-So, winter storm Brutus (our storm is named Brutus because letter a-Athena-is apparently hitting the East Coast pretty hard) has been a huge let down here.  It’s hit other parts of the state really hard, but all we’ve gotten is a rain/ice mix.  I’m not complaining too much, though, because I’m hoping to not have to drive through much snow when I head home in about a week.

-Apparently The Hobbit pre-sale tickets outsold the pre-sale tickets of both Skyfall & Breaking Dawn 2.  I don’t care so much about it outselling Bond, but I’m super excited it outsold the (hopefully) final Twilight film.  There’s still hope for humanity!  Also, I say “hopefully final” knowing full well that the entire series will probably get remade in a few years.  Back to The Hobbit.  I’m so, so, so, so super, overwhelmingly excited to see it!  I’m so pumped I can’t hardly wait (but I have to, because it’s over a month until it comes out).  

-So, I’m behind on my NaNo.  I’m at 12,797 words, and I need to 16,666 today in order to get back on track.  That’s not quite 4,000 words, so shouldn’t be too hard to reach.  Right now, in Word, that’s showing up (with page breaks done for new chapters) as 47 pages in Pacifico font, and 37 pages in Times New Roman.  That’s 12 pt., single spaced.  (I’m writing in Pacifico because it looks like actual cursive, so I feel like I’m not just typing, but I’m writing.  I probably sound silly, but hey, it works.)  I can honestly say that I’ve never written this much on one subject in my entire life.  Even though my story is getting better, I know the beginning is an absolute travesty.  I desperately want to go back and re-do it, but I made a deal with Katy that neither of us would go back and re-read and undo until December.  It’s a good thing I made that deal.  It’s forcing me to really try to finish something.  I’m not very good at finishing things, so this NaNo is teaching me a very important lesson.

-Everyone seems to be having babies.  Seriously, I have three friends who all had babies within the last 48 hours.  I have friends who are due soon.  I have friends who’ve had babies in the last two weeks.

-I realized, as I was falling asleep last night, that I left my NaNo characters heading out into the outdoors on their journey.  This ought to be good, considering I’m not exactly Outdoors Woman.  While this issue really freaked me out last night, today I feel much more okay about it.  At least it’s not set on Earth, so I can be as creative as I want.

-This last Monday I was having a particularly down day, and I was feeling incredibly sad and hopeless.  I got an email in the middle of the day stating that I had a package in the mail room of the service center.  I immediately went over, because I knew I hadn’t ordered anything, so I couldn’t imagine what would be there.  To my shock, a family from my home church had sent me a care package!  It really did come at the perfect time, and it was so helpful.

-Okay, so this is kind of hard to admit to, but I started going to the campus counseling center a few weeks ago.  The gal who’s been treating me at Student Health thought it would be a good idea, since this whole chronic disease thing is a pretty bitter pill to swallow.  I figured, “Hey, it’s free, it couldn’t hurt.”  So, I started going.  I really wasn’t sure what to expect, but it’s actually been pretty good for me to talk to someone who’s neither friend nor family, but who I know isn’t going to go blabbing my issues all over the place.  (There’s a whole contract of confidentiality that legally keeps her from doing this.)  Anyway, this week I got assigned homework.  I’m supposed to come up with five good things about myself.  I think this homework was brought on by the fact that the week before we did my intake questionnaire  and when we got to the question, “What are good things about yourself?”  I sat there frozen, and finally came up with, “I’m punctual?”  Which, I am, but it’ a pretty sad state of affairs when the only good thing I can come up with about myself is that I’m on time, and when I state that fact I end up sounding like I’m questioning myself.  Of course, the following question in the intake was about what I didn’t like about myself, and the list I produced was quite long.  So, I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching to try to come up with five things I honestly believe are true of myself and are also good.  I’m not sure why I’ve got such a low opinion of myself.  It’s certainly no one else’s fault.  My family has done nothing but remind me that they love me, and how precious and valuable I am to them.  I have friends who genuinely like me, so I know there’s got to be good things about me, I just have to learn to see them for myself.