How Do You Burn Boiled Hot Dogs?

By forgetting to put water in the pan.

Ed fixed hot dogs for us after he got home from work tonight and the combination of fatigue and being anxious to get back on his RPG game City of Heroes where his star player had hit level 50 just before he signed off to head to work this afternoon was his excuse.

My excuse for not being in there to catch his mistake or maybe fixing them myself?  He had just woken me up and I was still fumble fingered enough I probably would have dropped the pan full of hot water and burned Merlin, our cat who thinks he's a puppy dog and keeps some part of his fur in contact with my leg at all times or nearly dies trying.  Or worse, I might have forgotten to light the gas and burned worse the the hot dogs.

I was still asleep when Ed got home because I did not lay down this afternoon until just as he was leaving for work.  About eight hours past my ideal bedtime for the schedule I'm trying to keep.

I was up eight hours past my bedtime because just as I was wrapping things up to lay down this morning I saw a tweet on the #nanowrimo at Twitter that Scrivener was offering a special free trial edition of their story writing software for NaNo participants that would not time out until December 7 even if you download it in October. Which gives you plenty of tie to export and backup in other formats before you loose access to your work if you don't intend to buy.

But that wasn't all.  For all NaNo participants there would be a 20% discount off the regular price and for all NaNo winners there would be a %50 discount.  WOW.

But I still wasn't going to click on the link because I'd been drooling over Scrivener for years but knew it was an Apple only product.  Then my eye fell on another tweet about it and this tweeter claimed to be using Windows.  So I did click the link and ended up downloading and playing with it for the next several hours.  I am still working my way through the interactive tutorial that came with it.  As soon as I finish that I will use the special NaNo template also included in this special NaNo download to set up my NaNo novel project.

I just love software for writers.  Some better than others but just the fact that lovers of writing are involved in designing their dream applications for making their writing life efficient, productive and creative means that every one of them has something special going for it.  I mix and match those special features to create my own dream machine that I wish I had the know how to create.  Instead I mix and match the uses of the aps.  Using one for one point in the process and another for the next and maybe back to the first or on to a third.

In a few days I hope to have screenshots of my NaNo novel in Scrivener for Windows.  Meanwhile you can see some cool ones at Scrivener.

Apparently the Windows version is still in beta and isn't featured anywhere on the site except the page for the WriMos to download their special editions.

Ah, I just found this statement on the WriMos special edtion page:

Note to Windows users: At the time of writing, Scrivener for Windows isn't on sale yet, so the version for download here is a special pre-release version. Scrivener for Windows will be available for purchase on 31st October, though, so there will be plenty of time for you to use the 20% discount. 

I was expecting that discount to be all but meaningless to me as most writing software packages are well over $100 so even a %50 discount would not likely put it in range for me.  But I learned that their regular price is $45 for the Mac version and $40 for the Windows so that is very close to in range for me without the discount at this time of year when Ed is working full time.  But oh WOW if I make my 50K I can keep my edition for $20?  Woot.  I'm motivated now!

The one glaring thing on my wish list not yet included in Scrivener is a good interactive timeline and genealogical chart creator for creating the family trees of the characters and syncing them with the timeline of the plot and synching them with historical and current events from reality with those of the fictional world.  That is a dream I've had for over a decade and really I've yet to find program doing that.  At least not the ones I've been able to get free trials with.