To err is human, to blog is...well, also human. If you're an attention seeker.

So, this whole write-a-novel-in-a-month thing? Yeah, not so much. The laptop is pretty much cactus, and I've taken it back to the shop. Normally I'd just do the usual trade with a computer-geek friend (I cook, he makes the computer go) but this was very clearly a hardware issue, and the thing's under warranty, so you know. Reformat from scratch, I said. Hell, give me a new one, I said. Just don't charge me. I was bolshy, the lawyer knowing her rights. And then I walked out of the shop and looked up at the husband, lip quivering for added effect, and said in a plaintive tone that was the shiniest thing I'd ever owned, and now it's gone.

So, self-imposed pathos aside, I am still writing, but I'm not going to get to fifty thousand words in a month. I'm at nineteen thousand at the moment, so I'm shooting for a novel in two months. [Inter]national novel writing month[s], one might say. I feel what it lacks in pithiness it makes up for in accuracy.

Why not in one month? Well, apart from the job and the lack of laptop and the interstate visitors, I've also joined a new gym in the hopes that spending half my wage on indulgent yuppie faux-exercise rather than, you know, going for a damn walk, will inspire me to work hard and lose weight.

So far it's been a week of cancelling appointments because I have work commitments, and then an 8am 'orientation and assessment' in which they explained how to use the treadmill (Now, you press the big button that says Start, and then you adjust the speed with the big button that says Faster...) and asked me what time I started work (Me: "Well, normally 8, but I had an appointment with you so I came in at 7.15. Her: What, a.m.?|). No matter: I am enthused, energised, and almost completely sure that I won't be writing a post in two weeks that begins "So, this whole get fit and healthy thing?"