This week's goal

Update on last week: I ended up at 28,155 words, not quite halfway between my original goal of 27,500 and my Phelpsian goal of 30,000. That's actually pretty good since I completely rewrote chapter 1 (about 2500 words worth of work which didn't affect the total word count) and I also got the flu that's been running through our household and spent a day teaching school from the couch. It's a bit like being a Roman in a movie, reclining while people fetch you stuff, only I'm being fetched math homework and science reports and not peeled grapes and wine. It would have been more fun if my body hadn't hurt all over. I'm glad that bug is gone.

So for this week, the original plan calls for me to be at 37,500 words at the end of the week. Again I'm going to try to top my goal; that goal would only have me through chapter fifteen, and I have to finish chapter sixteen before I can watch Act 2 of Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. Having watched Act 1 many, many times (man, Neil Patrick Harris is the coolest*), I'm very anxious to earn my right to watch Act 2. This might be a little tough; it's a vacation week from school, but I have a ton of prep work to do on top of working the paying job, particularly as I got no prep done on our last vacation week. So, we'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!

I think I'll wrap up my Mitwa musical sharing with this one, from my favorite Karan Johar movie. As much as I loved Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna still edges it out as my fave. KKHH succeeds admirably, but in KANK Johar was trying something tougher. This is a movie about two marriages where you can see both why these people got together in the first place and why things are not going well now. Which is tougher than it would seem, apparently; so many movies fall down on one or the other score (usually the first, but I've already griped about Serendipity, haven't I?). Johar has such a light touch in KANK, you can see how ShahRukh's character is a bitter jerk, but being around Rani calms him, and how Rani's character is a bit of a nervous wreck (and compulsive cleaner), but being around SRK calms her. And they aren't even trying to do this to each other, exactly the opposite, but they just fit. They start out as friends advising each other on how to get along with their spouses, and the song "Mitwa" comes at the point where they are both beginning to realize their feelings aren't just friendly anymore.

Johar is very much of the "I must make my characters suffer" school of writing (my favorite kind of writer; when you get a happy ending, it's a thoroughly earned one). These two have a very tough time and the ending is a low-key kind of happy. Plus there's another musical number where colors are used to absolutely amazing effect. Highly recommend.

* After the fifth or sixth time I got geeked out to NPH's Old Spice commercial, Quin asked if we couldn't go back to the place where Salman Khan was the coolest, as he thinks he prefers that to Neil Patrick Harris.

"Yes, but when Salman was the coolest, you wanted to go back to the place where Justin Timberlake was the coolest, remember?"

"Can we?"

"As soon as Justin does something new, he will totally go back to being the coolest. Promise."