Fun with photos: where I write

Random things I learned this weekend:

1.  A clean kitchen is an awesome way to start the work week.
2. When your cream of tomato basil soup calls for finely diced garlic, finely dice the garlic. Go ahead and take the extra few seconds because when you don't, you end up with large chunks of garlic in your soup that leave you with a gross taste in your mouth.
3. Any sad or frustrating thing on your mind can be healed with a cup of tea. Preferably Irish Breakfast.
4. Speaking of the Irish, I'm going back this fall for 10 days. Just need to figure out the dog sitter situation.
5. If your leg muscles hurt from your workout on Thursday, pushing them to the limits again on Saturday doesn't make you a hero. It makes you walk funny.

Okay, this is becoming tedious. Here's what I really want you to know. This is a big deal, so are you ready? Brace yourselves...

I finally finished Game of Thrones over the weekend. Guys, this has taken me over two months. It has been countless lunch hours and 30-minute increments on the stationary bike at the gym. This one book has consumed more time than any book in my history, not including the ones I've written.

That's right. The longest book EVER. And now it's done. I feel like celebrating!

Instead, I have to get to work. I have many writerly/book related things I'm juggling all at once. My NaNo novel outline, my TBR pile, the book I'm reading for my friend, my two other NaNo novels, blog entries, and the writing lesson I'm supposed to have ready for my Tuesday night crit group. Lots of things to juggle.

In an effort to get my writing space ready for November, I spent many hours this weekend upstairs. And because I feel like sharing, here are some pics. One is my writing desk and the other is my writing bookshelf. Take a gander...

Why yes, that is a piece of chocolate cake the size of my hand on my desk. Why do you ask? Don't judge. I made it with egg beaters and unsweetened applesauce, ergo I can eat as much as I want.

Okay, here's my office/baseball paraphernalia/scrapbooking room. The desk is from the 1990s and is held together with a prayer and possibly duct tape. The chair is made of pine and the cushion you see there doesn't help. Some day when I'm all grow'd up, I'm gonna buy a big kids desk and a black high back chair. With wheels. It's going to be epic.

Some things on my desk include a stack of CDs, the ever important Mug of Something Warm (Irish Breakfast tea today), my space calendar which will soon be destroyed and taped on the stark white wall above my computer, a plethora of candles, a picture of an elephant because they're my favorite, and a bunch of post-y notes to remember stuff.

Here's a pic of the wobbly bookshelf to the right of my desk. Notice the imminent safety hazard of the extension cord holding my computer plug. What you can't quite see is the outlet itself barely hanging in the wall. The Eiffel Tower lamp is sketchy at best, adding to the electrical nightmare.

The black boom box (yeah, that's right, boom box) is from the 1980's and still works like a charm. If anyone needs a mix tape, let me know. Unfortunately, there's no CD player, so I have the grey one for that function. Unfortunately, the grey CD player doesn't have a jack for my headphones (see them next to the computer in the above pic? Yeah, only the left side works...), so when I want to listen to a CD with my writing headphones but without my internet distraction device computer, I have to use the grey one. It's complicated.

All my writing handbooks are on the top shelf along with all the drafts of my first WIP. The 2nd shelf is for stuff. I'm not too sure what's there. Oh, it looks like paperwork from my 2nd book. Hmm... I should finish that.

The third shelf holds all my journals. Here's a closer look of the journals minus the one that is tall enough and is hard covered so it's holding up the second shelf. Classy, I know. The journals are actually in a somewhat chronological order too, which is kind of neat. There's one that I can't open because I can't remember the code to the lock. Naturally, that one is NOT one my dear dog chewed to within an inch of its life. However, you can see there are plenty that served as a mid-afternoon snack for my dog back when he was a pup.

I never thought I'd really go through my old journals again yet this past week I've do so twice. The first time was to see what I wrote concerning 9/11. The fear and the anger were pretty clear on those pages. The second time was a trip down memory lane when an old relationship ended. There was something calming about reading back to when that ended. All the despair and questioning was okay--I came through alright on the other side. Good things to keep in mind.

So if you're keeping track at home, the number of broken things in my writing room = 5.
The number of journals filled with the trials and tribulations of yours truly = 14.

NaNoWriMo, here I come!!