Reasons Why Coffeetime is a Bad Idea (part 1)

First off, I'm a huge fan of coffee, what I'm referring to are the dangers of having coffee time with someone. More on that once Nanowrimo starts, because it needs an awkward duck painting to go with it. In the meantime, here is a recent coffee time experience.
Today the ladies of my office invited me for coffee and sat whispering conspiratorially and darting looks at me. I'm not sure why they whisper, because I don't understand Korean anyway.
Finally one of them asked. "Jackie teacher, what do you think of Korean men?"
"All of them?" I asked.
"What style of man do you like?"
I was unable to answer this question, because I'm not entirely sure I know the correct vocabulary to describe different styles of men. It's a confusing subject for me.
"I don't know... umm..." I said.
"Do you like tall man?" the science teacher asked, helping me out.
"Sure." I said.
"Taller than you?"
"I guess, yeah, I would prefer that."
"Ohhhhh." They all said together, sounding disappointed. The regarded me in silence, and I drank my coffee uncomfortably.
"Jackie teacher," said the science teacher, "do you know technology teacher?"
I didn't know there even was a technology class at my school. "No, I don't think so."
"He is very kind" she said.
"Oh?"
"He is thirty years old."
"Oh."
"He is not married."
"Oh! I see."
"But there is BIG problem."
"What is that?"
"He is shorter than you!"

She introduced me to the technology teacher later anyway, just in case, but I must say, I think his height is a less of an obstacle to our relationship than the fact that we don't speak the same language.

A Flurry of Sudden Blogging is Hopefully Coming Your Way

As many of you know, November is the month when I suddenly start updating my Facebook status excitedly with numbers starting around a thousand and going upward to the golden goal of 50,000. Or in the case of last year, sadly falling short and ending up with just 24,000.
If you don't know the significance of the numbers I will tell you. They're the number of words I've written so far for the fabulous writing event known as NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. This will be my sixth year participating and I've written some of the most hilariously bad or just terrible yawn-inducing fiction in the world. But it's fun, and practice makes perfect, as they say. Writing so many words does help me improve my writing, and when I was in college those 5-10 page term papers seemed pretty tame considering I was churning out 50,000 words of fiction every November.
Last year, however, there was a bit of surprise when I simply lost interest. It wasn't just that my novel was mind-numbingly boring, because that had happened before and I still managed to get 50,000 words out. Rather, I just lost interest in writing fiction, and have pretty much not written any since. But then last Spring I had an idea for my blog. I decided to paint awkward ducks. And I decided my real life is actually a lot more interesting than most of the stories I ever came up with.
So this year, I'm still doing Nanowrimo, but I'm part of the group called the Nano Rebels, because I'm not writing a novel, I'm working on my blog. Which means that, hopefully, in the month of November, there will be a whole bunch of new blog posts featuring the Awkward Duck. With the premise that a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm hoping to do about 25,000 words and 25 paintings, but it could end up being any combination of the two.
I'm super excited about this prospect because I'm hoping that when I excitedly post about having 5,000 words done, instead of rolling your eyes because I wasted my time posting a random number instead of something cute a student said, you will also be excited because there will soon be more awkward duck. And so far as I can tell, everyone loves the awkward duck.
I'll even give you a spoiler- the first post I'm currently planning to begin on November 1st is a great adventure with pizza. Or something like that anyway.