Sunday, October 17, 2010

NaNoWriMo 2010 ....

Yep, despite failing the last three years, I'm going to be attempting NaNoWriMo again this year.

So, as usual, starting Monday the first of November, 2010, I'll be attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That's almost 1700 words a day. I'm nervous, but I know I have plenty of time to do that (7 pages a day? Totally within reason, I think). I'm more nervous that I'm *also* going to be doing some other things: making Christmas presents for people being the Big Thing that I'm thinking about right now. Every year I start on such gifts too late in the season to get people their gifts by Christmas ... or I just give up. This year I've decided I'm going to start working on some of them tomorrow - and my plan is to have them given away or shipped off by 1 December (except in the case of one friend, Zoie, who I'm sending her gift to by 15 November, because she's leaving for Japan in early December).

This year I've decided to do some preparation work. Writing by the seat of my pants has failed me miserably the past three years, so it's time to try something new. I'm planning on having a rough outline, characters, and setting and plot built before November first, so that if/when I get stuck on things I'll have a way out. Less writers block is my intended goal, and I'm really hoping it works out the way I want it to.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Of Cavemen and Cold Monsters

It's been a month or so since I last posted, so I figured I should finally get to it. Overall, our lives have been quiet and uneventful, which has been rather nice. We're still settling in, we're enjoying what we have. It's nice.

The biggest thing going on for us right now is that we've decided to change our diet a bit. We are going onto a Paleo diet for the next month or so, to see if we feel healthier having done so or not.

What this means is that we're cutting out added sugar or sweeteners (with the exception of honey and agave nectar), and all grains and grain products. This means no more pasta, sandwiches, cookies, cakes, ice cream ....

I'm taking it mostly in stride. I've agreed to try this thing out with Tene, with the exception that I'm going to eat mostly Paleo - with sweets sometimes thrown in (I can't just totallly give up my sweets, after all).

The reasons we're trying this out is because we've heard a lot of good things about it from a friend we've made out this way, Frank, and because it seems like a very healthy choice. I haven't been eating enough, at all, lately - so hopefully I'll eat more on this diet and feel better for it. Tene had some blood work done for a physical, and while he's not horrible - he tends to be on the upper side of "normal" for the bad things, and the lower side for the good stuff. So we're also hoping that this will get him (and me - I didn't get any work done, but I would be surprised if my results were very different) to a more balanced place, health wise.

And, if you didn't get it from the name, the idea behind Paleo is that we eat what our bodies have evolved to eat - it's based on things that were available before the agricultural revolution, so things available to our hunter-gatherer or cavemen ancestors. I've been eating a lot of berries and nuts, and I'm enjoying all the fruit and vegetables. I could do without cooking so much meat, though. I hate handling it when it's raw. It's just gross.

We're also exercising more - Dance Dance Revolution, Yoga, I'm thinking of taking up jogging (maaaaaaybe), and maybe CrossFit - which a lot of Paleo-people like to do. I'm sick of how easily I get exhausted.

The only other big thing to happen for us is that we both got horribly sick the last two weeks. It was a basic cold - but it seemed like it laid us out for a good week or so, much longer than I was expecting it to.

Other than that, we're doing well and are enjoying our lives. We've been able to purchase a TV and a PS3, so we've got some more "luxury" items in our home, which has been nice - especially while we were sick. There are still a few things we want that fit into that category, but overall I think we're doing well.