I made it to the Fireside Lounge with a couple minutes to spare. I did eat my tasty healthy bento (half of it; left the other half for my partner for later) and then took a nap. Yay. I actually slept close to an hour. Then I showered, put on clean clothes, which included my official NaNoWriMo t-shirt. I grabbed my still-iced soy latte and the now cold edamame and headed out with laptop and water bottle in tow.
There were about 35 of us there, I think. Some had been there for a couple hours - but, as I already mentioned, I really needed some sleep if I was to accomplish anything. There was a lot of noise in the restaurant until the countdown to 12:01 and "go." Then, for 20 or 25 minutes, the only sound was keyboards click-clacking, the espresso machine hissing, and a whisper here or there.
My start was slow and steady. A little more stuck than I hoped and I wasn't that pleased with where it was going. But a few characters showed up and I feel I am starting to build their story. At 3:15, I was no longer able to connect to their wireless device. Luckily I had just uploaded the latest version of my novel, so that was good. And I took it as a "sign" to pack up and come home.
I was wide awake on the drive and buzzing when I came in. I downloaded the files from Google Docs to my desktop computer and was planning to do some more work. But as I'm typing this entry, I am falling asleep. So, I think, at 4:30 AM, I am going to call it a night and go to bed for real. Then I will write more after some good hours of sleep. I have already checked that the alarm is off *ahhh*.
Since the word count widget has temporarily disappeared, let me just tell you that *so far* today I have 1,418 words! And the Oregon: Portland region is 22nd out of about 440 regions as far as total word count. I will be writing more later today.