Ladies and gentlemen, against all odds I am indeed a winner. I have tackled the beast of writing a novel during law school while employed full-time and raising a toddler. I wrote this novel completely within the month of November, 2008.
What do I get for this achievement? Bragging rights. That's about it. Let's get one thing clear: No one ever said that the novel had to be good. Therefore, it's not. It's a window into the life of a depressed and lonely attorney as he goes on vacation in the Dominican Republic. There are thrills. There are chills. There are spills. There is gratuitous sex. There are zombies.
A ha! Now you're intrigued. Fear not, gentle blog follower. I shall post my manuscript on the world wide web very soon. I harbor no illusions of publication -- I wrote this one just to be able to say that I finished one. It's not even as long as The Bard was, but it differs wildly from The Bard, mostly in that it actually has an ENDING. Also in that it's a totally and completely different kind of story in a different genre yadda yadda yadda.
Well anyway, that's done. The book is over. I walked into work this morning to convert the whole thing into a .pdf and put it up for the world to read, but apparently my I.S. department is having server issues that cause all recent docs to be "access denied". Wonderful. I totally freaked out when I came in, because I (of course, paranoid me) assumed that it was just me, and that the technical gestapo was after me. That turned out, to my vast relief, not to be the case.
Gentle reader, now that I'm done with the novel, I assure you that the blogging will once again resume in earnest. So will the WoW. Hee hee.
In other news, Turkey day was very good. My family and I went up to my grandparents' house on Thanksgiving for a nice dinner with my family. Gwen was a little spaz, and she was very very cute. She played a lot with her cousin Charlotte. Those two are so freaking adorable when they're together that it's very hard to put into words.
On Saturday morning, I had class. After that we piled into the car and headed up north to Bemidji to visit my in-laws for Thanksgiving Two: Electric Boogaloo. When we got to Motley, MN, both of my girls were sleeping and it was snowing in earnest. The road (Hwy. 10, I believe) was clear-ish in one lane, and the other lane was covered in snow. I was going 55 even though the speed limit was 65, just for safety's sake (precious cargo, you see). People were whizzing by me in the snow-packed lane at 80 mph.
Outside of Motley, I hit a patch of black ice and started to fishtail. Kerry woke up (crappy way to wake up, I tell ya) and yelled, "What's going on??" as we proceeded to spin a 360 in the middle of the highway. There were no other cars on the road at that point (thank God). We came precariously close to going in the ditch, but thankfully we stayed on the road, ended up facing the same position as before, and didn't flip over. It was a shockingly scary experience.
Gwen slept through it. I would like to thank the Britax corporation for making one fan-freaking-tastic car seat.
The car was fine. We were shaken up, but it wasn't anything that a little Frappuccino couldn't take care of. (Well, Frappuccino and about 70 beers later that evening). The rest of the journey was totally uneventful.
Once we got to Bemidji, we just kicked back, relaxed, chatted and played games with the family, and had another awesome turkey dinner. All was well. We came home last night.
WOOHOO FOR LEFTOVERS WEEK!
