this little life of mine

What I'm Writing: Gah, not a damn thing! I just can't seem to get my act together with this novel. I know at this point I should just abandon it for another project (because God knows I have dozens to choose from!), but I'm just stubborn enough to battle it out a little longer before waving that white flag.

What I'm Reading: I started reading Allegiant this week. It's pretty good, but it's been a hard transition from Kaj Johnson's gorgeous voice in the stories in At the Mouth of the River of Bees to Veronica Roth's. (Not that her voice isn't gorgeous, it's just vastly different.)

What Inspires Me: I am still not terribly inspired by much of anything, but I am starting to look forward to Christmas, which might bring a certain magic with it, so who knows?

What Else I've Been Up To: Because I've decided to attend my High School reunion next July, I've abandoned my original idea of taking a photo tour of Ireland or Scandinavia. Instead, I'll spend a few days in Seattle and Victoria B.C., then drive across the state, stopping by my alma mater (CWU) and hopefully visiting a friend or two, before heading to Colfax.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

•Grab your current read
•Open to a random page
•Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
•BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
•Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week I'm reading Allegiant by Veronica Roth. This is the third book in the Divergent series, and while I enjoyed the previous two books quite a lot and really looked forward to this one, I find I'm having difficulty getting in to it. Hopefully once the action starts, I'll get sucked into it and really enjoy it!

Here are my teasers for this week from page 93 (Chapter 16 Tobias):

"I thought you might like an explanation for why I'm not dead," he says.

"I thought about it," I say. "They never let us see your body. It wouldn't be that hard to fake a death if you never show the body."

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Darn it, I keep forgetting to do this little meme hosted by Jaime and Erin until it's too late! Thankfully, this week it's still Wednesday! On with the show ...

What I'm Writing: I am still working on my NaNo novel, although I keep forgetting to post my word counts.  Last week I only got in 1167 words, which I think brings my total to 1690. Not too promising, but I still have a couple weekends left to catch up!

What I'm Reading: I'm still slogging through At the Mouth of the River of Bees. Who knew short stories could be so dang long?? Still loving it, though, as they're beautifully written stories!

What Inspires Me: I'm not terribly inspired by anything right now, which could be my NaNo problem. Currently, I'm too busy dealing with this damn, constant, everywhere-in-my-body pain and stiffness that started up around August (and simply will NOT go away despite all the Advil) to be inspired.

What Else I've Been Up To: The pain has not stopped me from working out, however (although it has changed the type and intensity of my workouts, which is disappointing), and while my trainer is on vacay this week, I've started the Couch-to-5K running plan. And, yes, it's very painful, but I'm determined to do a 5K next year (I'm hoping they'll have the same 5K at Concrete River Days next year that they did this past July!), and work up to a triathalon in a couple years.

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