starting Year One in just a couple of months. She's got less than three weeks of school left then about six weeks of holidays before starting in 2006. She's been home from school all day yesterday and today. Sick. I'm not exactly sure what it is, she's been hot and lethargic, spend the days on the couch, dozing occasionally. She's not eating much but she's eating enough to sustain her. If she's still not looking well tomorrow I'll book her into the doctor for that afternoon. Perhaps it's just a touch of heatstroke since it has been very hot lately (considering it's not even Summer yet).

Josh is getting big too. He's TALKING!!! *cheers* And guess what goes down as his first official word? Nope, I'm not counting the 'oof' and the 'at'. His first official word is 'MUM'. Or rather at the moment it seems to be, 'mum,mum,mum,mum,mum,mum,' lmfao. (Is that a sign that I don't pay enough attention to my kids? They have to keep repeating my name like that? ) Of course talking does not make him any easier to deal with. He is stubborn, so darn headstrong it's like wacking my own head against a brick wall. The real problem is that I'm stuck between him and a hard place because I know I can't give in to his will at this age or he'll be a terror all his life. But we battle every day because of it. Still, he looks adorable even when he's being headstrong and technically, headstrong is good because it will hopefully lead to a strong confident boy/man. That's assuming we don't kill each other before then. Just Kidding.

The NaNoWriMo
Still going strong. I'm a little behind the goal word count for this stage and with only one week to go I'm starting to get a little worked up about it. I was planning to do 5,000 words today but with Kaylie home sick, and that stubborn Josh deciding to find out how gooey a carton of eggs can be when spread over the kitchen floor, I only managed to get 3,000 written. Still, it's better than the word counts I've had Monday and Tuesday (0 words) and if I did 3,000 a day for the next 7 days I'd still make quota in time. Of course, I aim to blow quota out of the water so hopefully I can get 5,000 done tomorrow.

Away from word count and into plot. I've no idea where I'm headed in a more immediate sense. In fact I'm not really sure in a general sense either. Still the plot is interesting and I'm enjoying finding out as I go along. It's a new experience for me because since adulthood I've always plotted my stories before writing them. That's because I'd never managed to finish any story I didn't have plots sorted out for. They'd just wander on for all eternity never actually reaching, 'The End'.

Child of the Storm at least has a basic opening, climax, and end in my head and while I'm 30,000 words in I think I'm barely reaching the half way mark. The hardest thing is that I've got three primary characters, all good guys, but they've not really, officially met the bad guys yet. They know they exist, one of them was dead in the first chapter, a group of them had ransacked a wagon in the second chapter, but our protagonists haven't actually had a physical confrontation with them and I'm starting to worry that I'm leaving it too late. Ohhhh, interesting idea just came to me. We could have a scene/chapter insert of what the bad guys are doing. That way our protagonists mightn't have met them but our reader has. Mmmmm, ponder, ponder. Still, anything in that sense would have to be slotted in so that it fits cronologically (I hate writing backwards) Maybe it's something that'll get put in during NaNoEdMo in December.

Ipseitys
Over 100 new members in it's first month. I call that a marvellous opening. Still going strong too and growing every day. It would be nice if more people created a character after registering, even better if a higher percentage of those were acceptable and those denied were edited to acceptable standards. But I can't really be picky. The good news is that I've got a great chat room game going every Saturday Night EST. Two players so far but both giving rave reviews after the first session last weekend.

The forum game moves slowly with so few players but story is progressing. I wish I could prod players to post more frequently but the slowness is inevitable with forum based gaming. At least we are getting some regular players happening and some of them are giving exceptional posts (others could probably stand a little more practice).

The Weight Watchers
Well I'm still with it and getting into week 10 now. I'm not so happy with my results, it seems to be some big roller coaster ride for me but I suspect a lot of it has to do with not understanding it all right away. There is a big learning curve from having had an unhealthy lifestyle all my life, to learning how to make those changes to get things under control.

For example, Monday 14th we went to a meeting and the topic was Sugar Points. In WW your allowed 14 sugar/alcohol points per week. I don't drink but to give you an idea a glass of wine would be 1 point. A row of chocolate (Cadbury's of course) 3 points.

Anyway, I was doing the right thing, drinking my daily 2 liters of water (flavored with cordial) and watching out for the nasty sugar points by switching to diet yoghurt, jelly, etc. and using my sugar points for things like Jam (the diet stuff is horrible).

Little did I know how something so tiny could slip me up. CORDIAL. I wasn't drinking diet cordial but I thought because I added so little cordial to my water it wouldn't count. I mean I add only a quarter of the recommended mix. Anyway, during the meeting the leader was talking about nasty sugar points and I did the math in my head. One glass of cordial = 1 point. 6 glasses = 2L. 6 sugar points PER DAY = 42 Sugar Points Per Week That doesn't even include the 14 I thought I could add by having my non-diet Jam.

So, lesson learned, no more non-diet cordial. In fact I've gone no more cordial and actually find that I've grown accustomed to non-flavored water. It's little tricks like this that have been throwing me around on the scales. In 10 weeks I've only lost 3kg. I'd be happy if I'd lost 5kg as that would be 0.5 per week and the average minimum you can expect to lose on the program. I'd be happier with 10kg total as that would work out to 1kg a week the actual average loss overall. Still, hopefully by getting the hang of all the little tips and tricks things will start going steadily down very soon. Meanwhile, I just remind myself that I'm 3kg healthier now then I was when I started 10 weeks ago.

The other stuff
Still no renovations done on the house The money slips away too easily on inconsiquentials. Quick fix, gratitude now, stuff. Still, I could probably up my content insurance by another 2-3 thousand because of my new entertainment cabinet and DVD's. I used to blow my money on food which always made me feel terrible, at least now when I blow my money it's on stuff that I can see and feel for years to come.

Wow, almost 1AM. Even with this coke buzz I need to get some ZZZ's so I'll leave off here. I hope you enjoyed the brief (yeah, right. ) catch up. Have a great day/night/week/life.