Go me!

I just won the very first Ottawa regional word war of November! We have a chatroom to hold virtual write-ins in, so we all hung out in there for the few minutes before the end of the day. Then we started at midnight sharp, cranked out words for 15 minutes, and then all posted our word counts. It was a pretty narrow margin, but I actually won!

Happy NaNo-ing, everyone.

Houston, we've fixed the problem

After about an hour of messing around, I finally managed to hook my laptop up to my dad's wireless internet. Now I can novel and attend the virtual write-in at midnight without having to hog my dad's desktop. And besides that, when I'm here I can use the internet wherever without being tied to the modem with a cable.

4 hours 15 minutes 'till novel!

And I am so excited it's ridiculous. I'll have time to get in a horror movie or maybe two (if they're short) before midnight, but once that clock hits twelve I get to delve into all sorts of novel-ey goodness.

Happy Halloween!

Awesomeness

So last night was the Ottawa regional NaNoWriMo kick-off party, and it rocked. The friend who I was planning to bring missed the bus, so I went alone. I don't think he really would have enjoyed it anyway, it was just a bunch of people talking excitedly about their novels (my idea of fun, not really his). Besides that, the service was pretty bad and the food wasn't exceptionally great (everything I had was good except the chicken fried rice). The couple sitting next to me each ordered an appetizer and a main dish, and the food arrived in the following order with long breaks in between: husband's main dish, wife's main dish, wife's appetizer, husband's appetizer. Mine took a really long time, and the girl on the other side of me didn't even get her food at all.

But somehow, it was still fun. I got some great ideas, there were a couple fun activities, and everyone was so great and weird. It was kick-ass. And apparently, I'm some kind of hero for having been able to win NaNo last year without doing any write-ins and handwriting it. It was just cool all around. And there was a guy there who looked like Fred Flintstone.

Titleytitleytitleytitle

So the programming field trip is going well, today we found out that Ubisoft only offers tours for groups up to 25, which means we can't bring the grade 10 classes (darn...) so it'll just be our awesome class of awesomeness. The plan so far is just to bus to the Ubisoft headquarters, leave the bus, go eat lunch and wander around for a bit, get back to Ubisoft for the tour, get back on the bus, and come home. We're still looking for other interesting things to do in Montreal, though (and the fact that it needs to be within walking distance of Ubisoft doesn't help). Not to mention the failing search for a nearby restaurant or, preferably, fast food joint, that is currently sucking.

Time to cave in and save some tabs for songs tuned 1/2 step down and go play guitar.

Forecast for tomorrow...

20 to 30 cm of snow. Out of nowhere. First snow of the season and we get a god damn foot of the stuff. They better be wrong about this one.

In other news, 4 days, 4 hours, and 10 minutes until NaNoWriMo!

Awesomeness

Today went by pretty fast. All my classes felt short.

In art, my teacher told the grade 11s to get pens and ink and get to work on our projects before giving the grade 12s instructions. We were all well underway by the time they got all set up. Then he told them to each grab an easel, set it up somewhere around the class, and draw some grade 11s. We were all like "say what?" but it didn't end up bothering me, for one, because it's not like I could tell if any of them were drawing me.

And I managed to get one of my friends to come with me to the Ottawa NaNoWriMo kick-off party on Wednesday (my mom said I'm not allowed to go alone), so that'll be good fun. Definitely looking forward to it, and just remembered that I have to RSVP in the next 25 minutes, so I'd better get on that soon.

*Does a happy dance*

5 days, 7 hours, 17 minutes until NaNoWriMo starts. And I *might* be able to go to the kick-off party for my region if I can convince one of my friends to go because my mom doesn't want me bussing around downtown alone at night. *Is excited*

Good feeling gone

Not even George & Alastair's super-up-cheering powers can help with this one.

I was talking to an old friend of mine on msn and asked her if she wanted to go catch a movie this weekend and she said she couldn't because her sister's visiting and it made me realize how much I miss her but then I realized that I just miss being normal and not being able to recite a massive list of people I 'used to know' and I hate myself for thinking this but I hate her because she's the only person I know who can make me cry and it's really fucking hard to type when you can't see the screen and now my nose is all drippy and I have to go get a kleenex.

This sucks.

Yesssssss!

So I turned my house upside-down, working my way up from the basement, and finally found my slippers, George & Alastair. They're wonderful little puppies that keep my feet warm and safe from that damn ceramic tile in the morning. Here they are:




I am seriously the happiest person in the world right now. These slippers are not leaving my feet ever, ever again.

:(

Still no sign of the slippers. It's been a week now.

In other news, only 7 days, 7 hours, and 53 minutes until NaNoWriMo!

Today

Getting out of bed in the morning was a traumatizing event, as usual. I lost my big fluffy slippers about a week ago and still haven't found them, so running across the ceramic tile at the bottom of the stairs was fun.

In art the grade 12s were drawing pieces of sliced up red cabbage, but one of them wasn't exactly having fun so he started this big philosophical discussion about cabbage with our teacher. Partway through the conversation, the phone rang, and my teacher picked it up and said "we're looking for the transcendental image of perfection in cabbage." he then proceeded to talk to the person about cabbages for a minute before they asked for someone and he replied "sorry, but she's dealing with a severed hand right now and can't come down." (we were drawing bones). There's a reason why no one comes to or calls the art room unless it's completely necessary, especially ever since he told a pair of grade 10s to "go die" because they were bothering us with Student Vote Day crap. But yeah, art class is always interesting if nothing else.

Yesterday

It was parent-teacher interviews last night, so all our classes were cut short and we got let out early, so me and a couple friends made a quick trip to Timmy's before all heading home. From there, I went to Scotiabank Place to volunteer at the Sens 50/50 draw, which was awesome fun. I sold tickets until the start of the second period, counted my money, ate pizza, and watched the rest of the game. Then I got a ride home from a girl in my French class who I don't really know that well but she's really nice (although a little happy-go-lucky) and got stuck in traffic. It was fun listening to her yell at all the people who cut her off. It was also funny, after all the "and this is why I hate hockey", when a song came on the radio, she cranked it up really loud, yelled "I LOVE hockey!" and started singing along.

Sweet!

Today in computer programming class my teacher said that he wanted to find a field trip for us to go on to Toronto or Montreal or somewhere fun (the original suggestion was Wonderland, but we couldn't think of a way to justify it as relevant). Me and Sarah (the only other girl in the class, sometimes it gets way too testosteroney in that room with so many guys in there) spent the whole class looking for somewhere to go and eventually we found the Ubisoft website (well, we couldn't actually get on it because the school filters blocked it but the little blurb that showed up in google had an email). So she emailed them about tours and costs and whatnot, and hopefully we'll get to go there on a field trip. It'll be a party and a half.

The only thing about going to Montreal, though, is that it'll probably be a one day thing. Our teacher was saying that if we went to Toronto we'd stay overnight because he hates the field trips that are like "leave at 5 in the morning, spend 4 1/2 hours on a bus, go on the field trip, spend another 4 1/2 hours on the bus, get back at 11". But Montreal's closer, so we probably won't stay the night there. It'll still be a cool trip, though. My teacher's awesome and my classmates are pretty cool people, and we fully intend to spend an hour at ubisoft and the rest of the time doing something more interesting that we haven't figured out yet. But the suggestion of "strip club" has been raised and shot down a good dozen times...

Oh, the insanity

This morning, my alarm clock woke me up, but I was so tired it was just like "what's going on/why are you making noise/how do I shut this thing off?" so I just swatted at it for a bit before eventually switching it off. Then, 50 minutes later, my mom came into my room to ask me when I was getting up ><. And the best part was, my arm was asleep, so when I tried to prop myself up I just collapsed back down again.



Today in art class my teacher set up a big, complicated still life with a cello and shells and a spine and a skull and twigs and a gourd and shiny, fold-ey cloth. Then he told us to draw it three times, from three different points of view, with three different types of media. We had about 20 minutes to do each sketch. I managed to get the first one *done*, but the second two I didn't even manage to finish a pencil underdrawing. And it was funny whenever he told us to move and start a new one because everyone scrambled to get to a different desk (they were in a circle around the still life) and get different materials. All in all it was pretty frantic.



Other interesting things that happened: I almost choked on a bite of my sandwich at lunch during a minor altercation involving a balloon and a garbage can and when I got asked to put the answer for a homework question (that I hadn't done) on the board, I tried to make it up as I went along, but ended up half answering a different question (but at least I copied the right final answer out of the textbook...).

Suburbia sickens me

I seriously need to get out of here. My mom was driving me and my brother back from our dad's, and most of the drive is through country so I usually just look out the window because the view is all fields and trees and clouds and sunsets and old barns. When we got into town, there was this really sudden change from the nice scenery to rows upon rows of townhomes stretching off forever, and it made me nauseous. I actually had to close my eyes because I felt like I was about to puke.

I love country landscapes with squares of fields where you can see the borders of them and lines of trees and falling apart old wooden fences and flocks of Canada geese, and I love cityscapes and the city atmosphere with all the bustling and interesting people hurrying by, giving you glimpses into thousands of lives every day. But I can't stand the suburbs. I can't wait until I can get out and move to the city.