I meant to be in bed half an hour ago, but I've been messing around with my laptop and taking an inordinate amount of time to get ready for bed, so this post will be quick. I'm quite pleased with my day; while I didn't get up quite as early as I intended, I still managed to pump out ~3500 words (about fifteen pages) for the first day of National Novel Writing Month (heretofore referred to as NaNoWriMo). That's about twice as many words as the daily word count needed to stay on track to hit 50,000 words by the end of November, and I feel pretty good about what I wrote today, so I need to keep up the momentum! I blocked off time on my work calendar on either mornings or evenings all week to write for a couple of hours each day, which should be enough to hit the necessary word counts and set myself up well for another marathon writing session next weekend.
I probably could have written longer, since I only really wrote from eleven to three, but I decided to go in search of groceries before my required Sunday afternoon phone call with my parents. However, the parking lots at both Whole Foods and Safeway were full; while I could have circled and parked on the street, I knew that I would not want to venture into either store if there were no parking spaces, since that implies that there were hoards of scavenging disasters inside, and I was in no mood to stand in line. Perhaps I'll go to the grocery store tomorrow after I've hit my word count for the day, but we shall see. So I came home emptyhanded, spent a few minutes finally completing the unpacking job from last week's trip to Dallas, and then called my parents. We had a v. good conversation, talking for almost an hour and a half before parting ways. Then, I ate a bowl of frosted flakes (one of my comfort foods, oddly enough) and watched a bit of a Craig Ferguson episode from last week. But then I talked to Vidya, and we decided to get a snacky snack before the movie we were going to see, so the frosted flakes were ultimately a waste for reasons which will become abundantly clear in a moment.
Vidya wanted to try this dive/hole in the wall Vietnamese place next to the movie theatre, and I was highly amenable to that suggestion. The place really was a hole in the wall, and small enough that we were practically sitting on top of the cook, giving us perhaps too much insight into how greasy the food was and the crazy process that goes into cooking it. For instance, she was keeping the egg rolls (which were called imperial rolls, likely because they were the size of four egg roles smushed together) warm by occasionally tossing them back into the fryer. I ordered a combo so that I could try several things at once; Vidya ordered the garlicky tofu since she's a vegetarian and they seem to be heavier on the meat side of the menu.
The verdict? it was delicious, and a ton of food for only $10 each (including my diet coke). My combination was one imperial roll, some 'shish kebab' (really flattened skirt-type steak or something cooked on a griddle), some shredded cabbage, and a whole ton of rice covered in 'meat sauce' (which was some sort of strangely pasta-sauce-like tomato-based sauce with pork in it, which was okay but didn't really go well with the shish kebab). I also tried a bite of Vidya's dish, and it was quite delicious as well. But the end result was that because they were packed and we didn't want to rush our food once we finally got it, we missed the movie. Instead, we ate leisurely, enjoyed ourselves, and continued our conversation over Turkish coffees at the restaurant around the corner from Vidya's place. So we ended up hanging out for exactly the amount of time it would have taken to see the movie, but it was a much more social event (even if I still know nothing about black people's hair, which was the topic of the movie we were supposed to see). We'll try to see it again later in the week, but I wasn't too disappointed, since this was still the perfect cap to a great weekend.
Now, though, I really must go to bed; I have an eight a.m. meeting, and then I need to slog diligently throughout the day so that I can get out of there at five p.m. to write. Wish me luck!
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