Nine Months Later...

We're still in 2012.  We had a cold front come through last night, so today is a chilly 84 degrees.  Despite my sarcasm, I much prefer that to 100 degrees.  I hope this sticks around for awhile.

The Good Stuff:

• I paused work on PBOTL long enough to design a really wonderful exhibit for Inuit.  I had to design it before I could rewrite the scene, because Inuit is looking over the plans, offering suggestions, and approving the construction.  My sketches won't win any awards, but it helps me see what should be there.  This is just the public exhibit.  The behind the scenes stuff is pretty bland.
• Bike and stretching is doing fine.
• Lost the weight I gained last week.  I'm on a fairly even plateau.  I'm going to need to make some changes if I want to get back in losing mode.
• Hubby moved his music to the shop and is putting it in file cabinets.  That means we have more room in the blue room.  The goal is to clean that room out enough to set up the bed.  This has gotten me kick-started on going through some boxes.  I wish I could say I was ditching stuff right and left, but I'm not.  Alternatively, I conversed with a high school acquaintance about how he has his EBay business set up.  I have a number of items that might move that way, and I could get them out of here.  There's always yard sale, donation, and trash after that.
• We got dog kennel panels moved to the shop.  There are three more in the garage, but they are okay where they are at--for now.
• I jotted down the daily goals for Backward NaNo.  I liked the way that went for me last year.  Usually the excitement of the first few days makes the >3000 word counts easier to do.  Then the declining goal for the rest of the month is motivational.  I didn't make the count every day last year, but I feel as if I got caught up sooner.  Once the daily goal is down, I add the total words month to date needed to be on track on parenthesis.  Once NaNo starts, I'll write the actual total words month to date, which lets me know at a glance where I stand.  I just do it in a notebook.  I suppose I could do a spreadsheet and track results from year to year and do all kinds of analysis.  Yes, that does sound fun to me.
• I replaced my bike headlight, because I thought when the batteries corroded in it they had done too much damage.  I'd cleaned up the contacts, but when I put batteries in, it didn't light.  Hubby put different batteries in, and it worked fine. So, other than the added expense of a new LED headlight, I have two headlights now, which is actually a good thing. 
• I bought my NaNo gear for this year and made my annual donation.

The Not So Good Stuff:

• The DRUDGE report headlines this week were all election-related -- and I'm sure they will be from now until November.  I can't imagine coming up with a NaNo story based on variants of what I'm seeing.  I'll revisit that idea another time, maybe.
• I called DPS -- never got a response from my web query.  My license was returned to them, because they mailed it to Alabama (how did the mailing address not get corrected during the renewal process?).  They will send it out again (hopefully to the San Antonio address), and I should have it in one to two weeks.  Even though I have renewed my license and they have it in the system as renewed, I can be ticketed for driving during this time after the temporary expired and whenever it decides to find me via the mail.  I hope this try goes smoothly, because I'm the primary driver on our October trip.
• Supposedly there is a driver license office here in Central TX.  I may stop in and see if they can issue me a replacement temporary even though they aren't a SA office.
• The third generation iPod is giving me all kinds of troubles.  I wound up wiping and reformatting the drive.  It took forever to get iTunes to recognize it. Now, it's hanging whenever  I plug it in and it tries to sync some podcasts to it.  I'm not sure it's worth this trouble, but I'm trying to figure the problem out.
• I have so much I want to read, and I'm not getting any of it read.  This is a bad year for reading.
• I used the remnants of hubby's marinade mix that I found in the fridge to season a pork roast and tossed the bottle.  Turns out, it was his mixing bottle.  Oops.  (He was not happy.)

The Week Ahead:

• Going to Dallas this weekend to hang with the kids
• Continue work on PBOTL
• Continue trying to figure out what to do for NaNo
• Continue sorting boxes and books
• Research what's happened with EBay since I last listed anything with them.  Consider firing up an EBay shop (or at least beginning to list items) in November.
• Continue stretching and riding the bike -- take the heating pad and my yoga mat (easier to travel with than the bulky fitness mat I use at home) to Dallas and use the motel fitness room for the bike ride.