Cluck Cluck II!
I spoke with lil' Kristikeet on Saturday for a good hour - she's hanging in there like the little trooper that she is. The poor thing - to have a massive power outage AND a fire occur at the hospital you're in, the day you're having surgery - jaysus. I was like, "What else could possibly go wrong? Tornado? Locusts? Earthquake?" Thankfully our little Miss Kristen is at home now, recovering, slowly but surely. Take it easy, young lady! :-D

Writing the Novel
I had class today from 10am-4pm and I was actually on the list even though I hadn't received enrolment confirmation, so at least I wasn't a loser showing up for the class, which was, surprise, surprise, called "Writing the Novel." There were 9 of us, and I have to say, none of us were feeling that perky at 10am. I personally was not really functioning. I mean, my friends know never to ring me before 11am (at least!) on a Sunday. It just isn't right. Anyway, overall it was a good class, though we definitely could have been given more time for some of the assignments. We literally had 5 minutes to plan the genre, theme, and plot ideas for a novel that we were essentially making up on the spot and then we only had 5 minutes for creating character charts for characters we were also making up on the spot. What the???

I was going to use my current characters/novel-in-progress at the beginning, but it was actually easier to make new stuff up because I would have had too much to work with in 5 minutes using the old stuff. However, I will go back and apply the tricks and techniques we learned today to the stuff I have been working on these last couple years. I was relatively pleased with what I came up with during the class - nothing amazing, but not bad considering I didn't sleep well last night. And I did actually work on a piece for my never-ending novel-in-progress during one assignment (in which we had 10 whole minutes!) so that was good.

As I was leaving the building to head back toward my 'hood, this guy in my class came up behind me and said, "You know, I really think you will be the first in the class to finish your novel!" And I laughed and said, "God, I hope not! I'll probably be like 99 when I finally finish it, so you better hope I'm not the first one!" And then he said told me I was the most "natural writer" in the class, which is total bullshit as everyone in that class could write well and there was some really amazing stuff that came out during the free-writing exercise. I was very impressed.

After the class I went and got my new usual soy chai and wrote for another 2 hours at Broadway. Yay! I'm going for quantity not quality at the moment - just getting myself back into the habit of regular writing, ignoring whether I am "inspired" or not.

So Taxing
Big thanks to Rammstein for being so patient with my stupid tax deduction questions. You're the best. :-)

Chicago, Chicago
I finally booked my hotel in Chicago for my one glorious and hopefully restful night. I just want a nice comfy bed - I'm going to need somewhere soft, big, and horizontal to rest my weary head after 19+ hours of travelling.

V.isa, Please!
So I'm going to practice meditating while at the I.mmi.gration Office tomorrow. I need to finally get my working v.isa aff.ixed in my passport so I can actually get back into Oz in September. It normally takes a good two hours to get anything done there, but I'm going to get there before they open so hopefully the line won't be as bad and I won't get into work too late. I better bring my notebook - I'm sure there will be some inspiring characters down there!