National Novel Writing Month-- it's a simple concept, really. You have from 12:01 am November 1st until midnight, November 30th to write a complete novel of at least 50,000 words. Driving family, friends or one's own self insane is completely optional, albeit highly probable.

So, yeah, that's what I've been up to for the last five days. Elvis, for his part, has been spending as much time as possible at the pub, safely out of harm's way. NaNoWriMo 2002 seems to have taught him a lot.

I've been doing other stuff, too. Yesterday was another board meeting-- a monster one, this time, with almost two boards. The next one will be even worse, as it is the transition meeting. The bright side is that, for me, it will be my last, at least for the next year or so. Except, probably, it won't. We shall see, although I must admit I have high hopes. There's still plenty for me to do for the organization, but hopefully my position for the coming year won't require me to do quite so much.

A girl can dream, you know.

Tuesday brought with it the necessity for a monster trip to Jumbo, which, as you may know, pretty much sucks up the entire day, or at least the best part of it. A trip to Jumbo-- or any hypermarket, really-- also leaves me somewhat brain dead. I swear, I can feel the IQ points dribbling out my left ear the minute I push my cart through the the entrance gates, along with my will to live. Still, needs must, and among other things we needed light bulbs for the bathroom, one of which fell out of a poorly packed bag on its way to the taxi and shattered immediately.

This is the same light bulb intended to replace the light bulb that I bought the last time I was at Jumbo, which burnt out the second time I turned on the light switch. The fixture requires a spot light type light bulb, and the smaller grocery store closer to our apartment doesn't carry them. Until I can get back to Jumbo, I'll have to continue putting my makeup on in the dim. It shouldn't be for too long, unfortunately, as half of the florescent lightbulbs in the kitchen burnt out last night. The little grocery doesn't carry that kind of light bulb, either.

I've finally broken down and hired another cleaning lady, and her first day was Monday. She needed to be shown where stuff was, and kept asking a lot of questions, which is to be expected. She's fantastic, though, and I expect she'll have us whipped into shape in no time. She also removed about a cubic acre of pet and Elvis hair, which explains why it took her a lot longer than planned to finish. Which was OK, as I expected that, too.

Even so, with her here I couldn't concentrate, and after she left, I made myself lunch, and so I didn't get started working on the novel until half past four. That, I did not expect. (Not coincidentally, that was the first day of Elvis' new Pub Policy, as follows: if Dilettante's still writing, I'm NOT coming home.)

I did manage to do some research, however, so it wasn't a complete loss. And to be entirely honest, I probably wouldn't have gotten much accomplished earlier on anyway, because my brain was still fried from the weekend.

Ah, yes, the weekend. It was long, very long, and it seemed even longer. An entire day (Sunday) vanished, after having friends back to our place after the Late Night Bar of Evil closed, at around 6:00 am. Bad idea. Very bad. I did manage to put in 450 words on the novel, but it hurt. Seriously. My brain actually, physically hurt.

As opposed to my head, which was seriously hurting on Saturday, after a Halloween party feature a punch involving vodka, cheap red wine and I don't want to know what else, followed by the inevitable trip to the LNBOE. Oh, and at the party there was some sort of shot, allegedly from Madeira, featuring honey, lemon and I think moonshine. Or possibly bathtub gin. Something dangerous, in any case. It gave me a big time headache, but I deserved it, and it didn't stop me from reaching my daily NaNo quota.

The Halloween party was fun. It was held at the home of a couple who really, really like Halloween. Which is unusual, because they're Brits. I've always thought of Halloween as a uniquely New World holiday, not really celebrated in Europe, which until recently it was. According to my sources (Brits and other Europeans) until recently it was, and it's only in the last couple of years that people have started to celebrate it in the UK. According to people who have been living here for a while, this was the first year there was a lot of Halloween stuff in the stores. I don't remember what they had in Jumbo last year, although I do recall that Bud had a Halloween promotion in the pubs. Not surprising, as Bud is an American beer, although I hate to admit it almost as much as I hate Bud itself.

One of my oldest friends brews his own beer, and he spent a lot of time one evening explaining that Bud wasn't really that bad, and that it is merely a classic example of a "bland"-- you might not love it, but you couldn't really hate it either. Maybe he's right. It is rather hard to hate a beer that has no taste whatsoever, although I can try, I can try.

In any case, my friends had gone all out for their Halloween party. The lighting was kept spookily low, the punch had an eyeball floating in it, and they had an abundance of motion activated stuff that would scream or laugh eerily or whatever. By the end of the night, we had located the off switch on one particular mask they had hanging on the wall, which is why it will live to see another Halloween. Its eyes would flash red and it had a very creepy, very loud laugh. It was pretty nifty at first, but it got exceedingly annoying after, oh, five minutes. That damn thing never shut up.

Incidentally, we also played Pass the Parcel. Which was a lot more interesting once they explained to us stupid Americans what was going on. It hadn't occurred to them that we wouldn't know a game they'd played since childhood. The kiddies loved it.