Hello RPCA

Hello everyone,

I realize I've been a bit scarce for a while. I hope everyone who celebrates
it had a good Thanksgiving. And that those who don't had an extremely good
last Thursday in November. =o) The chief reason for my absence is that
yesterday, I completed my participation in National Novel Writing Month, and
I made it to the 50K word goal! =o) The sense of accomplishment is very
real. The cats of course supervised this procedure closely. Now I think
they're glad Meowmy is finished so that I can pay more attention to them,
again. =o) Nina and Francesca are fine, Pan is still with me. He's thinner
than I'd like him to be, and his hind legs don't have the strength they used
to, but he can still make it up onto the bed, and he still likes a good
cuddle. I don't think his number is quite up yet, although he is definitely
showing his age. His problem is a thyroid tumor, which is being managed with
pills. I just can't bring myself to put the poor old guy through radiation
or chemotherapy at this point in his life when he's almost 18 years old. If
he were ten or even five years younger, it might be a different story.

Now that we're experiencing relatively chilly weather (I know Marina would
not be impressed by what Californians think of as 'winter') I'm still
keeping the thermostat low, due to heating oil prices and wearing lots of
sweaters. But Nina has figured out an ingenious way to keep warm. I have a
down comforter on my bed, and she likes to get up on the bed and worm her
way UNDER the comforter. It makes my mattress look as if it has a
Nina-sized wart. Francesca has discovered that it's fun to sit on top of the
TV when I watch as it's nice and warm up there. She also likes to come sit
with me on the couch, although she has also discovered that she likes to
chew on Meowmy's hair, which is very distracting. All three cats very much
enjoyed the turkey scraps that came their way on Thanksgiving evening. Of
course all three cats like to cuddle up in a big pile on the bed together
and let Meowmy do her writing.

My present to me for completion of Nano was to promise myself a new laptop
computer. I went shopping yesterday at Frys, and realized that, if I wanted
to be able to use my vintage 1999 Hewlett Packard Pavilion desktop and the
new laptop interchangeably, as is my intention, my old computer will need a
lot of upgrading. =o\ I finally got paid this month for some work I did, so
I have about $1,200 to spend on the laptop, but upgrading my desktop ain't
going to be free if my desktop and laptop are going to be at all compatible.
I'm also wondering if all my old software will be useless once I do upgrade.
Curse you Bill Gates! But I did find an adorable little HP laptop
yesterday....

On the other hand, my Pavilion was supposedly designed to be upgradeable.
But the whole thing got a lot more complicated than I thought.

Melissa

What is this Novel Writing Month? (Congratualations! BTW. That is a very
hard thing to do). I"m glad Pan is still enjoying life. I was thinking about
him just the other day.


"Melissa Houle" wrote in message
...
Hello everyone,

I realize I've been a bit scarce for a while. I hope everyone who
celebrates
it had a good Thanksgiving. And that those who don't had an extremely good
last Thursday in November. =o) The chief reason for my absence is that
yesterday, I completed my participation in National Novel Writing Month,
and
I made it to the 50K word goal! =o) The sense of accomplishment is very
real. The cats of course supervised this procedure closely. Now I think
they're glad Meowmy is finished so that I can pay more attention to them,
again. =o) Nina and Francesca are fine, Pan is still with me. He's thinner
than I'd like him to be, and his hind legs don't have the strength they
used
to, but he can still make it up onto the bed, and he still likes a good
cuddle. I don't think his number is quite up yet, although he is
definitely
showing his age. His problem is a thyroid tumor, which is being managed
with
pills. I just can't bring myself to put the poor old guy through radiation
or chemotherapy at this point in his life when he's almost 18 years old.
If
he were ten or even five years younger, it might be a different story.

Now that we're experiencing relatively chilly weather (I know Marina would
not be impressed by what Californians think of as 'winter') I'm still
keeping the thermostat low, due to heating oil prices and wearing lots of
sweaters. But Nina has figured out an ingenious way to keep warm. I have a
down comforter on my bed, and she likes to get up on the bed and worm her
way UNDER the comforter. It makes my mattress look as if it has a
Nina-sized wart. Francesca has discovered that it's fun to sit on top of
the
TV when I watch as it's nice and warm up there. She also likes to come sit
with me on the couch, although she has also discovered that she likes to
chew on Meowmy's hair, which is very distracting. All three cats very much
enjoyed the turkey scraps that came their way on Thanksgiving evening. Of
course all three cats like to cuddle up in a big pile on the bed together
and let Meowmy do her writing.

My present to me for completion of Nano was to promise myself a new
laptop
computer. I went shopping yesterday at Frys, and realized that, if I
wanted
to be able to use my vintage 1999 Hewlett Packard Pavilion desktop and the
new laptop interchangeably, as is my intention, my old computer will need
a
lot of upgrading. =o\ I finally got paid this month for some work I did,
so
I have about $1,200 to spend on the laptop, but upgrading my desktop ain't
going to be free if my desktop and laptop are going to be at all
compatible.
I'm also wondering if all my old software will be useless once I do
upgrade.
Curse you Bill Gates! But I did find an adorable little HP laptop
yesterday....

On the other hand, my Pavilion was supposedly designed to be upgradeable.
But the whole thing got a lot more complicated than I thought.

Melissa

Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing month. The website is
nanowrimo.org. The premise is, participants must write a completely new
and original work of fiction during the month of November, totalling at
least 50K words on or before November 30th to be considered a winner.
Your story does not need to be complete by that date, so long as you
hit the magic number.

There is a great deal of camaraderie, and the exchange of
encouragement and commiseration between participants. I got into this
on the recommendation of several different friends, and decided to do
it, even though I thought it sounded insane. I was surprised though and
found it was actually great fun. And the feeling of accomplishment is
quite real. But it's possible to succeed at it, even for people who
work full time, if you pace yourself and keep going steadily each day,
writing a minimum of 1667 words. 50 K is about 100 pages or a little
over, which is really more of a novella than a novel.

Pan was my supervisor, but his main advice was "This book needs some
cats." He was disappointed that I didn't add any. At least not as real
and identifiable characters. =o) Nina sat on my computer desk drawer
and tried to eat the buttons off my cardigan. Francesca just popped by
to let me know her bowl was empty and wanted to know what I was going
to do about it. This being my fantasy world, however, I'm POSITIVE
there must be cats in it. =o) To get sorta maybe on topic for this
forum.

Melissa

Congratulations! Evveryone seems to think they could write a novel, but very
few can! As for computers they are as much a curse as a blessing. Still
can't remember what we did with our time before they came along!

--
Sandra

"Sandra" wrote in message
...
Congratulations! Evveryone seems to think they could write a novel, but
very
few can! As for computers they are as much a curse as a blessing. Still
can't remember what we did with our time before they came along!

--
Sandra



Isn't that the truth! LOL

kili

Melissa Houle wrote:

The chief reason for my absence is that yesterday, I completed my
participation in National Novel Writing Month, and I made it to the
50K word goal! =o) The sense of accomplishment is very real.

Oooo, congrats on nanowrimo!! A good friend of mine did this last year
and really enjoyed it. So, now that you've written it, are you going to
do anything more with it? Is the story completed?

Now that we're experiencing relatively chilly weather (I know Marina would
not be impressed by what Californians think of as 'winter')

Maybe not, but it's unseasonably cold right now for this area! (I live in
Oakland.) Even I am chilly, and I'm not very sensitive to cold.

But Nina has figured out an ingenious way to keep warm. I have a
down comforter on my bed, and she likes to get up on the bed and worm her
way UNDER the comforter. It makes my mattress look as if it has a
Nina-sized wart.

Roxy loves to do that, too, when I don't turn on the heat. (When I do
turn on the heat, she hangs over the back of the couch, soaking up the
heat rays from the wall space heater.) When she burrows under the
comforter, I like to call it a "Roxy lump".

Francesca has discovered that it's fun to sit on top of the
TV when I watch as it's nice and warm up there.

Yes, Licky has discovered this, too. Smudge likes to sprawl on the
computer monitor (I still have the big-ass non-flat-screen type). She
lies on top of the vent, and now the monitor does all this flicking
and clicking, like there are a bunch of little electrical shorts inside
it. Probably shorting on cat hairs.

Joyce

wrote:
Melissa Houle wrote:

The chief reason for my absence is that yesterday, I completed my
participation in National Novel Writing Month, and I made it to the
50K word goal! =o) The sense of accomplishment is very real.

Oooo, congrats on nanowrimo!! A good friend of mine did this last year
and really enjoyed it. So, now that you've written it, are you going to
do anything more with it? Is the story completed?

Thanks for the congratulations. The story is not yet complete, so
completing it will be the first step. I would like to TRY to publish it
when the MS is in some acceptable form for submission. The idea for
this story has been kicking around in my head for years but would run
and hide every time I turned on the computer. It turned out that
Nanowrimo was just crazy enough to work, and it finally made it out of
my head and onto the page. And of course, the whole thing would need to
be given a lot of polishing and editing before I tried to do anything
nearly so ambitious as even try to get a literary agent. =o)

Do be carefull about letting your cat sit on top of your monitor.
That's what Pan used to do, and he made it necessary for me to buy a
NEW monitor a few years back. Pan also has a thyroid tumor, now. I
don't know for sure that the two are related, so I don't want to be an
alarmist. But allowing your cat to perch up there may not be good for
its health, or the cat's health.

Melissa

"Shiral" wrote:
Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing month.

Ohh, novel writing! I think I've been too influenced by Suz's old
sig, because I mistook that for "navel watching". I thought to
myself, "Oh I could do that!" What genre did you write? Romance?
Fantasy? Horror? Horrific Romance?

LOL, Navel watching. =o) I don't think I'd be good for 30 days of that.


I wrote a fantasy novel, although it's mostly historical fantasy based
upon Renaissance Italy, however. No elves, dwarves, hobbits, or fauns,
and centaurs etc etc. It's main claim to being a fantasy novel is that
it doesn't take place in our world. And written under Feline
supervision, naturally. Now I need to catch up with the doings around
here.

Melissa

Welcome back! Congrats of the writing.
Best wishes,
Polonca and Soncek

Melissa Houle wrote:
Hello everyone,

I realize I've been a bit scarce for a while. I hope everyone who celebrates
it had a good Thanksgiving. And that those who don't had an extremely good
last Thursday in November. =o) The chief reason for my absence is that
yesterday, I completed my participation in National Novel Writing Month, and
I made it to the 50K word goal! =o) snip