NaNoWriMo 2017 Winner!

I did it! I just won NaNoWriMo for the fourth year in a row!

That's not to say what I wrote is totally-out-of-this-world writing, or that I'm anywhere close to being done...but right now, who cares?

Right now, I just wanna bask in my glory!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Now that I'm done with "Inktober" and engaged with "NaNoWriMo," I have been kind of hush-hush around here. Believe it or not, I made even more drawings (illustrations for my NaNo story) than I made last month. I might post all those sketches, or most of them, at a later time.

But I just wanted to make a little Thanksgiving post, and extend my best wishes to all my American mates out there. I hope your holiday was a good one; mine certainly was.

It was quiet and low-key, but I rather like it that way. Sometimes the best holidays are the simplest ones. All you really need are your loved ones, some rest and relaxation, and a bit of tasty food on the side. To quote Perry Como: "For the holidays, you can't beat home sweet home."

We had a little sleepover with my niece and two of my nephews last night, because my first nephew (Josh) had a fever (and a seizure, too, I think) and had to go to the ER. He's okay but they still need to run a few tests, and we decided to make it easy on my sister by taking the rest of the kids for a while. Lizzie was excited because she had been wanting a sleepover for some time, though she also cried this morning due to homesickness.

Both Mom and I had a very demanding night. I had a closing shift (I took the place of somebody who quit, after being with us for only two or three weeks; that must be a new record), and the guy I was closing with had to leave exactly at 10:00 or he would get in trouble. Unfortunately, we still had to take out the garbage, pull some rotisserie chickens (we are not allowed to stick whole chickens in the cooler), and hose down the floor. I can't hold it against my partner for not wanting to get in trouble (he did seem genuinely regretful as he walked away), but I just hope they won't hold it against me for staying overtime. They have really cracked down on overtime lately, because too many people were taking advantage of it. So I hope they'll make an exception in my case, since I was there out of necessity, and I wasn't there for too long. I managed to get everything done within a half-hour, and someone else was nice enough to take out the garbage for me. But it sure was a relief to go home at last, and especially to know I was off the next day. Mom even included me in the McDonald's dinner for the family.

Today, we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with a few snacks on the side. After taking Lizzie and her brothers home, that's when we cracked down on dinner.

The aroma of roasted turkey always tempts me. It's all I can do to save my appetite. The funny thing is, our customers at WinCo are big perfectionists, borderline fanatics, when it comes to meals for major holidays. We receive endless orders for salads, fried chicken, and sandwich trays, and we get snowed under with questions, like we're somehow supposed to know every single detail of our products, right down to the little numbers on the barcode.

Just the other day, I heard a story about a customer who spent more than 20 minutes on the phone, asking question after question about our turkeys. How big is it? How fresh is it? How much does it weigh? Will it be cooked for me? Will I have to cook it myself? Will it be stuffed for me? Will I have to be the one to stuff it? How long will it take to cook it? How can I cook it faster? Is it made with hormones? How many people will it serve? How long will it keep in the freezer?

It got to the point where the people at the customer service desk dreaded picking up the phone. We half-joked with each other, "When this is over, we'll all be turkey experts."

I bet we'll do this all over again with our Christmas hams. I can almost hear a customer asking, "Is it hot pink or baby pink? Which shade of pink is better?"

I can perfectly understand health concerns and not wanting to waste food. But I also find it remarkable how some people are so particular for the sake of being so particular. For them, everything about their holiday has to be "just so."

As for me, all I really care about is having a drumstick and a little dark meat. Sure enough, I called dibs on both those things at my family's dinner. Interestingly, we still have the other leg, and I felt like a dog gnawing at the bone. I couldn't resist saying, "I've got a bone to pick with you!"

Besides the turkey, we cooked up some stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and canned corn. Of course, our family's cranberry and grape salad is a sacred tradition. I used to avoid that cranberry salad like the plague but now I find it rather tasty. We even saved some for my sister and my grandma, at their request. Then there were dinner rolls, carrots and cucumbers that I sliced myself (and arranged rather artistically), and soda that we drank in our special occasion glasses. My drink was Cherry Dr. Pepper.

The food was excellent. I reached that perfect level of fullness, too: enough to not be hungry anymore, but not enough to feel like my belly would burst. In fact, my tummy was feeling very thankful.

Afterwards, we popped in to visit Grandma and Grandpa for a while. They served us some vanilla ice cream with graham crackers (I prefer that kind of dessert to pumpkin pie anyway), and I relaxed by their cozy fireplace.

Now I am home again, still feeling well-fed and at peace with the world. For now, life is good.

Now, back to that NaNoWriMo project! For the record, I'm almost there, at 41,700 words.

Movies That Surprised Me: Hotel Transylvania

Wowsers, it feels so weird not posting artwork this time. I miss Inktober, but NaNoWriMo is going strong.

Call me a nutcase but I stayed up until midnight on November 1 (and began writing at least a half-hour in advance), and I've already reached 5,000 words. That's not to say the words are necessarily good, of course, but as the NaNo people say, "Quantity, not quality." And this is a good exercise because it forces me to get the story out of my system; I worry too much about the decorations on the cake before the cake is actually made, but this makes me focus on the structure of the cake and then I can decorate the entire thing to my heart's content.

Anyway, I decided to do another movie review. Those reviews were a lot of fun, and since Hotel Transylvania is still fresh on my mind (watched it with my family just the other day, before Halloween), I decided to go ahead and review that one.

Now, I'm always a little cynical when it comes to new movies. I'm never sure about a movie before I watch it for myself, and I do lean towards the negative side. I'm just, "Meh, I don't know."

But Hotel Transylvania is one of those movies that (as you can deduce from the blog's title) surprised me. A lot. I didn't see it in theaters, but when I learned more about the premise (I like to steal spoilers from Wikipedia), I became intrigued enough to buy the DVD. And when I watched the DVD, I was all, "Whoa!"

Another funny little quirk of mine is that I do not like horror stuff. I avoid horror movies like the plague, and I try to stay as far away from Stephen King as possible, though I will confess to peeking at a few of his works out of sheer curiosity. But I flat-out refuse to watch a movie based on a Stephen King book all the way through; I won't watch Carrie or IT, and I wouldn't watch anything featuring Jason or Freddy or Mike if you paid me in diamonds.

Needless to say, I'm not a fan of vampires, either. Never had a strong stomach for that bloody, blatant stuff, and don't even get me started on those so-called "sparkly vampires," courtesy of Miss Meyer.

Probably the first thing about HT that won me over, and the thing that I'm the most impressed with, is how they portray Dracula in a different light--so to speak. In this movie, he's not a monster, at least not the type of monster you should bolt from. He's not the Grim Reaper. He's not the devil incarnate. He's not your worst living nightmare.

He is...a daddy!

I've always been a huge sucker for tender moments between a parent and a child. And I like characters who are "not evil, just misunderstood."

It's crystal-clear from the start that Dracula has nothing if not good intentions. Sure, his intentions are often misplaced, and most of his actions are not really justifiable, but they're 100% understandable.

Considering everything he goes through in this story, why wouldn't he act the way he does? Who wouldn't go to enormous, if not drastic, measures to protect their loved one...especially if that loved one is all they have left in the world? As Dracula himself puts it, "As a father, you do everything to keep your family safe."

There's nothing really original about Dracula losing his wife to paranoid, prejudiced humans. But it sure as heck never fails to rip your heart out by the seams.

"They are the real monsters." Ouch. 

Another aspect of HT that I really appreciate is how Dracula learns to get over his own prejudice toward humans. His budding relationship with the human Jonathan is both hilarious (I seriously hurt myself from laughing more than once) and heartwarming.

I also appreciate the way Mavis and Jonathan interact with each other. In a nutshell, their love story is everything the (in)famous Twilight is NOT. And coming from someone who's also a sucker for love stories, that's saying a lot.

Aww, how cute!

Speaking of Twilight, probably the gag that got me the most was that ingenious jab towards the end, from none other than You-Know-Who!

"This is how we're represented. Unbelievable."

So, to make a long review short, everybody ends up happy, and I was feeling amazingly happy myself. All I could say was, "Awww!"

Even the final song, "You're My Zing," came as a wonderful surprise.

It's not that I don't like closing with a song, but most "grand finale" songs don't perk me up all that much. But this one was a major, major exception. The lyrics were kind of corny but catchy all the same (I thought I found a love but she was just a fling/And then I met a girl and felt a diff'rent thing/It's like you're hit in the ring/Like you're pulled by a string/Can't breathe like you're chokin' on a chicken wing!), and may I say, Drac can really get down!

I've yet to see Hotel Transylvania 2 but it's got my interest snared. Just the pure, simple notion that Dracula is now "Grandpa" warms the cockles of my heart. The only relationship more beautiful than a parent with a child is a grandparent with a grandchild, and it's easy to see from the screencaps that Dracula loves his little half-human grandson something fierce.

(from Disney Screencaps)

And I'm very intrigued to hear that a third movie is due next summer. I'll definitely keep my eyes open!

So yeah, that's pretty much my whole HT review. It may not be Academy Award material, but it's a definite winner in my book. (The Academy Awards are kind of overrated anyhow.)

Sorry for the slew of screencaps, but can I help it if the scenes are just so dag-nabbed adorable? I'm telling you, this kind of cuteness should almost be a crime. Almost.