In the last three days, I have been very busy. Nevertheless, I passed an extremely pleasant Thanksgiving at my mother's, reconnected with some old friends, spoke Czech, Slovak, and Polish (and I should have spoken some rudimentary Russian too, but that guy wasn't at work) and made some headway on the previously-promised short story Czech translation.

So it was a good Thanksgiving vacation, even if I had to work almost entirely though it.

Closed At Sunset is engraved on the stone pillars by the only entrance.

Not tonight, as, on the way back from the bar, the gate swung invitingly ajar.

The town's oldest cemetery was very peaceful on a stark late-autumn night. The crooked tombstones and lonesome cedars were somehow just right.

[Edit: soon. Maybe by the 27th0: perhaps some original (albeit drafty) translation here.

Cemetery exploration, catnaps, and taking advantage of a real fall weekend for a change.

Reading, given up on the writing for the time being, apparently...but eating well and maintaining a barely reasonable sleep schedule. Like both my jobs more than ever, though. Also, lunch with my mother tomorrow, and more books in Czech coming my way!

So, hopefully I'll be able to write intelligibly again soon. I ramble now, but it's nice to get something out.

I like both my jobs a whole lot. The one's a reason to get up in the mornings, (plus free coffee, the office mostly to myself for breakfast, some reading time, and some sedate filing in a very motherly atmosphere), and the other is lively and full of ostly fun people mostly my own age.

It's just rough on the joints. I have to stop falling asleep on my wrists, apparently. And sometimes I'm so tired I don't know what I'm feeling beyond that. Trying to nap, cook, read, and write, and my German is apparently progressing somewhat, so life could always be worse.

And now, to slightly more than six hours of sleep.

NaNoWriMo.

No, I'm not doing it, as such, although Nick is, or at least seems to be. Bully for him, and so forth. But it is a handy stimulus towards creating time for my own writing project, though it doesn't exactly conform to their standards or deadlines. Nevertheless, I hope to handwrite 10,000 words of Pan Theodor Mundstock by November 30th. This will require either picking up the pace in the evenings or forfeiting some between-shift nap time, as I did today. Hopefully not too much of that. And hopefully by the time I start typing later in the month I've have mastered enough LaTeX to be formatting it as I go along. While still converting Burner of Corpses into a much prettier format.

It's nice to have quixotic projects, anyway, and a modicum of external motivation.