So LJ's prompt of the day is "what did you do for Valentine's Day?" Answer: nothing. We went to dance class after work, where we suffered the in-retrospect hilarious interlude of the teacher of the class next door bursting in and demanding that we turn off the music since her class couldn't study with it playing. Our teacher responded that ours is a dance class and thus requires music, and further that said crabby lady had already been directed to take her issues to the people who run the center, one of whom was standing between our instructor and this lady and trying to get the lady to listen to him. Eventually he succeeded in getting her out of our classroom and I hope resettled her group into a different room; our class can't move because we need the room with the dance floor. This was a smirch on an otherwise good class. Honestly, you'd think that getting old would lend you a touch of grace or class or whatever you want to call it, but in this lady's case, apparently not!

Went home after class, ate dinner, got cold (I've noticed this tends to happen to me after dance class...) and ended up huddled in bed with my sushi blanket, doing cross-stitch on the big old-style map project I'd set to the side. I'm on my sixth color now, oooh~! However, in my defense, the colors I've done thus far were the ones that had a LOT of use in the thing. Still, it's in a large embroidery frame and thus not really a transportable project; I need to find something that is so that I can take it along places. I'm guessing I'll probably pick some blackwork for that again. There's a Holbein stitch strawberry pattern I would like to try, and I have red and green silk twist....

Spent a good portion of today trying not to fall into a doze at my desk. It was very quiet and dull once I'd done my usual run-out-of-work-to-do thing and finished my current embroidery. I've pretty much filled the linen piece I was working on: two cuffs and a collar in black, two cuffs in a different pattern in rust red, and the blue test of that second pattern. I need to do up another piece of linen to work the second collar in, and then I get to make shirts.

I made oatmeal-raisin cookies yesterday when I got home and have decided on mods to note next to the recipe. Like twice the raisins, for example. When I make cookies that have stuff in, I want lots of stuff! 'Coz it's yummy!

And now... to write. Darn characters are writing me in circles trying to find their point. Fortunately after this scene I'll only have one (pseudo-)main character left to introduce, and I've known her for a while, so Susse's characterization should come more easily.

Day one of IProCreMo done. Transcribed 2,748 words from notebook writing into the file. Which I realize isn't real writing, but I can't write further until I get what I have into the file. I have just a little bit of the next scene also written, so tomorrow I'm going to be doing real writing. I've hung a little sheet of paper above my computer and am writing dates/word count totals onto it as motivational reminders. I'm aiming for 2K words/day because I'm going to have several days this month where I'm not going to be able to write much if at all--two school nights (tomorrow is the first) and a weekend trip to visit hoshikage. But my current total is 42,859 words / 72 pages 10-point single space Times New Roman / into chapter 11. Expect frequent updates on these numbers because I really do want to finish The Novel this month and posting about it here makes me accountable.

Other than rereading the first sixty-seven pages at work today (it was slow... very slow), I fiddled around a bit with my inherited collection of silk threads and started a new blackwork embroidery in blue buttonhole twist. It was a bit stiff and a bitch to work with until I hit upon running the thread between my nails a few times, which got rid of the stiffness, doesn't seem to have affected the twist, and actually improved the sheen. So we'll see how this goes. As it's mainly a timekiller at this point, I'm probably going to be concentrating my time and energy on The Novel instead.

I normally don't remember my dreams. Given the dreams I've been having the last week, I think I'm thankful. There are the recurrent ones about my car either getting stolen or getting towed from the parking lot right next to our townhouse, which I can attribute to the fact that I'm not entirely comfortable with parking outside of a garage, which is silly. But then there was the nightmare about a friend of a friend (no one I know in real life, one of those people who only exist in a dream universe) e-mailing me, horribly upset about how homophobic I was toward him (he being gay, incidentally) because I didn't like him touching me when we went somewhere in a group. I was trying to compose a reply e-mail about how I can't be homophobic because I'm bisexual, have dated members of my own gender in the past, have homosexual as well as bisexual friends, have you READ the stories I write and post on my webpage, and I didn't like you touching me because I don't like being touched by people I don't know well. That one was more deeply disturbing than the car-theft dreams for many reasons. I don't think I'm homophobic (though, as the song goes, "everyone's a little bit racist" and I do know where my unfounded phobias are and am trying to confront/dispel them) and am failing to figure out what issue it's standing in for. -_-;#

But, letting go of all that now. *deep cleansing breath, exhales*

With one of my coworkers in Hawaii on vacation, though the workload is up, the dislike I have for the atmosphere is down. I normally don't mind being the youngest in the office by ~20 years, but it really does irk me when the subtle racism of my coworkers gets brought up via their complaining about Asian doctors and nurses and blaming whatever problems they're having with the doctor's office on race and inability to speak English. It doesn't even occur to them that since I have a degree in Japanese (yay, maiko Barbie coming out next month!) I would have a problem with their remarks, my Caucasian-ness aside.

Letting go of that too. *breathes*

I'm three-quarters finished with the collar embroidery. That, at least, is a positive thing.

Mwah, looks like I'm twice over not going to get to go to FIDM's Star Wars exhibit with friends. Guess I'll just have to set things up and go by myself. Or with family, maybe.

Spent today at work being wobblyish and having trouble concentrating on even my embroidery. Fortunately I got all the work done yesterday, so there was nothing left for today but answering the phones and the embroidery. I'm a quarter way through the blackwork for the collar now, yay. Now if only I can get it together and be productive on sewing this weekend again....

Also had trouble writing tonight, but did finally find a groove, so here's more

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