Wardrobe, work, and woe

I'd like to wish a Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain to all! I went to school today in costume and enjoyed a lot of the reactions I got. Not many people at school wear costumes all day the way I do, so I guess they weren't expecting to see a devil walking towards them looking like this (um...add some devil horns to the top; I forgot to put them back on before I took this pic...)

I got a few stares and a lot of "cool" and "looks good!" My favorite compliment, however, came from a girl in my sound design class. As I walked in, all smiles with a black velvet cape billowing behind me and my backpack giving me a hunchback, she returned my smile. "You would be in costume. That's awesome!" Today's costume provided very few mobility issues, but comfort was a minor sacrifice. My own fault, I suppose, for wearing boots that have heels of about 2 1/2 inches. Oh, well. I've always had fun showing my Halloween spirit!

Checking my calendar put me in a minor panic as I realized tomorrow is November first, the official beginning of NaNoWriMo 2008. I haven't touched my plot or my characters since late August/early October and have no idea whether or not I'm ready to dive headfirst into the story starting tomorrow. I did find an excellent motivational tool here. The simple textbox that is provided - after the main menu - lets you type freely and keeps track of your word count at the bottom. If you stop typing, depending on which mode you choose, you'll either receive a pop=up message or hear an annoying sound once a certain amount of time has passed. The screen changing colors makes it even easier to keep track of time's passage, how long your fingers have been motionless, etc.

Tomorrow, as well as launching NaNoWriMo, will cue the final tech weekend of the fall semester. Fun stuff, always. I also have the cemetery walk on Sunday, a test in Spanish Monday, and a test in English Tuesday. Tuesday marks the opening night of 'Stop Kiss,' our last mainstage production of the fall semester, which will run through Saturday. A bake-sale will be going on during the run of the show to raise funds for the theater club. Strike will be Saturday Nov. 8 immediately after performance with a post-production critique Monday the 10th at 4 pm. On the 15th, several members of the theater club are going to see Stomp, a trip I'd love to go to but keep talking myself out of. I'll likely be spending Thanksgiving studying for finals, which begin the first week of December. The more I think of all this, the more I wonder just how crazy I am to be trying NaNoWriMo this year...

A thread in the NaNoWriMo forums proved that most WriMos who don't succeed fail simply because they don't start. Of course, for me to cite this fact seems something of a moot point since I've never broken a word-count of 10K. Oh, well. This year, I'm going to have fun and stick with it.

I'm off to study Spanish and eat candy. Everybody stay safe tonight!