After going to bed way later than expected between Friday and Saturday, I got up a bit later than planned and didn't get to the ZipCar until around 2:30 in the afternoon.

Then I decided to fight the traffic up and down Rockville Pike. Why? Because I realized very late Thursday (like, technically, Friday, long after I should have been asleep) that all the makeup I thought I had... I'd thrown out a couple of years ago because it was either dried up or gooey in bad ways. That, of course, would make putting together the planned costume for this year problematic.

And so, I finally got around to hitting the places I'd normally hit, just about three weeks later than I should have. Most places were picked clean. (Though I did find a nice leather motorcycle jacket at Ranger Surplus in Rockville that I may have to go back and get... I need one that actually fits right.) But, over the course of a few hours, I did manage to get everything I thought I'd need.

"Everything I thought I'd need" turned out to be too much, as usual. Good news is, if I ever got some of the projects I have in mind off the ground, some of it will definitely come in handy.

Due to traffic and weather, I got home a bit later than I expected... and apparently (yet again) missed the large group of trick-or-treaters at my apartment. I'll be eating candy for a few weeks. Aw, shucks. :)

I forgot how long it took some liquid latex to dry enough so I could put makeup on it. That slowed down the costume putting together. I ended up rushing on the last bits of application... finally got out of the apartment just after 8:30-ish (about half an hour after I wanted to be at the party).

As always, Jeff's party was fun. He puts out a good spread and lots of fun people show up. My costume went over well, there will be pictures sometime soon. I got sucked in and totally lost track of time... so I didn't make it to Spellbound as I had planned.

But what I did do was have good conversations with interesting people who I really do want to spend more time with.

Overall, Halloween was full of win.

Got home earlier than planned... removed the makeup and then wondered what I should do with my "extra" time. Then I remembered that after Halloween comes NaNoWriMo. So, off I go to start the story... Feel Free to follow it here. :)

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

Welcome to NaNoWriMo 2009!

Jumping right in to the experiment using Tarot as the main guide to, well, everything in the story.

We start out with the main characters, drawn from just the court cards of the Minor Arcana:

• Queen of Swords
• King of Spears (Wands)
• Knight of Shields (Pentacles)
• Page of Cups

Well, that's an interesting spread. One from each of the suits.

Because it fits my normal literary tastes, I'm going to use our Knight as the main character. Turning to the wonderful name generator over at Seventh Sanctum, we find that he is called Solomon Mercado. I think I can work with that.

I'm going to go and do the same for everyone else. I'm also going to do a single card draw for each from the rest of the deck that will come into play in a second. Note that I've also decided to set the story in a more contemporary time than the Arthurian cards project, so there's going to be some translation and twisting going on.

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