It seems no sooner did the holidays come around that they're gone again.  I blame moving in December, and the snow coming late.  And now it's the last day of 2012.  What a year.

Christmas time I always look forward to.  There's a kind of warmth to the season even though it's winter that you can only feel in this time of the year.  Seeing all the houses decorated with Christmas lights and decorations - there's honestly nothing more fun than living in or near a neighbourhood where a majority of houses are decked out with lights.  I wonder how many nights I can go walking around and enjoy it before they all get taken down.  This was also the time of year when I got to see most of my relatives, especially those who I didn't see any other time of the year.  Those were always such great times and memories.  Sometimes I look back and miss them but not with any kind of regret that they're over.  I'm happy that they're there for me to look back on, now that the family's grown on and apart.

Now with year's end here my focus is on the new year ahead.  This year there are no resolutions for me, I'm not going for that perspective.  There are plans and goals to be sure, I plan on being very busy in the new year.  Instead I'm starting my year with something that's been floating around Facebook.  An empty jar, which you fill throughout the year with notes about good things that have happened throughout the year and at the end you open it and look back on the great year you have.  I like the idea in being open to whatever good comes your way and not just what you plan to accomplish in the year.  After all:
The road to success is a journey; it twists and turns, sometimes things are unexpected.  It may not be the path you expect, but if your eyes are always down on the road you'll miss all the unexpected blessings that tend to come along.

Today I'll be doing some prep and planning while I continue to try and heal this back.  I strained it badly last week and it's been pain central ever since, though I've made sure to keep any length of bed rest to a very bare minimum.  The pain at least has started to subside and the more I do the quicker the swelling goes down, so hopefully a week?  Or two?  My New Year's Eve will be pretty quiet, just my mom and I.  Some of my friends will be ringing in the year playing video games, I'll likely follow suit.  I got Diablo III and a World of Warcraft time card for Christmas as well as a brand spanking new laptop all my own, but that can wait for another entry.  Because I can ramble on about those all day long!

Enjoy your New Year's (safely!), and here's to a brilliant 2013!

My whole November and the first couple weeks of December can be basically summed up like this:

• - start NaNo
• - get two days ahead
• - put in moving notice
• - house hunt
• - struggle with word count
• - find house, start packing
• - more struggle with word count
• - lots of packing
• - pack and send out NaNo swap packages
• - finalize new house
• - packing?  Yep still that
• - word count finally caught up
• - NaNo ends
• - call utilities
• - packing done

Yes I'm moving again.  The place we're heading to is a really nice place and I'm way excited.  I'm more excited about where we're moving to than when we moved here.  Don't get me wrong, this house is a nice house and it's in a nice area, there's just something about this new place we're heading to.  I'm hopefully going to take pictures, providing I can get a camera.  My goal this time around is to have a less stressful move than the last one - so far about 95% achieved.  The truck is booked, we have friends to do the heavy lifting (some of this furniture is pretty freaking heavy, no lie) and the place is for-sure.  And we have a move-in date, we'll be able to celebrate Christmas there.

NaNo so far can be easily summed up like this: I got ahead a few days, fell one day behind, caught up, fell behind some more, lost a couple days' of writing and managed to just make it on the 29th.  Rewarded myself for managing it, Magnum ice cream is the most amazing thing ever.  I had a hard time about week 2 with this story, I started hating it.  And it wasn't even like it was work-through-it-fix-later kind of hate, it was I-don't-want-to-be-here hate.  Normally I'd take a break to something else but I wasn't going to allow that during November.  I ended up rewriting chapters 2-4 until I got them going in a way that made me like the story again, and I created a dump file for everything I've written but decided is not going to go into the story.  That way I hadn't lost words I fair and square wrote and managed to preserve my chapters.  In eight chapters my two M.C.s had three bad spats and a new character materialized around chapter 4 with some timely conversation.

Well I needed the word boost.  Dialogue is good for that.  Besides, it's not the first time a new character has shown up out of nowhere, and won't be the last either.  We'll see how he shapes up as the story progresses.

I realized what a tricky main character I've designed here, though.  She had some of her memories locked away and starts the story that way, but along with those memories she's forgotten two significant things: the man she loves and the reason for the whole thing in the first place.  She's reunited with said love interest in chapter 2 and has to deal with emotions her heart remembers to a man her mind can't recall.  Pinning down what that would make one say, do, feel and think is interesting, although difficult because it's something I'm having a hard time connecting to.  I've never been in such a situation so what would be a realistic reaction?  When would you follow your heart and when would you follow your head?

It's a challenge.  And I love it.

I'm going for a story with some didn't-see-that-coming kind of twists near the end, and the whole truth of the situation comes out.  Everyone has their piece of the story, or what they think is the story, and with my M.C. acting as sort of a catalyst for the truth it's going to come together nicely.  Plus her mother's going to get into some serious battle action.  It was a topic in the Fantasy forum on the NaNo boards, I think the pet peeve topic, and one commenter's peeve was about how older women never seem to do any of the 'fun' stuff (fight, have adventures, love story, etc).  I didn't add it with a specific goal of bringing that to light, but the point kind of stuck in my head.  Because you know what?  It would be rather fun to see the 'mother' figure kick some butt here and there.  And I was kind of taken by Rene's role in Thor and the scene when she picks up the sword to defend her husband.  I was a little disappointed that she only got one strike off before being knocked aside; I mean come on, this is Lethal Weapon's Lorna Cole and the character comes from the Norse mythology and gods.  Let the lady kick some ass!

Goodness, what a mess I'm surrounded with.  Guess break time is over, I should get to cleaning house.  Again.