17 Hours and Counting

So, I just did up this nifty little Excel spreadsheet (for the second, time, mind you, stupid Microsoft software messing up my Mac!) to add up my time I’ve spent writing. M and I have a little wager: I have to write 80 hours by 1 November 2008. So… I’ve been at this since September 8th. And I budgeted 10 hours per week for two full months.

You can guess where this is going, can’t you? Grand plans–all worked out with calendars, schedules, Excel spreadsheets. Sound familiar? You may be familiar with some of my former attempts at these sorts of things–food plans, weekly meal plans, exercise schemes, Phase One anything. (Those of you familiar with the South Beach Diet may be shuddering at this point. Mmm, cucumbers and celery and low-fat string cheese. Sign me up!) Next thing, you’ll catch me writing affirmations–but, by God, that’s writing, isn’t it!? It counts towards my goal!

I’ve racked up a whopping 17 hours and 5 minutes so far. Yikes. Which means I have a lot of catching up to do. I’ll hold true to my bet, but it’s a lot harder to sit down and write if you don’t have something specific, like a novel, to work on. I’m doing a lot of journalling and a fair bit of blogging, actually, as you probably noticed. I also should sit down and hammer out an outline for the nebulous Nanowrimo book floating around in my head.

Now I’m sitting at the computer with my headphones on, partially to block out the weird army movie M is watching right now and our other loud neighbors, and partially just to literally tie me to the desk. Half of writing is just B-I-C (butt-in-chair).

So I am writing, but… unfortunately, most of what I’m writing is not really about much: no matter how cool the country you live in is, an average workweek is just that–average. But, every day some neat stuff happens. I’m still trying to come up with things for the list of things I’ve never done before. For instance, today I got very close to a baby Australian magpie. The whole time I kept a weather eye for its dive-bombing parents. (They didn’t show.) They’re such striking birds (ha ha). No really, they are very glossy, crisp black and white with great shaded beaks. There are some great pictures here of various Aussie birds as well as what to do if Mom and Dad Magpie do show up.

We also had a spur of the moment calamari-and-chips dinner and, while we waited for it to cook, we walked around a nice little strip of stores that we haven’t fully explored yet. It’s quite close to our house and has a small clothing store, a video store, a couple of convenience stores, a cafe, a butcher, a German bakery called King of Cakes (It also sold refrigerated German sausages, headcheese, mustard, etc.), and the fish monger/fish and chip shop run by a lovely Greek family.

So, add to The List these two things I hadn’t done before–seen a baby magpie and explored those shops. I guess if I do two new things a day that I’ve not done before, that will keep things interesting enough. Enough to write about for 80 hours? We will see.

Yesterday’s list would include trying new Aussie chocolates: Good–the crazy coconut truffle things and the chocolate espresso beans. Bad–the fruit-flavored chalk dipped in chocolate. They were called clangers and I threw one and a half of them away–I only bought two. They were ghastly.

If anyone has any special requests for blog topics or any writing, let me know. We’ll call it an assignment. It’ll be practice for my debut** as a freelancer.

Do you know how Australians say this word? I do, because lots and lots of people had Olympic debuts this year. They say day-boo (not day-bue). Day boo. For real. I love this place. You should hear how they say Adidas and Hyundai.