How did it suddenly get to be the middle of November?

I don't remember how the time went by so quickly. I really don't.

I've been getting an average of nine hours of sleep every night, and I'm still tired. Part of that is because I'm going to bed late (by my standards —remember, your mileage may vary) and getting up later. This has two disadvantages: one, I'm generally a morning person, and so waking up at 9:30 or 10:00 means that the more productive part of my morning is pretty much gone by the time I'm up; two, I tend to stay up later to compensate for not having accomplished as much during the day, even though I'm not as productive in the evenings. Thus the vicious cycle starts.

It doesn't help that a lot of my friends are night people, or at least have to be night people because they work all day. I try to match up my schedule so that I can spend at least a little time with them, but I tend to be wiped when I get home. Unfortunately, "wiped" doesn't usually translate into falling asleep right away. I usually have to wind down before going to bed, either with a bath (and a book) or by rummaging around on the internet.

Part of me is really pleased that I don't have to worry about working this month. I really, really needed the extra sleep, the time to myself, etc. The other part of me is running around like a caged rat, shrieking with anxiety about the fact that I'm about to run out of money, the fact that I haven't worked in three weeks and that at this rate no one will ever want to hire me again, etc, etc. NaNoWriMo has been a great distraction for not thinking about how stressed I am about all this sort of thing. Unfortunately, it's also a great distraction for all the things I still need to be doing this month.

Off to find something for breakfast. If I have all the ingredients, I may try out toughlovemuse's pancakes that she made last night during the writing jam. She gave me the recipe for the batter when I asked for it. Yay!

Running indoors

So toughlovemuse introduced me to video games last night. She showed me a game called, I think, "Dragon Quest," and let me play it for a while. I think she was a little amused by many of my reactions.

1- Let me start out by saying that it was a great deal of fun to play. I am glad I don't own a gaming console or a computer powerful enough to play games, because you'd never see me again.

2- The game went counter to most of my upbringing. toughlovemuse kept telling me to run places, and it made me twitch, because, well, running indoors is bad. So I kept trying to walk places, except that walking is more unwieldy than running thanks to the gaming console.

3- Apparently being a hero in this game entitles you to rummage through other people's stuff and break their things if necessary. You are encouraged to go into people's houses and public places, and just go through their stuff and take whatever you want. toughlovemuse laughed very hard at me when I cringed and didn't want to do that. After all, the game NPCs are very understanding about the fact that you're the hero and can do whatever you want.

4- NPCs have extraordinarily short attention spans in this game. Mind you, since I've only played a few hours of WoW apart from this (I refuse to count the one time I tried playing Resident Evil and couldn't get my character to do anything except walk into a wall and get eaten by a zombie), I have no idea how much I should expect out of any given NPC anyway.

In conclusion, though, it was fun, and I'm looking forward to trying to get to the end of the story at some point. Or at the very least get to the end of my current quest. I've already died twice, once because I hit the wrong button. :P

Okay, now I'm *really* going to get breakfast, and then I have to get some writing done. I have 45,000 words to get written, or thereabouts, in the next two weeks. Wish me luck!

Rave reviews!

So for those of you not in the know yet, I've been writing a zombie novel for National Novel Writing Month. It's being posted as I write it in my writing LJ, secret_history.

What's very gratifying is that it appears to have attracted some readers who are not, in fact, on my flist. For instance: baronmind had this to say about my humble little offering:

...there's a fantastic zombie story unfolding over at secret_history, currently titled Afternoon Snack of the Living Dead. Despite the jocular title, the story takes itself seriously. The character development is fantastic, the actions and responses realistic, and the entire scenario is horrifically believable. The story is this year's NaNoWriMo effort by mousme -- already past the 50,000 word mark, I might add, which is impressive in and of itself -- and I'd like to thank fearsclave for bringing it to my attention.

With reviews like that, how could you not want to read it? ;)