Here comes the judge

As I did last year, I agreed to be a judge for the local high school literature competition, the writing equivalent of science fair. I’m expecting to receive one batch of entries today and the rest sometime later on this week, so I should be in for some interesting reading.

I will be so glad when this election process is over. I am so exhausted from it. What the news outlets are going to do to fill up the hours in a few weeks, I have no idea. This all-election-all-the-time approach wears me down. However, the early voting numbers are encouraging, so turnout might be higher than average overall. I just hope that people don’t get frustrated standing in hours-long lines tomorrow.

The separated couple got a break last night on The Amazing Race—the first non-elimination pit stop. Glad to see Starr and Nick continuing to do so well, both in the contest and with each other. My favorite teams are always the ones where the contestants manage to avoid the pitfall of picking at each other. If I were Terence, I’d worry about being murdered in my sleep, after the way he nagged at Sarah. I’d double check the knots on any support ropes during climbing challenges, too.

Not a bad episode of Cold Case last night—I liked the scene where Vera had the guy in the box and treated him the same way a high-pressure car salesman treats his customers. One of the weaknesses of this show, though, has always been its recreation of the crime at the end. More often than not, the point where the person decides to pick up something and bludgeon the victim to death or strangle them, or whatever seems weak, lame and forced. This week was no exception.

The Unit took another turn at playing Mission Impossible, with its fake re-enactment of news footage of a terrorist act. Looks like the Mack vs. Major Ryan subplot is going to erupt next week.

Got a fair amount of work done on the new novel, but it isn’t all contiguous. I wrote part of a chapter and then jumped ahead to the next chapter because I wasn’t entirely sure about part of the backstory. I’m still sort of feeling my way around with the material, and spending a fair amount of time rewriting what I’ve already done, but I’m making progress. My fiction output, except for one flash fiction story, has been pretty low of late. Ever since the hurricane, in fact. I’m glad to be back at it again on a regular basis. I decided against NaNoWriMo, though, because I know there are a couple of things will be happening this month to keep me from being that productive.