Weather: sunny and beautiful

Reading: Nasty People; How to Keep From Being Hurt *by* Them Without Becoming One *of* Them

Knitting: baby blanket

One sentence I just wrote: She lay alone in the center of the big bed, the covers swirled around her as if she were a tiny fairy asleep on an oak leaf, tucked in by some loving giant.

Well, I have been, for many months now, playing a plethora of ridiculous games on facebook. Maybe you haven't heard of facebook? Good! Keep it that way and you stand a chance of keeping your sanity. There are so many interesting people on there, and so many games to play that I can't seem to stay away from it. If you know me in person, you probably have noticed that I tend to get a tad obsessive at times. If you're that way, too, and you want to lead a normal life? Don't join facebook. If you're normal enough, or want to try it, go ahead. There is great stuff there, something for everyone.

I spend time playing a game called Knighthood that has me building and expanding and improving various fictional buildings - each expansion and improvement takes more time than the last. I get more players to lay it with me, and they help me, too. In exchange for their fictional labor I give them gold and advice. I am in peace mode, which means that no other player can attack me. But it also means that the game can be a little dull, as I can't attack any other player, either. When one of my vassals decides to go to war, if they tell me ahead of time I can live vicariously by funding their efforts with fictional gold, giving them weapons, lending them vassals or holding their most precious vassals to prevent their seizure in case things go ill for them while they're battling. Most of my vassals don't tell me in advance, so I can't help a lot. Once two players are in two different modes, there can be no exchange of troops, gold or anything other than advice, whining and other communication.

I also do the egg hunt game, called Hatchlings. I have a link to a nest on the front page of my journal. That can be a real time eater; I find myself just wanting one. More. Egg.

I play Metropolis, where I'm a mayor building stuff for a growing city that other players are helping me build. At the same time, I'm helping them build their cities. And I play My City, same kind of deal, but less elaborate. It focuses on types of citizens instead of types of buildings. And Nations. That's a funny game. My nation is called Gabrielle the Glorious.

I'm not playing Pirates much any more -- got bored with it. Ditto Flora and My House and the various scavenger games. I have to stay away from Packrat. That one is incredibly addictive.

And then there's YoVille. It's less complex than Sims, the game by ea games ("challenge everything" - I don't know whether that whispered slogan is a part of a statement or an imperative) but it's similar in that you decorate houses, or apartments, in this case, and make a character. The advantage of YoVille is that there are lots and lots of people playing it, on both myspace and facebook, and you can interact with them. You chat with the other players, and that's the main thing about it, unless you're seriously into decorating.

However, in spite of all this gaming, I am writing, too. I am gearing up for NaNoWriMo. I won the last two years, and I'm going to do it again this year. I will be writing a sequel to Her Thirty Percent, the novel I wrote last November and am still rewriting. I wasn't sure until a few days ago that that is what I was going to do this year. I employed last year's method of drawing tarot cards to get an idea for a plot and characters, and the first of the three cards I drew was the one card that represented my protagonist last year, so that is how I knew it was meant to be. Watch and see what will come of it.