I feel pretty good about that, even if I didn't technically win. 50k words felt like just the right level, it was enough to be challenging, but it would have been vaguely possible if I hadn't got cold and depressed and disorganized. And it had the intended positive effect of keeping better in touch, even if I'm still short of where I want to be.
In other good news, I gave a very successful talk to the department today. I cut it finer than I'd like to finish writing it, but once I got up in front of an audience everything was peachy. And I got lots of interested questions which implied people had listened and taken it in, so yay. Also, today I made tasty tomato soup. All in all could be a lot worse!