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Last night was day #3 of National Novel Writing Month and both Tammy and I are off to great starts. As of this morning, our word counts are neck-and-neck at almost 6500, which is a healthy 1500 more than we should have at this point. Almost a day ahead, three days in! Again, Tammy's finding that she needs to write in longhand, at least when she's thinking really hard, and then she's transcribing onto the computer. I'm finding success with my typewriters; I switched last night from the Underwood Standard to my Smith-Corona portable just for fun and fancy. I think I'll continue swapping night to night. It's what I expected: physically strenuous but viscerally exciting in a mechanically percussive sort of way. My forearms and hands are already getting stronger.

So we both have our "challenges", but at this point our greater uncertainties are over the novels themselves. That's to be expected. Last year it wasn't until the 40,000 mark that I really felt confident that I would win: I could see everything that needed to happen, and it would take about 10,000 more words. You can watch our progress using the little graph in the sidebar. I whipped that up myself this year. The PHP code accesses NaNoWriMo's word count web services and generates the HTML. I would have used the stock widget from NaNoWriMo like last year, but even as of last night, theirs weren't working.

Well another Halloween has come to a close. It started off with a party at the dojo after regular sparring class. All the kids got changed into their costumes and went through a number of relays to get treats. They were also presented with an additional bag of treats. Our usual get together with Katya and her family didn't happen this year since a number of us are unwell. Instead this year I took the kids out and Simon stayed home. Considering we only had contributions from about 8 houses, their pumpkin buckets were overflowing. I don't know what we're going to do with all their candy and the left-overs we have. Our grand total this year: 36. The numbers have been dwindling:

• 2004 - 109
  
• 2005 - 82
  
• 2006 - 72
  
• 2007 - 43
  
• 2008 - 29
  
• 2009 - 36
  

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Just goes to show you how out of touch we are with the local community. We were awakened this morning at 7 by cheering and a guy on a loudspeaker. I got up and opened the window to listen and it was immediately apparent that it was the start of a leg of the Olympic torch relay. It was still dark because the clouds were thick and pouring down rain on the events. I got Miranda out of bed and Tammy explained it to her (my throat is sore) and I got the binoculars. Turns out the torch was run up Otter Point Road towards downtown, so we actually got a chance to see it from here. The flame was really quite bright. Either they had it turned up due to the rain, or it doesn't show up well on the newscasts where they've shown it. I'd be scared if I was holding it, for sure.

I asked Tammy later if we'd known about it would we have gone. With a sick husband, two kids and a downpour at 7 a.m., she declined.

It's me, and I'm in the rectangular province again. The usual Monday to Friday jaunt. No real surprises so far. The weather here is prairie autumn-typical, although maybe a bit warmer. Here's hoping that the weather holds for the week. It would be nice to get to walk the the University and back each day.

Update

Well, the weather hasn't cooperated, and today it's snowing. The snow isn't staying on the ground, so it's more like light rain. The neat thing that I've noticed on this trip is the birds flying overhead. It seems as though Regina is on one or more major flyways for migrating birds. This morning when I was waiting for the cab, I tried counting the birds in their V-shaped flocks passing overhead and couldn't keep up, even counting by rough fives.