The couple that builds a desk together stays together

My favorite month (October, in case you're slow) is upon us!  For a while I flip-flopped between what my favorite season was, deciding it was Spring because of the relative warmth and the flowers, but let's be honest: nothing can beat Fall.  Nothing.  NOTHING.  I love the changing leaves, the cooling temperatures, the rain, and all the memories associated with October.  October has been a big month for me over the past eight years: re-discovering The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and thus meeting Lauren and Kate (two of my closest friends and two of my bridesmaids), discovering the music of Bruno Pelletier, traveling to Québec and seeing Bruno perform and meeting him for the first time, interviewing him for US Bruno Fans six years later on the anniversary of when I first met him, meeting Karen and Heather in person for the first time and seeing Bruno in Québec City, meeting Kate in person for the first time... yeah, it's crazy. I love October.  There are certain songs that take me right back to certain Octobers throughout my life.  I love it.

Also, Halloween.  And Hallow's End on World of Warcraft, because that's soops fun.

October is also NaNoWriMo prep month!  For those who don't know what that is, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place during November.  It was started in 1999 (I believe) by Chris Baty in San Francisco with him and some of his friends.  Since then, it has grown exponentially and now thousands of people from all over the world participate.  The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month.  Most people start a brand new novel, but some people (called "rebels") write short stories, poetry, non-fiction, edit past works, or something like that.  I myself have been participating on and off since 2005 when I was fourteen after finding out about it on DarkMark, the Harry Potter message board I frequented at the time.  For the past few years I've written fanfiction, but this year I'm starting an all-new novel!  Okay, it's not all new; it's based on an idea that I started writing back in 2009, except now it's been revamped (get it? because it's about vampires).  Maybe it'll be published one day; who knows?  Either way, I'm excited.  There's a group of local participants meeting up in Murfreesboro (a city about twenty minutes away) next week and throughout November, so I'm doubly excited for that.  Yay!

We also got me a desk!  Yay!  The fun part was putting it together (not).  It was extremely frustrating.  The first night we found out that we would need a super short flat head screwdriver (because of course they couldn't tell us this in the beginning).  So we had to wait until Theo got home the next day so we could go get one.  That night, we worked on it some, but it was extremely frustrating and difficult, as the bulk of the desk uses cam locks, and those things suck.  We just couldn't get them to, well, lock, which kind of defeats the purpose.  Ugh.  So the next day, day three, while Theo was at work, I sat down and finally finished the stupid thing.  And I'm using it now.  I love it now.  Although I'm still recovering.

In other news, I've started some freelance work as a proof-reader and a sort of transcriptionist for a retired Truman professor.  It's fun!  More yay!  Noodles.