Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

It's like I'm in grade school all over again!

I've finished "Half a Life."  The purpose of a book club must be, at least in part, to get you to read books you would never look twice at otherwise.  I also think it's interesting to try to figure out why someone would choose a particular book and I look forward to finding out a little bit more about that when we meet next.  The book was a memoir of a man who hit and killed a classmate at his high school.  It's essentially the story of how he lived with, or through, or around, the event.  Books, and stories, are amazing because quite frequently they meet you where you are, no matter where that is.  I was drawn to his conclusion which, to paraphrase, is things don't go away and you can't escape the past.  And it's not strength that makes you more or less able to cope, it's human nature.  How true that is.  Despite our vastly different stories, I could relate to him.  Books are magic.

And then there's writing!  Yesterday officially started NaNoWriMo!  I (awkwardly) attended a 'write-in' kick off event in Mission Viejo where I successfully completed my first 1600 words!  Go me!  My story seems to be taking on a life of it's own.  I'm functioning under the working title of "The Tracks" and the assumption that it will awful when (if) it's done.  Still I have a goal: 50,000 words this month, a little over 1600 words a day.  One more or less completed novel in November.  Jen is participating as well, although I haven't heard her progress yet.  Mike also committed to some amount of involvement, pending my daily success, while we were in Vancouver although the details of which have yet to be clearly recalled by any of the witnesses.  

I really just threw in Arithmetic because I thought it made the title awesome, but in the way of basic math, I have been testing out Mint.com this month as a financial tracking cloud based software.  It's fine, but to be perfectly honest, I'm way happier with my personally created excel sheets (although import is a bit tedious and they became slightly more complicated each year).  Eventually, I recognize the necessity of a more streamlined process, but for now I'm holding out.  Maybe Mint will grow on me?

I know I'm late with my Halloween post and will do my best to get that posted ASAP.