Project 365+1: Days 308 - 315

This last week has mostly passed in long hours spent madly typing away on my laptop. If I've not been spending time NaNoing (mostly in the mornings before work), then I've been working to get my assignment finished (also mostly in the mornings before work, but after NaNo because I've obviously got my priorities straight).

Now the assignment is submitted and I've already started work on the next section ready for the dreaded December 13th submission date of TMA02. I'm still powering through the NaNo story, The Experience Machine, having hit 30,000 words today. After last year's non-starter I'm quite pleased with how well it's going. The few times when I've felt myself writing into a corner, in true NaNo spirit I've just wound up whichever bit I'm on and I've moved onto the next section.

Normally if I get stuck when I'm writing I just stop where I am until something better occurs to me, so this is definitely progress of a sort. I'm fairly confident that by the end of November I might actually have something approaching a very rough first draft of an interesting story. My next major hurdle I suspect will be not stopping writing when I get to 50,000 words. In the past during NaNo I've hit my target and then stopped, regardless of whether I've reached the end of the story or not.

Day 308: Gosa Vadd

Although we have not yet put together our new coatstand (which is still in the box in the living room but which we will get to at some point in the coming week, I'm sure), we do have lovely new Ikea pillows on the bed and a nice new Ikea lampshade hanging above it. Google reliably informs me that Gosa is the name of the pillow and Vadd means stuffing or wadding. They're definitely comfortable anyway. I love that I seem to forget how comfy a new pillow is each time my current pillow gets all sort of squashed down and flat. These ones are lovely and fluffy and when you lie back your head sinks into it, heavenly!

Day 309: Playlist

Please ignore the grubby screen in the above photo. I swear it doesn't look that bad normally in real life, the flash just seemed to highlight every fingerprint and spot of dust! This photo was really just supposed to show that I'd managed to get the Taylor Swift CD Speak Now onto my iPhone. At the time that this was taken, I'd not finished my assignment so I wasn't letting myself have Red, but to celebrate getting the second draft all sorted meant that I allowed myself Speak Now.

Of course, the iPhone being the iPhone it took me best part of an hour (on and off) to figure out how to get the CD onto the iPod bit of my iPhone. I was nearly late for work, but at least now when I'm in the shower I can have music playing in the background. It's also just as well that I've figured out how to do this now, because in a couple of week's time I'll be wanting to put all my Christmas music on here instead.

Day 310: Back on the Shelf

And to celebrate my finishing and submitting my assignment, Othello and The Duchess of Malfi are now safely back on the bookshelf, at least until I need to dig them out for exam revision at least. It's quite nice to see the gap closed up, though not for long because I've taken the next book off already (Oroonoko which I'm hoping to make a start to later on today, just as soon as I get to the end of Northanger Abbey).

As of yesterday I officially finished Part 1 of my coursebook and moved on to Part 2. I'm not sure whether or not the travel writing and journeys section is going to be quite so interesting, although there seems to be a lot of information about the historical context of these writings so I'm looking forward to getting more stuck in before I make any big judgements about it.

Day 311: All Gone

This was another of our Ikea purchases: new plates! The plates we've been using since we moved in were my ones from when I was in Halls at university, added to with some that I got for my flat while I was at university a little over a year later. While the ones that survived Halls appear to be bomb-proof, the ones I got later have become ever so slightly chipped now (one has had to be binned after it didn't survive a trip out of the house and came back in more pieces than it left in). New plates were called for.

Growing up we always had matching sets of plates, which, while it looks nice, isn't particularly practical. I mean, if you break one, it's very difficult to replace it. I much prefer having everything odd. So when we were in Ikea we each picked a new dinner plate and side plate. Mine are the ones you see above: pretty floral pattern for the side plate and plain green for the dinner plate. Mr Click went with matching for his, both have music on them, as soon as I spotted them I knew they were perfect for him. We're planning a trip over there again in the future at some point, so we might slowly replace all of our crockery with funky stuff from there.

Day 312: Camouflage

Look! I took my camera out of the house this week!

*Ahem*

I walked Tara round and round the garden as usual the other morning, completely oblivious to the fact that we had a little visitor stopping by. He was sitting at the bottom of the drain pipe, right above the drain, beside a little pile of leaves that had washed down it, so he was blending in well. It wasn't until I was about to go back into the house that I noticed a little pair of froggy eyes watching me that I quickly dashed in, dumped the dog and grabbed my camera.

This is actually a different frog to the one who normally visits our garden (why yes, I am that well acquainted with the amphibians who come to visit), this one was much smaller and more of an orangey-brown (hence the blending in so well with the leaves). It had vanished by the time I went out later in the day, so I hope he's found somewhere warm and snug now.

Day 313: Bugged

Our stairs have been bugged. See that dingy little green blob on the bottom left of the photo. That's Tara's Bug, her favourite toy. And Bug stinks, or at least, he did when this picture was taken (hence Bug's banishment to the stairs, sometimes Tara thinks a good way to wake you up and let you know she needs to go out is to stick stinky, slobbery Bug in your face, which isn't much fun at 6am).

Since this photo was taken Bug has taken a spin in the washing machine and now smells absolutely delightful. And for this reason he's still hanging in a net bag clipped onto the airer, because it's only a matter of time before he starts getting all gross and stinky again once Tara gets him back. Luckily she's got her Kong right now, so she's not missing him too much.

Day 314: Festive Films

We've got to that time of year where Christmas is slowly creeping up on us and more than anything I want to just stay in and watch Christmas films (and as we have over 30 of the things on DVD and blu-ray, it does take us rather a while to get through them all). So we have a little collection of films that while Christmassy, aren't technically Christmas films, which makes it okay to watch them in, say, the first couple of weeks of November.

So yesterday when we got back from walking Tara (and talking about nothing but Christmas) we stuck Holiday Inn on. Holiday Inn is allowed because lots of different holidays are celebrated; Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas as well as a couple of President's Birthdays. Then later in the afternoon we decided to carry on the theme and so watched Hogfather, also allowed because although Hogswatch bears striking resemblances to our Christmas, it's actually a different holiday, celebrated on a different world, so that makes it okay. Still to watch are The Holiday and Love Actually, but we'll save those for a little bit longer.

Day 315: Kitty Cat

I've been wanting to take a photo of my in-laws' cat for a few months now. She and Tara share something of a love-hate relationship. The poor cat will put up with virtually anything from Tara, though will happily lie there smacking her if Tara goes too far, which Tara seems completely oblivious to or treats it all as a fun game. Kitty's quite a pretty cat even if she does have a slightly psychopathic way of just staring at you. She's quite photogenic as well, considering she'll happily stay put in one spot for ages, so I'm hoping I can get some more photos of her in the future, maybe some where her chin doesn't blend into her chest so much.

And that about wraps up this week's worth of photos. Tara's pestering for her walk now so we'd better go before she starts bugging the cat and causing trouble. I'm hoping that in the next week I might manage to hit the 50k on my NaNo story (and keep my momentum going into week three). I've also got to get stuck into my OU as well as lots of reading.

Plus we're starting to gear up for Christmas, and that's always fun too. ;-)