Convenient Customer ID -- Gee, thanks...

There's a website I go to where for years I've had to log in using my social security number as a user ID, plus a password. Obviously, this is a legitimate site that I trust. However, it's always made me nervous using my social security number.

So when I logged in recently and noticed an alert telling me I could log in using my customer ID instead of my social security number, I felt relieved.

But then I saw my customer ID -- a sixteen digit number.

Really, can anyone remember something like 1185603382904776?

(not my user ID -- just typed in random numbers)

So instead of your SSN, you get this 16 digit string of numbers that you pretty much have to write down and post by your computer, or tattoo on your forearm.

Perfect.

Tenderloin Thief

Hey, buddy, is that beef tenderloin in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?

Oh, my mistake, eight packages of beef tenderloin.

Parade of Awful Gifts

If you're on my Christmas list, you should be afraid -- very afraid -- because this festive holiday season, someone is getting individually-wrapped prunes from yours truly.

A couple of years ago, I blogged about the challenge of gift-buying for the elderly. Since then, it's become even more of a challenge because, um, they're even more elderly and we've been through several cycles of the old standbys.

After some conversations with one relative's caregiver, I opted this year to do a fruit and nut gift bag. And that led me to prunes-to-go. Hey, think how handy this is going to be for long waits in the doctor's office! Just pack a couple of prunes -- all nicely wrapped in cellophane -- and you're set.

If you think the individually-wrapped prunes are bad, then consider this: I recently got my boyfriend a trash can for his birthday. Never mind it was a pricey stainless steel model from Bed Bath & Beyond that he had been wanting for sometime -- it still gets me the playful "you got me a trash can for my birthday" guilt trip.

So yeah, prunes, trash cans -- you should be scared when you open a gift from me this year.

NaNoWriMo: In Retrospect

Lessons Learned

* I wish I had thought out plot before I started writing.

* I realized that I am not cut out for getting up and writing the same story all day long. I get bored too easily. I need to have at least two things going on so I can switch back and forth.

* I imagined that meeting the goal would help boost my confidence. Indeed, I was very happy about meeting the deadline, but at the same time I'm disheartened by the amount of crap I produced.

* The quality of my writing is very mood dependent. Some days it's just a waste of time to force myself to write because the result is, well, craptastic.

What to do with this mess
My 50,000 word document is not a finished novel. I think it would take 20,000-30,000 more to finish it. Parts of it are definitely salvageable.

What I think might work best would be to split it into two books. There's just too much going on and too many characters. No kidding -- by the end of the month I had forgotten the names of some of the characters from the beginning. That's not a good sign.