8.21

     I finally got to the point where I can do all of the single-stroke drills at at least 100 wpm! And it only took me 9 weeks. Okay, so that's kind of sad. My average on the drills is now 130. It was 115 when I started, so I guess that's good.
   I also got my new minute today. It took me almost two weeks, but it was at 250. I got up to 260 at the end of it once. My next minute is at 230, but it doesn't seem any slower.

8.12

     Apparently at some point, I decided it was okay to define some "–ness" words using –NS rather than *NS. I realized that the other day, and I decided to go back and fix all of those entries.  It turns out I had 1,600 "–ness" entries, and about a third of them didn’t have asterisks, so yesterday I spent 45 minutes going through and fixing that.  I also looked at the next section of the VITAC book, which just happened to be alphabets.

     I was just thinking that I needed to really get in there and fix my alphabets, so, then of course I had to.  I spent about an hour evaluating which ones I needed and how I was going to define them.  I wound up with five. The first two I already used and didn’t change. An uppercase and a lowercase way to type the letters in my global window (or anywhere I happen to be, theoretically, but the global window is the only place I use it). Those are A*RBGS and A-PG, respectively.

     I also needed one for capital letters with periods, so that was easy, A*FPLT.  Then I did one for standalone capital letters, A*, and one to just attach a lowercase letter to the last word, A*PG.  I decided that I’ll use a separate stroke to go back and stitch a word, make it lowercase, or start it with a capital letter.  I haven’t figured out how I’m going to do that yet, though.

8.11

     I finished my whole entire piece on Tuesday.  It only took five weeks, which is good, and much better than the 14 weeks I spent on the one before it.  Unfortunately, it was the last one that RTC labeled as 220 wpm, so now I have to move up to 225.  That wouldn’t be so bad except that the first piece at "225" is actually 250 wpm for the first minute. :(   

     I’ve been working on it for a couple of days, and I’m not ready to give up yet, but it’s definitely difficult.  I actually hit 214 at the end of it today.  I misstroked "windowsills," and what I actually wrote was "vindowsills." TM translated it to "veindo Simms."

8.8

     Lots of things have happened since I updated last.  I got a new job, which I like lot better, and that kind of takes the pressure off of getting done with "school" as soon as possible.  My boyfriend of six years broke up with me a week ago, but I didn’t take a single second off from homework.  I think it actually helped me focus a little bit.  I also didn’t care about much of anything for a few days, so I wasn’t stressed out about trying to get everything perfect when I was writing.

     I got the 2 minutes together that I was working on last Saturday, at 97.8% accuracy, and 250 wpm at the end.  I was also going at 250 wpm when I got the next minute last Wednesday (I just barely got it – 95.01% accuracy). That one only went so quickly because it was at about 210 wpm, though.  Now all I have left to finish the piece is the last 2 minutes together!

     Unfortunately, because of scheduling with my new job, I had to take 2 days off in a row.  I used to take a day off once a week, and I haven’t been doing that for about seven months.  Now I get to go back to it, which is great, but this particular set of weeks, the days had to be next to each other, and that didn’t help at all.

     I feel like I spend 95% of my practice time writing in a position where I can’t properly reach the keys, and then, that one magical moment when I manage to get in the right position is when I get my minutes.  I guess I’ll figure it out eventually.  I discovered that slog, spake, and slub weren’t in my dictionary.  I also got "boric flay" out of trying to write "work and play," which was interesting.