I'm Declaring a New National Holiday... It's the Only Way I'll Finish

Despite Autumn not officially starting for another 10 days (it occurs on the 23rd this year), it has decided to make a premature appear in Victoria. It's grey, wet and dismal since the end of the long weekend. There's been moments of sun but even then it's still cold.

Somewhere in that fog is East Sooke Park.

I love Fall and all it's changing colours so I'm excited despite the depressing view out my window. Plus, we all know what exciting season fall brings right? People running around, trying to get things done before that big night, feelings of stress because you haven't gotten everything written before the deadline, so many social events to attend but you have to turn them down because there's too much to do...

IT'S NANOWRIMO!!

I first learned of NaNoWriMo last year for a creative non-fiction writing class I was taking. Learning about the event a mere week before it began, I took a valiant stab at it... and failed miserably. It didn't help that most people go into this with characters developed, outlines created, key scenes blocked in their heads. I went in with the idea that it might be fun and I had a story I had been mulling over writing for a while. Between full time school, part time work, and life in general, I got to around 800 words and then quit. My excuse is that my class did NaBloPoMo for charity so that took up all my allotted 'fun' writing time.

Well, not this year! This year I am undertaking the challenge again and I will be prepared! To victory!

Or, at the very least, 50,000 words of crappy writing!

GBC Question #9

Question #9: A book you've read more than once.

I tend to read books more than once. They're like dear friends that I have to visit every once and a while. The ones I visit most often, however, would be any of the novels of Jane Austen. I'm a huge Jane Austen fan, even going so far as to include Bath on my travels around the UK strictly because so many of her stories have settings there. Yes, I'm a dork. I think I've already established that fact!

If you watched the BBC's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and didn't

fall in love with Colin Firth, we may have to rethink our friendship.

[Copyright: BBC]

Some where in my travels I picked up The Complete Novels of Jane Austen. Every couple of years, I pick it up and pick and story to read. In fact, it's been a while since I've done that. I'll add that to the list of books to read for the challenge.

Any other Jane Austen fans out there?

GBC Question #8

Question 8 is, to me, very strange: An unpopular book you believe should be a Best-Seller.

This question has honestly stumped me. Just because a book isn't a Best-Seller doesn't mean it's unpopular. It could just be that it doesn't have the marketing power of the Twilight series behind it.

I honestly have no answer.

GBC Question #7

Question Seven: A book that's hard to read

This question has me confused. Does it mean actually hard to read as in 'hard to follow', or does it mean emotionally hard to read? I skipped ahead a few questions and saw that there is a question coming up dealing with emotional difficulty so I'm going to go with my first assumption. For that question, there can be no other answer than Ulysses by James Joyce.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I have started reading this book and set it aside never to return. One of the problems is that it ones of those books, like The Tin Drum, which has so many references to other literary works and ideas that it really should be read as part of a class so you can actually understand half of what is being said (without words in many cases) on the page.

About a year ago, I broke down and bought myself an annotated version when it was on sale but never quite got around to cracking it open. Some day I will give that sucker a go and if I still can't finish it... well, I'll buy the Cliff Notes and start lying.

"I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries

arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."

~James Joyce, on Ulysses

GBC Question #6

Oh, right. Those questions for the Great Book Challenge. Question #6: A book that makes you cry.

Les Miserables - I read the book when I was 12. I had discovered the musical a few years earlier and decided I should read the book. I did the same for Phantom of the Opera, how hard could it be for Les Mis? I was in love with the book and I went through it quite fast given its size. My parents were throwing a party and knowing I only had about a quater of the book left, I excused myself when I felt I had done my daughterly duty and escaped to my room to continue reading. If memory serves me correctly, that was a little before 10 pm. Some time before 2 am when my mom checked on me before she went to bed, I started crying. I put the finished book down sortly after 3 am and my tears had reached full sobs. I sat in bed crying until I noticed the sky was getting light (it was summer so I'm going to say this would have been around 5 am)so I laid down and cried myself to sleep.

Is it really any surprise that this is the man who wrote a book called 'The Miserables'?

For weeks afterwards, I'd think about certain scenes in the book or sacrifices certain characters made and I would just start to bawl. At the dinner table, in the shower, writing notes off the board at school, I was an emotional wreck thanks to that book. I've wanted to reread it as an adult but I've shied away from it because I don't know if I really want to be randomly bursting into tears while I but sugar in my coffee...

Either I'm Cool or the World is Inhabited by Geeks

I attended Denbaya this past weekend. It was a four day West African Dance extravaganza. On our last night there, MoonDance Arts (the coordinators of the event) treated everyone to dinner at the West Arm Pub on Shawnigan Lake, not too far from where the weekend was being held. Our instructors brought a lot of life to an otherwise quite Sunday night at the pub.

The original video is not this dark, but I can't seem to fix it on this site.

My apologies to Manimou, the singer, because you can barely see him.

I love that as I get older, I need to explain myself to people less and less. It seems like the rest of the world is becoming nerdified because people just 'get me' now. The following is a list of things I admitted to people that I hardly knew and none of them blinked an eye:

• Robert Service is my favourite poet. I travel with a collection of his poems and I can recite a few of them as well.
• Name an 80's/early 90's rap and I can probably rap it for you. Also, I will most likely bust out the running man because that's just good times.
• When something frustrates or angers me, I do my 'West Side Story' snaps and I have trained my office to do the same.
• This is the greatest news I've heard in probably ever; does anyone have a Wii they'd like to sell?
• I have been accused of snoring, talking and singing in my sleep although all these accusations have come after a night of drinking.
• I'm a classically trained pianist. My favourite composer, well, it's a toss up between Bach and Chopin. If I had to pick one, Bach would probably win. I held an open debate with myself about why.
• My favourite movie in Casablanca. In close second is Beauty and the Beast which I haven't seen since 2003 when I moved out and no longer had a VHS player. It's being re-released on DVD on October 5th. I have seriously debated booking that day off work so I can go buy it at 8:00 AM. (I then sang a few of the songs for those within ear shot.)
• I will slap my own ass in the middle of a dance routine if I think it's funny.
• I will do a lot of strange things in strange places if I think it's funny.

All these geeky things that I willingly admitted to and yet I came away from the weekend with lots of former acquaintances I now call friends. Drumming, dancing and new friends? It's going to be hard to top that.

I'm Not Dead Yet!

Why, oh why, can I embed a post on my other blog but not this one? This will require some investigation when it's not an hour past my bed time. This post was supposed to open with this which explains the title.

It's late and I need to go to bed but I just wanted to say 'hello'. I can update that I'm failing miserably at my Project365 (it really doesn't help when you keep leaving your camera at home), I'm currently reading two books for the Great Book Challenge, and I have a lot of things written in my head but I'm trying to enjoy as much of the nice weather that I can before it leaves us. I love Fall so I'm not sad to see Summer go, but now that it's no longer really hot, I want to enjoy it just a little bit longer.

Plus the sudden change to winter on Tuesday just screamed 'rewatch the BSG mini-series' and so I did. Originally it screamed specific Doctor Who episodes but those are currently out on loan so BSG it is.

copyright owned by SyFy (don't get me started on the name change)

I'm also working on something creative that I think is awesome and I will most likely share on here once I'm do, so... my friend's son thinks I'm the coolest person alive. I introduced him to pretty much any geeky thing a 10 year old boy is old enough to watch and I did it without ever once having met him. Last Saturday, we actually hung out for the first time and we got along really well. Well, I have risen yet another notch in his eyes. His mom has a foster child in Chad and he's decided he wants to go to Africa. His mom told him I lived in Africa for four months and next time he sees me, he should ask me about it. When she told me this, I immediately set about turning my pictures into a video with (if I get a decent microphone) a speaking track or written commentary about them. Time consuming? Yes. Worth it? HELLS yes!