KWH: 520

I’ve been wondering what “pico de gallo” translates into. For those not in California, pico de gallo is a salsa-like substance found at Mexican restaurants such as Baja Fresh and El Pollo Loco (which means The Crazy Chicken, which I knew). It’s diced tomatoes, onions, and cilantro, as near as I can tell. Anyway, I’ve asked a few folks what it means, and nobody knew. (Ken took several years of HS Spanish and wasn’t sure.) So today I popped it into babelfish.com.

It means Rooster Tip.

Now I’m even more confused.

So, we spent a good chunk of yesterday at the War site. I helped load stuff into the big metal storage box, and Ken did that and hauled haybales and made bundles of them, and we cleaned the bathrooms in the HQ building. There was a volunteer raffle just for the Monday helpers. We’d missed the raffle on Sunday, so we got tickets for the work we did during the event and for Monday (we totally forgot to get them for the two days of set-up. Ah well. We don’t volunteer for the gifties.). I won some trim and a half-hour massage from Ceridwen (I’d been thinking about hiring her anyway—we were going to get massages for our anniversary), and Ken won two metal cups (all of our goblets are shallow and we wanted something deep), a box for me, and a scarf for me. What a sweetie.

So now it’s hit-the-ground-running week. He’s off to Portland this afternoon, until Friday. I have to finish copy editing, run a bunch of errands today, and have Spinners on Wednesday. I’ve been working on a master To Do list for the week.

Last night was sewing. I cut out and constructed my brick-red linen cotehardie. It’ll have false undersleeves of white linen (rather than me making an underdress; welcome to Caid and the heat), and the short oversleeves with tippets will be lined with a light olive green linen. I put together the white sleeves but we’re still working on the pattern for the oversleeves. It’ll all be trimmed in an inkle-woven trim I bought in Belgium, of dark red and navy blue with a bit of green.

I’m having second thoughts on the NaNoWriMo challenge. November is filling up fast, as all months seem to do for us. We’ll be in Baltimore for a wedding one weekend, Cat’s coming one weekend to sew, Coronation and Queen’s Champion will take up one weekend, and we’ll be going to Meg & Matt’s annual Homeless Waifs Thanksgiving Party, which lasts four days. Plus, Ken’s seriously considering taking a week off to work on the house. That all gives me 21 days “at home” to write (I’m including Cat’s visit, but not plane flights, possible evenings, etc.) I’d have to write 2400 words on those days. It’s not impossible, but it’s a tighter deadline that I’d like right now (I’ll probably also do a copy editing job in there…). On top of all that, I’m feeling a little guilty about starting a new book while AETW sits languishing. I’d be better off working on that. I may Dare myself to do it as an unofficial, personal NaNoWriMo challenge. If I keep up with the word count, AETW will be finished before the month is out. But first I have to do some plotting and planning as to What Happens Next, and In the Rest of the Book.

Ran errands from about noon to 1:30, although I failed in getting stuff mailed at the PO because the line was about 30 people long both times I checked. I have to go back today, though, because the stuff has to be postmarked today. I figured I’d download some stories into the Palm or something. I came home because Ken had about a half-hour window of opportunity before he left for the airport, so I got to see him for a little bit.

“Buffy” watched (and another solid, if not outstanding, episode. “She’ll tell you…”). Desk cleaned and many small projects finished. A bit of writing done. A few e-mails answered. It’s way past my bedtime now, so I’m off. Hopefully I’ll scrounge the time tomorrow to post a write-up about the War.