All through October I wondered if I could pull it off again. NaNoWriMo. National Novel-Wriiting Month. Last year at this time I sat down and wrote 50,000+ words in one month; most of those words were crap, of course. I’ve given the pile to a couple of people, but no one has been able to actually read through the whole thing and give me any feedback. But it was a good experience for me; it helped me to clarify the mythos I’ve been developing all these years and which I’m still putting some other projects now. Assuming I could ever finish those other projects.

This year, of course, I’m working and traveling way too much. NaNoWriMo just ain’t a go for me this year.

Today I’ve been lazing around the house. Jennifer is still down in Santa Cruz, the land of banana slugs, training more mollusc handlers; I was in Santa Clara for the first couple of days this week, and now I’m home. I spent the day writing in my journal and playing with my wireless network card at Starbucks. And when I came home, I fully intended to eat dinner, rest for a few minutes, and then head off to choir practice, which begins at 7 on Thursday nights. This evening, though, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until 7:30 when the pastor of our church called to wonder where I was.

“We were all worried that you were in the hospital,” she told me.

Hospital? I wondered. “I don’t recall being admitted to any hospital.”

“Oh, well [Parishioner X] saw you at the scene of an accident yesterday and we were all worried that you’d been hurt and were in the hospital in critical condition and that’s why you couldn’t make it to choir tonight.”

“Accident?” I thought about this for a few moments. Then I remembered that while I was on my way home last night, just a couple of miles out on I-80 from Dixon, I saw an accident on the highway. Well, I didn’t witness the accident itself, I just saw the aftermath: a woman sitting inside a badly wrecked late 80’s model Honda — it looked like it had been smashed from above by a big fist — and a man standing next to it trying to get his cell phone to work. I pulled over and got out, asked if I could help. The man told me that he’d been unable to get through to 911, so I called them on my cell phone. I also got in touch with the woman’s doctor and got some instructions from her to pass on to the EMT’s when they showed up. (I’m certainly not a doctor or an EMT myself; my only medical knowledge in this sort of situation consists of knowing that if you’re not in immediate danger, like flames or a smell of gasoline, then if your neck hurts after an accident it’s probably best not to move.) After passing the cell phone to the EMT so that he could talk to the victim’s doctor, there wasn’t much for me to do except stand around and wait for the ambulance to leave — it was parked between me and my car, so I couldn’t get to it without getting in the way.

So I guess Parishioner X saw me standing there. And that’s what caused the concern.

I just thought it was neat that word got around and my pastor called just to see if I was all right.

You know what’s cool? Cigarette-Smoking Man from The X-Files showed up in my training sesions last week and this week. Trenchcoat, cigarette, and all. Perhaps these mollusc handlers are on to something. “You’re not ready for the truth, Mr. Crawford.”

Digging through the Jurassic era layers of my desk drawers yesterday evening, I found a CD set that I’d purchased a long time ago and then forgotten about: a set with seven episodes of Tales from the Crypt. I drove around town last night and this morning on my errands, listening to kooky tales and strange stories starring the likes of John Ritter and Tim Curry. Great fun.

One of my errands was swinging by Blockbuster and renting a couple of movies. I rented Dagon, a Spanish film based on a story by H. P. Lovecraft, and Jason X… just because I could. Plenty of cheese for me to indulge in.

So. No NaNoWriMo for me this year, but plenty of cheese anyway — almost the same level of cheese as I churned out last year at this time….