Falling behind...

Unless I do something in the next couple of hours, I shall wake tomorrow 3.6 days behind the pace for NaNoWriMo, which will really suck considering that the effort is 8 days old. Then again, LJ friend rjlippincott managed to surge ahead in the first few days, so perhaps it will be possible to surge from behind later on.

As much as I should probably give up the car I rented in Albuquerque, the back and forth between home and the store is such as to make me glad I have a set of wheels that are not attached to a bicycle. In a day or so the issue will be moot, as it will cost me more to give up the car than to return it to Albuquerque. After all, there are a mere four days left until I go to Albuquerque for my interpretation assignment. If I could figure out a way to get from there back to Pagosa next weekend, the problem would be solved. Hmmm.

This morning, I finished the IBSL job (IBSL = itty bitty splotchy letters), and unless I get something tomorrow via my client that gives me a better than even shot at deciphering the content of this one unfortunate sidebar that I have deemed to be illegible, I'm likely to send what I have to my client.

Then there are the two remaining hazard reports, the deadline for which has been slipping like novice skater on winter's first ice (but which appears to have stabilized for tomorrow, so I better get my wings level PDQ).

Cheers...

Mirabile dictu!

It's sort of amazing what solitude will do for you. Or to you.

The rational part of my mind tells me that this whole NaNoWriMo thing is hogwash. And yet, there is a certain unfulfilled part of me that, like Special Agent Mulder, just wants to believe. I have no illusions that whatever I may write would not hold the attention of a really bored person for more than a few seconds, but after many years of writing non-fiction, and a career based on expressing in English what others can only say in Russian, the idea of stringing 50,000 words in a row to tell some kind of story, even haltingly, seems insanely attractive.

So, I just finished laying down enough words to cut my NaNoWriMo deficit to 2.5 days, relying mostly on a kind of mental jiu-jitsu that had me thinking of the plot (not worth talking about) with my real life living with Galina. Of course, the facts have been changed to protect the guilty, but that - as the man says - is life.

The darned thing is X rated, or just about. Hmmm.

Cheers...

On the (approximate) eve of November 10...

From a letter by Corp. Jeffrey Starr, USMC:

I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq. it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.

RIP, Mac... and semper fi.

Cheers...