Fin

It is done. The first full draft of the book. 380 pages. 99,150 words. Now comes the editing.

A little Twilight in the morning

Thanks to mininova.com I spent the morning watching Twilight with my computer hooked up to the flat screen. It gets better each time I watch it. I'm sure to watch it again before the long weekend is up.

Thankful

On this day of giving thanks, I wanted to share a few things I am incredibly grateful for: quiet moments shared with family and friends, the overwhelming love I have for my husband, the stories and characters that live in my head, laughing until it hurts, having friends who "get" my quirky personality and like me because of it not in spite of it, friendly smiles from strangers, the feeling of obsessiveness I get from reading a good book, passionate heartfelt songs that give me goosebumps, snuggling with kitties in bed on a lazy morning, putting the right words down on paper, a glass of crisp white wine, fictional characters that I love enough to cry over when they are gone, random cards and emails that let me know the people I love love me back.

Traditional oyster Thanksgiving dinner?

We purchased a 1/2 bushel of oysters in preparation of Mark's family coming down for Thanksgiving. Then, due to some unforseen and sad circumstances, plans changed. And we were still lerft with a cooler full of oysters that I wouldn't touch.

So we did what we've done for all of the other holidays when we couldn't be with family. We called our friends. Krysti, Andrea and John came over and we camped out around the kitchen table and polished off 2/3 of the oysters. The high point of the evening came when Mark broke out the bacon and sharp, white vermont cheddar and John decided Mark needed to add it to the Priddyboy's menu because it was the perfect meal.

The Edward to Erin's Bella

These are our seriuous Twilight faces.

Twilight: initial impressions

The movie totally rocked. Apart from a few minor things that annoyed the crap out of me, I LOVED this movie. I sat sandwiched in between Mark and Erin on an almost full row of people our friends had invited. Mark seemed annoyed but kep to his promise of not saying "Awww" once. Though he looked very much like he wanted to. Erin was so excited, she held my hand through most of the movie.

The Good:

• Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart - they were kinda perfect as Bella and Edward. Playful and serious, and intense and gorgeous.
• Voice overs from the book that made it feel like the book I fell in love with.
• Their first kiss - OMG! Much more powerful than I was expecting.
• Stupid Lamb quote was intact and exactly the way it was said in the book.
• The music kicked ass. Especially Muse during the baseball scene. (Erin and I sang along quietly to almost every song.)
• I cannot wait to see it again in Chatta with Mom and Karen!

The Bad:

• Edward sparkles so much better in my head.
• Edward shows Bella that he sparkles because he is trying to scare her, not because he's sharing some wonderful, perfect secret with her as in the book.
• Edward looked sick when he first smelled Bella not hungry or mad. It was sadly laughable.
• I liked Jacob. (And I HATE Jacob!)
• No "Stupid shiny Volvo owner"
• If I hadn't known the back story of why they loved each other, I probably would have been confused. And that makes me sad.

Twilight Tonight

Midnight, baby. T minus thirteen hours and counting.

Holy Half Blood Harry Pt. 2

This is quite possibly the best Harry Potter trailer ever.

Ramblings from the anti-social

• At trivia on Monday I talked to my friend Bret's girlfriend for the first time. We'd exchanged a few hellos and what nots before, but we had never actually had a real conversation. She sat next to me and we bonded over Edward. As it turns out, she's a really cool chick.

• On Wednesday, I went to Krysti and Billy's for a Rock Band party where, thankfully, they did not force me to participate. I toured the house, pet the sweet kitty who I was told doesn't usually like to be pet by strangers, and continued bonding with Erin over Twilight, and then Buffy and Linkin Park.

• I realized last night while talking to Ash for over an hour that I haven't seen her in almost a year. And though we email and comment on each others blogs frequently, I haven't spoken to her in that long as well. Hearing the Georgia twang creep softly back into her voice when she got really excited about something made me smile. It's been way too long and I've missed her way too much.

The end is near

I think that by the end of the month, I might be, maybe sorta kinda, finished with the full first draft of my book.

Almost Perfect

We had a perfect score through the first three rounds of trivia. Bonus questions included. Things were looking up. Then Adam, the trivia host said that if out team got all questions right in the last category we would be the first team in two years to have a perfect game. So naturally, we were screwed.

And then, we got the last set of questions. Our confidence level was high. We felt pretty good about most of the answers. We at least had answers for all of them but the bonus. The questions had to do with giving the nickame of a convict, whose real name we were given. While all of us threw out any names of criminals we could think of Micha, who never talks, said was that the guy who escaped from Alcatraz? None of us knew. So we put some other answer down. We should know by now that when Micha answers, it's right. He only answers when he knows he's right.

So on our almost perfect round, the only question we missed was the bonus question on the very last round.

He must really love me

A few weeks ago, I was complaining to Mark that I didn't think I could drive to TN for Aria's wedding knowing that Twilight came out at midnight and I hadn't seen it yet. Those eight and a half hours seemed daunting in my current obsessive state of mind. This is the exchange that followed:

Mark: "I'll go see it with you at midnight."
Me: "Seriously? You'll go see Twilight with me?"
Mark: "Yes. I know how badly you want to see it."
Me: "You'll go at midnight? What about having to be at work early?"
Mark: "It's okay. I'll deal with the lack of sleep if you want to see it before you leave."

So I just bought my tickets to see Twilight at 12:01 am on 11/21 from www.fandango.com so he can't back out. (though I think he actually wants to see it so he knows how the big fight with james ends. He didn't get that far in the book on CD on the last drive from TN.)