In between fiddling with That Damned Laptop and my NaNo project pages and Quatro, The Undead PC… I have managed to churn out 5,000 words or so over the course of three days. This means that I’m actually on track, oddly enough.
The laptop trouble turned out to be entirely the fault of Mandrake 9.0, the KDE portion of which is hopelessly befouled. I installed it onto one of my desktop PCs at home and had even worse performance than I did on the laptop! Desperate to get a Linux-based writing utensil working, I installed (sigh) RedHat 8.0. It’s working, but I’m not as happy as I would have been with a good Mandrake rig. Oh well. Once November ends I can blow it straight to hell and try something else.
A fair portion of my weekend was spent at Java Vivace in NW Portland hanging out with fellow WriMos. An impromptu kick-off party was held Saturday afternoon, while yesterday was our “more regular” semi-impromptu meeting. I got there early yesterday and managed to get most of the day’s quota done between bites of omelette and sips of cocoa.
As an aside, is it just me or do coffee shops have the world’s worst hot chocolate? Bland, lifeless cocoa is the bane of my existence. One of the banes, anyway. It doesn’t get better with whipped cream, I can assure you. Someone, please, point me towards a place that serves really tasty and sweet hot chocolate.
To sum up, not only am I solidly on track but I have a working progress chart, backup copies of my work on almost half a dozen computers, and a new group of friends to chat with both online and in person. And I’m sure we’ll stay in touch for at least a couple of weeks after November has passed…
Comments
7 responses to “So, Karel, how’s that writing thing coming?”
after your writing extraveganza give knoppix a try.. it’s debian based and will boot/run off a CD.. it’s pretty slick.
How interesting. Does that make you the second person to suggest I try Knoppix… or the first? 😉
When going to a coffee shop see if they make steamers – A chocolate steamer w/ a little carmel added is awesome, but just a chocolate steamer is often better than their hot chocolate out of some package. There should be no coffee in the steamer unless you request although I have run into newbie barristas who have tried to put coffee in my steamers.
Coffee shop hot chocolates *are* usually good. (Makes me wonder about the sanity of coffee shops in Portland…hmmm…) But if they don’t add enough chocolate to the milk then it’s a rather nasty concoction. Try adding a flavor to ze concoction (mint is a good one to start with, vanilla doesn’t do much for the flavor of the cocoa) and see if that helps.
It’s a bit of a drive :P, but if you want the best hot chocolate, you have to come to Lancaster County, PA. I know a dairy where you can get this absolutely delicious thick chocolate milk. Heat it up and you have hot chocolate to die for. It puts those sugar packet dealies to shame and honestly, was one of the best things I discovered when I moved to Lancaster County!
You’ve got more gumption than I do…I heard about the NaNo project and quailed in my boots. Good luck & smooth writing! Though I hope it’s not occupying all your free time.
next time, just bring yer own container of yer favorite hot chocolate! that way you have nothing to complain about, except for maybe the noise.
happy writing,
innowen
(7000 and counting!)