1) Still raining.

2) I just had a character pop into my head, complete with a bit of dialog that identified a couple of other characters and gave some hints as to plot. However, it's completely useless for the project I intend to be working on, and requires world attributes that I don't think fit with any partial ideas I have sitting around.

3) I just gave up on another book I was reading for a reason I find annoyingly frequent. What genre or subgenre is to blame for the infiltration of these plots into so many sci fi and fantasy books? I'd guess somewhere in either the Romance, or Literary ends of things, but I'm not sure. What I'm talking about is the stories that are all about political intrigue and all of the problems result from character A not talking to person B. Also B doesn't talk to C, C doesn't talk to A, and D doesn't talk to anybody.

Meanwhile the villain (and it's almost always a single figure dancing through everything without a single mis-step) is manipulating the entire thing behind the scenes and while the reader knows immediately, even those characters who should know better don't do anything that might slow him or her down. It only take two characters actually talking about their problems to realize that there might be a common thread, they talk to a third and it's confirmed, and by the fourth they've got the bastard nailed to the wall, but they never think of doing it until the last 50-100 pages. Besides, it makes the villain a cardboard cut-out Machiavelli. They kind of have have to be, since they're building a fragile house of cards, almost invariably manufacturing accusations of infidelity or treason completely out of thin air, without ever being caught.

You know, the more I think about it, the more i think it's probably a subgenre of Romance that's to blame. It has the right ... superficial (not the right word, but it will have to suffice) feel to it.

I don't care if it is primarily a research library, if it has a fiction section, it shouldn't treat it like it is a poor relation.

I know that classifying a books age range is difficult, but splitting a series back and forth randomly between adult and teen, or teen and children, is simply unacceptable.

I know that the building design encourages rotatable stands as well as standard shelves, but distributing the teen fiction section randomly between the two is unacceptable. (as in, the shelves are organized A-Z, but a selection of the books aren't there, they are on the stands instead)

I know teens are worse about putting things back in the proper place than adults are, (though not by much) but allowing the stands to achieve maximum disorganization is completely unacceptable.

Supposedly, the library has two copies of the book I was looking for, both in with a location of "check shelf." They may have been stolen, or may not have, even the librarian I asked couldn't be sure they weren't just somewhere else. No book should have four possible locations that have to be exhausted before you reach "It looks like it's been misplaced." For that matter, with this level of organization, how will they determine if they have been stolen?

It's been a boring couple of days combined with someone pulling the fire alarm... at 3 AM. It doesn't take more than a couple of nights of that before one is not great company due to thoughts of a decidedly antisocial nature.