Southern (and Midwestern) Hospitality

It may be an outdated concept, but I definitely have been enjoying my couch surfing in the last two weeks. Let me start back a bit, with my stay in Green Bay with KN and her family.

First off, going to Green Bay was surprisingly fun! There were five of us PM's in total, which probably made for much more exciting times than had it just been one of us. We stayed with KN's parents and then met her whole family... a couple aunts, her grandparents, and a brand new baby cousin. Everyone was so adorably wonderful, just like KN herself (we know now where all those fabulous quirks come from!). We ate way too much, drank quite a bit, and enjoyed wandering around Lambeau and taking in the sights. It was all terribly fun while being completely relaxing, which helped since I had a very stressful plane ride immediately following.

On my connecting flight to Pittsburg from Detroit, NWA pissed me off. They never announced that the flight was running late, until 10 minutes after the time it should have left by. Then they refused to tell us how long it would be before we had a plane, and once the plane arrived and we boarded, we sat on the tarmac for over an hour and twenty minutes with deicing and "resolving weight and balance issues" by buring off fuel. It was depressing and horrible being trapped in a plane that long, especially since I wouldn't have needed to eat if the plane had simply taken off, or been deiced... the extra hour on the ground pushed me into really hungry, cranky Ari territory.

And then I had a week with a presenter that slowly sucked the life out of me. He was overly nervous about everything, even his physical appearance was full of nerves. He constantly twitched and fidgeted, constantly prattled on and on about stupid stuff, and was obsessed with stupid things (his hair had to be properly hairsprayed into place and he changed from his black wool dress pants to his black cotton dress pants for traveling so that the wool pants would "hang nice"). A perfectionist beyond belief, he had me packing up all of his displays into very carefully labled boxes which were diagramed so that everything could be put in them perfectly. When he introduced me in the morning to make my announcement he made a bunch of awkward, semi offensive jokes about the company I work for (and he works for...) and then kinda made fun of me as well. His personality was just icing on the cake: he was such an overt attention seeker that his presentation was more about making jokes and showing off than actually explaining the things he was trying to teach. I guess that's what happens when his teaching carreer was only default to his original dream of being a famous actor. A self-absorbed LA'er to the core... the only question he ever asked about me was literally in the last taxi ride as we were pulling into the airport drive.

Luckily, I had a weekend of fun ahead of me, so I made it through working with him with only a few problems (primarily a serious lack of desire for food after too many bad hotel dinners, even when I went all out and tried to have a nice chicken dinner it was dry and gross). Hanging out with MJW & Fiancee was really enjoyable. We slept in late, went to the art museum in ATL to check out a really cool Chinese exhibit, went coat and dress shopping, and headed out dancing later in the night. I haven't had so much fun at a club in a long time... although the prices definitely were right up there at the astronomical level and I ended up getting booze spilt all over my clothes. Luckily, one plastic bag later I can keep those clothes seperate from the mildly clean stuff I need for work.

The best news of all is that I'm going home tomorrow! Laundry and family dinners await, although turkey and all the fixings does not appeal to me yet... I have a car for these two days so I'll be going out to eat at places that are actually decent. Last night I had blackened mahi mahi that was spectacular... along with butter beans and corn and followed by Key Lime pie. I intend to wander around a bit and find somewhere equally tasty for lunch, then enjoy Richmond at dinnertime!

As far as NaNo goes... I'm not going to win. I haven't gotten any further after a lot of stress last week with food and the presenter, and then I enjoyed Atlanta at the expense of my writing time. I'd have to crank out over 20,000 words in this next week, and I just don't feel that I have the energy to do that. Hopefully I can get at least within 10,000 and then polish the story off in the next week or so. I want to print myself a lulu.com copy of the book so that I can say I wrote a novel. It's been an interesting experience thus far, and I'm impressed with how my story has changed over the years (it started as a dream when I was 17) and even throughout the month of writing it. There's a big chunk left to go, mostly back in the beginning, and it's a hard chunk. I have to somehow make a character more believable as well as develop further a bunch of characters in the early stages of the novel before the plot takes over and tests them.

It's not all horrible, although it's definitely not great. I don't think I'd ever attempt to publish this... it's more of an excercise that shows me that I can write a novel, and that I can let this story go. Once it's all tucked away in completion, I'll be able to bring more characters into fullness. I've used this strategy before, writing away something and finding myself finally able to let go of it. Who knows if I could ever actually get published or write a novel worth reading, but as long as I can put this one aside I can move forward right?

Oh yes, for all who are interested: I'm right back to drinking soda, although at a far lower level than I had expected. I'm definitely more interested in iced tea or coffee than diet coke. Perhaps giving it up for that long did make a difference.