Camp is a bust, but not a fail

Well, there are two more days of camp left, and I'm not going to make my word count goal.  I realized over this past week that I had wandered away from the original point of the story, which was meant as therapy.  I had been working on another story with the same characters and setting, but needed to dial it back and finish what I originally started.  The word count was becoming more important than the plot, and since the therapy exercise will never be published (at least not that I can foresee), it doesn't matter what the word count is.  I just need to tell the story from beginning to end and worry about cannibalizing it later.

I'm okay with not winning Camp NaNo this time, because I don't see it as a fail, since I'm refocusing my effort, which helps me out in the end.

Weight is stable, ate off plan more than I should have, but I'm back on track now.  I had to delay my shipment twice, because we were getting a new fridge, and I had to wait until the new one was delivered before I could stock it with the NS food.  At least I didn't gain any weight, AND I'm comfortably wearing pants two sizes smaller than when I started, so I am very happy with how it's going.  Yay!

We had a small 3.2 earthquake that was close to us the other night, but our house only shook once, and I didn't feel any aftershocks.

  

Camp and weight update, lost car dream

I have just under 9k words written, which means that I'm about 4k words short of my schedule.  I've introduced two new characters, shop assistants for Sara, although I might end up cutting one out.  Does she need two?  Researching the first assistant's background was fun.  She's an older lady from England, whose husband took a job at U of Washington eighteen years ago, although he died a few years ago.  Since then, she moved to town and started teaching part time at the community college.

I'm not sure what the Bournemouth accent sounds like, or what common phrases they use there, so I'm trying to find suggestions for TV shows or movies that I can watch on Netflix to hear them speak.

The writing that I've done has come easily, and I'm still skipping around and writing random scenes, and so far, I've only written to a few of the plot points that I came up with last month, so there is plenty of work to do.

My writing buddy has been participating in the postcard swap, and it sounds like a lot of fun, so I'll probably participate if they have it during the next camp session.  I never know what to say on postcards.

The weight is still coming off, albeit slowly, and people are actually noticing the weight loss, which makes me very happy :)

I bought a new dream book by Theresa Cheung called "The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 Dreams".  I found a listing for lost cars that says that it can mean a loss of direction:  

"One of the most common dreams in midlife is that of the lost car.  You park the car and return to find it's gone.  You wander anxiously around the area but cover the same ground with no results.  In short, this is a dream about feeling lost because you have followed the rules rather than your instinct or intuition.  If you have this dream, the indication is that some part of your waking life is unfulfilling and you feel as if you have lost something precious; you are not only upset when you recognize you have lost it but your life comes to a complete standstill."  

And that makes perfect sense!  I didn't have the dream until I turned 40 and moved back home, and I've had it almost every night since then.  Now that I recognize what it is, hopefully I can begin to work my way past it, and yes, it's nice to know that it's a common dream, although I've never known anyone else who has had it.

The magic house is still making an appearance almost nightly (technically "daily", since that's usually when I sleep), and my "mother" in the dreams is sometimes a princess, as a symbol of the Goddess.  Family is very prominent in my dreams, and of course, the animals and trying to keep them safe.  The odd obstacle courses are still there, and I have to go through all sorts of contortions to get through them.  There's always a fear that I won't be able to fit through the tunnels, but I always make it through.  That's pretty easy to interpret.

Alright, back to work!

NASA lassoing an asteroid?

This month, NASA has announced plans to lasso an asteroid, so it can be parked near the moon, and a team of four astronauts can study it.  The purpose of the study is to see how to mine asteroids for materials and to learn more about the mineral composition of the solar system.  For this experiment, the U.S. is planning to spend 100 million dollars.

$100 million dollars to figure out how to mine and destroy other bodies in our solar system, when we have hungry children and homeless people right here that we should be taking care of first.  $100 million would go far to help resolve those issues.

We should be spending money on finding forms of sustainable energy right here on earth, before we start thinking of mining elsewhere.  They think about traveling out into space and colonizing other planets.  Why not take better care of the one we live on now?  We need to quit treating the Earth as disposable.     

I don't understand how we can have $100 million to spend for exploration, when we still have such a huge national debt.  Why isn't the money going toward that?

There are so many other immediate and more important needs for the money right here on Earth.  Why can't those people in Washington understand this?

Camp has begun!

Well, we're four days into camp, and I'm ahead of schedule.  I challenged myself to write 30k words this month, and I'm already over 5k.  Having the list of plot points that I wrote last month is really coming in handy.  I'm just writing random scenes from that list in whatever order I feel like it, and I'll fit them into the manuscript later.  I don't feel rushed or stressed this time, and I think the time I spent preparing for it was really worth it.  Of course, already knowing what the book was about and being familiar with the characters and setting help too.

The weight loss has really slowed down, but that's because I had several days of eating off-plan, but I'm back on target now.  It really does make a difference!

My sleep pattern has totally switched again.  I'm staying up all night and usually crashing in the afternoon and waking in the evening.  Not good for me, and it sure makes the day fly by quickly.  I wake up, and soon afterwards, everyone is ready for bed.  I'm getting good writing time in, but I don't want to mess up my health.

Had a dream the other day in which I was walking down the grassy median in a street pushing a cart, like a shopping cart, but different.  At one point, I "woke up" (in my dream) and was just standing there with my cart while traffic went by.  I truly hope that doesn't mean I'm going to end up as a bag lady!  I don't think it meant that, as the cart wasn't filled with my only belongings.  I had been shopping or was moving something from one place to my home/new home.

Still working on the map of the town in my book, but I did finish designing the block that her shop is on.  Trust me, it looks great :)

Back to work...