I took some pretty spectacular photographs today, if I do say so myself. It was almost 60 degrees in some part of the sound and there were mostly cloudless skies. This means the temperature will plunge overnight but what a beautiful day it was to have the day off and be able to drive around and take pictures. I took almost 100.

I also created a photo album just for pictures of Mt. Rainier since most of what I took today were pictures of, wait for it, Mt. Rainier. How could I not when this is what I see all day?



Click to view full size panorama

But there was also a nice sunset and a full moon rising:







Still these things really couldn't compete with the sun reflecting off Mt. Rainier.





The album can be viewed here.

Well it's not *quite* over yet but it looks like I won my first Farktography contest. What a nice birthday present.

This picture is currently in first place at the current Farktography thread.

So, since I'm in the lead I will again petition you all for votes! I placed third last time, with your help I can win. This is a stronger photo than 2 weeks ago, it has real potential to take first.

Make this my birthday present! Contest ends November 28th (vote today and tomorrow only).

And there was much rejoicing:



I'm actually at 50,006 words right now and the story isn't quite done. I need a couple thousand more words to finish up. But I think I will then I'll post it somewhere. Maybe.

8000 words written despite a raging headache. 48066.

Broke 40,000 words today. Home stretch ahead. I don't remember now how I intended to end this novel but I can feel it coming to a close anyway. I just need to walk my characters through the next twenty four hours and then all hell can break loose and wrap itself up neatly.

If I can do 3,000 words a day Tues/Wed/Thurs I'll be done and set before all hell breaks loose at work as well. That would be nice.

Hopefully I'll have a sense of accomplishment when this is done. Right now it's just a stress albeit kind of a nice one.

The new cd from OneRepublic is entitled Waking Up and it is even better than Dreaming Out Loud.

I'm about 1500 words behind in NaNoWriMo. I had a few days I couldn't pull myself in to write but I wrote about 3500 words today so I expect I can catch up in a few days. I really need to have a good cushion for the end of next week. If I can put together 22,000 words in the next week I should be able to make it. Hardly seems possible that November is almost over already. It's a short month though and work being so busy makes it go by that much faster.

I am seeing New Moon tomorrow afternoon with my girls from work. I am excited for that, at least.

At 25,083 words I have officially broken the halfway point. I took 2 days off from writing and I had a hard time committing to return today but it was very productive, with about 5,000 words written. I have started to set up the crime. Now to close the trap.

The latest Farktography contest theme is destroyed and at the close of the first 24 hours I am tied for 2nd place with one other picture, and 1st place is only 1 vote ahead of us. So you, dear readers, can make the difference. Help me get my first ever Farktography win! You can also vote for any other pictures you like although the burning action figure and the popped bubble are the two pictures in contention with me. The voting is tight in this contest. Every vote will count but after the crappy last couple of weeks I've had, pulling out a win in this for the first time would be an amazing gift. Go here to vote You do have to register a fark username but it's free and unobtrusive. Then click the Vote box next to the pictures you favor and navigate away from the page or click the Vote link at the top. I will be much obliged if you vote. I have plenty of weeks where I suck it up and wouldn't ask but this week I have a really good chance to place well, even if I don't win.

After all the waiting, I did not get the job.

The Nano site appears to be down this evening but I got to 15,048 words today.

I know where I want my general story arc to go but it's getting more and more difficult to continue the section I'm working in now. I don't want to go too quickly towards the climax. However I have a major section still hanging out there and I think it's safe to proceed to the next major point.

In other news, the CEO of JCPenney came to my store again today but this time he was accompanied by the General Merchandise Managers for most of the merchandise divisions. I suppose we should feel honored that they got to work with us. Also, our District Manager is doing a 2-day "shout out" where you can get 30 minutes of his time for a 1 on 1 chat. I was the first person to sign up. Maybe I can get an answer to what happened with my management training and why I stayed in the same store, and if there's any career opportunities left for me with the company.

I say that last bit because I still have word on the job I interviewed for the last three weeks and while I realize it probably has to do with the people making the decision not being able to be at work for awhile, it's still disheartening to have to wait so long when I no longer have a terrificly optimistic feeling about it anymore.

At 8405 words I'm actually ahead of tomorrow's goal today. Since I'm almost 1/5th of the way to the goal, and my main character hasn't even gotten to the college yet, I'm beginning to think that 50,000 words won't be enough to wrap everything up. I love divergent threads that appear where I get to paint a scene. This scene isn't particularly lovely but it gave me the opportunity to paint my protagonist as something of a coward and emotionally distant.

Below, a brief excerpt:

When the phone rang I expected it was my mother calling to check in on us. But my dad sat bolt upright, his plate of chicken tumbling onto the living room rug.
“I’ll be right there,” was all he said. He stood, shaking biscuit crumbs off his rumpled trousers.
“Get your coat,” he said to me, “And the camera.” That meant it was paper business.
We drove north on the highway out of town towards the base. From far off I could see the flashing lights of cops and firetrucks. By the time we got there the ambulance had already left with Denny Edwards. There was nothing they could do for Jerry and his father.
In the back of the cop car, a soldier sat quietly. He stared straight ahead, not wincing or even blinking when the flash of the camera reflected off the window by his head. I took several pictures. My dad advised me not to come over where the Edwards’ lay. But I was fifteen and curious.
It was cold enough that the blood was already congealing on the ground, growing ice particles at the edges like a morbid skating pond. The grass by the side of the road was slick with it, as Mr. Edwards’ body had slid down into the ditch. The weapon lay on the ground, as a sheriff’s deputy photographed it. I followed him around, pretending to be doing my job as well. The lights from the fire trucks set a backlit stage that seemed surreal to me. With every flash from the camera everything would come to life in lurid reds and browns and fade back to black leaving little stars in my eyes. The heavy iron post hole, covered in bits of human detritus, was a solitary player upon the stage.
That was all I needed to see. I turned away. I didn’t continue down the slope into the ditch where my father stood with his notepad, talking to Sheriff McGill and scribbling furiously while the sheriff tilted his hat back and scratched his forehead in that way that all sheriffs seem to have. He projected authority and where something defied his authority he had to maintain that slim grasp on dignity, on the fact that if he didn’t have control of the situation, then it was so strange and so unexpected that it defied the imagination and logic of all reasonable folk. For Newberry, this was not out of the realm of possibility. This was only the second murder since my parents had taken over the paper. The first had been a cut and dried jealous husband slays cheating wife and had been wrapped up, tried in court and sentenced in a matter of a month. But this triple homicide involving the base was something entirely new.
We went home, silently. Mom called later and my dad mentioned something to her about there being a story when she got home but he wanted her to keep her focus on grandma, and to let us handle it. We were fine, he reassured her. No, she didn’t need to come home early but he was going to send the story out to the Associated Press tonight and if she checked her paper in the morning maybe she would see it. And if she did, could she please bring a few copies home so Dad could frame them and put them on the wall of the print shop, to see his name under a bigger paper’s typeface.

Job decision being held up by an inability to contact my professional references, and apparently JCPenney can't provide any information beyond a hire date. If you got a phone call from me with no message it's because I needed a live voice on the end of the phone to provide a reference. And I hate* you for not answering the phone.

(Hate being a metaphorical statement not meant to imply actual hatred).

were taken several - actually, many years ago with something like this. Thus the picture quality is pretty poor but they're the only pictures of rainbows that I have in my archive that I know were taken by me and not by my mom.

Unfortunately rainbows require sunlight, and though we get a fair amount of rain we don't often get the sun to shine through after, to create rainbows here.

My characters Claire and Cameron have come to life. I wrote about 2000 words yesterday so I'm starting slightly ahead of the curve. Now to keep it up.

Called back for third and most likely final interview on Tuesday, with the VP of the college.

Change is scaryyyyyyy but I'm proud I've made it thus far.

Well this week all 3 of my pictures are in the #30s, each getting 12 or more votes. I am happy because every week it seems my total vote count goes higher and my average vote count is getting closer to being on par with some of the regulars. But I don't seem to have THE photo that winds up in the top 5. The best I've finished was 18th.

Every thing in due time. There's a contest coming up called Clusterfark which is supposed to be a complicated and dizzying photo. I have some great ones for that of Chihuly Glass and this crazy bicycle I saw.

Next week's Heebie Jeebies however, I have to punt. I haven't been able to find anything really all that creepy and manufacturing a double exposure ghost is something I can't do with a digital camera.

After seeing many friends of mine embark on this journey, I too am going to attempt to complete NaNoWriMo this year.