I got started an hour late today, so by 3pm I only had 4100 words. Then, most awfully, I noticed it was only another 1100 words to 20K on the book, so obviously the day's goal was not 5K, but 5200 words. And at 3pm I *reaaaaaaalllllly* didn't feel like writing anymore. So I came downstairs to log on and whine, and found that Ted had sent me a copy of the Rogue poster for X3.

(I am despondent. My hair is nowhere near long enough for X3 Rogue. It wasn't even before I cut the damaged stuff off the bangs.)

However, it was an excellent poster to make my Rogue X3 Take A Stand graphic with, because I was deeply bitter that they had Storm and Angel and Phoenix but no Rogue, and I had a good positive/negative for her. So I made the icon that is currently displaying on this entry, and I am inordinantly pleased with it. I have not made an animated graphic since 1999, I'm pretty sure. I was somewhat amused to discover the technology hasn't changed.

Anyway, so I had this plan: I was gonna do the icon, write my words, get Ted to cook dinner, and dye the not-streaked part of my hair darker brown.

Except it took an hour and a freaking half to do the icon.

Much of this time was spent trying to find a frakking gif animator that didn't cost me money to use (thenomain came to my rescue) and then I realized I'd made the whole thing 125x125 instead of 100x100 and I'd only saved them as gifs so I couldn't just tidily shrink them without screwing up the look of the font, and then it was 50k and LJ only lets you have 40k graphics, and...

By the time I got it done Ted had already cooked dinner and I was on my way to eat and I hadn't written a single more word. Dinner, however, was insanely yummy and I gobbled it all down post haste and then went back to writing, feeling much better about everything.

And I hit 20K.

And I dyed the none-striped part of my hair darker brown (in fact, wet, it looks *black*, so I'm pretty curious about what color it's going to be dry) and I'll go have a pro do the stripe blonde on the 24th or so, and it'll be fun even if it's not long enough.

And I walked the dog, so I'm not a total failure as a human being.

Life is good.

ytd wordcount: 168,800
miles to Isengard: 37