Today I went to a writers' group meeting, which two of the folks I know from NaNo go to. Melinda (the one "old timer" from the last NaNo meeting) invited me to it, and we all had a good time yakking about writing, science, and various forms of geek entertainment.

I got invited to join the group, which meets on Wednesday nights. I am going to attempt to get OFF of volunteering on Wednesday nights (then again, I've been trying that for awhile...) so I can join them. I'll see how things are going by Wednesday.

I need some kind of writing motivation for non-November, non-December months. I keep trying to think of some way to motivate myself to do novel writing without NaNo, with some kind of accountability or deadlines or something, and maybe a writing group would be good for that.

Maybe that should be this year's NYR: figure out some way to force myself to write the other ten months of the year.

After that, I went over to the CC to work on more Christmas presents. Much to my delight, I managed to finish the major work on my last glass project. I've got to get the last four plates slumped (i.e. shaped like plates rather than glass slabs) and grind off any funny edges, and I'll be done. Big yay there. I only hope that the folks running the kiln can get them all done in time. I have my doubts considering that Monday through Thursday only class stuff gets run, though... But at least my part is done and it's up to the teachers to finish things up.

I had one hour left before the CC closed, so I decided to work on making the skirt for my doll.

You know what I hate about sewing? You go in with an hour to work and you think, "Oh, I'm not doing anything too hard, I can do X, Y, and Z in an hour." An hour later, you're lucky to have gotten HALF of X alone done. Waaah.

And that's pretty much what happened. I wanted to cut the fabric, sew a hem, sew the side seam, and put in threads for gathering so by the time I left, I could go home and gather the waist around the waist of the doll and sew it on. Sounds easy, huh?

Oh nooooooo. First I can't cut in a straight line, so when I finish the hem one side is longer than the other. So I cut that funny bit off, repin, rehem. I ALMOST get that done, and then one end somehow doesn't get sewn right...and then 45 minutes are up and a volunteer gets sent in to tell me to clean up ASAP.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. I didn't even finish the HEM, y'all. A hem!

I am going to try to go in tomorrow morning and give it another shot, but who knows if that'll happen. Mom is making noises about coming up here tomorrow by 1 p.m. instead of being late as usual. (We're going to a "holiday hula" performance at Sac State in the afternoon.)

And then I DIDN'T go to the gym.

I hate winter. I get out of the CC at six p.m. and it's cold and dark and I'm hungry. And between the commute over there and back and the time I spend working out, it'll be three hours later of being even colder and even hungrier. It's really irritating, this whole slacking off at working out thing.

I don't really know how to fix the cold-and-hungry problem, though. I have a hard enough time managing to bring lunch to work every day- bringing lunch AND dinner (and dinner better not need a microwave or water in order to finish preparing it!) on campus 6-7 days a week is just not going to happen.

Plus the whole cold thing... yeah, I know I live in California and it doesn't snow and the coldest it's ever going to get in my area is something like 33 degrees above at night, but unlike everyone else on the planet, I don't have a car. So whenever I'm going anywhere and it's after 5 p.m., I'm walking home for about a half hour in the cold, and it's becoming a factor in how much I am willing to do once night falls. And going home and eating before going to the gym...yeah, right, I'm going to go BACK outside in the cold again once I'm home? Puh-leeze.

So.... well, ugh. Well, maybe this will improve once I don't have to spend all of my free daylight hours on weekends working on projects at the CC. If I can start going to the gym in early afternoons or late mornings the way I used to, that might improve things.

I'm adding a bit to the stress-o-meter today, just because getting this sewing thing done (hell, I'm not even close to getting Mom's doll done yet!) is worrying me a bit.

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