i'm developing a cough. maybe i'm consumptive, or i've caught black lung disease or something (as though it's contagious). or maybe it's because i had a small oven fire and inhaled too much smoke from it last weekend... whatever it is, i feel anachronistic, hunched over my writing tablet, candles glowing, blanket covering my shoulders, cold hands reaching up to cover my mouth as i cough weakly... just a few thousand more words, and i can get some rest... sigh...

woe, oh woe! i am uninspired. my muse, louise the 7" giraffe, is not exactly doing her job. maybe it's because the last time a kid was over here, louise lost an ear, so she can't hear my screams. or maybe it's just because she's a plastic giraffe.

on the other hand, i'm very proud of all the people who have completed their novels so far. way to go! how exciting to see so many names up there! i'll be joining you soon!

john at work was nice enough to put my novel-writing goal into perspective this morning. "what's better than writing 50,000 words in thirty days?" he asked me. "writing 20,000 words in five days." holy cow, people, i don't think i'm going to make it. if i only had a plot. maybe i'll turn it into some kind of david lynchian nonsensical nothing of a novel that just goes somewhere really weird and uncomfortable. it's not like i'm going to let anybody read it.

i hope you all had a happy thanksgiving, or, if you're not into that sort of thing, a happy four days off. and if you didn't have time off, and you don't celebrate thanksgiving, i hope you're just plain happy.

okay, so i'm rambling. i'm avoiding writing my novel. for something far more amusing than my stupid rattling on, all you vader haters out there can go check out the star wars gangsta rap, if you haven't already seen it. kick it old school.

this thanksgiving holiday is jointly sponsored by coca-cola, inc. and the walt disney corporation. may it be a pleasant one.

so, it's thanksgiving tomorrow. to me, this means that i have four days to spend writing my novel. or, rather, it means i have four days to pretend like i'm going to write my novel, but really i'll fill that time up with sleep or food or sitting and staring out the window or doing anything i can to avoid actually writing my novel. one of my characters has been about to go on a date for a week now, and i think she's kinda getting antsy. she's just hopped in her yellow 'le car', navigated the rain-soaked streets, and is pulling up to the restaurant. i'm trying to decide whether or not it will go well.

you know how you're not supposed to put forks in your blender? yeah, i think most people know this rule. i even know this rule, but i guess i temporarily forgot it while making a pumpkin pie (from scratch!) for lesile's birthday/house-iversary. i was making pumpkin puree for the pie, and figured i could get away with just nudging the pumpkin floating at the top down to the bottom where the blades of death awaited it. it didn't seem to be working, so, being the genius that i am, i decided to push a little more. then there was a loud clanking sound and lots of orange splatters. allow me to emphasize that: lots of orange splatters. it took me a second to realize that the fork had been yanked out of my hand and was rattling around in the blender, but i finally figured out that the "off" button on my blender really needed to be pressed.

did i mention the pumpkin splatters? i ended up with pumpkin puree all over my face, in my hair, on my glasses, up on the cieling, the cupboards... the actual force with which the pumpkin exited the blender must have been tremendous. i should have taken a picture.

there is good news, though. both my blender and the fork survived the incident without sustaining any noticeable damage. also, the pumpkin pie turned out really well, despite my somewhat unorthodox methods. don't worry, the puree i scraped off my face and the cieling ended up in the trash.

this cracks me up: "He's a fast talking Jewish waffle chef trapped in a world he never made. She's a ditzy hypochondriac Hell's Angel from a family of eight older brothers. They fight crime!"

i went to see dr. brian greene, physicist and super string theorist, give a lecture tonight. wow. pretty cool stuff. i've been reading his book, the elegant universe, which does a really good job of taking something completely incomprehensible (like einstein's general theory of relativity) and actually making it possible for me to understand it. if all college professors were like brian greene, i would never have left school. i don't get to do a lot of things that immediately make me think, "wow, i'm smarter because i did that!" this was a welcome exception. i still don't entirely get how you can have five or six extra dimensions that none of us know about, but i'll certainly continue to think about it. in the meantime, if anybody has a great explanation for how that works, let me know.

i don't love raymond.

you people are all nuts. okay, not all of you. but i've been sifting through my site referrers today, and if you got here from a search engine, chances are you are sorely disappointed to be on my site. oops. sorry 'bout that. this is not a site about "hirsute women", which is apparently a very popular search term. it's also not a porn site. sorry, no hairy and/or naked chicks here. other notable queries (things people actually typed into search engines) include:

• watch me poop
• having shapely buttocks definition
• nerdy girl porn (very popular)
• nice leg contest
• do i sound like i'm ordering a pizza
• the kentucky people who came up with the song happy birthday
• documentation pictures of women urinating

what chain of events would lead a person to go to a search engine and type in "watch me poop"? just typing it here makes me feel a little bit icky.

it's already started. i woke up this morning and thought, hey, i get to snooze. i've got nine more minutes. grr. i am a foolish, foolish girl. okay, mostly i'm just being melodramatic about something as ridiculous as the time on my alarm clock. i admit it.

so sydney gave me a link to a funny site that shows rowan adkinson manning the taliban phone line. it's pretty darned funny. i replied with a link to some funny sound waves, including those wacky arnold schwartzenegger prank calls.

disaster struck today. i turned on my alarm clock last night because i was really tired and didn't think i'd get up on time to meet sydney for coffee and novel writing. but i woke up pretty early and eventually sat down at my computer to write. then, it happened. my alarm went off and i looked at the clock on my computer (fool that i am!) 9:12, it read. my alarm was set for 9:21. i now know that my bedroom clock is 9 minutes fast. i have gone to great lengths to not know how fast that clock is over the past six months. but now, it's all ruined. RUINED, i tell you! now i will wake up and refuse to get out of bed because i'll have nine minutes left. i'm never going to make it to work on time. oh, the horrors! woe, oh woe!

help! at lunch, i was telling a co-worker about a site i went to a loooong time ago where people were writing stories together. you'd post your little piece of the story to the site, and then other people could append their piece of the story on to the bottom. my problem is, i can't find the site again. does anybody know where that is, or what i'm talking about? if so, please send me an e-mail. thanks!!