Good Monday Mornings

Man, I love it when Monday's just flow and I get in the zen of stuff. What I've managed to do so far:

-Work out on the Elliptical while watching The Office on hulu.
-Get pumped up with a homemade iced mocha and trance music
-Do some serious work (yay!)
-Order firewood for the winter
-have morning snuggles with cats and hubby
-and am now getting caught up on podcasts.

Gotta go to Irvine tonight - late night...sigh. Need to spend my lunch hour writing 3500 words to stay on track with NaNoWriMo.

weird stuff

I was watching football today and suddenly one of those freaky cartoon Charles Schwab commercials comes on TV, right? And who is it, but my old coworker Lee Shephard. All cartoony. And freaky. Talking about investing and savings and how he's going to need this money pretty soon, and can't afford a mistake. Followed by the "Talk to Chuck" slogan. Too weird.

Other than that, I'm puttering around writing my book, avoiding the fact that Thanksgiving is 2 weeks away, and November is going too quickly. I sure love November. It's my favoritest month. I wrote 3500 words today. Good day word-wise. Feels like I've earned my tv-time now.

ERGH

It's been a busy week. I slept nine hours last night, and man, did I need it. Here's how the week went...

Friday, 10/30: J started his Landmark Forum, and I drove to Pasadena to set up the CLA booth. CLA started from 4-7pm and I drove home in Friday night traffic. Got home at about 9:30. J called at 10:30, all excited from his first day, so we talked until 1am.

Saturday 10/31: I went to Pasadena to get to the booth by noon-ish (left around 10:30). Booth time, then meetings until about 6. Came home, felt lazy and not like cooking at all, so had grilled chicken from KFC. J called at 11 or so, and we talked until 2, which was really 1 since the clocks went back.

Sunday 11/1: Went to the booth by 10. Stayed until 3 when CLA was over. Went to the Glendale Galleria to shoot the breeze until 6ish when I headed over to LAX to be with J as he finished his Landmark Forum. Was there until 10, then came home and J was, of course, totally excited about life, and we were up until about 1:30 talking.

Monday 11/2: Woke up and went to MCLS early. Came home and actually had an evening at home, but J was still in talky mood, so we were up until pretty late, despite my best efforts.

Tuesday 11/3: Worked at home but went to J's Tuesday Evening session with guests. Got home at 2am - ate at In-n-Out after the evening session was over.

Wednesday 11/4: Worked at home but went to my agreement in the evening. Got home at 1am.

Thursday 11/5: Went to MCLS, and nearly passed out in the grocery store on the way home.

Friday 11/6: Worked at home, but went to ILP Classroom in the evening. Got home at 1.

LONG WEEK. I was so desperate for the long sleep that I got last night and this morning. Life is so much better after you sleep. I've also been slightly freaked out all week by J since he's on fire from doing the Landmark Forum. He's got so much energy and has so many amazing goals and plans now - I keep wondering what happened to my husband!

Today J's friends came over - they have a six month old, and I'm having fun with her. It's kind of freaking me out about having our own. It sure does require a lot of energy.

Anyway, that's it for now. I started my novel this weekend for National Novel Writing Month and am up to about 10,000 words. Nice to be back on schedule.

The Reasons I Love October...

Here are the top reasons I love October -

- The haunted house we went to in our tiny mountain town last night. Those kids worked so hard - it was awesome.
- Pumpkin-flavored candles
- Fires in the fireplace
- Soft pine needles all over my driveway
- It's cold enough to eat a lot of soup again
- Sweater weather!
- the light is all golden

And finally -
The new designer handbag line at Target is being released this Sunday (technically November, I know, but I spent all of October looking forward to it...)

Getting started following my bliss

I got all reinspired when I was in the UK, and am committed to making it work so that I can live there part-time. To do that, I probably need to work for myself. It's not something I want to do just yet, but I do want to start getting things moving so that when the economy improves, and when we can sell our house and move back to PA, and everything gets in alignment, I can get right on the stick and step into this dream. So I'm starting to make things happen.

My big three passions in life are music, the internet and marketing, so I'm trying to figure out how to combine those three things. I'm starting by writing to musicians and finding out what their needs/wants are with their marketing - I really want to put together tools to help them do it themselves guerilla-style rather than just charge $150/hr to manage their web presence for them. So I've started writing to friends, friends of friends, everyone, just to see what people think. I'm committed to having 50 conversations with people before the end of the Introduction Leader's Program (the Landamark program I'm on right now) which is March 19. I think from that I should be able to put together some ideas that I can start working on, and make it happen. Moving slowly and gently, though, and not rushing into this. It's like when I first started dating Jonathan. I'm going to have the rest of my life to work on this project, hopefully - I don't have to rush into it and figure it out right away...

So that's what I'm working on these days. Go me!

Halloween

We're all in the Halloween Spirit here. I'm actually not that much into Halloween, but I love fall, and Halloween comes in the fall, and so through using the transitive proof, I love Halloween. If Valentines Day came in the fall I'd love that just as much. But it doesn't, and so it's Halloween.

Yesterday we carved pumpkins, on display here. Mine is the happy one. J's is the skull and crossbones. We used a stencil kit from Target - I wish we could claim that much skill ourselves. We watched The Nightmare Before Christmas while carving. Today I worked on a new episode of my Renaissance English History Podcast - the history of Halloween. I'm loaded up on the candy corn and am officially ready for the trick-or-treaters!

Was on vacation the past two weeks - back to the grind on Monday. Oh well, it's been nice. Went to the UK and got myself all reinspired about figuring out a way to split my time there. Thinking about the things I love - marketing, the internet, classical music - and how to put them all together. Lots of ideas floating around in my head, and thankfully I have a lovely new Muji notebook from Carnaby Street in which to capture them all.

The first thing I need to do is start talking to musicians, particularly classical musicians, about their needs and how I might be able to fill a gap in the market. I'm envisioning some type of membership based website with an accompanying book or something like that to help musicians market themselves better online, but I'm not sure about how great that need is. So I'm going to start talking to people, seeing what might be possible, what they'd consider paying for, etc. One thing I'm clear about is that I can make this happen. So yay for me.

Then J and I went up to the giant sequoia trees, a place I've been wanting to see since I came to California. It's pretty humbling to stand in front of a tree that is 2200 years old. That tree was already big when Jesus walked the earth. Crazy.