Happy 5th Anniversary! Blogging, running and preparing to write my first novel

I realized early this week that I've been blogging for 5 years now - well, five years and three days to be exact - which kind of amazes me. I started "Figuring it out" at the suggestion of a friend who wrote his own blog, but I had only a vague notion of what I wanted to write about and posted pretty erratically the first few years. In the past couple of years, it's become a running blog more than anything else, with a fair bit philosophizing and occasional poetry thrown in for good measure.

In the next year or two, I hope to post more about other topics that interest me - books, travel, writing, photography and motorcycling, to name a few - but my muse may have other ideas so we'll see how it goes. In any case, congratulations to me for sticking with it this long!!

In other news, it was a hectic week at work and at home so I didn't do as much running as I'd have liked, though I still managed to get out three times and had a spectacular 16km run today from our home in Conquerall Bank along Highway #331 to LaHave.  It's terrible having to run in such ugly surroundings.  :-)

My ultimate destination was LaHave Bakery where I was meeting husband for brunch and pastries.  The Bakery is a fun and interesting place and we enjoyed delicious eggs benedict and coffee, followed by a melt-in-your-mouth mincemeat tart. Hubbie was feeling pretty mellow after his own 9km run.

Here's me checking out the pastry selection.

I didn't stop to take a lot of pictures en route because I was too busy noodling about the plot of my first novel.  (No, I'm not kidding - see below.)  But I couldn't resist grabbing two shots.  The first was of a dilapidated VW Beatle parked by the edge of the road next to a body shop.  I loved how its colour popped against the blue water and sky, echoing the autumn foliage across the river in Dayspring.

The second was of a piece of folk art parked by the side of the road further on made me laugh out loud because it reminded me of my little red Rebel.  

See the resemblance?  The artists's name is Norman Veinott and he does some wickedly funny stuff with old car parts.  

Speaking of my little red Rebel, I went riding twice this weekend. In fact, in the few weeks I've owned it, I've already logged more than 125 kms - which is pretty impressive given that I haven't really gone anywhere.

Yesterday, I drove down the east side of the river 10 kms or so, stopping en route in Peace Park, where I sat at a picnic table in warm sunshine for an hour or so sketching out the first few scenes of my first novel.  That's right. My novel. Crazy as it sounds, I've decided to try to write a novel during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

I've wanted to sign up for NaNoWriMo since I first heard about it a couple of years ago but life always seemed too busy. It still seems too busy but, since that's not going to change anytime soon, I've decided to just go for it as part of my 50th birthday year celebrations. Whatever comes out the other end will be crap but first novels are always crap and - as the old saying goes - "you gotta start somewhere". I figure if nothing else it will keep me out of trouble when Husband's away in a few weeks.

Anyway, it's time I signed off and went to bed. I've another busy week ahead - which will include tackling the piles of work on my desk and dealing with whatever Hurricane Sandy decides to send our way.  At the moment, it looks as if she may pass us by but I expect we'll get heavy rains and wind at least.  Thoughts and prayers are with folks in the US and elsewhere who have been or will be more seriously affected.