Thanks for the good wishes, Thorne. They seem to have worked, too; the co-manager from the store called to ream my supervisor at the PO a new bodily orifice... and having talked to the strong determined MALE managerial type, she buckled. Funny, the polite fax from the female store owner didn't get results, but let a guy with a deep voice and dangly bits call her on the phone, and then all of a sudden they can spare me those two days a week after all? ...growf. It's not that I don't appreciate getting the scheduling conflict dealt with, but I resent the fact that doing so required heavy application of a Y chromosome. **sigh**

...hmm, maybe tomorrow I'll just say "screw it all" and work on a holiday layout of some kind. That'd be good. For now - thudness.

...and they wonder why people "go postal"...

Hating the PO job with huge, hot hate right now. It's not just the usual holiday rush of frantic typing; I've been through that twice already now, and it's practically routine anymore. What has me supremely PO'ed is that this year, they flat-out refuse to make any allowances for the fact that I already have another job. They don't give a damn that they're scheduling me on days I'm supposed to be at the store. They don't give a damn that I may lose my other job (which helps support me for the other 49 weeks of the year) for their 3-week Christmas rush. They could care less that they're removing 20% of the workforce of a small, retail business during *ITS* busiest time of the year.

...a small business which, by the way, ships all its mail-order via the US Postal Service, although they're re-thinking that at the moment.

This will not result in me committing any violence. However, it may well cause me to simply hand in my ID badge in the middle of their All Important Busy Season, and telling them exactly what they can do with bale of barbed wire and what is usually considered the exit door of the digestive system. RAR.

...still the prettiest?!? (**snork!**)

Congratulations! You're Legolas!

Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Other recent quizilla results... I came up with "The Hoyden" in the Regency-romance one, and for some inexplicable reason the Village People quiz tells me I am the Indian. Go figure.

Mwahahahaha, and our plans to kidnap Twig proceed apace! X D eeeee hee hee hee hee!

"In blinded mind you are singing a glorious hallelujah..."

Before I forget yet again, Happy Belated Birthday to Drakos! (yeesh, I'm so bad about keeping track of things like that. oh well, just think of it as making the big day last longer...? ^_^;;)

Chapters 9 and 10 of Duality are spell-checked, poked at slightly, and posted. Even though NaNo is over for this year, Mihai and company are not going to allow themselves to fade into obscurity, so the story will be continuing. (Should I apologize now...?) Since things are already picking up to insane Christmas-card mailing pace at the PO job, though, there probably won't be much more than another chapter or two before the holidays.

Okay, now for the threatened convention review of Darkover Grand Council nubmer....whateveritwas. We got out of the house later than planned, but still early enough to reach the convention hotel in decent time. We Mews had decided this year we were taking our kimono and all the relevant accessory bits, and entering the Masquerade. On the drive down, we worked out a funny little skit (soon to be detailed in the Mews blog) - and of course, I was madly scribbling away at my NaNo story. Which meant that Rissi and G-Cat got stuck with all the driving on the way down, which included rain, construction and Beltway traffic. (Domo arigatou gozaimasu, oh wonderful roomies!)

Got to the hotel, checked in, unloaded our gear and signed up for the costume contest. Riss went up to the room to start prepping, since Darkover's masquerade is on Friday night, and at this point we had about an hour and a half to get ready. When I got up to the room, we hit Crisis Mode: the iron in our room had plastic burnt onto its plate and was unusable. I ran back down to the lobby where the friends who run the masquerade were sitting at the sign-up table; didn't even make it halfway through the tale of woe before Marty had his room key out and was saying "Take ours." (Yet another reason to adore Marty and his wife Bobbi, as if there weren't quite enough already! ^_^ )

Dashed back up the room, where Riss started ironing like a mad thing and G-Cat and I worked on makeup. In the middle of all this frenzy, my friend Susan (who roomed with us) arrived; as an old hand at costuming, she was unfazed when we dragged her into the frenzy of preparations (that huge box of safety pins was a life-saver). We got ourselves all put together with maybe 15 minutes to spare before the competition was scheduled to begin, and hauled collective fanny off to the 'green room' to be assigned our slot. We were scheduled second to last, out of 9 costumes; at least three of those were lovely examples of workmanship, and I didn't find out until later that one of them was showing only - NOT competing.

Competitors then got led like a flock of very strange sheep across to the ballroom, where we found out the tech crew had not bothered to set up sound or mikes yet. D'oh! ("Fan organization" is an oxymoron.) One of the women waiting to watch the masquerade ran back to her room to fetch a CD player, which solved half the problem, and the techies hurried to get at least one of the mikes live. G-Cat spent the wait fussing with her "hoof" gloves, which kept slipping and will need to be redesigned if we want to do this routine again. Then it was on with the show.

We had one obligatory cute baby costume, the girl playing Sarah in the "Labyrinth" presentation gave me serious Hair Envy (it was down to her knees, I swear) although I think their lip-synch dragged on a bit too long. Oh, and the "Visiting Professor at Hogwarts" was very well done; I know I'm blanking on a couple of others, but then it was our turn. We got on, started our skit, "the Kitsune's Wish" - had to improvise for a few seconds when the announcer forgot he was supposed to read another line, but got through it intact and got some good laughs for the punchline.

After waiting through some photography and the game show planned to buy time for the judges to make their decisions - we got "Best in Show"! O,o Hm, I wonder if this means we have to compete in the "journeyman division" at bigger cons from now on? Must ask friends in the Costumer's Guild.

I even managed to attend two panels during the con (voice acting, and Japanese braiding) around my attempts to write. G-Cat did much better in art show sales, courtesy of her lovely engraved glassware, although I did at least cover the cost of my membership so that's not bad at all. Saturday night was given over the the Clam Chowder concert and its attendant fund-raising for Children's Hospital; I helped roam the crowd and collect the donations. (And yes, once again Susan did manage to get the con-goers to cough up enough money to induce the Clams to sing "Bend Over, Greek Sailor".) Midnight Saturday was the annual "Hallelujah Chorus" performance around the indoor swimming pool. (Woo, the tagline was relevant after all!)

Sunday morning was our traditional breakfast with Marty & Bobbi, then there was nothing to do but pack up and vacate the hotel room, cruise the dealer's room, and wait until we could reclaim our unsold pieces from the art show before starting the drive back home. Once again I scribbled away in the passenger's seat until the sun set and it got too dark to write; then finally I took my turn driving. ^_^;; Last minor crisis occurred when I booted up my computer again at home and realized I'd lost an entire scene I wrote for Duality late Saturday night. (D'oht!) I still don't think the re-write is quite as good as the original bit was, but whatever. Had my novel verified by the NaNo counters by about 9:30 PM and spent the rest of the night "eep"ing at random intervals because I actually managed to finish the darn thing.

Oi. Right, time to stop boring the nice people now... thanks for putting up with the blather!

Mighty Like a Nasty Llama!!!

Well, damn! Lookie this:

I think I'm still in shock. Two more completed chapters to post soon, but I need a day or four to decompress... and spell-check the suckers. O,o

Congratulations to Twiggins and Ann and Drakos and Tsaiko for also whomping NaNoWriMo, and to Luns for slaying the wild NaNoManGo!

Blee. Convention review will follow, after some sleep. Thorne, Luns, I'm sorry we weren't able to work things out to schedule a get-together... and yes, Thorne, I do still have your phone number, but I left my dayplanner at the house. >_< And it turned out our schedule at the show was pretty well insane until this afternoon anyhow. *sigh*

Okay, now it's time to go get drunk on candy wine and watch G-Cat smack around her Tactics Timmies! Woot.

Setup for fight scene - Taking. For. Bloody. Ever. >_< Shoot me now, please.

No, wait, don't shoot me just when the house is starting to smell really really good from roasting turkey. (No, G-Cat -- "turkey", not "turkles," or even "Turks." Bad cat; don't make me kick you in the arster! X D)

So we're anxiously awaiting our lovely Rissicat-prepared meal, and trying not to turn into stressbunnies over the convention tomorrow, for which we are (as usual) not quite ready. Stayed up until 3:30 am watching G-Cat play Tactics, trying to teach her main character the Ultima skill, which the bad guys steadfastly refused to cast on him. Difficult gits.

I'm thankful for the best roomies in the world, good friends (it would take forever to link you all, but you know who you are!), a sister who loves me in spite of our many differences, and warm purring felines. ^_^ Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Happy Birthday, Catt!!! Have a wonderful day, and may all your fondest birthday wishes come true. ^_^