Putting my house in order

Well, I start my new job on Monday. This process has taken so long that it's still not quite real to me that I even got the job in the first place -- maybe it'll finally sink in when I walk in the door on Monday morning. Yesterday I went over to City Hall to get sworn in (don't ask...crazy regulations regarding municipal employees, I guess) and met one of the gals I'll be working closely with. She was really great, and everyone's already doing so much to make me feel welcome. Apparently they bought me a brand-new computer with a big flat screen and all spanking-new software, so I suppose I'll be able to reconcile myself to working on a PC instead of a Mac. :-P  I still have to go over to Personnel toward the end of next week to do all the benefits and tax stuff, but I've pretty much cleared the final hurdle. (Even the physical had me stressed, just because you never know if they're going to dig up something horrible. "Well, the good news is that you got the job, but the bad news is you've only got six months to live!") But that all went fine, too, so now I'm pretty much set. I spent the morning cleaning the house, and even though I hate housework, it felt good to get the place all spic and span...'cause God knows I won't feel motivated once I'm back working full-time. (I'm writing this lengthy post because I've trapped myself in the office after shampooing the carpet in the front room and hall, and now I'm waiting for it to dry.)

All this leads me to the conundrum of Nano. elementalevil gave me a guilt trip when I said I might not do it this year because of just starting a new job, so I went ahead and went back over to the site to at least make sure my login still worked, etc. I haven't bothered going to any of the forums because I have no frigging idea what I'm even going to write. I was toying with the idea of a time-travel romance set in Nazi Germany (stay with me on this one!), but the amount of research that's going to involve isn't even funny, and I've whiled away my summer writing fanfic, not doing research. I also had an idea for an erotic contemporary romance (not something I would normally write, but a plot bunny bit me) that would probably be pretty easy to do, since it wouldn't require any more research than Sympathy did last year. However, for the last Nano I got through the whole novel in a month because I had a lot of down time at work to write. I get the feeling I'm probably going to have the same thing at my new job, but I don't know for sure yet (obviously), and even if I were able to write there, I'd feel sort of weird about writing some hardcore smut on a city-owned computer. The logical solution would be to skip over the porn and write that at home, but I'm not one of those writers who can jump around all over the place. I write in a very linear fashion. I'd say writing fics made me do that, since I post a chapter almost as soon as I'm done with it, but I've been writing the same way since I was in junior high, so that doesn't explain it.

Oh, well...I suppose if worst comes to worst I'll just write that Snape/Sinistra fic I've been contemplating for a while. Or the paranormal/mystery/chick lit/romance that involves psychics, UFO hunters, Kabbalists, and various other whack jobs running around L.A. and uncovering an alien conspiracy behind all those orange spray-tanned celebrities. :-P