Important News! Word Wars and Excel Spreadsheets and Location Changes, Oh My!

Hey guys! Thanks again to everyone who came out to the Kick-Off Write-In last night, and I look forward to seeing all yinz guyz who will be coming to Church Brew Works in a few hours (don't forget the Daylight Savings thing ;). A few more notes about our region:

First: we have been challenged to two word wars!! The first is with our sworn enemies, the city of Philadelphia! (Sorry, I've never gotten over that Keith Primeau thing from the 2000 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals... but go Phillies! I do sincerely hope you beat the Yankees!) The second word war is with Sacramento, whose lucky participants will be upping their word counts a full three hours after we turn ours in! (Okay, okay, as a former West Coaster, I realize that this is because they had to wait an additional three hours to start after we could last night, but... you know ;).

So, how do we win a word war? We write more than they can! And what do we get if we win a word war? ....Maybe I can get their MLs to run through the streets of their respective cities chanting 'Here We Go Steelers' and wearing nothing but a Terrible Towel? Or there is always just that nice feeling that we're better at something than other cities of reasonably the same size :) The stats of our word war will be displayed on the Regional Forum Header, which is basically the front page of our forum, except you click 'Regional Info' instead of just the main page. Right now, our stats are showing as a little red X. I am hoping to remedy this soon!

Second matter of business: Excel spreadsheets! Those of you who were at Eat n Park for the midnight write-in last year will remember these. The lovely Coggro (who seemed to disappear... are you still around?) developed a fantastic Excel spreadsheet that automatically calculates totals and things for you, and shows you just how far behind your projected word count you really are, all month long! The problem is, I am unable to send this through a regional e-mail, and thus need to do it in a kind of wonky way. If you would like this Excel spreadsheet to help you keep track of your noveling progress (and it's a neat thing to have, year-to-year, to see how you're doing compared to how you've done), I need you to shoot me an e-mail at foxwrimo at gmail dot com (except when you type the address, make the gmail dot com part look normal - I just don't want it to be picked up by bots who will send me tons of spam). Please put something along the lines of 'NaNoWriMo Excel Spreadsheet' in the subject line, so you don't accidentally get tossed into the spam folder, and I will send you along your spreadsheet!

Briefly: you can now access our Google Calendar from the Regional Header as well. It should show up right on the first page, no clicking necessary. Clicking on an event will show you more details, like time and address.

Finally (for now), I would like to alert everyone that the City Write-In scheduled for Wednesday November 4 will be having a location change! Since everyone alerted me that Caribou is apparently nuts during the hours we write (sorry, I've been sadly out of college for a little over two years now, so I guess that makes me officially out of the Pitt loop!), let's get together at Kiva Han on Craig Street instead. Hopefully, we can snag that upstairs area so that we can chat away about our fantastic word counts without making any other patrons jealous ;)

I believe that is all for now, but you'll probably be hearing from me again soon! Don't forget: in less than two hours, be at the Church Brew Works for delicious food and socializing!

Going To Eat My Weight In Church Brew Works Pierogies,
fox
----------

(banner made by the amazing ThisIsRocketScience)