NaNoWriMo

OK, I'm giving it a try.

I saw this writing program mentioned over on Don't Print This awhile back, but I didn't really give it much thought or check out what it was all about until the Brooklyn Hillbilly sent me an e-mail last night.

It was this line on their website that made me decide to sign up for the write a novel in a month challenge:

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing.

The object, they stress, is quantity, not quality -- and because of the way I've been feeling lately, that's exactly the low-pressure strategy I need.

I also know that it would be helpful for me to feel like I accomplished something. Fifty-thousand words (about 175 pages) in 30 days is definitely a lofty goal, especially in a month with numerous holidays, travel days, and after hours work assignments, but if I could somehow pull it off, it might be a morale boost that would get me through the holidays ;).

Lion in them thar hills?

I've been following this story with great interest.

I know having a lion prowling around the hills of WV is not a good thing -- especially for the lion -- but there's part of me that would love to see a lion poking its maned head out of a thicket of rhododendron. Just once.

Cube Wisdom -- On Charitable Giving

When you spend most of your life planted in a cube farm, you get to overhear stunning snippets of wisdom, such as this:

Fashionable Person, speaking to another Fashionable Person: "I need to get some old clothes out of my closet, but I don't like donating things to the Salvation Army. Do you know what they do with all the clothes people donate to them?"

The answer, in a loud whisper, as if revealing outrageous secret: "THEY SELL THEM! They take what people GIVE to them and turn around and sell it in their store!"

OMG, I feel so used. How dare they take my worn out jeans and sell them for 50 cents to make money for their programs!

My Yellow Feast

The last couple of weeks have been stressful and hectic. So, as a treat to myself, I decided to take time to cook some Indian food -- instead of, oh, cleaning the house or doing laundry.

Here's what I made:

Turmeric Rice

Murgh Tari (chicken curry)

Alu Tari (potato curry)

If I had made these dishes before, perhaps I would have been wise enough to vary the menu to allow for another color of food.

Tonight, on day two of the leftover chicken and rice, to jazz things up a bit I added zucchini and tomatoes (the last ones from my garden) with fresh ginger, ground coriander, garam masala, and, of course, turmeric:

My zucchini/tomato concoction

I think my favorite of the new recipes was the potato curry. I added extra lemon juice to give it some more zip. While it was the most exotic-looking dish, the chicken was OK but not fantastic. The rice was adequate, but I'll probably never make it again. I think plain basmati rice would have been better with the various dishes, and the turmeric rice wasn't really special enough for the extra trouble.

Considering the amount of money that went into the ingredients and the time it took to prepare it, and the rather mediocre results, I would have been better off going to an Indian restaurant. Ah, but that's just it: the local restaurant is closed, and oh how I miss it!

Oh yeah, isn't it kind of weird to be getting zucchini from the garden in October? In August, the middle part of my zucchini plant shriveled up. I nearly pulled the whole thing out of the ground, but the four little branches out from the middle section looked OK, so I left them. They've been bearing zucchini ever since. It's not the most prolific zucchini plant in the world, but it's definitely long-lived.

So you're the woman from my nightmare

OK, so I have rarely had to deal with the woman from last week’s nightmare – until this week. And the first encounter wasn’t entirely pleasant.

Which makes me wonder if my nightmare was foreshadowing my imminent demise…

Which causes me to get anxious whenever she enters the room…

Which surely makes me seem like a real nut…

Darn my subconscious.

And some days you just wake up feeling small

Last night I was berated by one of my supervisors all night long.

Well, at least in my nightmare I was.

My unconscious mind cooked up a vivid dream starring one of the higher-ups at work. In real life, I don't have much contact with her, but in my dream, she hauled me into her office for what seemed like hours of belittlement.

There was the issue of my clothing -- she didn't like them. "Do us all a favor and don't wear those pants again."

And my desk -- I wasn't properly "marketing myself" using my office. "You should use your office to sell yourself, not to put up pictures of dogs and cats. I walk into your office and all I see is dogs and cats." For the record, I have only a dog calendar -- no actual photos of pets.

And on and on like that.

Finally, clearly angry, I stood up (in dreamland) and said, "So, what you're telling me is that the quality of work I do doesn't really matter -- it's all this other stuff -- my clothes, my hair, my desk?"

She looked at me and said, "Well, yes."

I woke up feeling drained, depressed, and more sure of what I already suspected.

Pardon my lack of pity

Because I'm apparently an unreasonable bitch, please don't tell me your sob stories about being poverty-stricken if any of the following apply:

• You have taken 2 or more vacations in the last 12 months
• You have a cleaning lady
• You drive a newish SUV
• You have occasion to buy new formal gowns and cocktail dresses
• They call you by name at the local Starbucks