NaNoWriMo, Speech and Debate, Glasses, and the Edge of the World

So I've heard a lot of rustlings of NaNoWriMo in the blogosphere during the past few weeks. Maybe a week or two ago Lydia asked the question that had been rolling around in my head for a few days: "What if we did NaNoWriMo?"

So I mulled over it some more, and long story short, I think I'm going to try it!

I've already got the makings of a plot, I'm going to see if I can weave "Robin Hood" with "Sleeping Beauty". I wrote (in my head, mind you) the first chapter/prologue when I was trying to sleep, and was quite pleased with it. I've got a Pinterest Board set up for it. I've got names picked out.

I'm starting to get super excited!

Now, about Speech and Debate.

Lydia and I are doing a duo for Speech, if you are unfamiliar with what that is, just look up "speech duo" on Youtube. We are doing "The Tiger, The Brahman, and The Jackal", a fable text from India. But we've reworked it to take place in a zoo in modern times.

The thing with duos is, you can cut as much of the story as you want, give one character's lines to a different character, change verb tenses, but you can only add up to 150 of your own words, if you're going to compete with it, otherwise, you could be disqualified from the competition.

All that is to say, duos are fun to perform, and hilarious to watch.

Now there are two different kinds of Debates.

Lincoln-Douglas, or LD, is one person debating another person on a predetermined topic. That's about all I know about it, because I don't do it.

Team Policy, or TP, is a team of two people debating against another team of two people on a different predetermined topic. The topics stay the same throughout the entire debate semester/season.

There are eight different speeches in a TP round; four for affirmative, or aff, and four for negative, or neg. Aff always goes first, with the 1AC (first affirmative constructive) and is then cross-examined by the person who delivers the 2NC (second negative constructive). After that, the 1NC goes, and is then cross-examined by the 1AC speaker. The 2AC follows, and is cross-examined by the 1NC speaker. The 2NC is the last constructive speech. All the constructive speeches are 8 minutes long each. Cross-examinations a 3 minutes long each.

After the constructives come the rebuttals. It starts with the 1NR (first negative rebuttal), then moves to the 1AR, back again to the 2NR, and ends with the 2AR. Rebuttals are 5 minutes long each. It is not permissible to bring up new arguments, you can only refute the other team's points. There are no cross-examinations in between rebuttals. Each team is allowed a total of 5 minutes of prep-time to be used before speeches when needed. Usually, all of it is used before the end of the round.

If that wasn't complicated enough, there are two-day competitions, called tournaments, scattered throughout the season which you are encouraged to go to. You usually have a total of 6 rounds at those tournaments.

Lydia is not doing debate (sadly), so Christian and I are TP partners. We've debated against two other teams at our club. The first time, it was against a team that had only been debating for one season, but we had no idea we were debating that night. The second time we were paired up with the most experienced and best team in the club.

We did better our second try, but they still creamed us. We were told that if we had harped on a few of our points a little more, or not asked some cross-ex questions that we probably would have done a bit better.

There's a tournament in November that Mom signed us up for. Yes, NaNo and a tournament at the same time: Challenge accepted!

Ok, so on Thursday, before going to Speech and Debate club, Mom took me to get my eyes checked because I had told her that I was having some trouble reading sermon notes on the screens at church, and reading signs whilst driving.

The verdict was that, yes, I do indeed need glasses, and I'll need to wear them all the time. Who knew right? I was thinking that I might just need them for reading, apparently not. I had no idea my eyes were that bad!

Mom said that she would have been rather upset with me if I had neglected to tell her and if I had waited until the DMV told us that I needed glasses to drive whenever I get my liscence. I recall having some trouble with the eye test when I was getting my permit- I had to guess twice before I got enough letters correct.

After the appointment, they gave us the prescription so we could go pick out frames and order the lenses at Costco. They'll arrive at Costco in 7-10 days, then they'll give us a call, and we'll go pick them up. The doctor said that it would take about a week for my eyes to adjust to being able to see with the glasses, and that the floor might look far away for a while.


Whenever it gets really foggy/rainy, down the hill disappears so it looks like we're on the edge of the world.

This morning, the fog was so thick, that the barn and chicken coop were only partly visible! By now though, all the fog is gone, and there's some blue sky, but it's supposed to come back again later this afternoon/evening.