Month: August 2022

Had to get up early because the UK people have some kind of holiday. But they cover for us when we have a holiday, so whatever.

Finally decided to run Dungeon World again for Big Bad Con, since it wasn’t completely disastrous last time. I’m pretty sure I’m a worse gamer now, though.

Read: FAIL.

Written: Made a bunch of notes for Big Bad Con, most of which will probably be worthless.

Pretty much all I did today was go to Rachel’s birthday party (finally held because Jeremy stopped being full of covids). I ate too many party snacks and didn’t drink enough hydrations and saw a lot of people I haven’t seen in quite a while. They are still way cooler than me. I gave up on masking, so I should remember to test on Thursday or Friday.

Read: Cinnamon Bun vol 1 (Ravens Dagger): LitPRG about a teenaged girl named Broccoli Bunch who flings herself into a fantasy world and gets assigned the class Cinnamon Bun, which comes with important skills like Friendmaking and Cuteness and Jumping. She has many cheerful and only slightly alarming adventures and talks a whole lot. Alas, the other two volumes seem to only be available on Amazon.

Written: FAIL.

Feeling much better but not entirely. Managed to go grocery stopping twice without disaster striking, but accomplished nothing else today. Jus is hanging out at the mall with her friends, Nonny is playing the teaser for Splatoon3, and Ayse is napping, so no socialization today. I guess it’s a day of rest, which is another way of saying I suck and can’t get anything done.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 20 (Tomohito Oda): The snowboarding episode, also the “there was only one bed” episode. But nobody whose business it actually is freaks out, so good for them.

Watched: Hazbin Hotel pilot: Despite the nonstop murders, it feels slow, and the OP character doesn’t have any personality beyond being so powerful he doesn’t have to care about anything, which is 700% less engaging than Stolas.

Written: 428 kitten words.

Spent all night with my digestive system being unruly, then it was mostly okay when I went to get my tooth reinstalled (which went fine), then it rebelled again on the way home. Ugh. Fortunately, or not, I was still able to do work as badly as ever.

Read: Bad Moons Rising (Brian Clevinger): Solar-system scoundrel adventure by the author of Atomic Robo,. A minor criminal, her ancient but surprisingly performant spaceship, and the strays she picks up along the way vs capitalist intrigue and assorted annoying gits.

Read: “D.I.Y” (John Wiswell): Queer disabled wizards save the world despite the best efforts of major institutions.

Written: 485 kitten words.

Didn’t go to the office, no one said anything about it. It probably went on my permanent record, though.

Played: Lancer. We finished the raid on HA, so that’s probably enough Lancer for now. I was 100% useless for the entire three-session combat, so whatever. If we play again, I’ll ask Ken to design a damage-dealing mech for me. We don’t need three support weirdos per actual combatant.

Written: FAIL. I have to get up extra-early to go to the dentist tomorrow.

After waking up early and going “fuck this”, I decided to go into the office after the early meeting instead of before, and then found out that boss A’s kid is sick (probably not covid, but still yucky) and the going-into-the-office plan fell apart. There was some movement towards everybody going in tomorrow, but people were too wishy-washy about whether it was really happening, so I’m using my own discretion and if they don’t like it, they can make an actual plan next time. I’ve been interacting with people over the Internet for more than 30 years, I feel no need to marinate in the virus pits just so I can say I was in the same room as my coworkers.

Watched: Helluva Boss 1.6-7a, 2.1: Another episode of violence in which Millie and Loona save the day because they are awesome, and then all feelings all the time. Apparently the second part of the S1 finale is not out yet, but based on the first episode of S2 (which is), it’s probably Blitz feeling terrible about his poor life choices.

Watched: Our Flag Means Death 4: I had not previously understood how over the top Stede’s ship is. Also, cliffhanger ending!

Written: 595 kitten words.

Apparently while I was looking for pictures that I could use for my terrible D&D character, Dave was optimizing his character to provide all needed skills for the party. I should probably just give up on gaming, shouldn’t I?

Watched: Helluva Boss 0-5: Dysfunctional demon startup doing murders on Earth when they can stop swearing at each other and being horny but it’s actually about the relationships and I see why Marith is a Stolitz shipper and Stolas and Octavia are so adorable in episode 2 and I kind of like Loona even though she’s awful and askjgfagk FIXME

Watched: Our Flag Means Death 3: Still ridiculous and violent, because what else do you expect from the Republic of Pirates? But finally we meet Blackbeard! Despite Izzy’s valiant efforts.

Written: Nothing, I tried to go to bed early so I can go in to the office tomorrow.

Played: Dark Matter. Jeremy volunteered to run, so that’s what we’re doing. We each made two characters, so there were six people crammed into a stolen three-person ship, making a desperate escape from the Elf Police. Somehow (ie, GM nudging) we escaped into an abandoned secret base with a six-person ship that can probably be fixed, and sent our original ship out into the enemy’s fire to fake our deaths. I have a bomb-throwing union goblin as my combat character and a mothian noble duelist as my noncombat character. We’ll see how this goes.

Read: My Cottage Was Transferred To Another World vol 1 (Sebastian Guzman): After wreaking a terrible revenge on his allies and befriending his enemy, the Summoned Hero retires and is immediately thrown into another, even more horrible world, but is still completely OP and starts defeating the toughest monsters and accumulating a harem. Meh.

Read: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom vol 7 (Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka): Katarina has to rescue her brother, but all the adventure gets in the way of her being fawned over by beautiful girls so I think it’s serious misjudgement on the part of the author.

Written: 280 kitten words. No other words, because I still suck.

I did not feel as clever in the training meeting today, and in fact I accomplished almost nothing, because I suck.

Played: Lancer. Part two of the assault on HA, still not finished. I did manage to get my mech destroyed, though, because I am terrible at all games.

Read: A Spaceship Repair Girl Supposedly Named Rachel (Richard Roberts): A teenaged girl escapes Earth into a solar system that is entirely habitable as long as you aren’t infected by Math. It’s a fun romp, and has some good images, but I’m always dubious about fantasy writers writing fantasies where fantasy writing is the greatest power, and I’m not sure the universe really hangs together. Probably not worse than a superhero universe, though, which is what Roberts is known for writing.

Read: “A Long Walk Home” (Jay Lake): Mysterious disappearances on a colony planet leave a survivor quite alone for many many years.

Written: FAIL.

I should probably do something with my life other than play Shop Titans and complain about the heat.

Read: The Upside of Falling (Alex Light): Het teenage romance, alternative first-person PoV, meh. I guess the guy isn’t as terrible as most teenage guys, but whatever.

Written: 784 kitten words, but also I reread my NaNoWriMo from last year. Sadly, it is terrible. I don’t know how human feelings work, and the (completely hypothetical) reader doesn’t need to know every single thing that my MC finds confusing and appalling. However, I might have to write all of them and then take them out. I hope not, that sounds terribly inefficient.

Pretended to be awake this morning so my boss wouldn’t ask what’s wrong in the weekly 1:1. I think I fooled her!

Read: Kiruru Kill Me vol 1 (Yasuhiro Kano): A rich asshole finds out the random girl he’s fixated on is an assassin, so he puts out a hit on himself to get to see her again. Uninteresting fanservice hijinks ensue.

Written: 723 kitten words, as I carry on being lame.

Today’s event was minigolf with Nonny and Ken and Dave. It was very hot and I probably died of the sweatings, but it was fun. You can tell I didn’t play enough minigolf in my formative years, though.

Written: 682 kitten words, for a total of 4182/3000 this week and 44018/30000 for the whole challenge. I missed my quota the week of the corporate super-spreader event, but more than made it up with the other nine weeks. That’s technically a novel, almost a NaNoWriMo, and now I have a buffer of more than a month with kitten words, but I feel like I should have more to show for that many words.

Bah, getting up. Bah, being on call. But bouillabaisse and shishito peppers are good!

Played: Among Us. I think we might be getting better at this, although I still pay way too much attention to performing my tasks and not enough to establishing an alibi. Also apparently bodies don’t get autoreported?!

Read: “Porgee’s Boar” (Jonathan Carroll): Only arguably spec-fic. Also an example of why psychological attacks don’t necessarily work on truly terrible people.

Written: 518 kitten words, which brings me to 3446 for the week so far.

I did not feel as smart today, but hopefully I did not completely miseducate new coworker C.

Watched: Our Flag Means Death 1-2: Super-ahistorical fun. Marith compared it to The Princess Bride and Galavant, which seems about right (although there is not much singing). It’s definitely not going to engage with the actual horrors of the historical setting, which is fine. Only humorous talk of murder and cannibalism, we are here for the cinnamon rolling!

Written: 536 words today, 2928 for the week so far. I think it’s pretty likely I will make my weekly goal of 3000.

Interviewed a candidate, which was not a terrible experience, although of course I cannot say anything about them.

I finally read a bunch of stories from Apex Magazine that I had bookmarked, and they were pretty uncheerful. Content warning for death, despair, slavery, animal death, and assorted misery.

Read: “Nine Theories of Time” (Spencer Nitkey): Sadness about humans.

Read: “Hank in the South Dakota Sun” (Stephanie Kraner): Sadness about trains.

Read: “The Fruit of the Princess Tree” (Sage Tyrtle): Surprisingly, not unmitigated sadness. One character manages to emerge from the slough of despond.

Read: “On The Day You Spend Forever With Your Dog” (Adam R Shannon): Sadness about dogs.

Read: “Copper, Iron, Blood and Love” (Mari Ness): Sadness about ravens.

Read: “Lazarus and the Amazing Kid Phoenix” (Jennifer Giesbrecht): Another story in which the characters can change things, although it’s not clear how much they do. Also less abstract than a lot of the others. Definitely my favorite of this lot.

Written: 566 kitten words (one block over from the Beast), 1843 so far this week.

Had to get up two hours early for an all-hands meeting. It wasn’t a bad meeting (except for the time), probably because I didn’t have to contribute.

Read: “Papa Legba Has Entered The Chat” (DaVaun Sanders): I don’t entirely understand what happened at the end, but I don’t think it was written for me to begin with.

Read: Lazy Dragon Queen vol 4 (Ace Arriande): Just as ridiculous as the previous volumes. More orgies, less crafting. Also, the inevitable result of heterosexual orgies. But punching people isn’t cool, dude.

Written: 901 kitten words, 1277 week to date.

No in-person gaming because Jeremy is still testing positive, and we weren’t collectively competent enough to schedule virtual gaming to talk about what we want to play next. I did manage to go grocery shopping, and do a two-hour cowriting session that got me 2038 kitten words.

Read: Reborn (DI Freed): LitRPG in that everybody can call up their character sheet, but not associated with an MMORPG in our world or any variant, and qi cultivation, two subgenres that go frequently together. The MC goes from smart but qi-crippled to insanely OP, but at least she’s not a stupid stupid guy-creature. Naturally planned to be a series, “The Jade Phoenix Saga”. I might read the next one, even though it was ridiculous. (See previous posts on having no brain for serious reading.)

Written: 2328 words today, 5504/3000 for the week. Only one more week of writing challenge left!

Still sleepy and no brain, didn’t get up in time to go grocery shopping, barely got lunch at a reasonable hour because I had to play Squaredle. Pharmacy didn’t have my distilled gila monster spit, and although they found another pharmacy that had it, they couldn’t guarantee they could make them send it by Monday. Marith, hero of the revolution, agreed to detour to pick it up on the way to Monkeycat Towers.

Jus was busy having teenager fun all day, so we didn’t have Zoomwarts. Marith and I went over for dinner, though (delicious home-made ratatouille and salad and berry cobbler for most of us, In-n-Out for weird non-eggplant-eaters), and searched for the lost art of conversation for a while.

Played: Among Us. I was the imposter twice, and actually won once. The other time I got caught because somebody saw me sneak through the vents from the security center. I blame the unfamiliar map!

Written: 554 kitten words for 3176 so far this week.

Bah, work. Why not nap instead?

Played: Lancer. Brand couldn’t make it, but the rest of us started the battle Dave set up. As expected, Ken has the most effective mech, Vivian has the weirdest, Brooks spends the most time thinking about what to do, and I’m just kind of lame. We did avoid taking too many huge AoE attacks, though.

Read: “This Place Is Best Shunned” (David Erik Nelson): A cosmic horror encounter in the backwoods of WV, including revelations that severely damage the protagonist’s sanity. I feel like there are knowledge skills that would have protected her, though.

Written: FAIL.

Commuted into the office, spent most of the day hiding in a conference room so I could unmask, but then I didn’t have an external monitor so bleah. After getting home, Coworker K (who was in office yesterday but not today) announced she’s testing positive, so that’s 2/7 in our team so far. At least coming in to the office for the rest of the week is cancelled.

Read: Liching Hour (HK Tolson): Despite actions that could be construed as heroic, our protagonist is still pretty terrible. Just not as terrible as other monsters.

Written: 441 kitten words, total 921 for the week so far.