Lots of change and not much sleep make Claire extremely, overwhelmingly, mind-numbingly nostalgic.  

There's a lot to write about but right now my bed is more welcoming than a computer screen.

Off to Atlanta soon, won't make it there till midnight or one in the morning, then going to Utah at around five a.m.  I will miss Tallahassee and the people in it more than I can say.  Though right now there are considerably fewer people in Tallahassee...they're off on their own adventures too.

Soon enough it will be time for mine.  

I hope I'm as ready as I seemed to be.

Hello, world.  Claire's taking  a break from her blog until November blows over.  I'm one of her main characters.  My name is Kate, and I'll be here as her replacement until this whole National Novel Writing Month thing blows over. 

I haven't seen much of Claire lately, so I can't really say what she's been up to.  Mostly she's been doing an excellent job of avoiding me and the rest of my roommates here in the realm of her imagination.  It's not really our fault that we're so boring to her.  Actually, we tend to place the blame squarely on her shoulders, seeing as how she dreamed us up in the first place.  It's quite irresponsible, if you ask me, inventing a whole world full of people and then abandoning them to their own devices, stuck in limbo until our story is told.

On the other hand, she has been quite busy lately.  I think her family's planning a garage sale this weekend.  And her computer has been acting up over the entire month of November as well.  Her laptop fan doesn't work, so every few minutes she has to stop working on her novel to shut her laptop and wait for it to cool down.  Pathetic pieces of technology aside, it gets quite frustrating being in the middle of a life-altering, character shifting moment, and then have someone slam a lid shut on you midsentence.  Being a character isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know.  

And our relationship isn't all bad.  Early in the month Claire was contemplating abandoning us in favor of another story she was toying with.  I'm glad she decided to stick with us.  She has given us quite a lot to do early in the month.  On Veteran's Day we were extremely busy.  Seems she wrote over seven thousand words in a single afternoon.  And she also introduced us to various professions, hobbies, and menfolk who always make our days interesting.

I just hope she gets some inspiration while she's out there in the great wide somewhere.  It's getting a little boring in our little world.

I never thought I would be so happy to see something in the mailbox as I was today. I checked the mail at three thirty, thinking anything that would be delivered would have gotten to me by that point. The mailbox was empty, so I figured I'd have to wait until Monday. I went to the library to check out a couple of books for my mom and returned home a little over an hour and a half later.

I decided to check the mailbox one last time, just in case. And inside the mailbox, glory be, was my MISSION CALL!! I burst into tears in the middle of our apartment parking lot and did a dance of joy once I got inside.

Whereupon I promptly began freaking out. I was alone. My roommate was nowhere to be found. My mom was in Panama City, my dad in Utah. The Bowcutts, who had been calling me all day long to see if my call had arrived, were not picking up their phone. I called Lance in desperation and he said he'd come over. After about an hour's worth of frantic phone calls, I got through to several of my friends who made their way over to my house. I tried to get my broken laptop to work well enough to get hold of my parents on video iChat and called my dad and put him on speaker phone.

And then came the actual reading of the letter. I am still freaking out about it, two hours later. I think I've run the complete gamut of emotions over the past four hours. My roommate doesn't seem to think so, though. She just sneaked up behind me and grabbed me by the hair. Thanks, Rebecca. Thanks a lot.

I am once again behind in my NaNoWriMo novel this month. I'm not sure what is wrong with me. Maybe my story sucks (okay, there's no maybe about that). Maybe it's because I've been too social for my own good (didn't get to bed until three last night). Maybe it's because I keep running out to check the mail every twenty minutes (still no call letter yet!).

Whatever the reason, I think I need a jump-start. This thing is failing. I've been consistently two or three thousand words behind since around the sixth, unless you count that whopping seven-thousand word leap my wordcount took on the eleventh. That was the day I had no classes. I also didn't happen to get anything done in the way of school work that day.

So today my only class has been cancelled. It seems I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Write like mad to try and make it to 32K today and potentially salvage this month's novel, or...finish the school work necessary to graduate?

I forgot to adequately close my bedroom curtains last night. The window is inadequately insulated and positioned directly above my bed, so on a cold night I really feel the chill unless I maneuver the cloth hangings properly.

I love the cold weather. It's not quite as nice when the high temperature gets up into the eighties, like it will today. That means I'll have to wear extra layers in the morning and be ready to gradually remove them (and carry them around all day) as the day wears on. Still, I can't complain. I love that bite that the air gets when it's cold out. Mornings like this make me want to stay in bed all cozy-like. Mondays offer me no such opportunity, though, so I'd better get going soon.

I've often wondered what it would be like to have a full-scale orchestra follow me around and play theme music for my life's story. Okay, maybe not often wondered. But you know how in movies there's always that orchestra that shows up whenever the main character is doing something particularly heroic or emotional or dangerous or has just come to a crossroads. You never actually see any violins, so maybe they're just practicing next door. But still, it's remarkably well-timed.

Well, if the London Symphony Orchestra decided to do a score for the life and times of Yours Truly, they'd probably be playing something like this.

Seriously. Will the mail never get here?!?!!

I did a lot of writing today.

Even that's an understatement.

I slept until noon, having had a late night last night. I wrote a little here and there and then did some other things around the house before coming back to my novel. I added a few scenes here and there. Then I decided to do a little first-person outlining from each of my characters' perspectives, because my previous attempts at outlining and writing sans outline have not been doing so well.

And in that segment alone I wrote over 3000 words. I couldn't believe it. My previous wordcount according to NaNoWriMo had been somewhere in the mid 14,000s range. When I updated my wordcount after this writing session I was up to 21,161 words.

Is that insane? How is that even possible? I wrote seven thousand words in an afternoon?!

That can't be right.

I haven't written to Christine since my computer crashed. That was over a week ago. Shame on me.

Sunday was difficult. I will be glad when the mail I'm waiting for finally arrives.

I took a nap yesterday afternoon. It was a much needed two-hour affair, but I woke from it extremely unsettled. You know those dreams you have that involve actual people you know, and something happens in the dream that changes your opinion of the person, even though you know that it was only your subconscious and the dream's events never actually took place?

Well, I had one of those dreams last night, and it involved one of my friends, and it scared me half to death.

Also it involved a setting not unlike FHE, so when my roommate came home and the first thing I heard after waking up was a suggestion to go to the Institute for the last half of FHE, it gave me pause.

I am woefully behind in my novel. Woefully. I caught up a little bit last night, but I'm still more than two thousand words short as of this morning. Regretting more than ever my laptop's decision to quit on me. Without the use of an external drive I have no computer at all, but I so wish I could bring my laptop with me today.

Last night we watched "Twilight" with Rifftrax again. Most of the people there were not there last time, so it was like a whole new experience. Every time I watch it I catch jokes that I never noticed before. It's great.

There is an episode of the comedy "The Big Bang Theory" in which the characters decide to take a train from Pasadena to San Francisco to attend a conference. Sheldon, the nerdiest and most OCD of the bunch, realizes he's left his flash drive at home and the knowledge eats at him. As the train pulls out of the station and starts its clickety-clack motion, Sheldon starts to whisper to himself along with it, "You forgot your FLASH DRIVE, you forgot your FLASH DRIVE, you forgot your FLASH DRIVE..."

Why do I bring this up? Well, last night I didn't write a THING on my novel. I comforted myself last night that I had written more than my par the previous day, so I was only three hundred words short as I was going to bed. But this morning I woke up with the rhythmic mantra in my head:

"You didn't make your WORD COUNT, you didn't make your WORD COUNT, you didn't make your WORD COUNT..."

Not to mention the smoke detector in the hallway needs a battery change and keeps beeping shrilly and intermittently - seldom enough to make each one a surprise, but often enough to drive you nuts.

I wish my laptop wasn't broken so I could bring it to class with me and type away. As it is it'll be back to good old ink and paper for me just so I can ward away the guilt monkeys.

The last several days have seemed to drag. Maybe it's because I have a lot to do these days. Or maybe it's because my brain tends to make the month of November last longer than usual.

My to-do list is getting longer, but I relish the feeling of an evening's work well done.

Some friends came over Saturday night after we put in an appearance at a Halloween party. We watched “Drag Me To Hell.” Horrible gory movie. Gross sound effects. Way too many bodily fluids for my taste. I wrote some during the movie though it was dark, and then once people had left I made it to 2000 words plus before I passed out. I think I'm coming down with a sore throat, which petrifies me to no end.

Sunday was the first full day of NaNoWriMo, and also Fast Sunday. I love them both. Break-The-Fast was a joy as always, especially since the theme was Thanksgiving foods.

Elder Lewis came back to Tallahassee on Sunday! His family came to Florida to pick him up because he got was getting released on Monday. They came to the Institute where we had just finished watching a CES Broadcast with Elder Uchtdorf (if you can, look it up. It was most excellent). Much chaos ensued in the Institute foyer with embraces and shaking of hands (depending on the gender of the person involved; Elder Lewis had yet to be released and so was technically forbidden from physical contact of any sort with females). He kept shaking our hands like the good little not-quite-released missionary he was. Rebecca and I sort of bent the rules to take a picture with him. Ah, the undeniable awkwardness of an elder putting his arm around you for a photograph. What a great guy.

Noveling is awesome.

Word count as of tonight: 5198 (woohoo, ahead of schedule!)

How I feel about my story (scale of 1-10): 5

I hate working without an outline. I like to know the shape of my story instead of this random, fly-by-night, throw in a random quote from my journal here, an odd character there business. I'm a creature of habit. I like a house of order.

And yet I signed up to write a novel in 30 days. Laugh at me if you will.

Okay, so I lied about the whole "tomorrow is my last tutoring gig" thing. I had a lot to do on Friday afternoon, what with traveling to Gainesville that evening. A horrible excuse to evade my tutoring duties, getting ready for a YSA dance, but it's the only excuse I have and I'm going to cling to it.

The Zombie Prom was awesome. The drive there was awesome, the dance itself was awesome, the drive back was awesome. I got to put makeup on (hang on, let me run up the tally on my fingers) . . . five of my friends, not including myself. I have to say, it turned out really well. Not bad considering the weapons -- er, tools -- I had were limited to the powder, eyeliner, and/or lip balm variety.

Jesse, displaying my handiwork. I wish we'd have gotten a pic of his other side, it was just as creepy.

Another one of my volunteers (right).

The whole motley bunch of us. This was after several hours of dancing, so we look less zombified and more like we just haven't slept in a while.

Last night was fun too. I slept until noon, having gotten to my bed at four in the morning. Jacqueline's house hosted a Halloween party. Rachel came over beforehand and I put her hair up in two buns to be Princess Leia. I went as a Jedi. Even made a light saber (one of my friends thinks that's one word, but Blogger thinks it's two) out of a vacuum cleaner attachment and a scarf - coincidentally the same scarf I used as a sash for my zombie getup on Friday night. That scarf has seen some good use in its day. Christine used it as a neck kerchief a year or so ago to be Daphne when four of us dressed up like the Scooby Doo gang.

All three of them are now on missions. Velma's on her own.

Our Star Wars costumes were reminiscent of the first year Christine and I lived together. Looking back I realize now how much dressing up we did as roommates.

Ah, R2. We made him out of a bucket of oats, among other things. He served us well.

Tomorrow may very well be my last tutoring session with the Estonian girl I teach. She's very sweet but it'll be wonderful to have Monday and Friday afternoons to myself again. Especially with NaNoWriMo so near I can smell it.

I have joyously recruited at least two friends from church to participate in the madness with me. Last year my old roommate decided to give NaNo a whirl but she quit partway through the month. I have another friend who has been participating the past couple years. She's a writing fiend who eats novels for breakfast, so this is a challenge she was already game for.

I'm excited for the Gainesville Institute's "Zombie Prom" tomorrow night. I haven't been able to experiment with special effects makeup since high school when we did "Dracula" my senior year...well, unless you count the fairy makeup for A Midsummer Night's Dream this summer. That show involved an airbrush though, so I wasn't wholly responsible for the cool effects.

With zombies on my mind, though, I've spent the last several days looking online for easy and gory effects to use on myself and my friends (let's be honest: who doesn't dream about zombi-fying their friends just for the fun of it?) and figuring out what to wear to the dance. I'm not usually the kind of girl who frets about wardrobe choices, but I think costumes in general require some thought. I found some old fabric my roommate left behind when she moved out. She used it for a Little Mermaid costume the first year we lived together. I have put it to use in a somewhat less Disney-related fashion. We'll see what other people think.

So today I went to the local costume shop in search of liquid latex and/or Plastiwax to simulate fake skin (into which you can cut gouges or peel back parts to make it look like flesh is rotting off your face. Neat stuff, says the theatre geek inside me. Careful or you'll scare the kiddies, says the more sensible part of me who realizes not everyone likes to look disgusting when they're headed off to a dance.) The store parking lot was jam-packed with cars, and there was a large sign outside the front that said in large bold letters:

No backpacks.

No purses.

No bags.

NO EXCEPTIONS.

Well, I had my school bag with me but didn't see a place outside the store where I could check it with an attendant, so I pulled open the front door anyway.

About two feet inside the door was a burly guy with a (fake) gash in his arm that was dripping (fake, I hope) blood down his wrist.

"I'm sorry," fake-gash guy says in a voice indicating he's not sorry at all, "I can't allow that bag in the store."

I pause. "Um, okay," I respond. Then for lack of a better way to say it, "What do I do with it?"

"Well, leave it in your car." He points outside.

"I don't have a car."

Gash Guy folds his arms. "Well, I can't have it in the store, and I can't hold it for you and I can't watch it for you." He's really helpful, this one. Is there anything he can do?

Unsympathetic to my plight, he resumes his stance in front of the aisle, which I notice is the only accessible aisle in the place. Apparently if you don't get past this guy, you don't get to the Holy Grail. Other customers are filing around the store in what looks like a single path carved out for them with guardrails - yeah, big metal guardrails. Cattle to the slaughter, these customers. I wonder briefly if they're being frisked before checking out.

So I did the only thing I could think to do at this juncture. I left the costume shop and walked to CVS. They allow purses there.

My laptop decided to explode on me. With three days before NaNoWriMo starts, this is unacceptable. I don't know what part of the cosmos I offended to have this happen, but the writer inside me is weeping. Not least because most of my outlines are now sucked into oblivion.

See, I have a backup copy of my computer on an external hard drive. I backed everything up on October 11th, which was approximately ten days before I got my actual idea for this year's novel. I got excited and made some notes on NeoOffice document...because my copy of Microsoft Word disappeared the last time my laptop exploded, about a month ago.

I thank my lucky stars that I've been regularly emailing my old roommate who is now on a mission. I've been sending her essentially my journals for the week, so I've only lost about four days' worth of my journal. Still, any loss is inconvenient.

What really cooks my grits is that my social calendar is so jam-packed as to make any trip home for fatherly computer repairs inconvenient. I can limp by on my external drive well enough; the only thing now is that my laptop makes a funny clicking sound, and none of my files are in the right place...and oh yeah, my novel outline has been eradicated from my computer's recollection. Not to mention my fears about typing anything on my computer ever again.

Back to good old paper and pen I go.

I am a silly, silly girl. That's all there is to say about that.

I tutored on my own yesterday for two hours. Hopefully I made my point that I'm not just going along for the ride on my partner's coattails. Honestly, I think I did a great job of getting my student to talk. We read two books by Peter H. Reynolds ("Ish" and "The Dot"). If you haven't read any books of his, you should. They are beautiful in their simplicity. Very much a feel-good genre.

I chose those books because my student loves art. We talked about the different things she's been learning in art, and I shared a few things I remembered from all my elementary and middle school art projects. Then she read a Curious George book and part of a Magic Tree House book ("Buffalos Before Breakfast") in which the characters are transported to the Great Plains. That sparked a discussion about the United States. I drew her a ridiculously bad sketch of the shape of the United States and pointed out Florida and Illinois (where I used to live) and Utah (also used to call home) and told her a bit about the pioneers who crossed those plains on foot. I'm not sure how much of that she absorbed, but at least she was exposed to a fluent English speaker.

I do believe I may have decided how to do NaNoWriMo this year. One with a sad ending. Or bittersweet, which is not something I've done before.

I've been reading this book, Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly by Gail Carson Levine, the author of Ella Enchanted and many other retold fairy tales. One of the writing prompts she gives in the book is to write a story with the ending line already in mind. The one I'm choosing (tentatively, because I still have ten whole days to change my mind) is:

Maybe they would see each other again. Maybe they wouldn't. It didn't matter anymore. She waved good-bye.

Now mind you, I have no idea who they are or who she is, or even what universe this is taking place in. But I think that maybe this year I'll write my novel backwards and figure these things out as I go along. Maybe referring to my characters as he and she and they will take some of the pressure off and let me do whatever I want with these characters without feeling pressure to do something great.

Monday (Well, Tuesday as I write)

I woke up this morning feeling very hopeful. Well, actually the morning didn't start out that way. I actually woke up feeling migraine-y (that's a word, yes?). Also I woke up feeling sleep deprived. See, the past few nights I've been getting to bed at incredibly indecent hours. Examples include the following:

Friday night we had people over and I went to bed at three thirty a.m.

Saturday night we had people over and I went to bed at two.

Last night I went to bed early (ha!) at eleven, only to wake up at six for class.

Mondays are busy, as are Wednesdays. Tuesdays only feel busy because although I only have two classes, they're spread out over an eight-hour period (one at eleven, one from six to eight thirty). So the first half of my week always drags and is stressful with all the things I have to remember.

But after popping an aspirin-caffeine-acetaminophen to calm my brain (and experiencing a hefty amount of caffeine-induced jitters to accompany my morning), I felt a lot better. The day was wonderfully brisk outside. I got to wear my woolen peacoat for the first time this fall. I made it to my first class on time (well, ahead of the T.A. at least). I got some knitting done in my first two classes. I heard a good Weepies song on my iPod. I knew most of the tunes we practiced in Irish ensemble. I had some yummy chicken soup and an enjoyable discussion with our Institute director and with JQ who is quickly becoming one of my favorite people in the world. And then I went to Institute class and got to lead part of the discussion, and I rocked it. Brother B came in to find me still up at the front facilitating the discussion and said he owed me part of his paycheck. My friend D-Bro and Elder B paid me very kind compliments which they said were not compliments because they were facts (and D gave me advice on who I should marry, which I found hilarious). And then my tutoring partner showed up and we planned for our lesson that we'd teach the little girl we're helping learn English.

So right up until about three thirty, the day was going swimmingly.

That was when we arrived at the home of our student, and her mother decided I wasn't doing enough to help out with the tutoring sessions.

See, my partner and I are in different classes, both of which require that we work with an English learner as field experience. My partner (let's call her Sue) is required to have more hours than I am, and she's been working with our student for a couple of weeks longer than I have, partly because she got the assignment first, and partly because the week I was supposed to start, I got sick. I wasn't there for the first week or so, when the Mom suggested all these activities to Sue for them to do, like going to the circus and going to the FSU Rez, and going to Tom Brown Park. Sue called me and we've been getting together to plan our activities with Student before we go over to her house each week, putting together vocabulary lists and talking about Student's progress. This week the theme is "Circus," so Sue found a book about the circus for us to read and we spent the afternoon working on a lesson plan and looking up vocabulary words for us to introduce. Mom's supposed to get tickets for us to go to the circus on Thursday.

So we get there today and Mom says she got the tickets, but only for Mom, Student, and Sue. I'm surprised because I thought I was going too, since I'm, you know, also the tutor. Then Mom asks us what the plan is for today. Sue reminds her of the circus theme and I mention the book and the vocab. Then Mom turns to me and asks, "And what do you have?"

I don't know what to say. I start to reiterate the vocabulary that we'll have Student do, and Mom shakes her head. "Do you have anything planned for today?" And she's looking at me as if she's expecting me to come up with an entirely new and exciting lesson plan all on my own right there on the spot. I'm confused. I say that Sue and I are partners in this tutoring business. She goes on to say that the circus was Sue's idea, that this is "50-50" and that she wonders what I have planned. And then she tells Sue that she doesn't need to come next Monday, that I'll be coming on my own.

And all the while I'm standing there thinking, what the heck, lady? First of all, she's not paying us to do this. It's for a class. I'm not doing this for kicks. I'm doing this to fulfill a requirement. And working with a partner is not only perfectly legitimate, but it's one of the only ways I can possibly complete the assignment. Public transportation takes twice as long to get out to where she lives, and if she really insists on me making a special trip out there without Sue, I fully intend to count transit time as part of the experience.

So after she got through making me feel incredibly awkward, we got to take Student outside to have her read to us. Sue dropped me off at the Institute and I retreated to the library to lick my proverbial wounds. I had D-Bro and Ang to help, and I vented to my roommate once I got home. Then I emailed Student's Mom trying to clear the air (is she really keeping me from going to the circus? She really wants to keep me from getting my hours done, just so she can insist on extra sessions with her daughter? REALLY?) and forewent a nap to bike to the Institute for FHE.

Wes, Lena, Vic and I continued with our Firefly saga until the wee hours. I love my friends. Much as I love those who were with us before, it was nice to not have them that talk at the theatre to sully the experience this time around.

I hate Wednesdays.

I've fallen lax with this, as with many other things lately.

Saturday morning a bunch of people from the ward went to the temple in Orlando. Victoria drove our car, with three other girls and me. I was the DJ. It's nearly a four-hour drive from here to Orlando, so we got a lot of girl talk in. The session was great, if a little lengthy. I found out yesterday though that one of the girls in our car may have left her wallet at the Chik-Fil-A where we stopped for dinner on the way home.

On the drive back we talked to the girls in the car about dating. One of them is currently dating someone, and the other two are waiting for guys who are currently on their missions. They gave us some tips on catching a guys' eye that were pretty hilarious. Apparently it's a good idea to wear white to get a guys' attention. Also, I was told that it's much easier to keep a guy than it is to catch one in the first place.

Sunday was fast Sunday at church. I'm on the committee for the Break the Fast potluck after church, which meant I had to duck out early in Sacrament Meeting to help get things set up in the cultural hall. But it turned out better than any Break the Fast I've ever been to. The theme was "Soup, Salad, and Breadsticks" and people could bring any of the three (or dessert). And we had such an amazing turnout. There was so much food on the four long tables that we had to have the silverware and plates on a separate table. I just hope people's enthusiasm carries over next month. It's possible that people will think they can get away without contributing next month because everyone brought so much this time. But I hope not!

Monday I went to FHE for the first time this semester. Arnold taught the lesson; the theme is Articles of Faith, so he did numbers 5 and 6. Then we played Spud in the gym, one of those violent schoolyard games involving lots of running around and numbers and being tagged with a volleyball. I was one of two last girls standing. After we were tagged out, the game got a lot more violent. Then we had a sort of girls' night watching Remember the Titans at our apartment. I say "sort of" because Todd came. We ended up chatting into the wee hours with Lena and Charlotte about guys and people in the ward and dating and whatnot. There was no earthly reason for any of us to be up that late, but it was fun nonetheless. I love girl talk.

Tuesday I only had one class. After it was over I was walking by the student union and saw that there was a Clinique truck parked on the green. They were giving free makeovers and taking photos for entry into a Vogue magazine contest. I decided to do the girly thing (I don't usually) and hopped in line. The PR representative was trying to get us to act all happy and excited and do the FSU war chant so they could film it with their camera crew, but it was hot and muggy outside and a lot of us hadn't eaten lunch yet, so I don't think we gave her the results she wanted.

I have no idea if I'll win the contest, and I don't mind if I don't. I got a little pampering and some makeup tips, and the photographer was handing out free samples, so I even got a mascara and a two-in-one lipgloss set out of the deal.

P.S. The only time I get Clinique is when my mom goes to stock up during their gift days. She gets the soap and things she need, and I steal her free samples. They last me all year.

Today will be busy. Linguistics, followed by Irish ensemble, followed by Intro to Speech, followed by a short break during which I will dash to the Institute across the street from campus and grab some lunch, and then a three-hour Teaching English as a Second Language class. Then a jaunt home for an hour, before heading back to the Institute for Brother B's class. It's because of the length more than each particular to-do item that I hate Wednesdays.

Cookie Monster

I crocheted this Cookie Monster doll this summer. I couldn't be more proud.

Wednesday, 30

I woke up this morning with the realization that two exams were looming. With my cold I didn't even want to get out of bed. I made it through the first one at nine a.m. and caught the bus back home, deciding that skipping two classes (one of which I'm taking for no credit) was worth the hour, hour and a half of sleep I could get in between exams.

Then I went home and lay down for precisely thirty-eight minutes before being woken by a phone call from a potential job. I'd already postponed the interview from Tuesday because I was feeling flu-like, but even though I had all the details of the location already, I had to listen to the lady run through directions to get to their office on Thursday. Taking that call, during which I got put on hold twice so she could presumably do the same to two other callers, I missed a call from an old tenant. Let me just say that being a landlord is not worth the hassle. It makes me want to throw up. Luckily my mom knows what to do.

And our home teachers helped too. After encouraging (one might even say goading) one of them (as well as a pinch-hit home teacher, since our second was not available) to leave an Elder's Quorum meeting early to home teach us, I was able to get a blessing. These guys in our ward may be goofy, but there is no doubt that they hold priesthood power.

Tuesday, 29

Dear Sir,

I woke up this morning feeling sick. The kind that isn't quite horrible enough to want to die, but just sinister enough to let you know that it could get that way rapidly if you don't immediately start downing the fluids and sleeping as much as possible. I emailed one of my professors to let her know I'd most likely miss class this afternoon because I wanted to get over this and not spread infection. Testament to the beauty of swine flu awareness, because where normally she might have demanded a doctor's note, she instead emailed me back with "Of course your absence is excused!"

What a shame that we have so little faith in each other until a disease borne of little piggies makes its way to our awareness.

Kayla is engaged. Can you believe it? I got a Facebook group invitation from her wanting my address for invitations this morning and that's how I found out. The group name was something weird, too, something like "Kayla and Craig are gay...together?" I went looking on her Facebook page for her mission call letter video, the one where she had an array of cell phones on speaker laid out in front of her, with parents on either side. They were so excited that she got called to Brazil, the same mission that her dad and (I think) Jay got called to. I watched that video earlier in the spring, but when I went back today to look for it it had disappeared, and there was her relationship status as "Engaged" to some guy whose name sounds familiar but I can't place it. He might well have been one of the masses of guys she'd dated in the past, broken up with, and still remained on good enough terms with to call each one of them on New Years' Eve to chat for half an hour (remember that?). On the other hand, he could be a new model. Who knows.

Stephenie Meyer has announced that The Host will be a film someday. She's gotten the screenwriter for "The Truman Show" involved, which I take to be a very good sign. I liked The Host better than the Twilight series in many ways, except for her annoying tendency to overuse the word "repugnant." Seriously. Seven or eight times in a few hundred pages is noticeable enough to be annoying. I wonder why her editors didn't catch that. There are other words to express distaste.

Victoria's gotten me into watching a show called "Psych," about an extremely observant guy pretending to be a psychic in order to solve crimes. It's well-written and enjoyable so far. I've only seen three or four episodes.

I gave my speech on NaNoWriMo in class yesterday. I think it went pretty well, except that I spoke rather rapidly. When I was practicing last week my times ranged from 6 to 7 minutes, but when I gave it I was wrapping up my third points by the time the T.A. held up a 5-minute sign. Hopefully I was understandable. I have a bad habit of speedy talking, especially when I get nervous.

Monday the Twenty-Eighth

Dear "Sir",

Victoria, ever the pro-active, has gotten people in the ward together to cook. Her enthusiasm surprises me sometimes. We went over to some guys' apartment last night after choir practice (we left early) so they could cook for us. Not having been to their apartment before, we left when they did so we could follow them there. It was fun to watch them in the car ahead of ours; from our vantage point we could see their anguished hand-wringing when they pulled through a yellow light ahead of us, followed by joyful fist pumping as they saw through the rearview mirror that we managed to stay on their tail.

So last night I learned to make Navajo tacos, though I suffered a slight injury when the dough I tried to gently lower into the hot oil ended up backsplashing on me. We played card games and ate yummy fry bread, first with chili and cheese, and then with honey for dessert. It would have been the perfect evening if it weren't for a furry creature one of them owns.

I tell you, people without allergies have no concept of what it is to be allergic to something. They look at you with this weird expression, as if unable to conceive of a condition in which the proximity of a plant or animal can cause you to break out in a rash. It's uncomfortable to see an adorable little kitty cat, and be accompanied with the knowledge that even if that cute little animal is several feet from you, or has just recently vacated the space you now occupy, it can inadvertently cause you to leak many fluids from your face. It's unattractive and annoying and inconvenient to have allergies. And it makes people look at you as if you are a freak.

Not wanting to be an aural nuisance to the other dinner guests with my sneezing and sniffing, I took a Benadryl before going over to their apartment. I was hoping that since the guys were aware of my "condition," the kitty would not make much of an appearance. But Kitty came out to play anyway, and one Benadryl just wasn't cutting it, so I popped another one. Round about nine o'clock, after dinner had been consumed and the card deck was being shuffled, I started to feel the effects -- not in the desired, non-sniffy, non-sneezy way, but in the "side effects may include drowsiness" way.

So, here we have my options where allergens are involved. Decide against the antihistamine and be a sneezy, rashy mess? Or medicate myself and fall into a drug-induced stupor?

Let's try this again.

I am not a blogger. Or at least, I haven't been for some time.

Being a Latter-Day Saint, I'm constantly told to write down my own history. Not to put on public display, mind; at least not the precious stuff. I don't relish the idea of hanging out my dirty laundry for all to see.

But since I've fallen into the very bad habit of not regularly updating my journal, I wonder if having an audience, albeit an invisible one, might help give me the push I need to make this more of a habit.

Of course, once I'm out on my mission this form of recording won't be available to me. Still, I'd like to at least try to get into the habit before I'm wearing the black name tag on my lapel.

I also happen to have a best friend who is currently serving outside of the country. She's available to me through the use of email and ink-and-paper only. So some of my posts here will subsequently be copy-pasted into my updates for her. That is, again, if I can make a regular thing of it.

Beyond that, there's no telling what might appear here. Stories, book reviews, music, musings on what it's like to be...well, me.