Friday, October 31, 2008

Call Me Crazy, yes actually - you should

As you may have noticed, I'm doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year. But I also just signed up to do 70 Days of Sweat as well. (You may remember 70 days of sweat from last year.)

So yeah, call me crazy. I'll be attempting to juggle two books at the same time. Do you think I'll be able to do it?

I guess only time will tell.

WIP Report:
Chronicles of Loresse, Book I - Final Draft stages
Chronicles of Loresse, Book II - NaNoWriMo, outline finished, starts Nov. 1st.
Historical Paranormal Romance - 70 Days, partial outline, starts Nov. 10th.

Wish me luck,
-Bitter

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

NaNoWriMo, you know you want to do it



Calling all writers, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starts in three days. It's not too late to sign up. Come on, you know you want to do it.

10 Reasons To Sign Up.
  1. I am.
  2. You can add me as your writing buddy.
  3. I know you secretly want to.
  4. It'll be fun, except for the parts where you have to force yourself to KYBICAHOK (Keep your but in chair & hands on keyboard.)
  5. We can be writing buddies.
  6. You can kick my rear end when I don't post my word counts, and I can do the same to you.
  7. It'll be cool.
  8. It's definitely doable.
  9. It's free. (But donations are welcome.)
  10. Um, and you'll hopefully actually finish writing a story.
-Bitter

p.s. here's my NaNoWriMo profile, just in case you decide that you absolutely need to add me as your, ahem, writing buddy.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Water, important stuff

I first heard of Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway back in April when he had a guest appearance on the Stephen Colbert show about water. Here's the link to his segment.

I just ran across a NY Times article that was talking about him again. Considering that eventually we'll be fighting wars over water, not oil, I'll be a little selfish by saying that I hope he gets massive amounts of outside funding, succeeds at mass producing these water purifiers and power sources, and does so quickly.

-Bitter

Friday, October 17, 2008

Aaaacccckkk! all my feeds are gone

So this morning I logged onto my computer, opened up Firefox to my iGoogle reader and all my RSS feeds have mutated into short feeds.

iGoogle. I'm officially NOT happy.

I've spent the past 40 minutes looking for a way to expand my feeds or give feedback to no avail, it's idiotic.

From the Google blog post: "We've rolled out an updated design for iGoogle to all U.S. users, which includes . . . full feed reading."

My response: "Um, WHERE?!?!?!"

Please tell me that you're not expecting me to go through and re-subscribe to all of my feeds in order to do this?

From the google blog: "I often wish I could deal with all my stuff without having to leave my iGoogle page."

Yeah, well as it now stands, I'm going to have to navigate away from my iGoogle pages in order to view full posts.

I'm not happy.

-Bitter

update:
Of course, three minutes after I posted, I discovered the full posts view. It's the double window icon at the top right hand corner of each blog box. Unfortunately, I kept clicking this icon on the blogs that don't burn full feeds.

To all my bloggers out there who don't burn full feeds, please change. It's annoying to only read a partial post, and most of the time I don't end up clicking through so some of us are missing most of what you have to say.

The end.

Update #2: Just found a new neighbor in my hood and added them to my RSS feed. But they ended up on the wrong tab. . . . It won't drag and drop into the correct tab. Now I'm NOT happy again. . . .

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Hallelujah, the heat is on

This is my fourth Autumn in NYC, and the most interesting of the bunch. The first Fall/Winter I roasted. The heat vents/radiator in the apartment where I briefly couch surfed were permanently on.

As in full on.

As in plastered into the wall with no access on.

The only way to cope, was to leave the windows open and wear shorts. It worked until the heat went off in the middle of the night and then we froze.

My next two fall seasons were pleasant, almost bland (heat wise). Actually, Autumn is my favorite season. Crisp cool days, turning leaves, hot chocolate and apple cider. Brisk walks through the city, shorter days, and the holiday lights and displays.

The past two Autumns, I haven't minded the slight delay of the heat turning on, while the super waited until the last possible moment to turn on the broiler.

This year I did.

I think it's because this is my first year at home. All day. Without heat.

You know, regularly, I'd go to work, sit at a warm but drafty cubicle, play into the evening, then come home.

I'd only be home long enough to snuggle down under soon to be warm blankets, toss and turn for a moment, dash quickly to the sock drawer to don additional layers, then dive back under the covers, where I slept soundly with my hoodie over the top of my head.

This year, I spend my days bundled up against the cold, with my "heater shoes" on (crocs if you must know) and multiple layers of clothing. And yet, here I sit watching my fingers freeze and the end of my nose turn cold.

It's the first year I actually looked up the NYC heat regulations.

The happy thing is that the heat season started Oct. 1st. The sad part is that supers aren't required to turn on the heat until the daytime temperature doesn't rise above 55 degrees, and the nighttime temperature sinks below 40.

Yeah. I thought the regs were shocking too.

I figured that since we're skirting those temperatures, but haven't reached them, that between the price of oil, the long-standing tradition of things going slightly unfixed around here, and our landlord attempting to save a buck, the heat wouldn't be turned on for a few more weeks. I was wrong.

It official. As of 6:00 this morning. The heat is on! We're saved!!! Er, um, at least I am. . . . What about you? Has your super turned the Heat on yet?

-Bitter.

Think, it's a car

I was meandering my way across the NY Times front page on Sunday when I ran across an article on "Green Tech" or "Clean Tech" (whichever you want to call it) and couldn't resist clicking through to read more.

It looks like we might have a new electric car on the roads as early as 2009 called the Think. The cool thing about this car (besides the point that it's electric) is that it will be made out of 95% recycled material.

How cool is that??

To read a little more about what the venture capitalists at Kleiner Perkins are up to, check out Jon Gertner's NY Times article, "Capitalism to the Rescue."

-Bitter

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Fred, goes swimming

My favorite part? Where Kevin chases after Fred. lol
-Bitter

Monday, October 6, 2008

The End, cafe mozart

A week ago a friend came to the City to visit, so we hit the town to celebrate. Bitter Style, of course, so we dropped by The Hampton Chutney Co. between 82nd and 83rd on Amsterdam, to get dosas, then walked down to Cafe Mozart for dessert.

My friend had been dying to go to Cafe Mozart since I blogged about their luscious Hot Chocolate Souffle in June 2007, so we headed south umbrellas in hand, but not unfurled, sauntering down Amsterdam.

It was a nice evening, cool, but not cold. Quiet, but Citiesque. We dropped into the Jaques Torres store and bought some chocolate covered pretzels and dark chocolate covered almonds (Mmmmm). We browsed the flower selections at several corner shops and enjoyed the misting rain against our faces.

We chatted about old times and caught up on the new, and before we knew it, we were there. When we rounded the corner of the correct street, I was a little confused. The string of lights outside the restaurant were out. I double checked, yes, that was the restaurant, we'd turned on the correct street.

We chatted while crossing the street, ducked between a couple of parked cars, and around the scaffolding poles to the sidewalk shed, then shrieked in horror as we caught sight of this sign.

Sad Day.

This is what it looks like inside.

My Favorite Table was just over there.

What a sad day.

The Upper West Side's lost another one of their gems.

Oh, the memories. The good times. The birthday celebrations. The crazy wig for the birthday girl or guy. The decadent desserts and yummy food. (Can you tell I ordered dessert here more often than food?) We miss you.

.

.

.

It took us a while to decide, but we ended up going to Grom instead. The pear gelato was fabulous of course.

-Bitter

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Bicyclists, in the morning

I woke up this morning to the sounds of whooping and hollering. Repeatedly. As I slept through it, with the occasional wake-up, I kept wondering what was going on.

I finally dragged myself out of bed, pulled the window open and shoved my head outside. It appears there is a race of sorts going on today. The 2008 Bike MS NYC. Looks like they've raised $1.99M so far. Not too shabby if you ask me.

For the past half hour as I've breathed in the fresh and clean (not normal, looks like it rained earlier) NYC air and watched young cyclists and old, heavy and skinny, roadies and mountain bikers pedal past my fourth story window I've thought to myself, hmmmmmmmmm, maybe next year I'll join them.

Of course that means that I'll actually have to ride my bike over the course of the coming year so my rear end doesn't hate me for the next decade.

-Bitter

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Marie, and the bassoon

I just realized that I've used four hours five minutes and 20 seconds of my life to listen to this song. (With the volume cranked up of course, since it sounds better that way.)

-Bitter