(no subject)

No school again today. I'm surprised by that. The roads may not be great, but another day isn't likely to see them get much better, and they'll have to run the buses eventually. Of course, we're in town and near a relatively busy road, so conditions probably look better to me than they would if we lived further out.

Scott made it to work on time yesterday. He says he's the only machine operator who was there on time. For a little while, he thought he'd be the only machine operator, period, but other people trickled in. I believe he's the one with the longest commute. (There was one poor fellow who was two hours late, but that was because he locked himself out of his car rather than because the roads were bad.)

One of our neighbors, I have no idea who and I really wish I did know, used a snowblower and cleared our entire driveway and all of our sidewalk. I didn't even hear it happening because I was playing music. I just looked out the door (I was putting the trash on the back porch) and saw that it had been done.

Cordelia has finished all of her library books. She wants very much to go to the library for more. She says she's decided that she'll just take the first few books she finds on the shelves in the teen section and try those. I argued for a different approach-- The library website lets people make lists of books and make those lists public. I thought she could browse lists that include books she's really enjoyed.

I don't know yet if I'll have extra kids today. It seems likely, but I haven't heard from their parents yet, one way or the other. I hope they do come. Cordelia will be very, very bored if they don't. I hope, though, that, if they do come, they bring something for lunch. I've got a box of macaroni and cheese, but we're out of the shredded cheese I would normally add to that to make it work better. I've got a bunch of chicken sausages that might work but no buns. We're also out of apples, and the oranges we've got have seen better days.

I did bake a cake yesterday. Cordelia lobbied for brownies, but we didn't have a brownie mix, just three boxes of cake mix (they were heavily on sale, so I bought several all at once). I'm not pleased with this cake; I don't think it has any flavor to speak of that doesn't come from the frosting. Unfortunately, one of the remaining boxes is the exact same mix.

Scott was scheduled to go in to work early this morning, but they called about 10:40 (shortly after I'd climbed into bed) to say that they didn't need him. He was glad of the extra three hours of sleep.

I did no writing yesterday, but I did do some editing and a little research. I had three documents open all day, and I kept looking at them and not being sure what should come next. Perhaps I need to shift to yet another different story for a while. I've got plenty of different stories to work on.

Of course, today's first priority is metanews link finding. That will take two or three hours, depending on how well I can focus and on how much people have been posting this last week.

(no subject)

Cordelia has decided that, when trying to find books to read at the library, she will just take the first two or three books that she hasn't already read. I'm not sure she's going to be happy with this method of selecting books, but it will mean that she's trying new things.

I don't know if she'll take recommendations, but she's now reading YA. She liked The Heroes of Olympus, The Hunger Games books, the Divergent books, Cinder by Marissa Meyer, and Ruby Red by Kirsten Gier. She's not interested in vampires. I'm not sure how she feels about zombies and angels/demons. She does judge books more on their covers than on their blurbs.

I got her started on GoodReads, but she says the books the site suggests 'look boring.' From talking to her, she's not actually looking at the blurbs, just at the cover images.

(no subject)

Scott is currently listening to Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind on CD. He's six CDs in and hasn't yet made up his mind whether he likes the book or not. He's not going to finish the dratted thing-- It's 28 CDs and is due on the 22nd, and he only listens to about 30 minutes a day (on his drive home from work). We can't renew it. The library only has one copy, and there are ten people on the waitlist. Because the book is so long, the check out period is six weeks, so it would be at least a year before we could get our hands on the set again. I'd ask the library to buy a second copy as there's demand enough, but the thing is unfortunately out of print. Amazon still lists reasonably priced used copies, but the library doesn't buy used.