The Adventure Continues!

It’s 3:25pm and I just woke up. I got home around 9am and it took me a couple of hours to fall asleep, but now I’m feeling awesome (though I’ starving) and I’m totally ready to tackle another day.

So as I said in my last entry, I headed back to the mall for the NaNo event.  8pm to 8am of writing madness. Unless you’re me, in which case it was more like 9:30 – 8. You see, I got to the mall and had forgotten what the name of the restaurant was. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue. I’d just whip out my iPhone, log onto the boards and find the info I’d been missing. But here that costs me $15 per megabyte and I just can’t shell out that kind of cash recklessly. I remembered that "family restaurants" was in the name so I wandered around trying to find a directory so I might look it up. For a mall that size, WEM has a stupidly small amount of directories. Long story short, the restaurant I needed wasn’t even in the mall!! It was across the street.

Once I finally reached the group it took me a few minutes to settle in and then the NaNo insanity began. Word wars and late night burgers and all manner of nerdiness ensued. Our waitress was amazing. She was the only one working the entire night and in addition to the maybe 25ish NaNo-ers to whom she had to attend (I forgot to take a tally) she still had to handle a restaurant that had a steady stream of customers.

I swear I didn’t have a drop of alcohol (though Michelle, the waitress, was sneaking beers at 3 and 4 in the morning to those who’d requested them — god she was cool), but last night is super hazy. I do remember feeling really hot (we were in a cordoned area and that many laptops with that many jazzed up bodies and no windows creates some very stuffy conditions) so I decided to take a walk around the parking lot. I checked the weather first and it was just below freezing. I, being stupidly excited about this, ran outside without my jacket and proceeded to skip along the parking stops as though they were a tightrope around the perimeter of the shopping center. Freezing temperatures aren’t nearly as cold as I was expecting. I totally want to find out what January/February is like (which everyone was insisting is Edmonton’s most brutal period).

It occurred to me as I was skipping from one yellow parking spot to the next that I just left all of my possessions, my phone, computer, wallet, passport and anything else I happened to throw in my backpack, sitting on the table at the mercy of a large group of complete strangers. You would think this realization would make me sprint back through the lot and return to my table. Instead I just reveled in the idea that we had all so quickly made such a strong bond that we trusted each other implicitly. As I suspected, when I returned my belongings had been untouched.

I had so much fun last night that I’ve decided it has to be a tradition. I *have* to come back for at least one week every November to NaNo with these guys. There were a plethora of awesome characters I won’t soon forget, but Christine is the one who stands out among them. She came in not knowing anyone (and apparently her hand had been forced when a friend blackmailed her into attendance after learning she wanted to attend but was too scared since she wouldn’t recognize a single face) and we bonded instantly. She offered to put me up so I wouldn’t have to stay in the hostel (which I politely declined as I now have my private room *woot*) and there was already talk bantered about of having her head south to visit LA for a bit.

In a nutshell, last night was amazing. I could honestly talk about it for a good hour, but I won’t bore you with too many of the geeky details. I cannot wait to find out what today has in store.

Now it’s time for food. I’m starving!