(no subject)

We're still waiting for the heavy snow. I got up this morning and looked out the back window. As far as I could tell, there was no accumulation at all last night. Looking out the front door confirmed that. I could actually see sidewalk around the salt pellets Scott put down on the front walk. There was a thin layer of snow around those patches, but nothing major.

This means that Cordelia's friend will probably come over today. It's an hour and a half before she and Scott are supposed to pick her friend up, and the snow is barely coming down at all. Even if that changes, there won't be much accumulation between now and then. I do wish the girl's parents would let her spend the night. I'd ask them to send an overnight bag with her just in case the snow gets really heavy between one and four.

The school district sent out a mass e-mail last night simply to say that, if there's a lot of snow, they might cancel school. They told us that they'll let us know if they decide to cancel. I'm hoping that, if they're going to, they decide tonight. I hate getting the phone call at five a.m. I understand why they call that early, but that doesn't make it any more fun.

(no subject)

I'm trying to come up with a short cut-- any sort of short cut-- for the world building I need to do for the next chapter of Rheotaxis. I need to sketch in several cultures, I think. I can layer the dominant culture over the top of them, but that's a veneer. Plus, I know very little about the dominant culture. I don't want to take real world cultures and try to copy them for these cultures. That really doesn't work very well and isn't very respectful (plus, even were I inclined to be so lazy, I don't know enough about most real world cultures).

I have four planets. Each of them should have multiple cultures. There may be some common characteristics to all the cultures from a given world-- they're all pretty globalized and have been for generations-- but there should be differences, too.

I'm thinking to cheat a little and take basic planetary characteristics, things like range of climate and natural resources and such, from a game book. We've got a couple of different games that have supplements dealing with a multitude of planets. The Babylon 5 supplement for the Non-aligned Worlds comes to mind, and I know we've got a ton of GURPS Traveler books. There must be something usable in there.

I'm wanting to make this as simple for myself as possible. I don't anticipate all of this stuff having a large impact on the story. It's just background for a chapter or three. I don't think that anything I make up is going to limit me later on, and I don't expect to have to expand on my sketchy world building later on. Of course, if I'm wrong, if I ever write a sequel to Rheotaxis, I'll be in deep trouble.

Anybody have any world building advice?

(no subject)

School has already been canceled for tomorrow. We had to go out to take Cordelia's friend home, but otherwise, we wouldn't have dared the roads. Thank goodness we have a Subaru! We didn't slide around much or get stuck anywhere.

Scott was going to drop us off at Girl Scouts, but when we got there, the troop leader who lives across the street was out shoveling snow. She told us that the meeting had been canceled at the last minute. Nobody'd called us because the other leader thought that a) e-mail would be enough and b) everybody would assume that the meeting was canceled. Not that we'd have been home to get the call, given how late the cancellation came.

We have to arrange to pick up the paperwork for cookie sales. There's only two weeks left of sales, and if we want to participate, we can't wait for the next meeting (which is in February). Cordelia will probably only sell cookies to us. I don't see us going door to door, and I don't think Scott can sell at work. We can't really ask Scott's parents because Scott's mother can't eat cookies (she has gluten issues) and Scott's father really shouldn't have them. Plus, there are two Girl Scouts in the family. They have to buy from both or neither.

I'm actually kind of disappointed that school's been canceled. I'll enjoy the extra day to sleep in, but I was hoping to get back to writing tomorrow morning. I can't really do that with Cordelia at home. She's going to be bored, I expect. She's pleased now, but the hours will stretch tomorrow. Oh, well, hopefully her friend will be available to Facetime with her.

It's entirely possible that there won't be school Tuesday, either. It's supposed to get really cold, and the city takes quite a while clearing the roads once the snow stops. I suppose we'll see what happens.

(no subject)

The size of Cordelia's soccer team has been explained. The coach is coaching two teams. Unfortunately, instead of dividing the team in half and telling us which team each girl is on, he has randomly assigned girls to one of the two games of the day. This means that we can't tell which other girls are going to be at a particular game. This will matter a lot when Scott has to work on game days (and he will have to. His shift has a couple of jobs going begging, so three of them are covering all of the overtime). The one other girl from Cordelia's school only overlaps Cordelia's schedule for one game. I was counting on them as a fallback option for transportation.

The first game conflicts with something else that Scott really wants to do. I'm going to have to talk to him and see what he wants to do. If we're looking for alternative transportation, I might as well start trying to arrange things now.

On the plus side, we've only got one game at Slauson. The rest are at Tappan where there's space outside the gym for things like changing shoes. We'll just make sure that, if Scott's parents come to a game, it's not the one at Slauson.