Very Little To Add

Except this: I won NaNoWriMo! I did it! I'm so excited!

Now I just have to finish writing my novel and then I can move on to the attempting to get published stage.

I Remember Why I Have A Blog

After writing and writing and nearly finishing my 50,000 words I have suddenly remembered why I have a blog.

There are moments when I stare at my novel and contemplate what an idiot I must be to word sentences the way I do. Or I just think how stupid this is that I cannot get my book to say what I want it to say. Sometimes it's all wrong and I am infuriated over the fact that I seem incapable of getting my points across. The characters are not as strong as I want them to be. The setting itself makes little sense. The suspense is not suspenseful. I just want to wrinkle pages and toss them in the trash can. You get the picture.

I went back over some of my older blog entries yesterday and then I remembered why I keep this thing around. When I read my better entries I think to myself, "A poor writer and an idiot could never have come up with that." So, in essence, this blog makes me feel good about myself. It's a roundabout form of self-encouragement. That's why I have it.

NaNoWriMo

As of tomorrow I will have three days to finish my novel. I am nowhere near the ending, however, so I suspect that it will be longer than 50,000 words when all is said and done. I currently have over 43,000 words. I have done most of this without caffeine and I am dang proud of myself. When I have finished writing for this month I will tell you all about the experience of participating in NaNoWriMo. I will then save all of the information off of my computer. My computer will then be packed into a box and sent off to someplace far away where strangers will repair its motherboard and return it to me free of charge. It will work better once they do that. In fact, it will earn its name: The Heart of Gold, after the ship in "Hitchikers Guide." But this does mean something. I probably won't be online much for the first couple weeks of December due to the missing computer. Don't expect many posts from yours truly.

Happy Thanksgiving

Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

I thought that this was an insightful editorial so read it as you contemplate the day, enjoy your turkey and watch football.

More Funny Stuff

After three years Jose Padilla has finally been indicted. Of course, he was not indicted for any of the reasons given by the government which held him three years without charges. Isn't that funny? He's still a terrorist, just not the terrorist we thought he was.

Christmas Shopping In Southern Indiana

I am not looking forward to standing in line this holiday season. Especially not with the crazies in this town and surrounding area.

You may have heard about the shortage of XBoxes. My area is no different when it comes to people wanting their toys. Or is it?

Now, keep in mind I live in a very liberal neighborhood. Of the people I know here the twenty or so regulars at my church are mostly conservative. Of the people I don't know, none of them are conservative. Basically, if you are a conservative you are part of unheard and basically non-existent minority.

So, today one of my new co-workers came into the office and told us about her ordeal to buy an XBox last night. She stood in line for five hours and the guy in front of her got the last one. She called around and no others were to be found.

She had another interesting story about a man who bought an XBox. He was a handicapped man in a wheelchair who had Down's Syndrome. He was lucky enough to get an XBox. At which point other customers began making threats against said handicapped man and began to follow him out of the store waiting for a chance to attack. The man had to be escorted out of Wal-Mart because people were going to jump him for his XBox.

Remember I live in a liberal town, full of liberal people.

Okay, these are people who will not die for their country. These are people who oppose killing terrorists. They oppose killing people who want to kill them. These are people who will not take a strong stance against criminals and instead call for rehabilitation. And these are people who would beat up a mentally handicapped man in a wheelchair to get their goldarned XBox.

That's all I have to say.

Edit:

I forgot to mention this: Most of the people who bought the XBox went back home and put them up on ebay for at least twice as much as what they paid. Capitalism is good, apparently, when it works in our favor. Even if our political views speak against it.

Deep Thought

It just seems like everyone I know is in deep thought at the moment. Or has deep thoughts to express. And it makes me wish that I did not live so far from most of the people I care about. It makes me wish I could go on a road trip to see them and hear their thoughts spoken.

Email and instant messengers are really cool inventions. I must admit I am probably one of their biggest fans. In many cases I use email before I pick up the phone. That may have something to do with the fact that I only use a cell phone and I do not wish to run out of minutes for the month. Or it may be because I often express my thoughts better in writing than in words. It does not matter. Phones are not the same as actually seeing a person either. You can talk into a telephone, you can hear the voice of the person you miss, but you cannot see the person's facial expressions, nor can he or she see yours. The voices are often distorted as well. It's just not the same.

I'm all for long distance friendships. In fact, most of my friendships are long distance. I am very good about keeping up with people. For the most part. But I forget what people look like, and I forget the sound of their voices. There is nothing better than the spontaneity of actually being around one's friends. The funny things that happen when you are with friends are infinitely more funny than the funny things that happen during a telephone conversation or during an email back and forth.

At the moment, it's not Hillsdale I miss, it's not Costa Rica that I miss, it's not even Michigan that I miss. It is all of you who are my friends. I wonder if it is almost better for me to be stuck in a place far away from all my friends. It forces me to come out of my shell a lot more and really talk to people. I also get to travel to see people and I love traveling. Yeah, that's a great way to look at this in a positive way. But on the other hand, it just sucks so much to be so far away from all of you! And you know who you are, you're the people I went to college with and the ones who transferred to other schools or chose another path entirely. You're my family in Michigan, Utah and Texas. You're the cool person I still keep up with who went to Costa Rica with me five long years ago. You're my friends whom I have known since I was a kid. You're also those friends who cannot be defined in any above category: Trump. I just miss everyone. I wish I had a big enough paycheck to cover the cost of two or three road trips.

The Department of Needless Bureaucracy

So I worked at this call center today and one of the things that I did was take calls for the Indiana Unclaimed Property Division. It was my job to look up people's unclaimed property, get the id number, put that into a form I had on the computer, get all their address information and tell them that the form would be sent to them in 7 to 10 business days. So, as Craig put it, I was working for The Department of Getting People's Information So A Claim Form Could Be Sent To Them. Now, when people wanted to know how to fill the form out, they would call and freak out and then I would give them another number to call. This was a number where they could reach (again, Craig's title) The Department of Filling Out Forms. That is because I did not even send out the forms, I had never seen the forms, so I did not know what was on them. Instead, The Department of Sending Out Forms did that. And I would add that a member of The Department of Filling 0ut Forms was in the cubicle right next to me, but I could not have the information on how to fill out forms because I was answering calls for The Department of Getting People's Information So A Claim Form Could Be Sent To Them. There is another department that I know of involved in this whole process as well. That's The Department of Processing Claims. Oh yeah, and there's The Department of Answering Questions About The Claim's Status. And then there's . . .

Dont you love bureaucracy? I mean, it would not be right if we did not make people jump through at least five hoops in order to get anything done. We are the state after all. We keep good, productive members of society paid so that they can answer fifteen phone calls a day.

Approval Ratings

When starting up my Firefox today I noticed that my home page of realclearpolitics.com had Bush's latest approval ratings up. I always thought that approval ratings were stupid. I still think that. There are several reasons for this.

First, what do they mean? That some select group of people out there don't like what the president is doing. Who is that group? Are they all in the same area? Are they a group that would not like what he was doing if he was Jesus? I mean, really, who are these people? I don't get polled. Oh wait, I don't have a phone. I have only known one person in my entire life who got polled and it wasn't for approval ratings.

Second, if I was president and someone came in and handed me a report and it said approval ratings I would shred it without looking at it. Something tells me that Bush does that too.

Third, it is not so much what people think of you and how you do your job that matters. It is how you do your job. If you know you're doing your job right than who cares what others think? If, on the other hand, you don't know, then ask people you trust. Don't just ask anyone. I mean, what good is the opinion of dozens of people who don't know you. And furthermore, if your job is something like the presidency then what good is the opinion of a whole bunch of people who will never be president and have no idea how terrible having that much responsibility would be.

That, in effect, is why I think approval ratings are stupid.

Now, I've got to get back to writing. I must apologize, but I can't post excerpts from my book because I fear that people would steal them. It is a science fiction novel about two genetically engineered humans. The main character is neither one of them, however, since you can't have the main character be someone whom no one can relate to. I'll tell you what. In another post, I'll do some plot summary. Some very vague plot summary. And I will get to that Pence post soon. I will.

Gonzo!

I was thinking of the moment in "A Muppets' Christmas Carol" where Rizzo the Rat gets attacked by a cat Muppet and he goes running around in circles shouting to Gonzo, "Help me! Save me! Help me! Save me!" That's because at the moment, I feel like doing the same.

Congratulations, I'm a working woman. That means I have no freaking time, ever! That means that I am going to get behind in NaNoWriMo very quickly. And that means that I cannot write thought provoking posts on my beloved blog where I generally put thought provoking, uh, thoughts. It also means I can pay off my college loans, and at the moment that's more important than any of this other crap. Well, no it's not, but it is more immediate.

I hope my readers do not abandon me in the month of November. Perhaps I should put some excerpts from my book up. Nahh, I'm a very private person when it comes to writing and I hate plagiarism. You can never be too careful with your own writing as my friend Foley has shown me through the sad misfortune of her dad's book being stolen by a potential publishing company that refused to publish the work up front and then published it later as their own idea. I do intend to try to find a reputable publisher for my book once I have edited it.

This is a great big ramble. And I'm sorry. I have to start a war in my book. So I have decided that I am going to take all the liberal ideas (which I totally disagree with, it was a massive beaurocratic miscommunication and I have heard that 500 tons of partially enriched uranium were found in Iraq last year) of how Bush lied and everything and have this government I created start a war based upon lies of a similar nature. Of course, my government is a bad government and it's very imperialistic. Anyways, so I am stalling at the moment because I am trying to decide how best to introduce my war into my book. I shouldn't be telling you all this, but since I didn't give many details you won't be able to steal my ideas. If you do steal my ideas, believe me, you will regret it. Mwahahaha.

Okay, this is Esther, tired and stalling. I am kind of an odd person really. Oh, like you could not figure that out. To T and A, I want to write a Pence post on those articles you sent, but it's kind of not happening very quickly. Maybe I'll do that on Sunday.