Month Impossible: Day Twenty-five, Quakers, Presbyterians, and pirates

Some thoughts at random: I read the headline “Quakes kill at least three on Indonesian island” too quickly, and I thought, “But the Quakers have always been a nonviolent people.” And what are Quakers doing in Indonesia anyway? Repeal Day, the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition in the U.S., is coming on December 5, …

Month Impossible: Day Twenty-four, revving up

There’s less than a week left in this month of challenges. Little time to blog, so let’s quickly asses the situation…. DrawMo update: I’m drifting behind on drawings — only 15 done, meaning my new quota is two a day for the duration, plus an extra or so when possible. This shouldn’t be a problem. …

Month Impossible: Day Twenty-Three, Count it out

I’ve reached the happy word count of 12,345 words in my NaNoWrimo novel draft, which seems an opportune time to stop and post a short blog entry. It is still not at all certain I’ll reach the 50k mark by the end of the month, due to what I’m gradually coming to recognize as a …

Month Impossible: Day Twenty-two, Pie!

Pie! Originally uploaded by cynthiacloskey And how did the pies turn out? Fantastic. Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t have any of the pumpkin pie, but because the filling didn’t all fit in the pie shell I had to cook the overflow in a custard cup. That’s going to be a fabulous breakfast …

Month Impossible: Day Twenty-One, Pie Preparation

I’m on dessert duty for my family’s Thanksgiving meal tomorrow. I rarely get dessert duty — Mom usually makes most of the dishes and brushes aside my offers to make pie, leaving me to bring a vegetable or other side dish instead. But she had knee surgery recently and is healing only slowly, so she …

Month Impossible: Day Nineteen, studying Spook and getting serious about the novel

Today I tried to sketch Spook, my other cat. Officially, Sammy is my cat, and Spook is Sammy’s cat. When I first got Sammy, she was cooped up all alone during the day — I worked in a real office then — and when I came home and tried to write or do anything she …

Month Impossible: Day Eighteen, Rain Dogs and Carmen

Carmen Originally uploaded by cynthiacloskey The song “Rain Dogs” by Tom Waits popped up on my iPod, and I thought I’d make a drawing of rain dogs. This would be my first DrawMo drawing from imagination, rather than from my surroundings. I envisioned the dogs as like the Hounds of Hell from a comic strip …

Month Impossible: Day Seventeen, 2PointHome

If you’ve been following my Month of Challenges, you know that today I planned to finally catch up on NaNoWriMo. You also probably know me better than I do, and guessed that I would not succeed in this plan. I went to an event in McCandless today, a suburb north of Pittsburgh, to check out …

Month Impossible: Day Sixteen

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Seattle for the annual LFM Alumni Conference. LFM stands for Leaders for Manufacturing, which is a program within the Sloan School of Management at MIT. I graduated in 1997. I attended a few of the conferences after graduation, and although I always had a wonderful experience — great …