It’s been a bit of a rocky week, with vestiges of that yucky migraine lingering until Thursday night and lots of work to get out of the way.  However, I think I’ve cleared a major hurdle (for the moment), so I’ve been celebrating with a bit of downtime.

The Successes:

• I read books 3, 4, and 5 of Karen Marie Moning’s FEVER series between Thursday and Friday night, which is probably a record reading binge for me. A huge thank you to everyone who recommended the series, because wow. It is epic and wonderful and amazing, and I am so glad I read it. Now I am going to sit on pins and needles like the rest of Moning’s fans to see what the upcoming films are going to look like. If they mess up Barrons, I am going to pitch a major fit.

• I had a movie marathon last night. I was planning on doing some writing and stuff, but instead I curled up on the couch and watched a couple of old favorites. I started with The Inheritance, a made-for-TV movie based on an early Louisa May Alcott novel, followed it up with The Princess Bride (so. darn. awesome), and then finished with Love’s Kitchen, which I hadn’t heard of until Netflix pushed it on my radar. It has a shockingly low rating on imdb, but I really, really loved it. The film involves food and cooking and people falling in love (three of my favorite things), and stars real-life married couple Dougray Scott (who I have had a huge crush on since he did Ever After) and Claire Forlani. It was definitely the feel-good movie that I needed.

• Outlining my NaNo project is coming along. I’ve started using the corkboard function in Scrivener, where I can lay out 3×5 cards to organize my ideas.  I’m not exactly working in a linear fashion, so I have Act 2 laid out, with short summaries for each scene, but little else decided beyond that. Over the next two weeks I’ll be brainstorming so that I can hopefully be ready to roll by November 1st.

• I finally finished the draft of the latest chapter of my MA thesis. It’s rough, and there are holes in it that will need to be filled in, but the hardest work (I think) has been done. I didn’t realize until I emailed it to my advisor exactly how stressed out finishing this chapter has made me feel, but I do feel like I have had a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. I can’t slack off too badly — I have lots more edits to tackle, along with a couple shorter sections to write — but I am going to step away from the project for the next few days and catch up on my writing.

Places to Pick Up the Slack:

• I only worked out 3 days this past week, instead of 4 like I had hoped, so I’ll need to make up for it in the days to come.

Fun Stuff to Check Out:

• As I’ve mentioned before, Em and I both decided to tackle NaNoWriMo this year. For an extra bit of fun, and because there seem to be quite a few first time WriMos out there, we decided to create a support blog of sorts, where everyone can pop in once a week and share the challenges and successes that they’re facing during November. We should be launching sometime this week, so keep your eyes peeled!

• The photo contest finalists from our ROW80 twitter party have been posted over at Jenny Hansen’s blog. Swing by and cast your vote — there are some awesome shots.

All in all, it’s been a pretty good week. How’s everyone else doing, mid-way through October? Don’t forget to visit the other ROWers checking in today!