The Trials of Travel

So, we're a two-car family. We have the minivan for family trips and Dad's garage saling ventures and Mom's Geo Prism for her stuff and the kids to use. Thing is, Mom used the car yesterday and forgot to put the keys back in the tray when she was done. Which meant I had to leave half an hour early and walk to school, thank-you-very-much. It also meant that I had to catch a bus downtown after class, pick up the keys from Mom, and catch another bus to take me home after doing that so I would be able to drive the car in the afternoon. See, while I can walk to class and get there on time, it's rather hard to walk from Kirkwood's Iowa City campus near the Sycamore mall to the Fun Zone downtown in less than ten minutes. I've actually never tried it, but I suspect it would take somewhere in the neighborhood of half an hour. And I don't much care for being late. So, after going to class, going to the library, retrieving the keys, and going home, I thought my travel woes were over.

Not so, socchan. It turns out that this particular morning was chosen for workers to tear up our sidewalk and for the appliance barn people to come instal the new stove hood. The driveway was more than half blocked when I got home. Thankfully, it's two-cars wide, but I'm still hoping it'll be more open by the time I have to leave again in *checks watch* less than half an hour.

...I need my own keys to the car, I'm beginning to think.

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( Socchan's (Not) To-do list )

That ought to keep me occupied for a while.

Edit: Re-named the 'To-do' list to a '(not) To-do' list, on the basis that it will probably actually get me to do the things I've listed. Well, except the homework and studying. That would get done anyway, if only after massive procrastination.

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Ah, procrastination ♥ How I love thee.

Was recently thinking on my characterization methods. See, I have to write Alfons sometime in the near future, and I have an obligation to myself (and my readers and most especially my requester) to give him good characterization. So I thought back to how I characterized people in HoS way back when. (I believe I was complimented on my Masuta. In fact, I found him rather easy to write, in contrast to Riza, who made me relapse into trichotilomania was much harder for me to get a handle on. He seemed to give a lot of the other writers trouble.)

My basic method was:
* Take the original character.
* Find what's changed.
* Apply changes thoroughly. (This means thinking things all the way through--for example, how differently would Roy act if he were raised in the East instead of the West? And if there were no alchemy? Etc, etc.)
* Write.

It's like finding the differences between identical twins. They're essentially the same genetically, but they're still two different people. It's just finding out how different that's the trick.

To give you an example, I'll show you what really started this train of thought: ( My fangirling of Yoruichi/Soi Fong (Spoilers for Bleach (through the Soul Society arc) ahead, arr!) )

Anyway, what I'm working on now is finding the differences between Alter!Al and MoreFamiliar!Al. So far, all I have is
* No alchemy.
This doesn't get me very far ^^a I mean, yeah, No Alchemy means No Failed Human Transmutation Attempt, but that still doesn't get me very far.

...Well, that was fairly long and pointless. Was that actually interesting to anyone, or was it just me filling up the air with a lot of meaningless words?