Day 18: 28K

8,141 words today. Currently at 28,243. Only 1,763 away from catching up. So close. Crap! Do I stay up and hit 30K tonight as planned, or do I call it a night? Pressure pressure. What to do? I'm right in the middle of a scene. My main character is standing at the back of the Griffith Park Observatory looking down on LA. No, she's not about to jump. She's just having a moment in her favorite (okay, my favorite--had to work it in somewhere) place in LA. Could probably knock out those words keeping me from being caught up in this scene, but seriously, I'm tired. And actually injured. Yep, I have my first NaNo injury--a sore wrist. I can't really lift anything heavy with it. Not good. Had to wrap it to get through the last 3,000 words. Probably a result of my poor posture while typing. What can I say, this chair is comfy and I can curl up in it with the laptop. I'll tough it out for the next 12 days. I'm not changing my routine now.

Got a good 2500+ words at this morning's write-out at Vroman's. Those are proving rather productive. Wish they happened more often. Might look into other write-outs during the week this week. Haven't really seen any on the forums. Everything seems to be for the weekends. Oh well. Guess I'm left to my own devices. (Never a good thing!)

Did take a much needed break this evening and watched the American Music Awards. Seriously, it was painful. I'm sorry, I just don't get the appeal of Fergie, Beyonce, Avril Levigne, and most of the other performers. I will fess up to owning Avril's first album and liking it at the time; and I'll concede that Beyonce has a decent voice when she's not singing drivel. But Fergie!?!?! You've got to be kidding me. As much as I HATE singers who don't/can't sing live, she should have lip-synced. Maybe smoother vocals would have distracted me from the actual lyrics of her songs (Did I seriously hear her sing "Fergilicous"?). I know I'm out of touch with most "popular" music these days. I don't really listen to radio or watch MTV, or even VH1. When I do, it's the same song over and over; it gets a little repetitive after a while. (I swear one morning last week I flipped from VH1 to MTV and they were both playing Daughtry's new video. Aren't these channels owned by the same company? You'd think they could better coordinate their playlists.) Besides, none of the artists I like are ever played. So, why bother. I guess this begs the question of how I ever find out about new music. Not really sure now that I think about it. Might need to start paying attention to that. But anyways, I had a point...actually, I guess I didn't. I just wanted to rant about how horrid the show was. And I'm sorry, but do we really need to leave it up to the public to vote on the winners. Isn't that what the People's Choice Awards are for? I'm all for the elitist, snobbery of a select few professionals deciding which artist gets recognition. At least then there's a (small) chance of someone other than High School Musical or Justin Timberlake winning an award.

I suppose all the words spent on this little rant/digression would have been more productive had they been applied to my novel, but I think I've earned a little reprieve. I'll catch up tomorrow. Looking forward to a relatively light week work wise given the upcoming holiday. Should be able to stay caught up, if not get ahead, this week. Off to bed.

Oh, one more rant. Got suckered into going to a Celine Dion concert. Let me say up front, while I like Josh Groban, it does not mean I'm a fan of the whole easy listening milieu. I can't stand Barry Manilow, Barbara Streisand, Celine Dion, or any other artist who Josh Groban gets lumped in with. I'm a former choir kid--all the way through college. Seriously, I lettered in choir in high school--geeky, I know. So I guess his voice and songs appeal to that part of me. Anyways, back to the Celine concert. There's a back story here. So, last fall when I wanted to get tickets to see Josh at Staples this past March, I asked my friend Christina to go with me. She's a Celine fan, and was familiar with and liked Josh's music. Actually, she's the easy listening fan. If you based our friendship on music taste, there is no reason we should be hanging out. But we seem to share similar guilty pleasures (She came with me to my first New Kids on the Block concert back in 1989--God, I suddenly feel old!). So, anyways, fast forward to this summer. Our families were going to Vegas together and she got us tickets to see Celine. I was all set to go, until my mother who was coming on the trip expressed an interest in seeing Celine. I happily handed my ticket over to her and skipped out on the concert to gamble. Christina was less than happy with me. So, my penance was dealt out to me this morning with an early wake up call (7:45 AM on a Sunday) informing me that she was buying tickets for Celine's show at Staples for next December. Yep, that's right, NEXT December; as in 2008--more than a year away! Who the hell sells tickets that far in advance?!?! God, I don't even know what I'm doing this Friday, but I now know what I'm doing on December 2, 2008 at 8PM. And if I'm NOT there, I fear I may be disowned.

I'm thinking of buying a ticket to see Tori Amos at the Nokia in a few weeks just to console myself. Might need to get on that before her show totally sells out.