Well I did it. Signed up for nanowrimo. Now the question is.. will i actually go through with it?

Okay. So here in Canada they show Buffy The Vampire Slayer on YTV (a children’s network) on Saturday’s. This means that I get a bunch of commercials aimed at kids which really do a lot to spoil the wonderfully dark mood created by Buffy.

Tonight I saw an ad for one of the strangest toy’s I have every seen. “Kitty fun Barbie” or something like that. The cat comes with many accesories including a bottle, carrying case, and a litterbox. What’s more, you can fill the bottle with water and then “feed” the cat with it. Once the kitty has been fed, kids can hold the kitty over the litter box and squeeze it and it pees into multicolored sand. Barbie then has this little scoop so the kid’s can have her clean the litter box.

Okay, Barbie with a pet is neat. But a peeing kitty? Sure, I believe in teaching kids responsibililty and that pets need to be taken care of… but still, a peeing kitty?

A day late.. here is my reponse to the Friday Five.

1. What’s your favorite time of day?

Strangely enough, since I am a night person and rarely get up before ten when I don’t have to, dawn when I have just gotten up (but not when I have been up all night) is my favorite time. Its so quiet out.. and fresh.. and new.

2. What’s your least favorite time of day?

Late morning and afternoon. I don’t know why. I like early morning, and I like night.. but no afternoons or late mornings.

3. Are you a morning person or a night owl? Does it cause any problems?

Night owl definately. Doesn’t cause any problems now since I so rarely have to be anywhere in the monring these days, but it has in th epast.

4. If you had an entire worry- and obligation-free day, what would you do with it?

I actually have quite a few of those. Like every day. I waste a lot of time in front of the TV, sew a bit, avoid housework…

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend?

Working on the quilt. Worrying that I don’t have enough fabric to finish.

I think I have mentioned in here or the journal (which I will update one of these days - promise) that about a month ago I decided I was going to use my new-to-me sewing machine to make a quilt. This was quite the project to take on considering I haven’t sewn a stitch since making a pencil pouch in junior high home ec. This was also quite an expensive project to start. I hadn’t realized just how expensive fabric is. Isn’t home made stuff supposed to be cheaper than store bought?

It’s going okay. Or it was going okay. I can’t for the life of me sew a perfectly straight seam, but they weren’t too wobbly. Until tonight. I was trimming quite a bit of fabric off of my finished blocks and I thought I could save a bit by cutting slightly smaller squares from two colors. And so I cut the squares for five blocks that way. Now, after having sewn them together, I realize that oops, they are too small. I don’t know what to do. I am hoping I can work them into the quilt by changing the design a little, but not sure how that would work yet. I don’t have enough fabric to simply toss them aside and redo with new fabric. And I know that the fabric shop is out of at least one of the fabrics I used, possibly others as well.

I feel like quite the failure at the moment. I will have to try and make due.

Can I just say I knew it?

For some time now Dr. Scott has been keeping the “hatless baldman index,” a (slightly tasteless in the mind of this married women who is really not normally a prude but who won’t even mention the S word in relation to herself in her own journal) count of how many times he and his wife.. um.. do it without a hat in there efforts to make a baby. I believe when he first started it (go find the entry yourself, I’m not looking it up) he wanted to see just how many times it would take before baby on the way.

When I read his September 11 entry I noticed immediately that there was no baldman index. There was the “inevitability index” (patients he lost) but no bald men. Was this some strange way of trying to be respectful of the victims in New York by not flaunting his trying for a happy thing? Or???

I wondered. And so I watched. And the index never returned. And now… this.

Conratulations Dr. Scott and Amy. Best wishes for an extremely easy pregnancy and a healthy and happy baby.

M. claimed that it was going to snow last night and today but alas, there has been no snow. Almost the end of October and no snow yet. So much for everyone’s claims that it would snow by the end of September. The forcast shows that it might snow Thursday.

I’m looking forward to the snow, although I am sure I will be sick of it by the end of winter. I’ve never experienced a winter with more than a few days of snow. Unfortunately this also means that I have never experienced a winter in a city that didn’t practically shut down at the first sign of snow, and so have never really learned to drive in the snow. I am not looking forward to that experience.

I kind of like this editorial’s suggestion of what to do with Mr. bin Laden. Instead of killing him kidnap him to Johns Hopkins University Hospital for a bit then return him to Afghanistan to enjoy life as Ms. Bin Laden.

And now, almost immediately after posting last week’s Friday Five a week late it is time for this week’s.

1. What’s the best gift you’ve ever received?

That would be the car my parent’s gave me (us) for a wedding gift. No contest there.

2. What’s the worst?

Another wedding gift, this one probably from one of M’s older relatives. It’s a terracotta pot with a wood trellis in it and some fake ivy. Very tacky. We got a few tacky gifts, but that one takes the cake.

3. What do you want for Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa this year?

Money. Money. And more money. It may not be very Christmasy, but I have bills to pay. The computer game Mist III (I have the first two). A gift certificate to a fabric shop. A larger quilting ruler (those things are insanely expensive).

4. As far as Holiday shopping goes, do you buy throughout the year or do it last-minute?

In the past it has always been last minute. However this year I am making several gifts and so have already started.

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend?

Being extremely careful not to hurt myself in any way. I don’t have health insurance until I can get into CAA on Monday. See entry below.

Oops. Big oops. M. can’t put me on his health insurance until I have gotten a bit further along in the immigration process. In the meantime I have been buying Visitor to Canada insurance from CAA. I just realized that it ran out on the 10th which means that I have been unisured all week. And since CAA closes in about fifteen minutes I can’t rush out and buy some now so I guess I will have to remain uninsured all weekend. Hope that I don’t break a leg or anything. Knocking on wood.

I’ve been meaning to do Heather’s Friday Five ever since I first read of it. Every Friday I forget. Last Friday I forgot as ususal, but I like the questions so I am answering them today before it becomes time to do this week’s.

1. Do you have any rituals or ways that you celebrate autumn (or spring for those in the southern hemisphere)?

Watching the rain. I’ve always lived in areas where it rained a lot during the fall. When I was a really little child I had a sturdy solid oak chest of drawers right under one of my windows and I would climb up on it and just sit there watching the rain come down. Sometimes I would find a book and read there for hours watching the rain out of the corner of my eye. Now I just watch for a moment at a time since I have to stand to see well through the upstairs windows and we keep the downstairs curtaind for privacy. If I ever design a house it will have window seats. I hope whatever house we end up buying whenever we are able to buy a house will have them.

2. Do you observe Halloween, Samhain, and/or All Saints’ Day?

Halloween.

3. Carve pumpkins or paint them?

Carve. I didn’t have any idea that people painted them until I was past my pumpkin days. How can you put a candle in a painted pumpkin? Although I suppose the painted ones last longer. When I have kids they will carve. But with those safety knives.

4. If you observe trick-or-treating, what will you be handing out at the door this year?

I haven’t decided yet. I can’t buy Halloween candy until the day of or the day before or it will be all gone long before it is time to hand it out.

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend?

Pretty much the same way I spent the week. Doing a lot of nothing.

Oh the horror. Just after I posted that last post I heard the noise that means I have new mail. So, all happy because I love getting email (I’m just terrible at answering it.. but I am getting caught up, all of you who I owe emails) and what do I find but a piece of spam! How dare they. Evil people. Does anyone actually do anything with spam other than delete it uread? How do they make their money? Why don’t they just give up.

I’ve only had the new email address about as long as I have had the domain. Maybe a month. This was the first piece of spam I have recieved at it. I feel as if my email has been defiled.

The plumber guy installed a new water heater for us sometime last week. It is amazing how fast the tub fills now that the hot water comes out as something other than a trickle. A fload, a fall, a gush.. but not a trickle.

Good news for all you pot smokers. The effects on the brain of using marijauna daily go away if you quit using for a while. The scary part is that they do last some time into the withdrawl period. I wish the article had said a bit more. How strong are these effects? Does it just make it hard to recall a word now and then? Or is it actually to the point that reactions are a bit slow and one shouldn’t drive? How about if one just smokes a bit every now and then, every couple of weeks or so? Do they have congnitive impariments that last beyond the high time? I know that people who just smoke every once in a while don’t have any withdrawl trouble if they quit all together, and accordig to this article daily pot smokers do. So there is at least some difference between doing it daily and just every once in a while.

I’ve never been able to understand why people smoke pot or drink daily. I suppose it’s just addiction with daily drunks, but its hard to get addicted to pot. I think that you need to smoke it pretty much daily to begin with to get addicted or something. Spend a little time in reality, for goodness sakes. Are those people such boring people that they can’t ever have a bit of fun without chemical enhancment?

I give up. It’s well after three in the morning and I don’t think the wildfeed summary is going to be posted tonight. Going to bed now. But I am sure checking for the wildfeed summary will be the first thing that I do when I get up.

I really did intend to remain completely unspoiled about what would happen on Buffy this season.. but somehow it hasn’t worked out that way.

The wildfeed was supposed to air at 4:00 AM EST. That’s 1:00 my time. So ever since 2:15 or so I have been hitting refresh about every three minutes to see if someone has posted the summary of tomorrow’s (well, Saturday’s for me) episode.

But I swear I won’t do that for the seventh episode. Or was it the sixth? The musical one anyway. That episode just sounds so good from the little I have heard so far.. I want to be surprised on that one. Now if I can just hold out.

Ursula Leguin has a new book out! An addition to the Earthsea books. I can’t wait to read it. She titled it The Other Wind and if you look for it on Amazon there is a much better description than the one that I linked to.

Just watched the Buffy episode “Afterlife” again. I taped it when it aird yesterday. Can I just take a moment to say how much I love that show?

In the rush to send donations to the red cross and New York victims let us not forget that other worthy causes need that money too and are probably receiving less as people ignore them in favor of New York.

Yes, human life is more important than the poor kitties from the above link. But donations to AIDS charities and children’s charities and the like are just as needed as help in New York. And the kitties are more important than the movie you were thinking of spending twelve dollars to see this weekend or the manicure you were going to get Monday.

I just think that if one is going to give the sacrifice should be one’s own, not the sacrifice of the charities that one would normally give to. Please, continue to give to local organizations and other worthy causes as if the terror in New York had never happened. Then sacrifice from your own life, even if it means living on cheap food like macaroni and cheese for a bit, to give to New York.

Perhaps I am just a little crazy.. but I am actually thinking of signing up for nanowrimo. Write an entire novel during the month of November? I can do it. Maybe. It’s not as if I have a whole lot keeping me busy. Though even with nothing to do I certainly don’t seem to get what I do have to do done very often. Like dishes….

So I’m sitting there whining to my darling, patient husband about how much I want a baby and how hard it is knowing that actually fulfilling that need right now would be completely foolish in our current financial state when my dearest friend from back home calls me to tell me that she is pregnant.

I feel terrible for her. It’s not something she had planned and the timing is terrible. But at the same time I feel just a little bit jealous.