Obligatory Boring First Post (and also, November is over!)

Sing ye choirs of angels.

December is here.  December and hot chocolate and Christmas and Christmas break and, oh, let's just smash it all together and make a list of why December 1st is a good thing.

Finals are almost here and thus almost over.  Christmas break is close!  Reuniting with friends and family around the corner!  Icicles.  Snow.  Sledding.  Cold air freezing your lungs.  Candy canes.  Baking Christmas cookies.  Getting to drive again!  Driving with the windows down, the heat cranked up, and the radio blasting.  Going on walks through a frozen, sleeping marsh.  Wrapping presents, tape sticking to your fingers.    Advent candles.  Christmas shopping.  Ice skating and watching the sunset paint the sky in a clash of pastel and neon.  Curling up with a book on the couch (A COUCH!).  Waking up at 5:55, making a hazelnut latte, and writing the morning out of the night, the darkness away from the light.  Coziness.  Cards in the mail.  Coats and scarves and boots.  Coffee.

I could really, really, really go on for a long time, but I shall resist.  Just basically, December is here and despite being welcomed by 60 degree weather and incredible humidity here in Kansas, it is distinctly different from yesterday, which was November.  Really, we all should pity November, a month whose only bright spot is the turkey and cranberry sauce at nearly the end of it.  Thanksgiving always feels like a sort of "We've almost survived November!  Just a few days left!  You can do it!" or a pity party, because there's absolutely nothing else about November that we can find to appreciate.

Of course, November also is National Novel Writing Month and was fairly significant for me this year, because (for the third year running) I completed my 50,000 words and especially because (for the first time ever) I was happy with my completed project (begun: four years ago.  Rewritten: seven times.  Finished: three times.).  Happy enough to wait two weeks (yeah... I finished my 50k word count pretty early), edit like crazy, and send it in to an agent.

Oh yeah.

AndthentwodayslatersherequestedmymanuscriptandI'msortofsuperexcitedBUTIKNOWITDOESN'TMEANANYTHING.... yet.

So, yeah, I'm happy that it's December.