wherein Liz signs up for Yuletide

Signups were extended until 10/31 because of a problem with AO3 challenge participant matching program, so I only got around to actually filling out the form tonight. As always, I am continuing the previous year's requests that did not get filled, which in this case means The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, Lucifer by Mike Carey et al, and The Dispossessed & "The Day Before the Revolution" by Ursula Le Guin (because I can delimit the Hainish Cycle any way I want via the character tags, and what I want is Urras and Anarres, dammit).

I have added a request for The Darkangel trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce, which may present a bit of a challenge if my assigned writer gets matched on that because while I requested "any" characters, I then went on to say that I wasn't particularly interested in a story about any of the four characters on the official tag set this year. I just want secondary characters and world-building -- no star-crossed romance or angst whatsoever. :-/ Ah well, I did try to provide some ways to tell the kind of story I want while still using Aeriel, Erin, Irrylath, or Ravenna, so hopefully that will work out. And it may never even arise as an issue. Perhaps this will be the year that I finally get my world-building story about Al-Rassan! (Which I have been requesting for years but never seem to get matched on. *sigh*)

My 'Dear Yuletide Writer' letter is here.

family update in re: Sandy, mostly for my own personal record

Sandy continued to be a complete non-event in Ithaca today -- only drizzle or light rain without even any wind worth speaking of. The creeks were running maybe a foot or so higher than normal, but that's nothing. I've seen them run at least three feet over normal, just a roaring, churning, avalanche of gray-brown anger and foam, after other storms. (And even that doesn't come close to the tops of the concrete channels that hold them. Whoever did water control in central Ithaca planned for the 500-year flood, for which I am thankful.)

I haven't heard from Vicky down in DC -- she's been having phone issues unrelated to the storm and also cell service is spotty over the east coast -- but she did manage to get in touch with my parents today so she's alive and well. I am unsure if she has power. Hopefully she will be able to text or email me tomorrow.

My parents have no power at all; they lost it around midnight last night. In fact, not a single building in all of Madison has power unless supplied by a backup generator. Both lines that bring electricity into town are down. Even once those are repaired, the mayor thinks only about 50% of building will get power back immediately. The rest will be dark for perhaps as long as a week, as crews repair the various local issues one by one. ...Some of which are apparently nightmarish jigsaw puzzles of multiple downed trees interlaced both with each other and with tangles of live wires and telephone poles. There is one such jigsaw on the street behind my parents' house -- three of the row of hemlocks on the back of their property went down like dominoes -- and another one street over that involves five trees and contains a relatively intact car in the center as if clutched in a giant plant-dragon's claws.

Madison is roughly twenty-five miles west of central Manhattan and lies in the Watchung Mountains, so the wind was pretty fierce. :-/