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.

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.

The Life of Rats

So I thought I should show you how the cage looks, what the girls have to play with, what they eat, etc.

 So here's their mansion of a cage, where they spend most of their time. Up on top half there are three hammocks, all purchased from Booth Seventeen (which has since stopped producing them, since the owner has some severe health problems). There is also a litter box, which they're still figuring out, and the green food dish (behind which is a water bottle). The rope is basic cotton rope, two braided pieces twisted together and pulled as tightly as I could get it. They don't use it often. The wheel is a new acquisition - a Senior Wodent Wheel that Moe and Anise use decently frequently, and the other two mostly ignore.

On the lower half there's a nesting box, food dish, water bottle - and the newest thing in the cage, a cloth-stripfilled digging box that has some as of yet undiscovered treat puzzles.

Then of course there are the girls themselves - Moe down on the bottom, hoping I'll let her out, Ai nibbling on something from the food dish, and Anise and Absinthe sleeping up together in a hammock.
 

The food I feed them is a mixture of Kaytee food blocks (which have full nutrition for the girls), and Suebee's Rat Diet - a new batch I made just last Friday.

Suebee's Diet doesn't have full nutrition (according to The Rat Lady ... that's why I've added the lab blocks, which I may switch out for something else) but it does satisfy much of what they need - and, most important to me, it uses human-grade food and doesn't have anything in it I wouldn't eat myself. It's also cheaper than buying traditional food.

The big problem with rat food sold in most pet stores is that it's formulated for rats and mice - usually taking mouse diet into consideration more than rat diet, which leaves much to be desired for the rats - and gives them a lot of junk they don't need (peanuts, which can cause allergic reactions; corn, which if eaten in large quantities can cause illness or even death ...). That's the biggest reason I decided to make my own food for my girls.

So there's a bit more information about the little fuzzbutts!

June to August

So, the last time I posted anything meaningful was waaaay back in June. Even before Tene's birthday.

So, for Tene's birthday I made dinner and a cake. I, unfortunately, spent more time on the cake, when what Tene was looking forward to was me making him dinner and having it ready for him when he got home.

Regardless, I had a lot of fun making dinner and a cake for Tene (or, rather, making .... four cakes. They continually failed, and I was trying to make a multiple-layered cake - three of the four layers ended up being useable, if broken in half), and I enjoyed making him dinner.

The cake I made, as I mentioned above, ended up being three layers - and was a very rich chocolate with a chocolate ganache frosting. I also made a little red marzipan robot to decorate it with! The end result wasn't the most beautiful of things, but I was happy with it anyway, because it was fun to make and it was special and everything. The robot ended up looking like the Pusher Robot (possibly the Shover Robot, I can't remember which one is red) - here to protect us from the Terrible Secret of Space. Or like the red robot. That wasn't intended, it just ended up happening. And ... Tene asked me for a red robot, and I only had so much chance to do anything special with him (I wanted him to be much more detailed, but ran out of time).

I've been doing better at cooking dinner nightly the last few months; missing fewer nights than before. I'm really proud of myself for that. My main-made meal is still rather plain - pasta with Parmesan chicken and some type of vegetable or green.

I've become very fond of artichokes, personally. Especially their delicious centers. We eat at least one a week, and usually two each within the course of seven days. Hooray Costco! Bringing us healthy food in bulk!

I've also found that I'm okay at making steak. This was my second attempt, and was better than the first. Although I didn't actually cook the steak (Tene did that for me), I did do all the preparation for it, though. I was focusing on steaming the artichokes, asparagus, and broccoli, as well as frying (and burning) the onions.

I prefer working with chicken to steak, perhaps because I prefer lighter meat to red meat. Chicken is also a lot cheaper (hellooooo Costco and buying waaaay more chicken than I need!), although a lot nastier when raw (I wash my hands a dozen times when cooking with chicken, a lot less when cooking almost anything else).

Which brings me to tonight! Parmesan chicken, baked potatoes, baked Brussels sprouts, baked asparagus, and steamed artichokes. Made way-too-late to be reasonable, but we needed dinner.

In the last few months we've also added some things to our home - Now we have three bookshelves (two are full: one with books, the other with DVDs and video games), and a dining room table and chairs. We also have a nice red couch! Soon I should be getting my craft desk and shelves (ordered them from Ikea today), and hopefully within a few weeks or a month I should also get my computer desk as well. I'm excited that our home is coming together and things are looking so nice. It makes me feel nice and at home.

Speaking of my crafts - I've started up on them again. Right now I'm focusing on soft toys and possibly making a quilt for us for Christmas (a gift for us). I've also been working on fixing Tene's favorite blanket - a quilt his mother gave him when he left for college. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately I suppose), it has been well-loved, and is falling apart.

I'm doing the best I can to repair it, but it's taking a while and is difficult.

I'm hoping to get a sewing machine in the next few weeks/month or so, which will make my soft-toy making a lot easier (and save my back).

Otherwise, not much has been happening the last couple of months. Tene's been working and I've been sticking around taking care of home (and loving it). I'm starting to take up Yoga again, and I've joined a couple of local groups for books, writing, and crafts. I'm hoping to start taking classes again,  but I know it will be a while before I can - I'm really getting impatient, though, and wanting to return to school.

Well, that's all that's been going on around here. I've managed to kill three more plants (two small roses and a flowering plant called an Orange Star - I had named them Rosie and Posie, and ... I never named the orange one), and the girls are doing well. I'm hoping to get something to make a play area for them soon, so that I can have more than one of them out of the cage at the same time - as it is right now I'm too afraid of them running off in two (or four) different directions at once - leaving me unable to find them again.

So, that's it! I'll try to post more regularly again from now on.

The Girls Meet An Apple

I decided to put an apple in the girl's cage to see how they liked it.

They ended up finding my feet much more interesting, and it turns out that Moe is totally an attention whore.