Took a little break there, didn't we? Quite unplanned, I assure you.

The problem with doing nothing is that you have nothing to talk about. It's very sad.

I mean, obviously I'm aware that my average blog entry says nothing at all and generally does so using at least four times as many words as necessary, but that's a whole different kind o'nothing.

First off, congratulations to McSwain! As NaNoWriMo winds to a close, she crosses the finish line in style! (Toldyouso.)

My own NaNo effort from so many years ago occasionally niggles at my brain. Back then, just post-fanfic writing, it seemed logical to me to pad out my word count with a gratuitiouos sex scene any time my daily word count fell behind. It was at the point where the story itself was veering in a new and rather unexpected direction, developing a plot and a discernable (non-pornographic) cast of primary and secondary characters, that I hit 50k that year. I abandoned the story forthwith but I've always been just a little curious about what was going to happen next.

Which brings us to another thought, which is the one around the idea that I might do a bit of writing in my spare time these days? Make good use of my unemployment, as it were, to up the quotient of completely pointless and possibly smutty fanfic stories in the universe?

Nothing so far.

The problem is that I have a tendency to feel guilty if I settle in to spend hours doing something unrelated to looking for a job. I skim the news headlines and spend a fair amount of time in personal e-mail, but for the most part, my brain says I should either be working at finding a job or doing chores around the house to do penance for being unemployed. (No, it's not my fault I'm unemployed. But my brain still says I should suffer. Sometimes my brain seems as though it doesn't really like me.)

Today I'm going to make stew. And tackle that kitchen floor again because it's still not really clean. (Something I did had an effect on the Malodorous Odor, though. It's mostly gone these days. Which is good, because I really don't want to spend most of the day every day in a house that pongs.)

So...what have I been up to, you ask (secretly hoping I can answer in 25 words or less)?

To celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday we went up to Blackhawk (I won $50.) (Actually, I won $150 on one machine, but I finished the day $50 up.) and on the Friday we made gingerbread houses, something that's rapidly becoming a tradition in Our House. This year, because of Unemployment Frugality, we hit a store called "Family Dollar" which seems to sell an astonishing variety of goods at amazingly low prices. We got almost everything we needed for $15.

It's at moments like this that I regret not having a digital camera. My little house sparkles in vivid green, accented with red. The R.C.'s house is a pastel poem of yellow and lavender.

Last year we shopped the grocery store and spent around $50 for our ingredients. It's beginning to occur to me that we waste a lot of money around here, without really thinking about it. In the past month, I've spent an estimated $60 non-essential dollars. Pre-unemployment, I think I went through more like $600 a month. Maybe $1,000. Just....money spent, with no clue where it went. A few books. A DVD or two. Maybe some clothes. Eating out several times a week. Wasting money buying prepared food at the grocery store because I was too lazy to fix it myself. You'd be surprised (well, some of you might not) how much money you can get through like that in a month.

Granted, it's only possible for me to get by on $15 a week for "walking around" money right now because I live in an apartment crammed to the rafters with books, computers, DVDs, computer games, and assorted other toys but still. I do now have that stuff. Once my employment status is regularized, I should take advantage of this newfound knowledge and start tucking a significant chunk of money away each month.

I probably won't because I'm always making good resolutions that I forget thirty seconds later, but I should.

What else have I been up to? I worked yesterday. (Hooray! Money in!) I brought home more work I need to do today. (I did some of it, after I finished this morning's job hunting, but I need to buckle down and get the rest of it done.)

So far this week, I'm showing a profit. I've spent $8 and made $200. (That will all change tomorrow, when the rent is due, but whatever.)

And that is, I'm afraid, about all I've done since last I wrote. I owe people letters, I need to do some laundry and my ironing, and my bathroom floor is a disgrace, but a list of the things I haven't done in the last two weeks would fill a book.

Now that I've finished this (and breakfast), I'm going to haul my hind end out of this chair and actually do something today.