Tom & Alissa

Back at work. We got home pretty late on Saturday night, watched the last new episode of The Office (sniff) with hot cups of tangerine rooibos and went to bed.

Yesterday we went to church early to set up communion. The service was downstairs again - the building we rent out is having serious heat problems, and the sanctuary upstairs, where we normally meet, was frigid - and it was reasonably crowded for a holiday weekend. After church we snuck off to Angela’s apartment and had buckwheat blueberry pancakes, sausages, and what I think was golden raisin bread with her and Steve.

Tom’s shooting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art today, so he worked yesterday evening to set up. They are shooting a very long day with a lot of extras in temple of Dendur room today. So while he was working, I went out in search of a tiny Christmas tree for us. I was unsuccessful - the hardware store where they’re sold was closed - but I did come back with lots of little white Christmas lights, candy canes, a couple of baguettes, four tomatoes on the vine, a bag of baking apples, and a power strip. Similar. Spent the rest of the evening cleaning up the apartment for the holidays and strategically placing lights and candles about the place. My major accomplishment was consolidating my stacks of notebooks, papers, portfolios, and books into a basket which I’ve placed at the foot of the couch, where I tend to do all my work anyhow.

If you haven’t guessed, I’ve abandoned the NaNo project this year around 22,000 words. I wasn’t anticipating the sudden spike in paid writing work this month, and paid (and published) work always comes first. I feel much better about it after talking to Josh yesterday, though - those 20k words do include one fully-finished story and half of five others, and that’s an accomplishment for me, especially with everything else that’s been going on. If nothing else, it’s helped me overcome my fear of writing fiction.

I have a lot going on this week, the most daunting of which is my wisdom teeth (uppers only) being removed on Thursday. Perhaps I’ll get some rest then?