(Post-A-Day Challenge, Day 11)

Well, we’re about a third of the way through the month.  I have to admit that coming up with a topic for a posting each and every day is harder than I thought it would be.  But never fear, I haven’t run out of topics yet!

Last week, I posted some of my NaNoWriMo preparation goals.  I haven’t cleaned my desk yet, but tonight I did finally clean out the garage refrigerator.

I learned a couple of important lessons about refrigerators tonight, too.  First (and I think I did know this, just didn’t have the time to do anything about it when it would have made the difference) is that if you’re going to leave a refrigerator unplugged and closed up for a while, you really want to make sure it’s clean and mostly dry first.  Unfortunately, there was just a little bit of water in this fridge when it got closed up, which meant that there were a few patches of mold that needed to be taken care of before I could deem it “food safe”.

And the second lesson I learned is that you should clean out the refrigerator and then plug it back in.  Or at least, you should clean the freezer side before plugging it in.  Did you know that 409 freezes?  I didn’t.  Made cleaning a bit of a challenge, until I figured out that I could turn the freezer section off and leave the door open, and it would thaw enough for cleaning to happen.

So the refrigerator is now cleaner than it has probably been since it was brand new.  I’ve even started to stock the freezer section with quick but healthy meals for the coming month.  Yes, it really is possible to eat from the freezer and still be reasonably healthy about it.  And it does make portion control easier.

While cooking is one of my joys in life, between shopping, preparing the food, and cleaning up afterwards, it can take quite a bit of time.  Which is why I don’t do a lot of cooking during NaNoWriMo.  (Except for Thanksgiving, of course.  That’s another matter entirely.)

The other goal toward which I’ve made some progress is rebuilding my NaNoWriMo playlist.  I have a feeling it’s going to be an iterative process — throw some music into it. play it for a while, toss out the songs that don’t work, load some more music….  I think that’s okay, since I’m constantly finding more music I like, in addition to finally getting around to getting some of my old favorites loaded into the computer for easier access.

So that’s what I’ve managed so far.  I’ll keep y’all posted on the other goals.