Nothing else matters ...

Oh, journal! What a long, strange couple of months it's been. I almost don't even know where to start.

Since it's November, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo as I do every year. I've written close to 60K words on an Epic Zombie Masterpiece that is currently lacking zombies. I nearly gave myself a week long heart attack when my computer caught a nasty virus about a week and a half ago and I had to reformat the hard drive. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue since I keep all the important stuff on my external hard drive. However, this virus snuck in and hid all my external hard drive files.

I went from being at 32K words on my NaNo story to...OMG!WHERE'D IT GO? over the course of one agonizing night. I persevered and kept writing, despite not knowing what was going to happen with the first half of my novel or even if I'd be able to retrieve it. Fortunately, I have an awesome cousin who popped over one night and found all the files and fixed them up for me right good.

This was just about the most fantastic thing ever and I'm so thrilled to say that everything has now been recovered and backed up in triplicate. Also, I have so kicked NaNo's ass this year.

I've been very neglectful of all my online sites lately as I attempted to get things up and running, blah, blah, blah. However, Twitter and I have become extremely close and I'm turning into an insane tweeter. INSANE.

I won't be such a stranger in the future. I promise. I think.

Well, it looks like I have good news on the computer front. I'm not quite holding my breath yet but so far whatever virus I picked up Friday night seems to have been contained. On the plus side, my computer is running so so so much faster now. Which makes me wonder how long that virus was noodling around before I caught it.

The thing that bothers me about this whole situation is that I'm not lax on my internet/computer security. I have firewalls and 3 different virus/anti-spyware sweeps that I run every week. Two of them run twice a week each. That's 5 separate scans I run. Every week. Yet the one that picked up the issue wasn't either of the two I pay a subscription to. How is that right? Why am I paying money for a service that isn't catching the things it's supposed to catch?

Not that I'm going to get rid of any of the paid ones or anything. Not after having the pants scared off of me so recently. I'm just... confused. The free software is doing a better job than the ones I pay for. The world is a crazy, crazy place.

Okay. Enough computer talk.

Cole had a flag football game today. He had two awesome interceptions, one of which he ran in for a touchdown. Yay! My kid is kinda cool. Which reminds me that I took him to get his whooping cough vaccination on Friday (do all incoming 7th graders need to show proof of vaccination or is it just in California?) and now his poor arm is all swollen with some sort of reaction. I'm watching it to make sure it doesn't get any worse and so far it looks like a typical vaccination reaction (my kid is dramatical in situations like this). Poor guy. He already hates getting shots and now he has to deal with a sore, swollen arm. On the plus side, I seriously doubt he'll ever be one of those rebels who gets tattoos and piercings because of the whole needle issue. Unlike his mom, might I add. Because I've had piercings in the past (belly button), I'm thinking of getting a piercing now (eyebrow and possibly more) and I have tattoos. If I ever get into tip-top shape I'll treat myself to another tattoo, too.

In some ways my kid is exactly like me and in others we are polar opposites.

Okay. Book stuff.
Book #172 - Predators of Darkness (Darkness #1) by Leonard D. Hilley II - An interesting take on shifters, I just had some minor issues with the willful blindness of some of the things that took place.
Book #173 - One Foot in the Grave (Night Huntress #2) by Jeaniene Frost - This book was GOOOOOOD. Sexy, fast-paced and well-written. Lovely. Just lovely.
Book #174 - Danann Frost Falls From Grace by Joanne Valiukas - This is one of those books that I'm totally torn on. I like some things and I loathed others.
In My Mailbox - An itty-bitty mailbox this week. One book. One. It looks so lonely sitting there. :(

Okay. I'm done. More or less.
Later.

I have spent the day trying to clean up my computer. I noticed that it had been taking longer and longer to boot up recently, so I ran a couple of different virus sweeps, defragged the little beauty and just tried to be a good computer mommy in general. I think it's running faster now, but it's kinda hard to tell. Unless I want to shut it down and let it boot up again. Which I don't. I'll see tomorrow when I start it up.

You know, it's later than I thought. When did that happen?

Okay onto the bookish stuff:
Book #19 - 47 Echo by Shawn Kupfer - I feel like I keep repeating myself here: This isn't my normal type of book, but I got a kick out of it.
Endlessly Quotable: City of Bones (part 2) - I really had forgotten how much I loved this book. Which is weird since I just read it 4 months ago.
Teaser Tuesday (01/11/11) - Dead bodies, lies, flawed heroines and ... interior decorating?

I must say that it was a good reading day.
And that's about all I can say.
Later.

Two days later than I was planning on posting it, but here it is. Chapter 5 - Circles and Salt

My computer is slower than the slowest slow thing you can think of. Only it's not my computer. It's the internet connection. My mom was complaining about it also. Annoying!

I read a book last night. Stop acting like this is out of the ordinary.
Book #40 - No Humans Involved (Women of the Otherworld #7) by Kelley Armstrong - One of my other favorite werewolves (besides Elena and Clay and Nick and Derek and ... all the other guys), North American Pack Alpha Jeremy Danvers, finally gets to cut loose when he travels to Hollywood to join Necromancer Jaime Vegas as she films a TV special. With Jaime as the narrator, the two of them help right some grievous wrongs and finally take the next step in the relationship they've been dancing around for the past four years.

One of the interesting things I've seen in Jaime's character is that she was originally portrayed as the ultimate party girl. She takes home guys she doesn't know, she can play the ditzy, air-headed celebrity with easy and yet she's smart enough to know when not to rush a relationship with Jeremy because he's not mentally ready for something long term. Kelley Armstrong did a great job juxtaposing those two sides of her. Jaime may not be the smartest or the fastest or the deadliest of the Supernaturals but she wields a power that can be terrifying if not tempered with her innate morality.

I did the whole car thing. $1300 worth of work. But I'd neglected the poor girl for a while and the work was needed. BFF Megan was kind enough to pick me up from the shop and drop me off at home, so we got to spend a little more time together on this visit.

The boy is kinda driving me crazy.
It must be bed time.
Later.

Holy fuck! I just changed my monitor over to a gorgeous one that's ... actually, I don't know how big it is, I just know it's bigger than the one I had ... and it's beyond AWESOME! It's HUGE! And I'm all ... O_o ... niiiiiccccce.

I did have to buy speakers to go with it since my old monitor had speakers in it, but it was a small price to pay for a free monitor that's 11111100000000% better than my old one. Plus, these speakers do sound way better. Music! Yay!

I must return later. Also, I must draw you. Hahahaha! I had a lot of coffee today. Hee!

Laters!

Day 8 of the 30 in 30 is up at blabapalooza. So is Day 7, I just didn't post here yesterday and hence didn't mention it. So, FYI, don't do your horror movie research with a 5 and 9 year old in the room when both kids will feel the need to sleep with you afterward becasue the movie was "too scary". Oops. My bad. Also, if you do decide to go this route you might want to pick a movie that doesn't have quite as much swearing in it. Double oops. For example, Slither is not the best movie to watch with kids. Apparently, Ginger Snaps isn't either. I would have turned it off, but I really needed to finish watching it so I could get my review up.

Yeah, I'm a bad mom.

Anyway. I went a-visiting with jenahville yesterday. I'm almost completely caught up on all my shows because she makes me watch things that I would otherwise put off. It's a good thing. We also watched 2 eps of Firefly. I have so much love for that show. LOVE! She also burned a bunch of stuff off my hard drive for me so that I can clear up some space. I guess I'll have to eventually break down and either get my DVD burner fixed (not entirely sure what's wrong with it, but it won't recognize blank DVDs) or buy an external one, because these discs she made for me are AWESOME!

Well, I have a lot of stuff planned for tomorrow. Stuff like emailing people and going through Cole's pants to figure out which ones still fit him. Fun stuff.

I'm done!

You know how as a parent you sometimes get roped into doing things and you're like "How did I end up doing all the work?"

Yeah.

Cole has his Young Author's Fair book due on Wednesday. He's written it, don't get me wrong, but I had promised him that I'd help him edit it. The book/notebook he wrote the rough draft in didn't leave me enough room to do any actual editing. Hence, I told him that I'd type it up on the computer with the spelling and grammar corrections already corrected for him. Yeah. I just typed up the whole damn story for him. And the kid kept disappearing to do "other stuff" while I was doing this.

Excuse me! Did you just wake me up? Did you rub my lamp? You're getting your wishes! Now sit down!

Yeah.

So, the thing's typed and I'm forcing him to do the cover of the book (a drawing of the lands in his story) and now my printer is out of ink. Blah. I think I'm going to throw it onto my flash drive and make my mom print it up tomorrow on her printer. I can't imagine that I'm going to have time to go buy new ink between work and the seminar thing I'm going to tomorrow night on house buying.

My fingers are doing much better, though.

I'm out.

My computer's working. Now I'm just cleaning up my iTunes which somehow ended up duplicating about 2500 songs when I moved it from my C drive to my external drive. *face palm* I actually followed the instructions on that also.

I'm so glad I took today off.

I'm off to bed.

I'm sad. There's something wrong with my computer. :( It doesn't want to boot up all the way. So I'm stuck on my mom's computer (which is nowhere near as glorious as mine, plus it's really loud) and must wait until Sunday to do anything about it. Why Sunday? Because that's when my super, brilliant, completely awesome and computer savvy cousin is visiting and may be able to work out the kinks. I love my family.

Since I have no computer and Cole's out of town, I'm going out to dinner with some of the guys from work. I'll drown my sorrows in a glass (or two) of hard cider. That makes everything better.

Now I'm done.
Look. I have no music today. :(

OMG! My computer has done something really bizarre and I don't know how to fix it. It uninstalled my wireless software and now it won't recognize my wireless card. Weird. I think I'm going to have to break down and send it in. Boo. But I'm sick of my comp not working so I'm going to do it.

Okay. Onto other stuff.
Book #86 - Seduced by Moonlight by Laurell K. Hamilton - Okay. I've read this book before. I thought I hadn't so I took it with me on vacation since H gave me the next book in the series for my birthday and I really wanted to read it. BUT I HAD READ IT! Crazy. Even crazier? I didn't really remember what was going to happen until I read it. I don't know where my brain's been lately. Still, good book. I think it's the 4th in the Merry Gentry series. Maybe it's the 5th. Or the 3rd. I don't really know.

Book #87 - A Darker Crimson by Carolyn Jewel - 3rd in the Crimson City series. I didn't really like this author's style. She jumped scenes really, really quickly and half the time you wouldn't know what was going on until a couple of paragraphs into the new scene. It was frustrating. However, she had this awesome description of an insane vampire trapped in a dead city that made my imagination go into overdrive. So, that was good. The good thing about this series is that all but the 1st and last books are written by different authors so even though I didn't really care for this author's style the next book will be a whole new ballgame.

:)

I have Disneyland stuff to talk about. Anybody care to hear it? I may come back tonight and babble. I don't want to forget all the weirdness that happened.

For now? I'm off. I still have a few shows to catch up on and I may just get to that. Later.