three weeks, two weeks, one month

1. Okay, so not really three weeks, but twenty days. Man am I ever a slacker these days. That's going to change a lot, though. I have a plan.
My life has been pretty full of plans lately. I have a plan for school, I have a plan for work, I have a plan for making them happen at the same time, I have a plan for knitting that will probably conflict badly with the other ones. I'm working on a plan for my living room (it needs to be a little more comfortable than it is) and a plan for food that isn't going to bankrupt or kill me. Plans plans plans.
My latest plan is something that has been nagging me for a few years now. There's this writing marathon called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) that I've made half-hearted stabs at in the past. It takes place every November, and basically you sign up and write about 1500 words per day for the month, ending up with a whole book. In theory. In practice, I tend to gack out at about day three or four.
This year's going to be different. And to get warmed up, I'm going to write at least 500 words here, on this very blog, every single day until November, at which point it may drop off a bit, because honestly 1500 words is an awful lot. I have two weeks to get sufficiently pumped to get through November. And then, of course, I get to write exams.
I may fail at this, but you know, I may not. And collecting these little victories makes it easier to try for bigger things. And hey, who doesn't have "write a book" on their to-do-before-I-die list?

2. So, what have I been up to these past weeks? Let's see.
I went home for Thanksgiving and took a lot of pictures, and visited with Grandma, and Grandpa, and Michelle and Scott, and Mom and Dad, and all the furry Peters. I brought Sean, and we had a good time, and lots of pie.
The pictures: We traveled via Saint John, where, apparently, the snow plows YOU.

We visited a park in downtown Saint John where there is a very cool fountain with some beavers in the middle.
We went to the woods near my house to appreciate the beautiful weather.
Possibly the best picture of Sean ever.
A bug's eye view of the woods. I took a lot of very fuzzy nature photographs.
Nature that is easy to photograph: Sonny, drinking from our garden pond. He has since taken ill, but apparently he's getting better quickly, so hooray for the indestructible Sonny!
Mom learned how to make my camera take everything in sepia tones. It's a pretty good picture, actually.
Grandpa got a manicure.
And I finished my first Jaywalker! I'm on the home stretch of the second, so hopefully I will have pictures soon.

3. This past weekend, we went to visit Sean's family, and spent a peaceful weekend playing with four dogs (two are his parents', two are Aine's) and visiting with Aine and her boyfriend Matt, and of course Sean's parents. Unfortunately, my batteries died, so I couldn't take more pictures, but they would mainly be of the dogs (Noola, Sam, Lucy, and Bailey) and of delicious, delicious food.

4. School has been ticking along with startling rapidity. I haven't got much to say, really, except that it remains a lot of work and I don't seem to sleep much these days.

5. Work has also been moving along. We have our new gallery completely set up and open for business, and have accordingly switched my hours to one hour during the week and four hours on Saturdays, to have the gallery open on the weekend. I'm pretty happy with it - it limits my ability to take off on Saturdays, but gives me my Tuesdays and Thursday back, except for that one hour. Very exciting.

6. Well, that's my words for today - closer to 700 than 500, but we'll see when I have less to catch up on. Stay tuned.