back to life, back to reality

I'm closing in on the thousandth lifetime post on my blog; this is post 994. That doesn't count the 320 posts still residing on my India blog.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to estimate the number of words I've written (and you've skimmed/ignored entirely/only searched for your own name - ahem Vidya). I calculated my average word count (based on the month of March) to be 491.6 words/post. Combining 1000 posts on this blog with 320 posts on the India blog means I've written 649,000 words since July of 2004 -- which also ignores the 2003-04 posts on my old, now-defunct Xanga blog, and misses the six months' worth of 2004 posts that I deleted off of this blog when I decided to start w/a clean, slightly less whiny slate.

649,000 words in less than four years. That's 2596 manuscript pages. Or 6.49 full romance novels. Just think -- if I turned the blog off and committed to writing 500 words/day for a romance novel, I could be quite prolific.

I'm not going to do that, though; I like having a record of what I've done and how I was thinking, even if it is edited to protect the innocent. I should commit to writing a certain number of words each day, but the blog is not something I'm willing to cut.

Today was a great, albeit exhausting day. I got up fairly early and went to Des Moines, where I shopped for eight hours -- I needed 'manager pants' and other work-appropriate outfits, as well as shoes and accessories for an upcoming wedding. It's imperative that I have enough fun/business outfits to last me 2-3 weeks, since I'm going straight from cross-country drive to LA beach wedding to [my employer] 3-day management offsite to desperate search for an apartment. I also have scattered appointments after the offsite to meet with various directors and figure out what my role will be when I officially start back at work, and since I want to get the best possible outcome, showing up in a nice outfit rather than a scrubby pair of Stanford sweatpants and a tank top is well-advised.

I was extremely successful with the shopping, although it simply makes it more imperative that I return to the income-earning world. Lots of things were at great sale prices, and it's economically smart for me to buy here since I can get pants shortened for cheap (seriously, I must be close to having dwarf-sized legs, given how many inches have to be chopped off of regular pants for me). I was relatively good and got work-appropriate clothes rather than yet another parade of casual I-wish-I-were-still-in-college shirts -- although I did cave in a moment of weakness and buy a pair of gold gladiator sandals. This of course just increases the pressure to pack tightly, since true to my acquisitive nature I've increased my holdings in the past four months and now need to fit it all in the same RAV4 that was perilously overpacked last time. Lucky for me, I like unsolvable puzzles. Now it's time for bed!