First NaNo-meet

Went to my first NaNo-meet last night. Was fairly awesome. I'm not very good at this whole sociable nonsense and I was kind of dreading it whilst being excited about it but it wasn't that bad. I didn't manage to get any writing done because I was terrified of people looking at my screen and of course as soon as people realised this they started quite obviously staring and refused to look away. So they got a nice view of my desktop for a while. Which didn't help matters as I have it set to a NaNo calendar with some rather awesome writing and book-loving quotes on it so they were quite interested in reading it and refused to look away. Anyhow, I learned something yesterday - apparently it's socially acceptable to look at someone's screen but not to touch their laptop. I wouldn't do either, but I honestly don't mind people touching my laptop (though not the keys, without asking at least) but seriously freak out when people look at my screen. Apparently I'm a freak. Oh well.

Met a few cool people and made a few new friends. Was about the ratio of actual writers to retarded teenage roleplayers who think they can write that I was expecting though, unfortunately. But everytime the retarded kids tried to say something I just looked at (uhhmmm, just realised I don't have a blog name for her, but lets call her Green Python) and we both laughed and they got confused and wandered off. I was pleased by this. As was GP (Ooooh, bad name choice). This is her 8th time doing NaNoWriMo and apparently the last seven years the NaNo-meets have consisted entirely of idiots and she didn't bother with them after the first week.

I also met this primary school teacher (who I am going to call Trans-Dimensional Snail for reasons you will never understand). Teachers are awesome. I love teachers. Especially primary school teachers who carry stickers around with them for their classes. My laptop gained a new sticker. It is a tiger. The tigers are the best and only his favourite children get tigers *grins*. I have to write an extra thousand words over the normal word count goal to get a ladybird sticker next time though. I want the ladybird.

Anyhow, the meet was meant to be from 6pm to 8pm so at 8pm all the teenagers wandered off home, but that just meant all the interesting people stayed behind and I couldn't bring myself to leave them as I very rarely get to be sociable, especially with people who actually have similar interests to me rather than just obligatory sociableness with family*. I completely lost track of time as I was enjoying myself so much, and I wasn't the only one, and by 11pm or so people were getting phone calls from angry wives or just noticing that they have 13 missed calls and 5 messages that they hadn't heard because it was so noisy**. Oops. Most of them went home. Was just me, Green Python, Not-a-Knobhead and Fucking-DBA left. Bar decided to stop serving drinks around that time as well, but the four of us were still enjoying ourselves so much that we didn't want to go home so we decided to find somewhere else. I tell them I'll go if it's not too far and from that comment of course the whole spoonie-explanation-conversation ensues and we limp off to Burger King to get something to eat, with everybody walking ever so slowly for my sake and Green Python making jokes about the little old lady that she has to look after. They're all older than me!

Blah blah blah. Late-night Burger King is awesome. Realising that the night service bus only runs on Friday and Saturday nights rather than Thursday nights kind of sucks. Found myself stranded at the bus stop at gone midnight*** with six other people who also didn't realise that there wasn't a night service bus on Thursdays. Fortunately three of them were going to Salford so we all jumped into a taxi together and it only ended up costing a few quid to get home. They did make me (try to) run to get the taxi though and although I tried to explain that I really was going my absolute fastest and I couldn't move any quicker (not mentioning that my absolute fastest is ridiculously painful for me and trying to hold back tears whilst doing it) I got shouted at a bit. *sigh*

Point of all this rambling nonsense - meet-up was awesome but I'm overdrawn from the spoon bank and in ridiculous pain still and haven't managed to write a word since. Until this blog post. Which totally doesn't count. But is destroying my wrist nonetheless and I really need to fucking stop it.






*Although, socialising with writers is...uhh...odd, to say the least. We're all very interesting people who have a lot to say when we're talking about things we're interested in, but we're also all normally pretty unsociable. So when the conversation's flowing it's great but when the silence descends no-one knows how to break it and nobody cares for small talk. We were yo-yo-ing between the best conversations ever, friendly insults and in-jokes, to awkward silence. All night long. Was rather odd.

**For some reason we were meeting in Kro Bar, which is ridiculously expensive, really busy and noisy, has no plug sockets or free wifi, and really really really uncomfortable seats that I'm still paying for over 24 hours later. Green Python's going to organise us a write-in where she works from now on, so we can meet in a quiet place with tables and chairs and wifi and plug sockets and a kettle!

***Rambo was expecting me home about half eight or so, as I said it was meant to be going on until eight. He knew I was going without the wheelchair, and lugging my (pretty much lightest you can buy but still too heavy for me) laptop all the way there, and attempting to focus and be sociable, and would therefore be completely out of spoons by the time I got home, if not sooner. So, around half eight, he took the wheelchair and the puppy over to the bus stop and waited for me to come home. For an hour. Before giving up and going home and being upset that he hadn't been able to do nice things for me. And then dragging pillows and quilts downstairs, making up a hot water bottle and putting it under the quilt to keep it nice and warm for me. Remarkably, it was still warm and toasty when I eventually got home at one in the morning.