What the Junk?!

My friend and I went out of town to one of our favorite restaurants. They have great pizza. I got a small one while in the restaurant. Their small is pretty much a bit larger than a personal pizza so easy to eat in one go.  He got baked spaghetti which also looked great.  He even went back and ordered us both a small pizza to go. :) Now I have lunch and dinner tomorrow. Yay! We also went to the Goodwill there. I got a few small things there. :)

Before we went, I got my daily NaNoWriMo writing done. I am at 18,686 words! :) Tomorrow I am participating in the weekly write-in, so that will be fun. I like doing those. It's fun to participate in a virtual write-in!

I am glad I posted early yesterday because I wouldn't have had time last night! Why? Well, my friend and I did our Friday thrift trip, but with a twist! At the second to last Goodwill, we looked to see if there was Goodwill in the city we weren't far from. There was, so we decided to go. We found a new one. Well, new to us. We headed from there to the last Goodwill we go to on this trip and drove past another. We turned back and went to that one too. So, we went to five Goodwill stores on this trip.  The 'new' stores were a nice change. I might do a list of items tomorrow. For now, I'm going to relax a bit. I also want to tune in a bit early on the Shortwave as there are more broadcasts to find on Saturday.

Did I write today for NaNoWriMo? Yes, indeed! I went over the 10,000 mark today, too! You know what that means, I treat myself to a pizza. It won't be tonight, but I will do it in the next few days. I thought about going out tonight to Starbucks, but I just don't feel like leaving the house. 

So, my friend texted me today and asked if I wanted to go to South Boston instead of our usual Reidsville trip. I was up for a change so I said yes. We drove up and went to the Goodwill there. He also went to a few pawn shops and then we went to a local Italian place that we both like. I got a small pepperoni pizza and he got spaghetti and we both enjoyed it. My pizza was the best I've had in a while, too! So tasty. That was a nice change. At Goodwill, I found a Myrtle Beach coffee mug with a picture of the beach on it, it's pretty cool. I also found a jack o lantern ceramic tealight holder and a Silhouette Mint for $3! Score! I just need to get ink and the 'papers' for it to make the stamps, but I was able to find those online. Nice find. I was able to get the software online for it easily and it works on my current version of Mac OS so I'm happy. I was able to get a few cute free designs from them and I'll research more later. I have to get the stuff to work with first. I'll do that soon. It was a small thrift, but I a pretty good one. Plus, the food was great! I am getting out the Shortwave radio after this and scanning for a bit. I meant to do it earlier but I'm just now getting caught up on everything else. I made myself a good logging sheet that I can use when I'm listening to keep track of what I'm listening to. I will then save these and I can bind them in a booklet later on. 

Well, after a lot of debate, I decided on my pizza today.  I picked Pizza Hut as they said they have curbside at my local restaurant. I ordered and went to pick it up at the required time. I checked in and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. I finally just gave up and went in thinking maybe it was ready yet. It was ready and just sitting there. ~_~: I got it and took it home. It was supposed to be great. Stuffed crust, pepperoni, etc.  They put enough sauce on it to drown a cow.  The best part of the entire pizza was the stuffed crust. I am going to have to force myself to eat any more of it later. It was that bad.  I might just cut the crust off and eat that. I HATE to waste food, but I already feel sick from eating that. UGH So much for my reward pizza. :( 

I almost forgot to post today. I got my NaNoWriMo writing done quite early and I did hit 10,000 words! Pizza was ordered and picked up.  It was decent, not as great as I was hoping, but I have half of it left for tomorrow and I have a free pizza too. Why? They didn't get it out in less than two minutes.  I'm not complaining one bit. Free pizza FTW!

I actually finished earlier this afternoon. I meant to post then and got distracted.  I have my two main characters in a situation at the moment. They have to work out how to get out of it tomorrow! :p  I have a few complications to toss their way, but they'll get out eventually!  Tomorrow wil also be when I hit 10,000 words. It's tradition now to buy myself a pizza when I hit 10,000 words and I hope that this year will be no exception. I just have to figure out where to get it.  I usually get Pizza Hut, but I don't want to go in and I don't want delivery. I'll probably go with Dominos since they have curbside pickup.  It works the best for me as I don't have to deal with anyone! I just say thanks as they hand me the pizza. Introverts dream! I'll let you know tomorrow if I do hit 10,000 words and what pizza I got! lol

My friend and I did not thrift today, it's been several weeks since we did our usual Friday thrift run. He had a package that he had delivered here today, so when he got off work, he stopped at KFC and got us both one of their chicken sandwiches and some fries. I love the chicken sandwich at KFC. I've now tried theirs, Bojangles, McDonald's, Hardee's, and Sonics.  KFC still rules as the best tasting to me.  I appreciated the treat for sure!  He ate and then got his package and headed out.  I had already written before he came in case he wanted to go thrift or do something.  It was nice to just relax.  

It's gotten cooler here lately and it was pretty darn cold last night. Today, I swtichend out my quilts. I have a summer quilt that is very lightweight that i use from Spring to early fall and a heavy weight quilt that I used from fall to spring. I am definitely going to need it!  Brr!  I have my heater ready to go, but I want to hold out as long as I can before I have to use it. I'm stubborn like that! :p

Yeah, today was supposed to be a nice relaxing one. No going anywhere or doing anything.  That got blown out of the water this afternoon! I was sitting at my desk watching a YouTube video of  Yuzuru Hanyu.  He is amazing!  Those jumps, wow.  He is also very kawaii and that doesn't hurt.  Anyway! I was watching one of his performances and my phone beeped. My friend was texting me. I wasn't expecting to hear from him today since we walked on Monday and thrifted yesterday.  He wanted to walk a bit and then go to this pizza place we like. I really did not want to go but I agreed.  I got dressed and met him at the trail.  We walked a short walk. Just a mile this time, and then got in my car and went to Milton, NC where this pizza place is.  We both got a pizza. I have a lot of leftovers for tomorrow and that is after eating some for dinner!  

Last night, I was looking everywhere for my Fitbit charger and I could NOT find it. I looked for hours and finally found it after 1 am I immediately charged the darn thing.  While I was doing that, I was afraid I'd not find it before bed, so I opened the Inspire HR one that I won some time back. I had looked at it, but never really taken it out of the packaging. I charged it up in case I had to use it.  Well, since I found my charger, I wore my regular Fitbit today.  I decided to add the Inspire to my account tonight.  It is water-resistant, and I figured it would be great for the beach.  I could get it in the ocean or the pool with no issues.  It came with a plain black band which is nice and I ordered a cloth-type colorful one back when I first got it. I ordered a couple of bands for it tonight on Amazon.  One a cloth band in blue and one a stainless steel band.  That will be good if I need to be a bit dressy. I like it. It seems to have all the features of my Charge, too!  I just wish there were more clock faces to pick from. Now that I downloaded the manual and see that you can swipe on the screen for stuff, it's even better!  It does the text notifications just like my old one.  I think I'll like it.  It's nice to have a choice. I can wear either one as long as I sync whichever one I'm wearing before switching! The inspire is a lot lighter than the Charge and it's got a smaller display too.  

The storm wasn't as bad as they were predicting. I never lost power this time either!  My friends went out for a few hours this morning, but mine didn't.  Figures, the one time I prepared for it and it doesn't happen. Oh well, I'm going to put the Sterno stoves and the generic stereo in my heavy-duty Dew / Oakley backpack and make a bug-out bag with it. I had thought about doing this some time ago.  It will be good for a BOB or just an emergency kit for at-home during outages. 

I didn't do much today, I stayed in.  I was tired most of the day so that had a lot to do with nothing much getting done! I did write though, so that is good.  After I post this, I'm going to get in my sleep clothes and get comfy and relax and re-read what I wrote.  I did a lot of work on yesterday's writing. I added stuff to it to make it flow better. I also wrote another 1100 words in addition to the edits.  It's coming along great.  I only ate half of my pizza today, so I'll have the rest of that for tomorrow. It was pretty tasty!  Of course, it's pepperoni pizza so it pretty much has to be tasty! ;p

My friend texted me today. He was trying to buy a house and made an offer but his offer didn't get accepted, so he was a bit bummed. He texted me and asked if I'd like to 'go somewhere, anywhere.'  I said, yes even though it was cold and overcast and we had rain/freezing rain. Luckily it didn't start up again until we were almost done with our adventure.  We went to Yanceyville, NC to the Goodwill there.  We then went to Roxboro NC and on to South Boston Virginia.  We went to the Goodwill there, too.  I didn't get anything major, but I did find some fun things.  Our favorite place to eat in South Boston was closed.  I looked on Google and it said it was 'temporarily closed' I hope it's not permanent.  We went looking for something else and found a place called Italian Delight.  It was right near the Goodwill we'd gone to so we had to backtrack.  We gave them a go and they were great. It was an order at the counter and fill your own drink type place.  He got spaghetti and I got a small pepperoni pizza.  It was delicious! Definitely a place we'll go to again.  

It was very cold out there today.  My car had ice on it when I got in it!  I noticed a lot of ice-covered trees in one area where we were. When we got home, he noticed that something was falling but it was very light.  We are under a winter weather advisory for the weekend, but sadly it's ice and freezing rain and no snow. Boo! I have no plans to go out this weekend and be in this mess!  I hope to get some writing done. I did write some earlier but I have a feeling tomorrow I'm going to want to edit it.  I have the entire weekend to just chill, write, and drink coffee! :p

So, we went out and ate at Victoria's Country Cookin'.  It's one of our favorite places to eat down here.  We went to three Goodwills after that.  I found some goodies at all three!  My friend got a shake at Cookout and while he was in line, I walked over to Starbucks and got some Starbucks. I also was able to pick up a bunch of cards. Yay! :)  It's always nice to get new cards.

I found a Fossil wristlet at one of the Goodwill stores, I found a Starbucks tumbler at another.  It is missing its lid, but it was in good condition.  I got various other things at each place. It was a pretty good haul!  

We also went to Food Lion while out and go some drinks and some food and snacks for the room.  We are set for a while. We are going to order pizza later from Hungry Howie's. Yum!

My friend that helps me out so much asked for a favor last night.  He had a package coming today and thought it would be delivered before 9 am.  He asked if I would get up early so I'd be ready to go get it.  I agreed and I set my alarm for 8 am. I was up before it went off.  I have been so tired all day.  The package did come before 9 am.  I went and picked it up and brought it here.  I was so tempted to take a nap but I decided to hold off. Hopefully, I'll sleep well tonight.

My friend came to get his package and brought some pizza for us to share.  He also put some foam stuff on my air conditioner to hopefully make it work better and be cooler in my room. So far so good!  I am going to enjoy sleeping tonight!

Oh, remember I mentioned that I got a weather alert radio at Goodwill in Longs, SC on the way home?  Well, I turned on the alert feature today so check it out.  I found out that it does, in fact, work! It went off this afternoon and scared the poo out of me. LOL!  We had a pretty good thunderstorm.  It's cool that the radio alerted me before any of my phone apps.  I will be turning it off at night before bed though.  I'm a light sleeper and I don't want that thing going off and scaring me half to death and waking me up! LOL!

I have gotten my second wind and I'm a little more with it now. I wanted to post about the interesting thing that happened on my way to Myrtle Beach!  My friend and I usually do this trip from Monday - Sunday. He had this planned well before Covid-19 and all that mess.  When he found out that we would actually be allowed to go, he also found out that he would be off Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before the day we'd usually leave.  What does this nut do?  He books us a room at a different hotel for those two nights! LOL!  Yes, we are here until Monday morning and then we change hotels.  Fun, eh?  Two extra days for having to move twice?  I'm not complaining!

So, we were getting close to getting to Myrtle and his battery light comes on. Uh oh! Not good.  He pulls over on a busy highway and risks life and limb to check under the hood.  Everything looked okay, so he said since we were less than 10 miles from the hotel, we'd try our best to make it.  Well, when we get in Mrytle, they have Ocean Boulevard only going ONE WAY. You have to get on a certain cross streets and go to your hotel.  We didn't know this at first and we below ours and we were going to just drive up. NOPE. You can only go right onto Ocean Blvd.  So, we had to go eight streets above our hotel and go through there.  The car was struggling.

We get to the hotel and he sees a few parking spots near the front and he goes for it.  The car dies right there.  Luckily he was almost  in the spot so he was able to maneuver it and park it.  We went to hopefully check in.  This was just before noon and check in is at 4pm!  Of course the room wasn't ready but she said she'd call.

So, we can't go anywhere because of the car. This first hotel is right next to the beginning of the Beach Boardwalk so we go sit on a bench in the shade there.  He does some looking online and calls around and finds an autoshop store that will deliver the parts here to the hotel. Score!  They do and he hs been out working on putting the two parts on.  Hopefully this will fix the problem.  It's been a very long day and we are both tired to death.

We stopped at a Goodwill in Longs SC. My first thrift store in almost two months!  I got really 'weird' in there.  The only thing I could describe it was I felt like I was going to fall over in the floor. I actually stumbled into a clothing rack and was swaying badly. We checked out and then got on the road. It wasn't long after that the car issues started up so I was freaking out about feeling like I was dying and the car was trying to die too!  I think the car and I are both better now.  I hope he is coming back in soon with good news.

As for me, I felt better once I sat down in a cool environment.  We ordered pizza and I ate three slices of that on the balcony with some of my beloved Mountain Dew (I AM NOT A NECKBEARD!) I just happen to love their drink of choice. D'oh!  Anyway, I felt a lot better after eating and I've been just sitting and relaxing since.  I am starting to feel like myself again but damn I'm hungry again. LOL

That pizza was almost six hours ago now so it's okay that I'm hungry. I want to wait for my friend to get done with the car and hope that was a success.  I can eat leftover pizza or if the car is running we can risk it and go out in this insane traffic. AHHHH!

So, that was my day so far. I wanted to share with you. I didn't realise I would be writing my next novel right here in the blog. :P Here are a few more -pictures including that fabulous Hungry Howie's pizza!

I have just hit the 45,000 mark. Actually, I've gone over it by 604 words.  Go me!  Guess what else I did today? I wrote pen pal letters!  I got seven written and sent off.  I went to the post office to mail them and found nine more!  Three are from people I haven't heard from before so potential new pals. I haven't opened them yet.  I was going to and go ahead and write to them and get them ready to mail, but I'm out of stamps!  I ordered some and hopefully, they'll come quickly.  

I got a good way into my newest read last night. It's pretty good.  I am hoping to see if there are more of this series.  It's a different post-apocalyptic fiction than my usual. This one has aliens trying to kill everyone on earth.  Something different and so far it's a good read.  I still haven't signed up for Kindle Unlimited, but I plan to.  I figure why not?  I get three months free.  I'm sure in that time I can find out if it's worth it for me! I need to check to see if my library has more of my current series. I know Kindle Unlimited has some from ones I've read in the past that I wanted to continue with.

I just checked and my library has all three of the books from this series. I went ahead and borrowed books two and three! :) Might as well.  That way I can jump into the next book when I finish this one!

Oh! One more thing.  Remember how during the month of actual NaNoWriMo I award myself a pizza?  Well, I had forgotten all about it because of COVID and everything else.  Plus me not planning on writing 50,000 words and all.  Since I AM writing 50,000 + words, I treated myself to a pizza tonight! :p

I got one of the puzzles out today to work. I decide on a puzzle with a pizza on it. I was working on it when my friend texted and said he'd bring by some pizza. LOL!  I now have almost a whole pizza for leftovers for a few days.  I only eight two pieces when I got it so I'd have lots for later.  I'm going to enjoy it, too!

I have been staying up way too late for the last several nights, so I'm going to try my best to get to bed early tonight.  I feel a bit off.  I feel like I might have a bit of a cold, but I also know it's probably just paranoia with everything going on right now.  I'm going to try to sleep it off. I have been using my hand sanitizer religiously and I've been very cautious on anywhere I've gone.  I know I'm just being paranoid, but a good long sleep sure won't hurt!

My reading is on a roll.  The only problem is, I'm staying up late to do it. I finished another book last night.  I looked up any apocalyptic fiction.  I was looking for zombie fiction, but I only found ones I've read or didn't look very interesting. I found another dystopian kind so I figured I'd give it a chance and borrowed the ebook.  I"ll be starting it when I finish this post!

I finished my puzzle today.  It was a fun puzzle to work.  It wasn't too hard even though it looked like it might be complicated in parts.  I will be sharing a picture of it here:

I've been 'watching' YouTube Reddit videos while working on my puzzle and doing other things. I'm mainly listening to most of them, but there are some you actually need to watch. (Facepalm, mildly irritating, etc) but the I don't work here, entitled parents, etc,  I can just listen. I have found a few other videos of other content I'm enjoying too.  One is TheWolfePit This guy buys cheap, Dollar Store items and tries them.  He also tries other weird stuff. It's pretty cool.  He cracks me up when he says he spit out whatever he was trying as soon as he bites into it. It's cool to see the products reviewed so I don't waste my money on something gross. I've actually tried one of the things he tried and didn't care for and it's something I have in my freezer right now. I actually like it.  To each his own. :)

I had some of my leftover pizza for lunch and saved the last two pieces for tomorrow's lunch. I could have eaten them for dinner, but I thought they'd make a great lunch for tomorrow and I had some other stuff I like, so it wasn't hard to save it.  It will be a nice treat tomorrow!  Speaking of tomorrow, my 'new' Fossil bag is coming.  I can't wait to see it. I hope it is scent free and I'm able to use it immediately.  Of course, I'll take pictures of it!