Hello everyone,

I realize I've been a bit scarce for a while. I hope everyone who celebrates
it had a good Thanksgiving. And that those who don't had an extremely good
last Thursday in November. =o) The chief reason for my absence is that
yesterday, I completed my participation in National Novel Writing Month, and
I made it to the 50K word goal!  =o) The sense of accomplishment is very
real.  The cats of course supervised this procedure closely. Now I think
they're glad Meowmy is finished so that I can pay more attention to them,
again. =o) Nina and Francesca are fine, Pan is still with me. He's thinner
than I'd like him to be, and his hind legs don't have the strength they used
to, but he can still make it up onto the bed, and he still likes a good
cuddle. I don't think his number is quite up yet, although he is definitely
showing his age. His problem is a thyroid tumor, which is being managed with
pills. I just can't bring myself to put the poor old guy through radiation
or chemotherapy at this point in his life when he's almost 18 years old. If
he were ten or even five years younger, it might be a different story.

Now that we're experiencing relatively chilly weather (I know Marina would
not be impressed by what Californians think of as 'winter') I'm still
keeping the thermostat low, due to heating oil prices and wearing lots of
sweaters. But Nina has figured out an ingenious way to keep warm. I have a
down comforter on my bed, and she likes to get up on the bed and worm her
way UNDER the comforter.  It makes my mattress look as if it has a
Nina-sized wart. Francesca has discovered that it's fun to sit on top of the
TV when I watch as it's nice and warm up there. She also likes to come sit
with me on the couch, although she has also discovered that she likes to
chew on Meowmy's hair, which is very distracting. All three cats very much
enjoyed the turkey scraps that came their way on Thanksgiving evening. Of
course all three cats like to cuddle up in a big pile on the bed together
and let Meowmy  do her writing.

My present to me for completion of Nano  was to promise myself a new laptop
computer.  I went shopping yesterday at Frys, and realized that, if I wanted
to be able to use my vintage 1999 Hewlett Packard Pavilion desktop and the
new laptop interchangeably, as is my intention, my old computer will need a
lot of upgrading. =o\ I finally got paid this month for some work I did, so
I have about $1,200 to spend on the laptop, but upgrading my desktop ain't
going to be free if my desktop and laptop are going to be at all compatible.
I'm also wondering if all my old software will be useless once I do upgrade.
Curse you Bill Gates! But I did find an adorable little HP laptop
yesterday....

On the other hand, my Pavilion was supposedly designed to be upgradeable.
But the whole thing got a lot more complicated than I thought.

Melissa