Lyricality

Hello all! Day 2! And for everyone who asked, all the World Building exercises can be found here (click Fantasy World-Builder's Guide, then World Building Exercises at the bottom). Another big thank you to andersenmon, who showed them to me in the first place. They were originally posted on the Nanowrimo forums.

Exercise: What role do you anticipate weather playing in your story? Do you have a lot of travel that you want to complicate with bad storms? Are you going to snow in your mighty heroes? Will there be a mighty battle, determined by sudden flooding? You actually don't need to know right now. Your exerise for today is to jot down ten plot devices that relate to weather, and what you think they do to the story (for example: a snow-in can turn the mood very claustrophobic... or very intimate).

( Ten Plot Devices... )

In other news, I've been doing some contract work for my former employer. Yey. It doesn't pay much more than unemployment does, ironically, but who cares! It will extend my benefits, anyway, and I'm glad to be doing some sort of work again. There's also a chance that the workforce center here will pay for training, so that I can learn Flash-based web design, which would be a huge help in finding a position locally. We'll see how things go.

I expect that what I really need to do to help my life fall back into some sort of order is go to bed at a reasonable hour, and get up earlier. ...Also I need to remember what day it is despite holidays, because I just realized that I forgot to make Vianne's dinner post on TR. *headdesk* I lose.

Well, today was a day of Minor Progress (yay). After spending most of the afternoon in the Starbucks Where I Also Live, I took the bus up to my former workplace, to return my key (which my boss had very briefly thought he would let me keep for a week or two of consideration, but then reconsidered out of immediate paranoia) and to see if he might have a copy of my old demo reel on CD. Since I had taken the bus there, I thought I would walk back into town to get my now-customary thirty minutes of activity for the day.

I've walked the same route several times--during the bus strike earlier this year, I walked it twice a day. It takes me through residential areas a bit outside of town, and alongside what I think is the Jefferson County horse rescue facility. At the moment the organization may be defunct; for some months I haven't seen any horses. In any case, there's a paved trail that runs perpendicular to the street I usually walk on, and I know my boss has mentioned that it also goes down into Golden, but along the foot of Table Mountain. Since I had some extra time, I thought I would have An Adventure, so I crossed the street and went walking down the trail instead. The sun came out from behind the clouds, tall trees framed the path, and squirrels jumped from branch to branch and twitched their noses at me. I was having a fairly lovely time, watching the squirrels and the birds and peering through the trees into the back yards of near houses...until I happened to notice the sign.

It happened to say

WARNING -- THIS IS AN AREA OF MOUNTAIN LION ACTIVITY

It then continued to say What To Do In Case You See A Mountain Lion, Why You Should Hike In Groups, and How To Protect Your Pets By Keeping Them On Leashes (It's The Law).

Well. Not being a complete idiot, I know that there is always some minor danger, this close to the front range. Boulder is only twenty miles away, and a couple of people have been killed by cougars, near Boulder. Last year, a cougar wandered into the downtown area of Golden, sprawled herself along a high tree branch for a few hours and watched the people passing below flail at her, then calmly leaped down again and went back to wherever she had come from in the first place. Obviously, there are cougars nearby.

However, I've never actually seen a sign before. I stopped to consider the matter for perhaps a minute or two. The danger was low. But I was not much of a group, all by myself, and I am hardly threatening, at just over five feet. I am significantly less threatening when wearing a skirt, a tank top, and sandals. I turned around, went back under the squirrels and through the long leaves of grass, and took my usual path home, deciding to have my adventure Another Time, preferably not at twilight, when large predators with little hungry kittens are just waking up and wondering what to feed them (Ooh, Lyric looks tasty!). I think I'll try the path tomorrow, instead, probably at midday and from the back of my bike. Still a risk, but a significantly less stupid one.

I would love to see a mountain lion, but preferably from a distance. ♥