Fifth day of Nanowrimo, wordcount 3kish

Things done list:
1) Seven hours of teaching accomplished on Saturday. The Survey of Medieval Arts ended up being taught by Mark and me together. The students seemed to appreciate it, especially the collection of ancient and reproduction glass, pottery, bone comb, brooches, buckles, manuscript pages etc. to be looked at. The body of the class was nearly 300 slides, and we had a 5 minute break every half-hour or so, so people could come up and touch the real things.
Nobody said a word about Mark being there--I suppose that's the unexpected benefit of the blacklisting being secret. Anyway, I'm done, there. Mark is already thinking of ways to improve and fine-tune the class, which will be useful if another Ithra campus asks for it. But I've decided I'm only going to co-teach it with him, so I'm probably free and clear for local commitments.
2) The Peel Affinity proofread--though not impeccably, because Alicia found a repeated word in the first chapter, after Mark, Daniel and I had all gone through it. Pity there wasn't time for her to do the rest of it.
The Peel Affinity isn't related to the Avengers tv show (thanks Bart! but I do have a proof copy of the biography of John Steed). It's a living history book about the life, lands and household of a 14th century knight, through one year. The illustrations are photos of the reenactors, showing everyday life and tasks in peace and war, as the knight joins the war in France. I appear as a painter, with Chris as the apprentice grinding pigments, and Mark is shown peering into a bake-oven (actually a pottery kiln). Several of the photos imitate well-known manuscript illustrations, so part of the fun is to spot the source. Froissart! Christine de Pizan!
3) Sunday visit to M-- to see how she's been fixing up the house and garden. This went from 4:30 to 10ish, which did in what might have been a fair chunk of writing time. I did manage to get in about an hour after getting home at 10:30, which impressed me, because I'd been near nodding off during the visit.
She did share the cheering news that she's started writing again, a short story about a young woman who may be delusional but whose delusions change her behaviour for the better, because she believes she's affecting the lives of others, and begins to feel less helpless and more responsible. It sounded interesting, and the wobbly balance of whether she's mad or sane reminded me a bit of athenais's snow-woman story. We talked a very little bit about writing; it seems she talks about it with Irene, and mentioned this to me because Irene didn't like the ambiguity.

Things not quite done:
1) Formatting Willow Knot and sending it out as an .rtf
I admit, I'm still reading through and making sure there's no really stupid glitches or continuity bumps. The sort of thing that becomes blindingly clear when you change the font or layout, or read straight through after you've been writing non-chronologically. Tomorrow. I'll get this sucker out tomorrow.
I wish I could have pulled an all-nighter or two in October, but it turns out that I am too old and decrepit. I'm still tired from the weekend, when I didn't even stay up late.
2) Getting somewhere with my NaNoWriMo. Which is just for fun, and I won't be stressing about it, though I have been stressed at the things I've had to clear out of the way to get to it.

Let's see, can I put a ticker factory countdown on here?




Looks like I can! The little purple dealy is a fountain pen, by the way.
Well, my first-person protag has had her rather sketchily-depicted grad student life disrupted by the sudden arrival of the girl with the devil in her backpack, and they are about to depart on a poorly-understood quest. I decided that her thesis was going to involve comparing the hero's journey to the folktale journey, so that ties in to much of what's going to happen to her. I'm thinking more sarcasm than irony.
No commitments this weekend, except for getting a basketful of apples through the dehydrator, so I should be able to catch up a bit. Though not to the people who already have 20k or so. It's started, that's the main thing.