Welcome to December

Well... National Novel Writing Month is over, and what a month it was. I made my 50k this year; in some ways it was easier than other years, and in some ways it was harder.

It often seemed like there was no way I could finish. There was so much going on. I've had a couple friends dealing with fairly serious health issues this fall, which has occupied a lot of my attention. Meanwhile, Mandi and I are still wedding-planning (we finally arranged a taste-testing with the caterer, which went very well) and... okay, I'll just say it. We've been house hunting. I'll let you know how it goes.

And of course, there's Thanksgiving, which was particularly exciting this year when the oven spontaneously shut down-- completely, oven and stove all turning off, and it's electric, so off means OFF-- about 30 minutes before I expected to take the bird out. There was a lot of discussion about finishing one of the birds on the grill or taking them 15 minutes down the road to my sister's house to finish making dinner as all the handy folk in the house checked circuit breakers (I was the first one to look, but no one believed me when I said nothing was flipped) and pondered.

Eventually, my brother-in-law realized it had been unplugged. Go figure. A few people concurred that this made perfect sense, that it must have been loosened over time, but seriously, how does a major appliance randomly come unplugged when the very large plug is UNDER the appliance? Either way, we got it plugged back in and working again, and managed to serve by 6:30, which is outrageously late to serve Thanksgiving dinner.

All in all, though, it went well. I also managed to acquire Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, so I spent much of Saturday, Sunday and Monday playing that instead of working on my NaNo, which I still managed to finish by 10:30ish.

November has been a little surreal.

Now it's December. Like every year, I've sworn I am not going to the mall this year. The one near us is so overly large it creates its own traffic patterns for a month on each side of Christmas. Like every year, I'll probably be there a few days before Christmas buying last-minute items. Maybe I should just give in and go early instead.

Before then, though, I'm going to Torah study with my fiancee on Saturday morning, followed by a production of Beauty and the Beast that night. Chanukah starts the following Saturday, so Mandi and I will light candles right after I trim the tree and put up the creche with my parents.

And now... now I need to call the lawyer and see if the sellers have signed a contract yet, so we can go to a home inspection...

Welcome to December.