Monday, October 31, 2011

The joys of fire.

Yesterday we went over to our friend's house, where we partyed for no reason over fish tacos (those things are yummier then they sound) and pecans, which we gathered fresh from the back yard ten smashed with wrenches. We also sat and poked a fire with sticks, which was seriously fun. And we listened to Calvin play guitar. And we also read the funnies before we fed them to the flames.

All in all, a very satisfactory evening. Except it started to rain, so then Calvin had to drag a hose out and spray it into the fire chimney thing, so we all got really wet while trying to put the fire out. And it also washed away all the beautiful smiley faces I'd drawn with my charred stick.

Oh, well. :)

Only 1 hour, 37 minutes....

I will very shortly be writing my novel. This means that at the current moment, I am panicing and gulping large amounts of apple juice. (we ran out of tea and milk.) I have come to the conclusion that I don't get out enough.






On the bright side, my looming novel-writing-dom has caused me to complete numorous frenzied novel-related stuff. Above is the cover for my novel, which is going to be a mystery set in Colonial Williamsburg. I had a tiny idea of what I intended the cover to look like, so I went ahead and made it, despite my woeful lack of a title.




Anyway, have fun and good luck this November! :D

Friday, October 21, 2011

8:14:8:21

Do you happen to know what this title means? Well, here it is; that strange string of numbers means that there are only 8 days, 14 hours, 8 minutes, and 21 seconds until November begins.

And it also means that there are only 8:14:8:21 until NaNoWriMo begins.






On the BRIGHT SIDE, I finished the outline for my story, which means I actually have a working road map for this novel. That's more than I can say for my novel last year: I spent all year studying instead of writing a workable outline. This year, I mostly skipped researching and just went straight to the outlining stage. Since it's a mystery, I just killed off all the victims with the plants I learned about in botnay.


So, YAY. MAYBE I'll live! And win! But for now... I think I'll just go crazy with stress. :P

Saturday, October 01, 2011

New house, old friends, and near-death experiences.

I might just start by announcing that this is the coolest place I've ever lived in.
It's like... Williamsburg-y!

Not to mention we already have friends living here, which is a definite plus.


So, my friend Calvin got a school project that involves collecting, like, forty different kinds of leaves from various trees. I happen to love to go places, so when my mom offered to go with them, she invited me too, and we jumped in the car and drove to this AWESOME camping park. We wandered around, looking for trees, and we came across this river with a very large rock cliff on the far side. Being unable to not climb the side of that glorious cliff (there were trees at the top) we ran across the river, teetering uncertainly on unstable rocks. Then, we climbed up the cliff, which wouldn't have been too hard except for the fact that we were laden down with various branches and tree books and a pair of scissors, and also Mommy's car keys.

We finally made it to the top and the first thing I saw was a nice little trail winding down the side of the cliff. It even had cute little "trail" signs. Good grief.

And of course, we found the elusive "Pin Oak" tree, which was the whole reason we climbed up there anyways. The only problem? It was hanging off the side of the cliff. So naturally, Calvin climbed up it, with me squeaking, "Um, Calvin? You know that's super dangerous, right?" and stuff like that. And he continued climbing up that tree and yelled back, "Will you speak at my funeral?"
And I was like, "Uh, sure?"
And then he yelled "Tell everyone I died in the name of science!"
And then the branch he was hanging on to snapped.

BUT HE DIDN'T DIE, which is the important thing. And we got the leaves, which is also very very good. So all's well that ends well, I guess.