I don't post much these days, but when I do, I'd like to know people can see what I post. When I post, I'd like to be able to refer to other sites and link them here.

I do not believe that Hollywood and all the entertainment companies combined are in so much (fiscal) danger that it justifies clamping down on regular folks like you and me in order to protect their wallets.

So, in about 45 minutes, my site is (hopefully) going "on strike" to help bring awareness about SOPA and PIPA to more people. Here's a quick video talking about PIPA:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Join me. Write your Congress-person and tell them to stop these bills in their tracks!

I made it. I managed to crank out 50034 words between November 1 and November 30th this year. And now I can go do the other eleventy million things I've been putting off all month with the chant, "December 1! December 1!"

Beginning with Christmas shopping.... I'll be back. Soon, I hope.

NaNoWriMo has finally gone live with their word count widgets. Here's mine, so you can see a (relatively) live word count update:

This year's novel is back in the Federalax (did I post about 2009's werewolf novel, Shards of Lunacy?). I'm telling the story of a new ship, named _Kestrel_, and her crew as they discover something never seen yet in this universe I've created. Actually, two somethings not yet seen. grin This year's novel has a working title of Kestrel's Thread.

If you're NaNo-ing this month, here's to solidarity and making it to the 50,000 word finish line. As of the writing of this post, I have crossed the half way point (last night, so I'm barely on target).

I finally installed reCAPTCHA, thanks to a suggestion from Randy. With that in place, I felt confident enough to open the site to user registrations again. My status report says I've already had 1701 blocked form submissions -- but that hasn't changed in the last hour, so I suspect that the basic CAPTCHA module has contributed to that. We'll see what kind of user registration spam I get.

This means comments are open again on all posts. I require site registration to leave comments. Maybe I'll move that to allow anonymous posts but still require use of the reCAPTCHA module eventually.

In the middle of all the productivity, Randy helped me get my favicon back: a little "headshot" of Ukiah!

So, "all" that's left is to work on the site's them a little more -- despite my love of all things purple, no I don't like this theme -- and to finish the re-design of the site's banner image. No big deal. Ha! Since the tasks I delineated in the previous post seemed so gargantuan, maybe these won't be so bad?

I've only got about:

days until NaNoWriMo begins. Maybe I'll put this counter over on the side somewhere? I received an email from the folks who put NaNoWriMo on that they won't be opening the site for the 2011 participants until the 10th of October. I'm not sure when the website badges for participants will be available; perhaps at the same time, since those badges usually link back to the site?

As for what I'm going to write, I mentioned in my earlier blog today that I have no clue. I had an idea about 3 or 4 weeks ago, but wasn't anywhere I could write it down...and now the idea that I lost an idea (whether it would have worked or not) is distracting me from the process of coming up with a new idea. Dumb? Yes.

So, I'm going to dive into my old ideas folder and see if I can't slam some things together. Hmmm... sparkles and vampires.... wonder if that would work?

Eek! Okay! Stop throwing things at me! I was just kidding!!!!

Invisible Illness Myth #1: "You look great - you must be feeling better." We're likely getting better about concealing how we feel, not feeling better. Or it might be a single good day after a month of horrible days. -- from FM/CFS/ME Resources, "What We Don't Want to Hear"/

This is very true. Most days, I don't think about my fibro. But if I stop and consider, my life has been adjusted so I don't have to: I have a C-PAP machine and nighttime meds so I'll sleep better. My spices try very hard not to wake me, so I get enough sleep (even if that means I sleep later than I really wanted to!), I (usually) avoid all caffeine so I *can* sleep. And I pace myself every day. If a task is wearing me out, I take breaks to keep from overdoing it.

Sometimes, I feel like a huge "faker" because I don't have it as bad as some of the women in my support groups do. I try to remind myself some of them have it so bad because they weren't able to make the changes in their lives I could. I don't work (outside the home). I don't have a set schedule I must keep. I don't have a handful of little kids I'm trying to keep up with. And I now have both a husband and a wife to help me manage the household. How many wives out there have joked about needing a wife themselves? I got one!

I'm expecting NaNoWriMo to cause a flare-up -- that's just the nature of the beast. I've given plenty of warning to "my peeps" (aka my spices) about what November will be like because I want to participate. (Never mind the total lack of a novel idea --in both senses of the word "novel"!)

I came across the myth (my name for it) and felt I needed to blog about it a little. I do my best to not be whiny on here -- maybe I've mentioned it so little my readers (all 3 or 4 of you waves) don't realize I even have fibromyalgia. Well, that's part good and part bad. Good because that means I'm not whining too much. But bad because we "fibromites" need to be able to see each other, so we don't feel so alone when our flares keep us home- and bed-bound.

I've been promising for a while now to work on the technology behind my blog, so you all can comment again and be part of this blog instead of just passive readers. I really miss hearing from you and knowing you are reading. I'll try to put "fix my blog" on the top of my to-do list this week.

And maybe it will even get done!

Yes, I'm messing around with the "theme" of my blog. It could be a slow, messy process -- sometimes involving hideous default colors -- so please be patient while I try to find something I like more than the theme I've had forever (and never really liked!).

Also, I haven't had a chance to work on the comments and such yet. So, I guess y'all will have to be patient in silence, eh?