Countdown time

mood: Overwhelmed
music: George Winston--Forest
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Okay. The countdown timer on my desktop says one week, four days to the start of NaNoWriMo. In that time, I have to finish critiquing five more stories for the contest I'm co-judging, sew a ridiculously intricate Halloween costume for my daughter, arrange a NaNo kick-off meetup or at least a live chat, and organize all my notes and ideas for this year's novel so that I'm not scrambling around and wasting precious time in November. Not to mention all that stuff like keeping the family fed, clothed and able to navigate around a relatively clean house, chauffeuring kids around, helping with homework, etc. I feel sort of panicky, so going to bed seems like a good idea right now.

However, a few notes first. Started what I think will be an interesting and productive writing workshop last night. Supposed to attend a tea tomorrow in the guise of a "real live writer" but wondering how I'm going to fit it in. Found a wonderful thesaurus program, WordWeb, that I think I'll be registering. I love the way it works in tandem with the word processor.

And here's an interesting little thing to play around with: Toogle. It does a search on your keyword and then creates an image from the text you entered. What a weird idea. But sort of fun.

One thing I learned today: A select group of people, nicknamed wizards, can nearly always tell when someone is lying. In a study of 13,000 people, 31 had the ability. Learn more at BBC News.