Current Mood: frustrated
NFL.com is being incredibly slow today, so I'm going to hold off on writing a bunch about football until I can watch all my highlight videos (32 teams - 4 teams on bye / 2 teams per matchup = 14 videos x 3 min. avg length = 42 minutes of video action). Lucky you.
Instead, here's a quick update on NaNoWriMo. As of this morning, the participants have written a total of 170,746,440 words since the start of the month, for really no other reason than a love of writing (assuming there's nobody writing to win a bet or something). I just find it fascinating to check the word count, since nobody is forcing anybody do this. It's as if thousands of people the world over decided to start
Skipping-It and logging their cumulative skips. Yours truly has contributed (again, as of this morning) 6,195 words, or 0.003%. I'm a little behind, about 3k below the pace to finish on the last day or halfway to finishing 5 days early (the 2k a day average). It's pretty tough to write so much each day, but I've finally gotten past the slow setup part of the plot, so hopefully the action part will flow much easier. Writing in third person about myself is screwing with my head.
Good thing I love my current phone, because the Samsung Juke makes a
pretty convincing argument to be bought.
My hair is really starting to bother me, because it's no longer curly and fro-y. It's gotten much longer and is starting to lay out. I'm not really crazy about it, so I may cut it. It will also be a great reason to bust out my
favorite hat ever. That also reminds me to backtrack a bit...
Two weeks ago on Friday (October 26th) I had the pleasure of seeing the Dalai Lama speak here at Purdue. It was a...unique experience to say the least. Renee had procured the tickets the day they were available, and my sister drove my brother up here for the weekend since mom couldn't make it. We got there almost two hours early for security because
some people aren't exactly crazy about the guy. While we waited, we spotted a local Purdue celebrity - former Purdue present
Martin C. Jischke (Bradley ran over and shook his hand). The opening act (mongolian chanting) was a bit of cultural learning that made me feel sliiightly uncomfortable. The Dalai Lama was a bit hard to hear and understand, but he seemed very at ease, very informal, and at times unintentionally funny. The theme of his speech was "cultivating happiness", but for the most part I felt he spoke about rather vague concepts and rambled about being a good person. A notable topic, to be sure, but I didn't need to spend a lot of money to hear it from him (more like "Dalai Lame-a"). At the end he elected not to tackle very complex issues in the Q and A session such as the US involement in the Iraq war, instead informing us all that his favorite color was green. In retrospect, perhaps this was
social commentary.
More than seeing world leaders speak, I was most excited to see my siblings. Things haven't been great between us lately, and I put a lot of that blame on my shoulders. I decided to tackle that head on and try to make sure they had an outstanding weekend here. I made them lunch Friday and breakfast the next day, and they stayed at my apartment which helped cut down on travel costs. They also joined me for our Annual Ship of Fools Halloween Extravaganza. Sis helped me with my costume (notably taming my hair). I went as an
emo kid, and I it went really well. So well, in fact, that Current Roommate Alex didn't recognize me, as did others at improv. The response on Facebook has made me really happy - I wanted to shake things up and do something people didn't expect, and I think it worked quite well. There were several awesome costumes (Jenny went as
Jessica Rabbit...she's not bad, she just dressed that way!).
The afterparty @ Peace's house went splendidly, even though we all left kinda early. Several former Fools made it to the party, and the fans seemed to enjoy it as well. Huzzah! The next morning, before Brad and sis left, we toured the new Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering and more of Purdue's campus. I should have classes in there in the spring, if things go as planned. Photos of the party
here, photos of the party and time at Armstrong
here.
As if that weekend wasn't amazing enough, Sunday was my 2 year anniversary with Jenny. We celebrated by going to see the
hosts of Mythbusters (Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman) speak at Elliot Hall of Music (Purdue's College of Science celebrates 100 years). It was very informal and entertaining, funny and candid. Benji and Corrie, also staying with us for the weekend, joined us and participated in the Q&A. My favorite parts were when they spoke about buying magnets. Afterwards was a dinner with some of the
Fools.
And speaking of improv, we've been very busy this fall with a number of community service shows and activities, which makes me very proud of the group. Blood donations, food drives, and now recently a benefit show [with the Crazy Monkeys] for Habitat For Humanity and the Timmy Foundation raised over $500. 00 dollars. The group is learning to incorporate change and new members, becoming a bigger part of the Purdue community, and casting away old rivalries. Quite impressive.
That's all for now. Why aren't busy I writing fiction?
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