Month: January 2024

A day for Marith!

I did go into the office today, but the person who freaked out wasn’t there and anyway it was quite busy so there wasn’t a lot of “between tasks”. I did get the sexual harassment training video squared away. (TL;DR: don’t be a disgusting asshole and you’ll be fine.) I also ate a pile of pork and dried mushroom dumplings, which were sadly underwarm but otherwise good.

Read (while commuting to work): Glitch vol 2 (Shima Shinya): The investigation club continues to investigate, we see more of the other members’ families, and then they get some of the weirdness on them.

Read (while commuting home): My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress vol 3 (Chisaki Kanai): Besides having maxed stats, the male lead apparently has the superpower of making vampires like him. Unfortunately this includes vampires who do not buck the stereotype of being crazed killers as well as ones who do. Also, ritual magic FTW.

Written: 203.

I am actually supposed to take 20 days of vacation this year, which may involve some planning.

Unless, of course, I have to live behind the bus station in a cardboard box. In my 1;1 with my manager, I learned that my habit of reading on my phone between tasks has been causing someone in the office to freak the fuck out, and it’s not somebody who can be ignored. I blame capitalism, because there’s sort of a reason for this, but if people just minded their own business, everything everywhere would be much better. My manager confirmed that my work performance is fine, this is purely about how things look in the office. There is an obvious solution here, but the whole back-to-the-office initiative was rationalized by the CEO wanting his domain to look prosperous.

Written: 146.

I think I like the concept of Lego more than the actuality, but I’m still pretty glad it’s a thing that exists. One of the better uses of plastics.

Today was a lot of nothing. I felt a lot better, though.

Watched: The Imperfects 1: Three teenagers find out they have superpowers completely paid for by the accompanying disads, and the mad scientist who did this to them has skipped town. Despite the line about “a banshee, a chupacabra, and a succubus” there is not so far any indication of supernatural elements, just improbable biotechnology.

Written: 471. Admire how I am not feeling (very) bad about not doing this every day!

But does “chocolate cake” mean chocolate crumb and any kind of frosting, any kind of crumb and chocolate frosting, or chocolate crumb and chocolate frosting?

Today I ate a pastrami cheesesteak, which was okay, did some grocery shopping, and was a massive lump because I felt lethargic and headachey and bleah. My guess it was side effects from the vaccination yesterday. Still better than anything I’ve ever heard about shingles.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 7-9: Oh good, Jus was appropriately disturbed to find out how the magical ecosystem works and what Kyubey’s role is.

Written: 147.

I didn’t celebrate, but I do like peanut brittle! I should get some of the See’s sugar-free.

No commute to the office today, but I did have to ride the bus a lot to get to the doctor for my second shingles vaccine dose. It was kind of a pain, but I got some reading done, and I’m okay with going to some trouble to not get shingles. It sounds dreadful.

Read: The Archive Undying (Emma Mieko Candon): Sometimes the AI gods of far-future city-states implode, taking any worshippers who happen to be directly connected with them. Sometimes the worshippers survive and can be used to make giant robots. It gets more complicated from there, with intrigue and M/M romance and existential despair and poor decisions and brain-eating.

Read: Reborn As A Vending Machine, I Now Wander The Dungeon vol 1 (Kunieda, Hirukuma, Hagure Yuuki): A vending machine enthusiast is killed by a falling vending machine and isekais as a magic vending machine. Fortunately he falls in with someone superstrong who carries him around so he can provide his bounty to many adventurers. There is a lot of murder and colonialism, though.

Read: Glitch vol 1 (Shima Shinya): A high school and middle school sibling (the older might be nonbinary?) move to a small down and team up with some other kids to investigate the strange creatures and mysterious apparitions of their town. Has a nice clean art style and mysteriously strange mysteries.

Read: Death by Irish Whiskey (Catie Murphy): Fifth in the “Dublin Driver” series and also the author’s FIFTIETH BOOK. This time the murders are at a whiskey competition and Meghan really tries not to investigate (for all the good that does anybody).

Written: 107. It’s not nothing.

Admire my Windows-free lifestyle!

Back to the office. The customers were rabid today, but I got a crispy chicken sandwich.

Read: The Yakuza’s Bias vol 1 (Teki Yatsuda): The boss’s teenage daughter drags the middle-aged old-school yakuza to a K-pop concert and a whole new world of fandom opens up before him. Most of the other yakuza are bemused, but a few get it. It’s definitely an “explain K-pop fandom to the mundanes” manga.

Written: 105 of outlining. It would be nice if I could just keep outlining and then add punctuation to get a complete draft, but it doesn’t seem very likely. Also I need to decide what these aliens look like now that I know where they come from.

Mmm, plant protein.

Not only did I miss the first connection, the following train was cancelled entirely, but I still made it into the office, ate a salad bowl thing with veggies and meat and grains, and did some work.

Read: A Cat From Our World and the Forgotten Witch vol 1 (Hiro Kashiwaba): Decades after the magical prodigy saved the world, she has fallen on hard times, so she tries summoning a guardian beast and gets an enormous cat. Problems ensue, but the cat is a loyal friend. Also apparently every character except the forgotten witch should get played with until they come apart.

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 1 (Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe): Decades after the team of heroes saved the world, the elven wizard is upset to be reminded that humans don’t live even a century. She sets out to learn more about humans as a way of remembering her friends, taking the apprentice of one friend with her. Although the premise is sad, the story isn’t that sad, or maybe I just don’t have a heart.

Written: 138.

No pie for me, still waiting on the medical-financial complex to refill my medication.

Got up early to meet, did another work.

Kit’s FIFTIETH BOOK, Death By Irish Whiskey, is out! It’s the fifth in a series, but buy it anyway!

Played: Lancer. Still playing as the corporate goons. Pretty sure the “corporate execs” we rescued were actually locals who hacked the system, but that’s an issue for the IT department. Besides, we’re not actually in favor of killer robots murdering people, even if altruism isn’t in our job description. Kelsey’s character got to run around slamming into people like a wrecking ball, so it was all good.

Written: 103, which is still in the triple digits, if only barely.

A gaming session is like a playdate for gamers, right? Definitely a comparable maturity level!

Played: Librarians Errant. Thaïs is doing okay at rescuing herself by pushing Gladys the turncoat librarian out a window, but doesn’t mind at all when her friends show up to help. There’s a comparatively minor kerfuffle and then everyone escapes with the books Gladys bought at auction, which are only moderately helpful in tracking down the Education, but take that, Gladys! Serves you right for locking cute girls in boxes! Martin is still nowhere to be found, so the next day the group is given into the care of Garth, an extremely hard-ass Librarian Errant who immediately takes them back down to the Elemental Plane of Books or whatever it is to help clean up the hellfrog damage. Naturally, they barely get started before Thaïs trips over some githyanki book thieves and a running fight breaks out. Alas, the githyanki excel at fighting in the narrow stacks and Lily is forced to surrender when she’s the last one standing. She does talk the githyanki out of taking a book that’s not on their list of books that the library stole from them, but the astral pirates make their getaway pretty much entirely successfully. Bah!

Maybe next time I’ll remember what shocking grasp is for.

Written: 141. I may need to delete it all, but that’s a problem for Future Me.

Penguins! They exist! Had you heard?

Today I accomplished all the things I planned to do, surprisingly. I did get up too early to get phlebotomized, then made it to the bookstore, a sandwich shop, and the grocery before arriving back home in plenty of time to be on call all afternoon. I was even able to almost entirely ignore customers and travel to Monkeycat Towers to watch more Madoka Magica. So yay me, I guess.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 4-6: We finally got to the episode where Kyubey explains what’s really involved in becoming a magical girl. “Why does everybody react the same way when they find out? I don’t understand humans.”

Read: D&D5e Tome of Beasts 3 (Scott Gable, Richard Green, Kelly Pawlik, Sebastian Rombach, Mike Welham, et al): A pretty good monster book, although like all modern D&Ds it takes a Linnaean approach to monsters.

Written: 175.

Where would we be without them?

Spent most of the workday on a customer call where I contributed little, but not quite nothing.

Watched: Hazbin Hotel 3-4: Okay, it’s better, especially since we got both Angel Dust and Husk doing things.

Read: Call the Name of the Night vol 2 (Tama Mitsuboshi): This volume reminded me a lot of Witch Hat Atelier, with the magic medicine lessons.

Written: 189.

At least it’s not Thesaurus Abuse Day, or I’d feel called out.

I missed the primary connection to get to work, but the fallback train is still not bad, and I got to the office in time to get my preferred desk (the one that lets me see when lunch is there). We got Ethiopian today, and not even the penalty for corporate delivery lunch could make it not pleasing.

Tried to get Jus to join the alternate Sunday game, but she is not at a stage of her development where she can go places and do things of her own volition yet. I feel like I could at that age, but a of all, like I actually remember anything that far back, and second of b, I had so many fewer commitments to plan around because it was 1984.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 28 (Tomohito Oda): I guess that passes for mushiness in this genre! Also Komi is getting better at friending and I think the series is probably close to the end.

Written: 111, which is more than 99.

Went to the office, closed some support cases, ate a Reuben. It was the opposite of warm, but the big medium pile of pastrami was satisfying.

My brain finally wandered back to not-Champions, although without having resolved any of the conflicts I was stuck on. It did occur to me that any of my ideas involving 4d6 (3d6 success + 1d6 level of success, or whatever) could be flavored as CMYK for that four-color goodness. Not sure if that should matter (like different results depending on which color is highest), or just be a reference.

Read: The Skull Dragon’s Precious Daughter vol 3 (Ichi Yukishiro): Field trip in search of a reptilian kami that turns out to not be who they expected, but Eve foils the villainous plot and all is well in dragonland.

Read: Otherside Picnic vol 8 (Iori Miyazawa, Eita Mizuno, Shirakaba): Sorawo and Toriko are always fine when they go into the incredibly dangerous Otherside, so is it really that dangerous? Turns out the answer is yes.

Written: 268, some words and some outlining. Although it’s an obvious point at which the MC could end up in the place and see what happened, it’s probably not enough time for things to have reached an interesting point.

Let’s watch all the Republicans whine when they get judged by the content of their character!

It’s a holiday, but I had to cover the afternoon, and ended up watching a lot of training video. Now I know a little bit more about kubernetes than I did before, or at least can put what I know into a little bit more context.

Read: The Skull Dragon’s Precious Daughter vol 2 (Ichi Yukishiro): More dragons, more magic, some dwarves, an elf, and an adorable baby.

Written: 209.

If only I had looked this up ahead of time, I could have gone to Togo’s instead of finding out that I don’t like chicken strips any more! But I got multiple grocery shoppings done anyway, so obviously I didn’t really need a lunch.

Now I’ve tried Caves of Qud, after downloading all the updates for like a year.The interface is clunky and the display doesn’t make things as obvious as my old eyes would like, but I can definitely see spending a million hours on it.

Written: 348.

Today was a day of uselessness I mean relaxation.

In the evening, we had anime again, so I at least had to leave the apartment, even if it wasn’t exactly useful.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 1-3: Jus is now old enough to see this! We got to the all-important third episode, so she wants to keep watching.

Written: 254.

I’m RIGHT HERE! But bald enough I probably don’t count any more.

I had to quote the lines of output to a customer that said exactly what he wanted to know and clearly labeled it, and then I had to repeat that those lines meant what they said. Yes, okay, ESL, but he was completely fluent otherwise, just not willing to read. Customers, ugh.

Watched: Hazbin Hotel 1-2. I feel like they put it into too many focus groups and everything interesting got scraped off. None of the characters are nearly as interesting as the ones in Helluva Boss, possibly because all their problems are external (except maybe Angel Dust). I hope it does well anyway, but I was definitely hoping for more.

Written: 199.

 

No apparent connection to turkey and gravy.

Read: Candy & Cigarettes vol 6 (Tomonori Inoue): Having accomplished their goal, our antiheroes discover that there is still a lot more murdering that needs done. Reminds me a little of Starter Villain.

Read: The Spirit Bares Its Teeth (Andrew Joseph White): Transmasc autistic necromancer in a C19 England where only men are allowed to do necromancy and AFAB people with the gene using their powers is as abhorrent as being trans or neurodivergent. Content warning for every terrible thing that can happen to young AFAB people in a C19 “mental institution” and some extra horrors that necromancy makes possible.

Read: My Poison Princess Is Still Cute vol 1 (Chihiro Sakutake): Human knight who respawns whenever he’s killed is married off to the demon princess who emits a lethal miasma, to make peace. 4-koma jokes ensue. The characters are not as charming as they’re supposed to be, although the male characters are the most meh.

Written: 215.

Made it into the office, did some work, ate some greasy “East-Coast-style” pepperoni pizza, made it back home without getting rained on excessively. I guess that was a successful day?

Read: The Witches’ Marriage vol 2 (Studio Headline): Further interactions between the earnest young witch and her partner the sexy older tsundere witch. Other witches butt in, there are magical mishaps, they go to Witch Marriage School and have a beach episode, etc.

Read: Have Sword, Will Travel (Garth Nix, Sean Williams): A sketchy magic sword drafts a boy who doesn’t want to be a knight, and his friend who would much rather be a knight but is spurned by the sword. Adventure and multiple villainous plots that need foiling ensue, and maybe the kids aren’t terrible at knighting after all.

Read: Candy & Cigarettes vol 4 -5 (Tomonori Inoue): Miharu’s tragic backstory, and then it’s off to America, because that’s where they keep the massive gun battles and desolate wastelands.

Written: 253. I came up with a better cliffhanger, although I’m not sure how the MC can possibly get out of it. Maybe that means it’s the right choice.

Every day I play Numbword, Connections, Wordle, Waffle, Squaredle, and Squardle (as well as Metazooa and Chrono), so uh it me.

I skipped out on the 7:30 all hands meeting, but I didn’t manage to get back to sleep, and also apparently there was actual content, so that was a poor choice.

Played: Lancer, this time for real. The corporate goons successfully fought off the robot army squad and rescued the major investor and his NHP expertise. Now they have a better understanding of how much trouble the colony is in, but maybe they can send those random do-gooders off to do something on another planet where they can’t get in the way of necessary corporate activity.

Written: 139 of outlining. I think I have a good cliffhanger, although I don’t know if it’s end of book or some random chapter or what, because I have no idea how many words this outline is supposed to turn into.

Programmers that make software? Programmers that arrange convention panels? Both okay in my book.

The first actual gaming of the year is unsurprisingly D&D. Time to roll a d20 to confirm that nothing happens!

Played: Librarians Errant. We start with the fight against animated books that was threatened last time, and the team pretty much get their asses handed to them, since each book is about as strong as one PC and they outnumber the team three to one. Fortunately their mentor shows up to save them and forbid them from returning to the Main Branch of Library Space until they are much higher level, so nobody actually dies. He also tells them to absolutely not engage with the renegade Librarian Errant who got past them in the stacks. Naturally, as soon as they’re done doing cleanup work and get to go pillage an estate sale, they run into her again. They do try to get word back, but their mentor is nowhere to be found, and shadowing somebody is the opposite of engaging, right? They each stake out the snooty auction hall in accordance with their personal idiom, but only Thaïs, who gets a job as one of the waiters because she looks good in a uniform, gets kidnapped. Next session, villainous monologue! I’m not sure what Thaïs’s resistance to that will be.

Written: 202. A bunch is still outlining, but maybe it will turn into real fiction.

I think there needs to be more burning of Trump (in effigy, with votes, whatever).

Read: Hell Followed With Us (Andrew Joseph White): Gay trans bioapocalyptic body horror turned up to 12. This is absolutely not a book for the faint of heart.

Watched: I Am Not Okay With This 1-3: A teenage girl in some decade suffers the usual teenage problems of family, friends, peers, sex, romance, poverty, etc, while strange things start happening. Reviews say “superpowers” but I think she might just be haunted.

Written: 102, which is still more than 99.

Hurray for birbs!

I did manage to have a functional metabolism all night, although I still didn’t like getting up in the morning and doing some work.

Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 7-8: Yep, that’s a Scott Pilgrim plan, all right. I can’t help but think that Ramona could do better, but of course that will be a different timeline. Anyway, musical theater, massive battle, the end!

Read: Frogkisser! (Garth Nix): A young princess goes on a Quest to defeat the evil sorcerer who is trying to take over her kingdom, which involves a lot of transformation spells. The Quest gets pretty complicated and also smelly, but she has an assortment of friends and allies and it’s not like she can go home until she’s done.

Written: 252, although half of it was terrible and half was just notes. Actually maybe all of it was terrible.

We have always celebrated World Hypnotism Day. It is the best holiday. You should celebrate it too. Join us.

More beeping and cats to help me sleep, more going to the office, more sleepiness in the afternoon. Today I had some kind of Mayan pork and roasted vegetables thing for lunch, which was pretty good and also did not make my arm widget freak out. I also ate a dinner of carbs and stuff, so hopefully there will not be any beeping tonight.

Read: Secrets of the Silent Witch vol 2 (Tobi Tana, Matsuri Isora, Nanna Fujimi): Continued undercover magic school intrigue, with bonus accounting.

Read: The Luis Ortega Survival Club (Sonora Reyes): A mostly-mute autistic high school and her friends have had it with rapist-boy and aren’t going to let him get away with that shit any more.

Read: Candy & Cigarettes vol 3 (Tomonori Inoue): Ah, the “captured and forced to do a job for the bad guy” arc.

Written: 205.

But I slept poorly, because my arm widget decided to beep annoyingly at me during the night. I guess I didn’t eat enough dinner? But I got up and went to the office anyway. The train was a mess because at-grade crossings are still somehow a thing, but because my new route is so much better, I was only like five minutes late. Did some works, got very sleepy, ate half a tandoori chicken pizza for lunch (didn’t seem to upset my arm widget at all, so I guess thin crust was the right choice), did some gross shell scripting to find out the shape of a customer’s doom. Despite being sleepy at work, I was very productive for a brief period when I got home, instead of immediately lapsing into torpor. Not sure how that happened.

Read: Candy & Cigarettes vol 2 (Tomonori Inoue): Further morally-questionable exploits of the 5th-grade assassin and retired cop as they work to take down the criminal mastermind through extrajudicial murder.

Read: Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki): A runaway trans girl, a diabolist violin teacher, and interstellar refugees cross paths in the Asian-American community of modern-day Los Angeles. It is very much about trans and refugee and violin star and demon servant experiences and trying to build new lives. I liked it, but

Read: Secrets of the Silent Witch vol 1 (Tobi Tana, Matsuri Isora, Nanna Fujimi): A high-level witch with social anxiety  so severe she had to invent silent spellcasting to avoid talking (and maybe on the spectrum as well?) has to go undercover at magic school to protect the crown prince. Hijinx ensue.

Written: 139, which is trending in the wrong direction but still valid.

Back to work for real, boo. I woke up early for 1:1, but it turns out my boss isn’t back until tomorrow, so it was all for naught. Then I did some works, whatever. I guess it was okay.

Played: Nothing, Ken had to take Jus to an appointment because Ayse is not up to it tonight. It is inauspicious but on-brand for the first gaming of the year to be Lancer and cancelled.

Written: 140. Still more than 99, so good enough!