NaNoWriMo update: The romantic humor story has morphed into a suspense thriller. The title has changed from Reason to Complain to Dance the Silence Down (both were taken from song lyrics). Most importantly, none of it is good. But there's 44,191 words of not good! I am almost there. The major conflict of the story only just started, so I could easily push 75K or more, if I wanted to continue the story after Nov. 30. But I think after winning (because I will win), I'm going to set the story aside. Long fiction isn't really my thing. I'm far better at taking things that have happened and describing them in a way people like to read, than I am at making up events that anyone would want to read about. Most of my word count is long passages of description, and some dialogue. Not much actually happens.

Friday Friday Friday Friday Friday Friday Friiiiiiidaaaaaaaaay!!!!

In stat mech, we actually talked about stuff that I'd seen before! Like determining whether a reaction is first order, second order, etc. through the use of actual experimental data. Now don't get me wrong, deriving some of the fundamental laws of nature is pretty cool. But they're important laws because somebody has already derived them, so it's not like there'd ever be a need to derive them again. Figuring out a reaction rate could actually be important in an experimental setting. However, since I don't see experimental settings anywhere in my future, I'm really just happy because I've seen this stuff before and it doesn't involve ridiculous amounts of difficult math.

Biochem...one of the most annoying 'ask a pointless question in an attempt to look smart' people is now being openly mocked by the rest of the class. There are the people who cough whenever she raises her hand, the people who call out her name mockingly, the people who see her raise her hand and say "What is it now?" and "Maybe I should just give you the chalk and let you teach the class." Oh wait...yeah, that was the professor. Great moment, that was.

NaNoWriMo update: I'm going to hit 20K tonight. So that's fun. As far as how the novel's going...I'd like to share with you all a quote from the "What is NaNoWriMo?" page:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

So, yeah. I just want you all to understand the magnitude of the crap I'm writing right now. There's a lot of padding, like overly long "chapter" headings. There are digressions. There are pointless additions. For example, mistyping the name Eddie created a character named Edie who works for Eddie (more words!!) There's a character whose last name is van der Weyden just because that gives me three words every time I use it. There's a character who's an art history grad student, who exists for the sole purpose of spewing out all the art history information I have in my head. (More words!!) Trust me, it's BAD. But the point is to have fifty thousand words of BAD by the end of the month, so it's going well overall.

I went and used my prize from the DDR tournament to buy myself Season 4 of the West Wing. That's my reward for finishing my French paper and/or my art history paper this weekend. It's a pre-emptive reward, which will hopefully inspire me to work really hard on both. Because, OMG, I own one of the best long term story arcs on any show EVER made: "20 Hours in America" I and II. "College Kids", "The Red Mass," "Debate Camp," "Game On," "Election Night," and "Process Stories." I own Marion Coatsworth-Haye of Marblehead. I own the babies come with hats monologue!! And I'm not watching any of it until those papers are done. Talk about motivation.

Watching Grey's Anatomy right now. Dr. Bailey owns my soul. I aspire to be like her. "Pissing off the nurses? .... Stoopid." And it doesn't matter that I missed the first part of the ep, because TWoP recaps the show now. How great is that? They're also doing both season 1 and 2 of Project Runway. Life really doesn't get better than that.

Today was pretty busy. Since I didn't write a single word of my novel yesterday, I practically woke up with a pen in my hand. I feel like falling behind the pace would be just too discouraging and could spell the end of this whole project. So first thing this morning, I caught myself up. Then I went to Starbucks to meet up with my partner for this French presentation. We got our entire outline together. Quite a productive meeting. I then tried to work on my art history paper in the library. But after checking out the books that were on reserve, I realized that I had no idea which pages I needed to read in those books. That was okay, because I also realized that I needed to book it to some store and buy a final clue for my little. After doing that, I had just enough time to change clothes for exec/pledge meeting/revelation/after-revelation dinner.

So then, there was exec. There were three members of section staff there. (A 'section' is like, all the chapters of APhiO within a metro area.) Section staff is made up of fraternity alumni who still want to be active in the organization. That's just background information. All I really have to say about their visit is that I work too fucking hard for this organization to sit there and be scolded by people I've never even met before. Too fucking hard. The scolding was because there was a section picnic at Lullwater today, and apparently only Kim H. attended. Please refer to my previous paragraph, and tell me where 'attend a picnic' could have fit in. Now consider the fact that I have a lot more free time than most other brothers. Then consider the fact that I'm one of the brothers in the chapter who makes the most effort to do APhiO stuff when I'm short on free time. Consider the fact that the past week was clue week, and that last night was our major fall fellowship. Consider the fact that Delta Kappa probably has more 20+ credit-hour-per-semester, thesis-writing pre-law pre-business pre-med pre-vet pre-dental members than Tech, Oglethorpe and UGA put together. Does it make sense that our attendance was low? I'm not too pissed at the scolding, since I know it was more of a general expression of disappointment than specific pointing of fingers. It's stil annoying though. Whatever. Exec's got a meeting with all these alums on Thursday, and maybe we can come up with...something. Or I could quit the chapter and have a lot less hassle in my life!

Nah, I won't quit. After the pledge meeting (which I missed because people I've never met before had to laugh at our service hour requirements, which we KNOW are low, thank you very much, person I've never seen before.)...after the pledge meeting, was revelation. That's always fun. Like, a lot of fun. I'm a dork. Katie's reaction when she turned around to see that I'm her big was great.

After-revelation dinner was supposed to be at the Cheesecake factory. One day, we'll learn that it's impossible to ever go to the Cheesecake Factory if it's a weekend, and if you're in a group larger than four. So we ended up at Outback Steakhouse, which was tasty. And I decided that if I ever get an acceptance to a medical school, I'll eat at the Cheesecake Factory every day for a month. Because I'll have to go there with all my friends to celebrate, but we can only go in groups of four.

I didn't do a damn lab-related thing all weekend. All week. I'll have to go in at like 9 tomorrow. Le crap!

Stat mech exam is going to kick my ass, once again. It's a pity...I had such high hopes for this one. I'm shooting for a 65. Yaaay, 65!

I started my day by calling the admissions offices of Yale and UNC, to schedule my interviews. UNC is in two weeks, on a Friday. Yale is the Monday after Thanksgiving. I didn't even pretend to care about classes or assignments I'd be missing. I've come too far for that.

Then I met with Dr. Kindt and we talked about Honors, and all these poster presentations and talks he wants me to give. Went straight from there to stat mech, where I realized that the exam is going to kick my ass. So that was kinda depressing. And worse, we got out of stat mech ten minutes late. Silly graduate students, don't you know that other people have lives, and OTHER things they need to do?

As usual, between stat mech and biochem, I checked my mail in all its forms, and bought food. The Thanksgiving food drive is on. I wonder how many hours worth of service will be put into it.

Biochem was sooo fun! Yay for mechanisms and stuff like that. There's this one chick in the class, who always asks the most ridiculous questions. I've talked about such people before..the ones who ask completely irrelevant questions in an effort to..get on the prof's good side? Make themselves look smart? Annoy me? Well, she succeeded at one of those. At one point, she asked a question that was ridiculously constructed and used the phrase 'using techniques previously mentioned'. At that point, my brain was so full of sarcastic comments that it was just overloaded. I was going to try to whisper one of those comments to LB, but then Heather, the girl next to her, repeated the "Using techniques previously mentioned" in the most hilarious voice. And I completely lost my shit. I was weeping. It took me a few minutes to compose myself. It was great.

Then right after biochem, I came to get my car, to pick up 4 other people for Sheltering Arms. That was fun, but tiring. I was with the one year olds. They don't sit still, ever. So that was a lot of running around. As soon as I got back here, I crashed and slept for two hours. Then I ate, started to look at flights, and tried to up the ol' NaNoWriMo word count a bit.

In an effort to pad my story with more words, I came up with this band that has accordions + drums + guitars + washboards...a blend of zydeco and hardcore punk. I christened this new genre 'zydecore'. Turns out I wasn't the only person crazy enough to think it up, but I think all the google results I found were also in jest. Somebody should actually start a real zydecore band. I'd buy tickets to that concert, oh yeah.

Back to writing for a few more minutes, then I've got to study.

The membership of APhiO has been changing since I pledged, back in the distant past that was spring 2003. The percentage of people who are in APhiO, and only APhiO, has dropped dramatically. Back in the day, I thought this would be a good thing, and only a good thing. I'm realizing now that it's more of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you've got a higher percentage of people who are in the organization to do service. More than ever, members are expecting the service fraternity to provide service opportunities, and that's that. They're not looking for the chapter to provide their entire social life; they've got other activities for that. Regular Greek life, cultural clubs, sports, performing arts, and so on.

On the other hand, the dramatic drop in people who only do APhiO stuff has made things more difficult. They're expecting the chapter to provide service opportunities, but there's only so much time in all these busy schedules to squeeze in the service. I've got people who literally only have one free evening or afternoon a week. And if I can put something together on a certain day, who's to say they won't be swamped with homework or have a major exam to study for? So it's hard. Which is worse? People who want to do service, but are incredibly busy? Or people who have lots of time, but care more about movie nights and trips to Chilis than they care about actual service projects...that is, until the due dates are looming? Actually, that's a silly question. The first group is better to have, just so much harder to accomodate. But, as always, I'm doin' my best.

In other news, tomorrow morning I get to schedule my interviews at Chapel Hill and Yale. And then I get to talk to Dr. Kindt about putting together a presentation for the American Chemical Society National Meeting. I am just as busy as a little bee.

And I wrote just over 2400 words today.

This was going to be the mother of all replies to a post, but I decided to make an entry of its own.

To claim that reading a blog makes you an 'audience', not a 'person', doesn't make any sense, and frankly sounds pretentious. The two aren't exclusive. In any form of communication you've got an audience. When I'm hanging out in a group, there's my audience. When I'm writing in my paper journal, there's an audience (me). IMing somebody? Audience. Just because the accounts here have been typed up doesn't make them any less real. How is it any different than thinking, ahead of time, of a way to recount an interesting story to your friends?

So. Why do I write in this thing? Cry for attention? Because I'd rather share with countless strangers than people I actually know? No and no. This LJ was actually started to replace my paper journal, and from entry one I aired all my frustrations and vulnerabilities and insecurities. After a while, I realized paper was best for that, and stopped using LJ at all. When I started up again, I knew people would be reading it and wrote accordingly. But you know what? If you were talking to me in person, you would probably get the same stuff. If I point you to a post here, in most cases it means that my account of reading essays letter-by-letter is exactly what I'd say out loud anyway. It doesn't mean that I don't value my relationship with you. And if you think it does...get over yourself? Thanks.

Of course, in my LJ I'm usually making an effort to be humorous. So maybe I'm not as guilty of..whatever, as the people who seriously bare their souls here. And I probably took entirely too much offense from the remarks that prompted this, but oh well.

So, a while back I went through a formal poetry stage, in which I tried to write villanelles, sestinas, pantoums, all those strange formal styles. Well, it's hard. And this is the only poem I wrote that I was satisfied with. It's a pantoum, basically about how hard formal poetry is.

My villanelle does not exist,
Sestinas are too hard,
And all the forms resist
My attempts to be a bard.

Sestinas are too hard;
Intent on trying to doom
My attempts to be a bard.
I chose to write pantoum.

Intent on trying to doom
Blank space within my head,
I chose to write pantoum
While musing in my bed.

Blank space within my head
And all the forms resist.
While musing in my bed,
My villanelle does not exist.

I bring this up because I'm going to try and write a ..something, in order to try and get credits. I refuse to pay real money! I won't do it! Because I don't have real money! I will write, and it will be very good, and I will win.

In other news, I might have a mob named after me. I am way more excited about that than any normal human should be. Hopefully, she'll be godlike or something really strong, so she'll kick butt.