November is NaNoWriMo, a novel writing program by which participants aim to write a 50,000-word novel between during the month of November. Quantity is valued over quality; the goal is to simply get people to write and have fun, which is, to my mind, a wonderful thing. I've heard of folks using it as an excuse to jump start the novel they'd always ( Read more... )

A few days ago I was playing on the Internets, and had completed one of those "Where have you been?" memes that always make you feel you've never been anywhere, even if you have citizenship from like 48 different countries. I realized that I'm one of the least traveled people in my family; my parents and brother have been to three continents, ( Read more... )

And so, the season of Christmas shopping begins. I have not begun to do any shopping mostly because I keep forgetting. Ed has put me in charge of all the shopping, which is probably a mistake, because I'm missing the Girly Gene that would make it necessary for me to actually enjoy shopping.

We did do some shopping today, though. St. Joe's is one ( Read more... )

Tonight Ed and I went to our first Christmas concert of the season, which featured the Utah Premiere Brass and the Salt Lake Choral Artists (consisting of five separate choirs: the Concert Choir, the Chamber Choir, the Women's Choir, the Salt Lake Vocal Artists, and the Young Choral Artists), who sang both separately and together in various ( Read more... )

(By the way, this icon, of an Estonia Air jet, is my new favorite icon for travel. Only edfox will understand why.)

I feel so...untraveled.


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I think this may be the quietest Thanksgiving I'll have ever celebrated: just Ed and myself with all the traditional fixins, spending the time enjoying the holiday together sans family.

Tonight's menu:

• turkey (brined)
• potatoes (mashed)
• stuffing (I decided against making sausage stuffing this year; it is possible to have too much stuffing for ( Read more... )

In which I continue with the subbing and tell you how my day has gone so far (recorded during my prep/lunch break; five periods down, two to go, at the time of this AudioBoo):



Also, it was a few periods earlier when my 2nd period kids (homeroom) had written this on the board; obviously, they know just how much I heart them:


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This afternoon we met with Fr. Carley for the second and last time regarding our marriage preparation duties. There was a form he needed to fill out - our names and addresses, parents' names, whether we'd been baptized, understood the commitment we're about to make, etc. - but all it all it was fairly innocuous. We were able to give him copies of ( Read more... )

Obviously, neither Ed nor I has kids yet - and of course we may never have them, insofar as having children, adopted or biological, is never guaranteed - but we're in an unusual situation if we are ever to successfully adopt any.

I was reading this article tonight about the difficulties that arise when a child with two working parents becomes sick ( Read more... )

It's hard to believe that our Engaged Encounter weekend was only last weekend; between subbing for four of the last five days this past week and getting a second fitting of my gown on the day I wasn't subbing, it feels like last weekend was a lot longer ago. (the first blog entry about last weekend)

For the most part, the talks that were given ( Read more... )