November is Here!

So begins the month of novel writing. NaNoWriMo.org is what I'm talking about. Already, I'm about 4,000 words in. I know, exhausting to even contemplate. Imagine how I feel. I still can't see myself being able to produce 50,000 words, much less a coherent story. But so far, so good.
I will be blogging at a minimum during this month. It's going to be hard enough writing a novel with finals and such coming up, so something has to give. I'll update with word counts as I get the chance. Hopefully, the world will have another awesome novel by November 30th!

Halloween Ideas

It's almost Halloween, and I always try and do something different each year. It's hard in Wyoming to trick or treat due to the terrible winds and horrific frost bite brought on by the snow. The weather here punishes anyone who isn't wearing the right costume, and since no one wants to see Dracula with a winter coat on, I've stopped doing that. In the past, I've been a delinquent running around stealing candy from kids, and I've been a dead body laying in the grass waiting for people to come see what I'm made of before I yell and get up. Now I need something new.

I have a few ideas. How about I dress up like Stanley Tucci from The Lovely Bones and ask kids if they want to see my secret room? I don't think anything bad can come from that. At all.

Another idea: I will pretend to be a free lance journalist from Sex Weekly and invite people to my secret room.

Yet Another: I will dress up like someone famous and invite people to my secret room.

Anyways, those are my ideas. Yeah.

Still

It still hasn't snowed. Here's a story. 

Impartial Leg Breaker

The minute can be a long time when you're doing something you aren't used to. Take exercise for instance. Even people who work out a lot don't usually do that much in a single minute. Most people think that the only way to work out is to pump iron for a bit and rest when their muscles start to burn. This is a good way to build strength. But what's strength without endurance? The way to build that is to do lots of reps continuously. A minute is a good place to start. And that minute is long the first time.

            This was how Delo felt the first time he tried to build up some endurance. His muscles were strong from years of strength-training; and that was all good, but he didn't like how quickly he lost steam when tossing bodies around. The weights, which were nothing to him under a few reps, taunted his muscles with burning. They mocked his body with their tiny heft. Don had told him to start with a minute and work up from that. But a minute was already seeming like too much. Maybe he should drop down to 30 seconds. If he didn't impress Chris the next time they went out, it was going to be burning a lot more than right now.

            Delo tried a few more times to reach the one minute mark with his curls, but he fell short again. He decided to stop as his anger increased. A quick shower and some fresh clothes later, Chris called. Shit. Delo threw his coat on and grabbed his baseball bat from behind the door in the hallway. It was a lot sooner than last time. And he was still sore from the workout. God dammit.

            The showdown happened like usual. Chris met him by the pay phone and told him to get in the pickup truck. Delo donned the typical paper bag that blocked out the view of everything around him and Chris told him to try and not count the stops and turns along the way. It was part of being an impartial leg breaker. He wasn't supposed to even know where the beating was going down. It helped if he didn't look very hard at the people he was pulverizing either. The less he knew, the more he could deny if anyone came after him. Delo didn't really understand much of it. Not only was it impossible to not count the stops and turns, but the images of those he struck with his bat were permanently burned into his memory. And who cared if he remembered anything? If someone was determined enough to bother to find out who smashed up their guys, they wouldn't be deterred by his pleas that he didn't know a thing, no matter how sincere those pleas were. So it was a weird job.

            Chris was driving the truck fast tonight. They made exactly seven stops, so they hit at least seven red lights, maybe some stop signs if Chris was being a careful driver, which he probably wasn't. The way the vehicle swayed, Delo counted five right turns and three left, meaning they passed through at least one intersection that was uncontrolled. From where they met, Delo surmised they were heading somewhere downtown. He tried to sit relaxed in his seat with his head back like he was getting some shut eye. He didn't know if Chris was fooled by the act, but Delo never got a talking to, so it was all good so far.

            Finally, the truck started to slow and it made a slight right turn as they probably glided alongside a curb. Delo waited for Chris to tell him it was OK to remove his paper bag.

            "Alright, take that thing off your face before someone thinks you're gonna give me head."

            Delo took the bag off and looked out the window of the truck. They were downtown alright, the tall buildings just a few blocks ahead. The building they were parked in front of was a faceless structure with tinted glass windows and a door with some small white print telling them of some lawyer who worked there. There was an alleyway next to the building and Delo supposed they were going down there to beat someone up.

            "That alley there. Some punks like to hang out down there and we gonna give em something to talk about."

            Chris got out of the truck and grabbed his own baseball bat from the bed. Delo sighed and grabbed his own baseball bat from between his legs.

The March continues

I've been prepping myself for NaNoWriMo by doing both 750words.com and Typetrigger.com. Each requires writing every day. The idea is to get into the habit of writing because writing is like exercise-you get more fit the more you do. Short entry today. Just an update on my march to a novel.

Finally

It's finally getting cold here in Wyoming. About time too. Some people (most people) I know like when the weather is blisteringly hot but I'm not one of them. I have this weird thing where my average body temperature is slightly higher than normal. It doesn't make me feverish or anything but I find any warm temperature uncomfortable. It also means that I find 50 degrees warm. I have the opposite of that vampire effect on people. You know the one, where the girl touches the vampire and gasps because of how cold he is. Well, for me people gasp when they feel how hot I am.

So yes, it's cold now and I'm feeling great about it. It's hard for me to sleep when it's hot, and now maybe I'll stop feeling sleep deprived. All I need now is a bit of snow on the ground and I'll be a happy camper (unless I'm driving).

Too Hot

It's interesting that the heater in my dorm room is turned up to maximum. You'd think that in this economy, the ResLife guys would be saving money by shutting the heaters off. I guess they don't care about us that much after we pay several grand for a room.

I'm not even complaining about the normal heat in the dorms, which is ridiculous without the heaters on. It's so hot, I feel faint every time I go out into the hallway because the temperature drops a good 10 degrees instantly. Isn't it reasonable for me to complain about this? After all, this is a lose-lose situation for everyone. ResLife is pouring immense amounts of money into heating the dorms, and it isn't the least bit cold outside. Seriously, right now it's almost 50 degrees outside. That's balmy for Wyoming, especially in October. I can't sleep when it's hot. Something about being covered in sticky sweat makes it very uncomfortable to be lying on a bed.

We are in the middle of a recession and they have the heaters cranked up to maximum. I know this is a rant, but I had to get it off my chest. Maybe someone from ResLife googling their own name will find this post and do something. Otherwise, I'm going to get heat stroke and become a very rich man suing the school.

A Treatise for Life Alert

I have a theory about Life Alert bracelets. For those of us who don't know what a Life Alert bracelet is; it's a little button that calls the cops. Old ladies use it for when they fall and can't get up. It's a good plan. But they need to market those things to other people too!

I'm a college student. I have no roommates since I had a bad experience with them. What does this mean? It means if I were to fall over and break my back or for some reason suffer a massive heart attack (unlikely but not unheard of in people my age) who would come find me? No one. It's 11 at night and no one is going to come looking for me until tomorrow by the latest. My door is closed and the TV is on. There is plenty of ambient noise to conceal my squeaks of terror if I would happen to fall right now and impale my own throat with a pencil. 

And I'm not the only person alive living alone. We looked at a study in my human lifespan class last year. It shows the many reasons married couples live longer than single people. One of the main reasons? They don't live alone. When the woman falls in the shower and smacks her head on the drain, simultaneously knocking herself out and blocking the water from going down, she starts to drown and can do nothing about it. Her husband comes in the bathroom to use it real quick, and notices his wife doesn't say hi when he calls her name out and he also notices the pooling of water. He rushes in and rescues his wife from her helpless stupor. So what happened here? If the lady had been single, there would have been no husband to rescue her. 

I'm not saying that having a Life Alert bracelet would prevent situations like this. But without one, a situation like this has no out. The single person dies alone. So market bracelets to anyone who's single! We could use them. My floor is littered with books and wires.