Airport rant and just taking a peek ...

... at my little Nanowrimo counter thingy. Two red squares indicate I didn't write anything that day. The yellow squares show the days I didn't meet the daily word count of 1667. But what it doesn't show is that on the green days, I often wrote way more than I had to. And that's why I'm still ahead by a day.

My lead got as much as four days, but I've taken a few mental health breaks here and there. But I'm pleased to announce that I have enough planned so that I won't finish the story before I've reached 50k. I've heard of that happening to others, but I wanted to make sure it didn't happen to me.

In other news, I believe I can officially say I've been sick four times this year. On Tuesday we had some of the biggest, coldest winds I've seen yet. It froze me, so now I have a bit of throat irritation. I would have written it off as not being sick, except the irritation was accompanied by huge tonsils. But I've busted out my thermals, and taking good care of myself, so I think this one will be short lived. Our neighbor across the street even said he and his wife are sick of the winds and are looking at moving to Idaho or something. I'd be lying if I said I haven't thought of the same thing myself. Especially lately.

I've been very disturbed with the news about airports and the invasive techniques they use in the name of security. It basically boils down to having naked pictures taken of myself (over which I have no control of what happens to the photos afterwards), or having strangers' hands put on my body in places only my husband is allowed to go, and only with my permission. If it were anyone else, it would be sexual harassment or worse. And were does it stop? Pretty soon they'll have to hire doctors to be TSA agents if this goes to the next step, "I can give you a prostate check or a pap smear while we check you for contraband!"

In the lower 48, it's much easier to boycott the airlines. Unless you're planning on driving across the country, most of America is reachable within a couple of days' driving. But in Alaska, unless you want to spend five to seven days driving through a foreign country, you don't have many options. I usually take a week long vacation - two days traveling, and five days visiting family. If I tried the Alaska Marine Highway (ferrying from Seward or wherever to Washington) that will still be three to five days traveling because they're more sightseeing and not direct travel. And I'd have to change ferries in southernmost Alaska. And that's just to get me to Washington. Would still take a day or two getting to my family.

Other options: see if I can hire a private plane to fly me. Have no idea how much that could cost. Or I could get my own pilot's license and fly myself. While tempting (I'm sure it would save a lot of flying money over the long run), I'm not confident enough to take on such a feat. I hate heights. And driving is scary enough.

So far, it doesn't look like Sacramento or Anchorage have the body scanners, but websites have been known to wrong. And even if they don't have the scanners, what's to stop them from doing the advanced pat-downs everyone is screaming about? Just because I've never received one of their random checks doesn't mean it won't ever happen.

As a martial artist and a woman traveling alone, I can't accept the idea of a stranger, man or woman, touching me in the ways I've read about. I'm trained to keep that kind of thing from happening, and it's just plain wrong.

So does that mean I'm stuck here unless I want to try to take longer vacations? Most of the time I can't do that. And if living here means I can't see my family without getting violated, it's not worth it.

I fully admit I may be overreacting. But it doesn't seem very likely.

And the Insanity Parade Marches On ...

Yes, I do believe there is insanity running through my family. I'm only grateful my job isn't full time because I'd be even more nuts than I am exhibiting now. However, while my job is short hours and lousy pay, it's long on physical demands!

And we haven't even started the dance rehearsals yet.

I think Nunsense II may be the most challenging musical I have ever done to date. I'm trying to think of any in my list of shows that were as freaky as this one is. I mean, really: bingo games with the audience, split personality puppeteering, singing and dancing in habits and other costume tidbits. I don't want to give things away, so that's all I'll say on the subject.

Except for this: I can only pray that the audience will be laughing at me for the RIGHT reasons.

Nanowrimo has been going exceptionally well. Yes, my little widget shows some yellow days amongst the green, and here's why: I've been largely ahead of my word count on most days, so there were a couple of days I technically didn't reach my daily word goal of 1667. However, the other days have made up for more than those short days. I think day one had me glued to my computer, cranking out near 5k! The take off is always the strongest.

I credit following Nanowrimo Sprints on Twitter for a big chunk. They run word sprints most of the day, so I can get on there and sprint with other people all around the globe. (So if you've been looking at my Tweets lately, that's what all those word count ones are about.)

The other big chunk goes to the write-ins with the Mat-Su chapter of Nanowrimo. We crank out a lot of words through word wars (where we compete for the most words written in a certain amount of time, making teams with names like Ghosts vs Fairies), with lots of candy and Pandemonium Bookstore's hot chocolate. Nothing like fellow crazies and sugar highs to knock out a bunch of words.

Anyway, now back to writing.

And we're off like a prom dress!

I know, I've probably used that line before, but I can't help it: It cracks me up!

Nanowrimo has officially begun in Alaska. I met with a couple of other die-hards at a restaurant in Palmer (the only one we know of open 24/7). We had salads and sodas, busted out our laptops, and had our first word war together as other late-night patrons chatted around us in the cozy cafe environment.

We left shortly after that first word war, but it was so cool to share staying up late and getting going right off the bat with others, that I didn't mind. It was too cool that we were able to do it to begin with! Always nice to know there are other people out there as crazy as I am!

I'm still 600 words short of my daily allotment of 1667 words, but it's just about two in the morning. I need some shut-eye in order to keep cranking out my glorious story!