I never actually heard of NaNoWriMo until a few years ago. Short for "National Novel Writing Month," it's a worldwide project for participants to try and write a 50,00-word novel during the month of November, or at least write 50,000 words for a novel. I think it works out to writing an average of 1500 words (about six pages of double-spaced pages ( Read more... )

So, yesterday I headed down to the National Mall to participate in Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear. It's not often that I take advantage of living in Washington, DC, but a rally hosted by two of the funniest political satirists and comedians in America definitely seemed worth bestirring myself from my usual ( Read more... )

So, I had my yearly performance review at work today, and it went pretty well. Yay ( Read more... )

I always thought that one of the benefits of working a steady nine-to-five job was that it would be much easier to get a good night's sleep every night. No more staying up all night to finish homework, or being unable to fall asleep because of a major exam the next day, or having to put up with unpredictable schedules from day to day (e.g. a lab ( Read more... )

Usually, when I go back and read old things I've written, from blog entries to stories and poems from high school and college, I cringe in utter shame. I can't believe how pretentious I sounded and how eloquent I waxed over subjects that seem far too petty now, in the hindsight of several years, for such strong feelings. The worst offenders in this ( Read more... )

When people say that there's nothing new under the sun anymore, I always have a hard time believing them, because I'm surprised every day by the unexpected and amazing things that people do. Of course, this might say more about my naiveté than anything else, but that's a debate for another day. Anyway, I recently came upon something that I thought ( Read more... )

1) It's September already? When did that happen? This year is going by too fast. Of course, I think that about virtually every year I've lived through, so this should be nothing new. I did enjoy my Labor Day weekend, though, which was a nice benefit of it being September already. While other people went on exciting trips to exotic places, devoted ( Read more... )

The great thing about new friends is the variety of new experiences and ideas that they bring to your daily life and the way they expand your world by showing you things that you never knew existed but are exactly the things you like and enjoy. The wonderful thing about old friends, though, is the deep connection you've formed with them over the ( Read more... )

For the most part, the real world and the world of games don't intersect very much, and for good reason. After all, the reason most of us play games is to escape the too-familiar realities of our everyday existence for a while and enjoy the novel situations that the game puts us in and the new sides of us that the game brings out: the strategist, ( Read more... )

At first, I was planning to write an introspective, philosophical entry about the Internet and how it sends words flying through the air. But then, I decided to write about a topic I feel very strongly about, especially right now: work pet peeves. Introspection will come later, but right now, irritation wins ( Read more... )