The book is on track (for NaNo purposes) at 30,927 words.  About half of those words are trash — I restarted about half way through, because the book was way off base.  But in NaNo, you don’t delete words.

I had a late night chat with Tammy Jones, and she helped with some guidance and a brief statement along the lines of “Mother Nature’s Middle Management problems sounds kind of intriguing.”  So I spent a day going through what I had so far trying to ask, “Why is this here?” (yes, this was done in a day’s writing — you don’t waste words in NaNo).  After gathering up all those “Whys,” I saw quite a few, “This doesn’t fits.”  I spent the next day looking at the “Whys” and attempting to answer some — that also added to word count — NaNo word count, it will be deleted for the “real” book.

Then I began writing fresh.  I had two scenes that could still be used, so I copied, pasted, and revised them for the new story.   I now have about 8000 usable words out of that nearly 31,000. But I’m having a little flow.  Some interesting conflict.  And I cannot believe how screwed up Mother Nature’s office is.  It’s simply astonishing.  And she’s chosen the reporter, yes, the reporter! to straighten it all out.  What was she thinking?

In other news, the Linksys wireless router has taken to losing it’s IP table every morning.  I’m not sure why.  A simple power off and on of the router and sometimes the DSL modem seems to correct it, but it shouldn’t be doing that.  I got on line to see what causes it, and, since the router firmware was dated 2004, I decided to see if there was an update to it.  That’s when I discovered Linksys had been bought out by Cisco.  I don’t have a problem with that — Cisco is a darn good company, but I couldn’t find the legacy support information on the site.  A search on the router model brought up Cisco’s page.  I was surprised it asked for which version my router was.  I looked, and there was no version number on our router.  Yes, that means it’s version one.  There was a newer firmware version than ours, so I downloaded it and installed it.  Everything appears to have gone smoothly.  It didn’t seem to specifically indicate it addressed IP assignments, so I’ll have to keep looking, but I can always hope the firmware update clears up the problem.

As for kittens, Number One kitten went to his new home night before last.  We think we found a good match for him and hope he thrives there.  Number Three kitten has a new home in the Dallas area, and we’ll arrange a delivery with her new people — probably the first weekend in December.  Her name will be Mugsy, so that’s what we’re calling her.  That leaves us with Roxy, Number Two, and Number Four.  They are all doing beautifully, growing like weeds, and really active.  Roxy had her surgery on Tuesday, so she doesn’t have to worry about getting pregnant again.

The latest political hot issue seems to be “TSA Groping.”  That led to a friend posting this link on Facebook:  http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199—israelification-high-security-little-bother about the Israelification of airport security.  It makes sense.  For Israel’s entire existence, countries have wanted to wipe them from the face of the earth.  Fifty years ago, they were where we are and realized they had to develop something better.  So they did.  It works.  Why didn’t we choose to learn from them and apply that in our country?  Why did we choose to restrict our freedoms in a misguided effort to catch an offender who is only going to move on to something else, causing us to restrict our freedoms even more.  This is the Old West version of the terrorist taking out his six gun and shooting at our feet saying, “Dance, Sucker.  I said, “Dance!””  Why have we agreed to play this game?

Two years ago when I retired, I decided I wouldn’t fly unless I absolutely had to.  I will not subject myself to being groped — either virtually or in reality.  My only concern with not speaking up with anything more than my wallet is that it won’t take long until the TSA procedures expand to encompass trains, buses, and other mass transit.  Once it does that, it’s only a matter of time before we are subjected to random searches at rest areas or when we stop for gas.  Then, we’ll be subject to random searches as we walk down the street.  Yes, our Constitution is supposed to protect us from unreasonable search and seizure, but we’ve been abdicating that.  We can only do it for so long before our Constitution will be meaningless in providing any protection.  She’s only a paper document.  People have to ACT to ensure those protections are upheld.  My Central Texas Congressman, John Carter, has announced he is taking on this matter, and I encourage other Congressmen to do the same.