The Gutter and some I & I

After taking a power nap, I climbed up on my garage roof and cleaned the leaves out of the gutters.  I think I'm going to buy better gutter guards in the next few days.  The ones I have are crap.  Anyway, once that was completed, I climbed on the roof of my house.  Yeah.  I figured out why the front one wasn't draining properly.  Not only is it clogged with leaves, a huge colony of red wasps has built a nest in the downspout.  Seeing five red wasps on the corner of the roof and numerous ones flying around have led me to put off cleaning that gutter until the wasps get flooded out or they freeze to death.  Unless I suddenly get courageous while procrastinating instead of writing and spray their asses.  Since there isn't far to run away from them on the roof, I'm not looking forward to attempting it.

Wandering the Web of Worlds - Some Influences and Inspirations:

• Spelljammer - While I liked the D&D setting that put fantasy characters in space, it wasn't sufficiently different enough from normal space for me and the setting wasn't properly utilized.  You just took flying ships to dungeons instead of horses for the most part.  There was never an epic story tying it all together.  Plus Wizards of the Coast owns the setting and I don't want to get into trouble for using it
• Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers - Without giving too much away, PJF's World of Tiers is about a family of gods that build pocket dimensions and are constantly at war with one another.  While this doesn't greatly resemble what I'm going to attempt with NaNoWriMo, it was one of the steps in the right direction.  Plus I plan on ripping off the Kickaha character in one of the sequels
• Hugh Cook's Chronicles of an Age of Darkness - Long story short, Cook writes fantasy about people with motivations, not merely good vs. evil.  That's what I'll be attempting.  Fenlock, one of my main characters, is a lot like a number of Cook's unheroic protagonists.  
• Jack Vance's Dying Earth - The magic system Vance invented for the Dying Earth and that was subsequently stolen for Dungeons and Dragons is the magic system I'll be using.  I also like the way Vance portrayed wizards as being pompous and bureaucratic and the way his dialogue is overly formal.
• Thor comics from the 60's - I loved it when Thor would go on some crazy adventure in Asgard with the other Norse Gods.  Sometimes that Jack Kirby had some crazy ideas.