December, already

Whew! I did that thing we think we're too old to do anymore - stay up late almost every night the last part of November! Nanowrimo is over now, but I'm still exhausted. I didn't quite make my goal of 25,000 words, but I met my real goal of adding lots of needed scenes as I revised my draft from Nov. 2008. I finished with just over 20,000 words, and got virtual pats on the back for it being all handwritten. Several people that I met at the coffee-shop write-ins won this year, cranking out 50K on their laptops and Neos - way to go!! And, we drank lots of coffee and had fun.

Now, what? First, I'm trying to catch up on sleep. Second, I'm back to reading. Writing is great, but that fire needs fuel and books are a good source.

Today I saw that Geneabloggers has an idea for people who are writing more about their ancestors than about their own lives: an Advent Calendar of blog prompts. Although I missed Dec. 1, I'm going to answer the one about Christmas trees. Here's a picture version of the calendar.

When I was small, we had one of those aluminum, silver trees. I think we may have hung a few ornaments on it, but it didn't need any extra glitter or sparkle. We had one of those rotating lights that hypnotically turned it into different colors (the 60s version of a lava lamp!). Somewhere in our family's collection is a photograph of me with my "Dancerina" doll, lit only by the red glow of that light.

(The link is to someone else's YouTube video; we didn't have videos back then.)