Excellent day for Gilbert & Sullivan heroes to be born!
Went into the office, was dumb, ate a cold Impossible burger, did a work.
Read: The Moon on a Rainy Night vol 3 (Kuzushiro): Protagonist has finally realized her feelings. Surely this will bring her only happiness with her beautiful girlfriend.
Written: 225 words of gaming notes, since I finally had ideas for the Perils & Princesses adventure for next Big Bad Con, or maybe it’s better to say the ideas I had started to fit together.
We must do SCIENCE to it!
Went to the office, ate a lemongrass chicken bowl, did a work.
Read: Hellsing vol 2-3 (Kohta Hirano): Mostly just vampires being gorily OP and Alucard being more OP, and weird interpretations of Catholicism vs Anglicanism. Meh.
Written: 116
Raar!
Played: Lancer. Of course that’s what we should be doing about orbital debris and killsats in a giant robot game. Never mind that it’s completely ridiculous
Written: 166.
Apparently I should have been working on my Perils & Princesses adventure for next Big Bad Con instead of doing a capitalism. Bah!
Written: 181.
It was! I did get out of the apartment by having a tragic bookstore accident on the way to buying more cat foods from the store that’s not going out of business, but otherwise nothing much.
Written: 125.
The weather was so nice today, I did actually buy tortilla chips and guac and salsa. Also ate my pastrami sandwich outside.
The traffic was not so nice when an accident forced us to double back and wander lost in the maze of brightly-lit car dealerships, but if I were not so dumb, we would have been fine.
Watched: Princess Tutu 2-3: Anteaterina! Also some plot stuff about why Ahiru’s necklace glows or something. Jus concurs that Drosselmeyer is not a good substitute for a cute animal companion, though.
Read: Wear Wolf (Murphy Lawless, Zoe Chant): The most recent Virtue Shifters book. When the blurb said the FL also had a secret, that is not what I was expecting!
Read: “It Answered” (Anastasia Kirchoff): Maybe we shouldn’t have asked… But hey, how can you complain about utopia?
Written: 121. Could possibly have been more if I hadn’t had to finish reading somebody‘s book about a fashion designer and a schoolteacher with a secret.
I actually did eat banana bread today, since I still had some left over from the gaming feast on Sunday.
Fortunately the presentation that got cancelled yesterday was repeated today for the other side of the globe and I only had to skip the team meeting to attend. It was even a little useful, although more sales-oriented than I wished.
Watched: Hilda 3.4-6: A new friend! An old acquaintance! An extremely scary monster, possibly from another genre!
Written: 243.
Another day that should be every day.
I did go into the office today, and ate Korean bento or something close to it. Then came home and tried to attend a late meeting about the new product I’m supposed to support, but apparently it was cancelled with no notice. Bah.
Read: Alpi the Soul Sender vol 1 (Rona): Nature spirits don’t die often, but when they do, their bodies are cursed until they’re given proper funerary rites, so the main character travels around doing that and dealing with other spirit-related problems, along with her butler(?). Humans make a lot of spirit-related problems.
Written: 128.
Another tasty observance missed.
Early morning company all-hands, so I didn’t go into the office today.
Read: Hold My Bear (Zoe Chant): Another fated-mates shifter romance from Kit. As usual, there is no antagonist, but the primary conflict is couple vs calendar, secondary conflict couple vs capitalism. Also, lots of food.
Written: 154.
What kind of person has that be only one day per year?!
Back to work, early morning 1:1, customers, etc.
Played: Nothing, Ken is full of audits.
Written: 143. Yes, this is better.
Also National Chocolate Mint Day, another one for Marith.
No work today, and I’m not even on call, so I was able to get pastrami and ice cream and manga and groceries and be a lump.
Written: I kept starting further and further into that scene and it kept not being right, so eventually I just moved on to the next scene and told instead of showed. This is the kind of thing that happens when I have a Kit to talk writing with.
The dwarf planet with surprising amounts of geology, or the Sailor Scout? Both good!
Played: Librarians Errant. Another two-fight session, first against goblin and hobgoblin mercenaries sent to hunt down the PCs get their wolf-riding asses handed to them, and then against whatever hideous cow monster Beasley Knees missummoned when Lily’s shoggoth book bit in him the middle of the incantation. There was a lot of dwarf-trampling in that fight, but literacy prevailed in the end, and Thaïs got to play hero to the local girls. Nobody even got ridden out of town on a rail!
Written: 183.
Hurray for pangolins! I don’t know why I like them, but I do.
Apparently I also like being a useless lump, because that’s what I did today. I was on call in the afternoon and had to do some work, but only for a little while. Then in the evening we accomplished anime night again. Huzzah!
Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 5-6: You can tell that new character is no good, he was mean to Amit!
Watched: Princess Tutu 1: Apparently we aren’t showing Jus Utena just yet, but Tutu seems weird enough for now.
Read: Crawljammer vol 4-6 (Tim Callahan, et al): More space adventure nonsense for DCC, random tables and adventures and random tables and classes and random tables.
Read: Dog of the Dead (Delia Marshall Turner): A no-nonsense middle-aged English teacher is bequeathed a mysterious giant egg by a student she sort of recognizes, and then everything goes downhill. Way downhill. Everything is eventually explained, but it is dream-like and elliptical getting there. I liked it, but it was pretty weird.
Written: 190. No, still not right.
It’s a day for Marith!
Did not go to the office today, did some work, I guess?
Watched: Hilda 3.1-3: Looks like we know what this season’s mystery is! Also, the return of Wood Man. This is such a good weird show.
Read: The Stick Princess (Delia Marshall Turner): Finally, after like thirty years, I get to read the last book of the trilogy! Unsurprisingly, it is also about a young woman with an unusual relationship to magic, although she is even more at the center of what’s going on, and it crosses over with the big even at the end of the other two books. It also has an epilogue, establishing that it really is the end. I am surprised by how low in the text, if not actually subtextual, the F/F relationship is, compared to the open M/M relationships in the first book.
Read: Crawljammer vol 1-3 (Tim Callahan, et al): A regular zine for DCC, expanding it into a habitable solar system without being any less gonzo. Want to be a Red Martian Psychic Knight and steal from the Pirate Kings of Pluto? Now you can do that! But you can also be a dwarf or a thief or whatever. In spaaaaaace!
Written: 137. This is still all wrong again.
Yes, hippos are great! Best animal ever! 14/10, would import to different continents again! (Do you think that’s enough to keep them from murdering me?)
Went to the office, tried to learn a thing, ate some barbecue (I like barbecue, I’m probably doomed), tried to learn another thing, came home.
Read: Bloody Sweet vol 2 (NaRae Lee): Magic potential and a vampire in her closet don’t stop our MC from being bullied at school, but she deals with it pretty well, possibly because her emotional support vampire is full of wise advice.
Read: There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… vol 4 (Musshu, Teren Mikami, Eku Takeshima): Our MC is now being fought over by two beautiful top-of-the-class girls, and there seem to be more waiting for their chance. She complains a lot, but she’s definitely doing something right.
Written: 120.
I did get up and did go to the office and do a few works (not as many as I hoped) and eat British Indian food (tasty but not very spicy) and not die, so I guess that was something. Now can I do my writing and Internet chores and go to bed at a more sensible hour?
Read: Nameless Magery (Delia Marshall Turner): I first read this approximately one million years ago and then the author vanished, but now it’s been republished because that can happen on the Internet (which we have now). A young woman of vast magical power escapes the evil interstellar empire by crashlanding on a backwards planet and getting tangled up with the local mages and their licensing board. Entanglements and magic and road trips ensue. I’m not sure why I like this so much, maybe it’s the two sides each being sure they know how magic works, or maybe it’s just Lisane being awesome.
Read: Of Swords and Spells (Delia Marshall Turner): Same setting, different and more prickly young woman of vast magical power, more Enforcers being horrible. We get to see a little of what things are like on civilized planets, or on spaceships, but at the end it does cross over with the climactic finish of the first book and we get to see it from a different angle.
Read: Run Away With Me, Girl vol 1 (Battan): Two women run into each other again ten years after breaking up at the end of high school, with their adult lives that are not as satisfactory as they might like to pretend, and there are Feelings.
Written: 110. I think this might need to be thrown away too.
Hello, please accept this gift of space yogurt.
Had no brain and accomplished almost nothing at work. I have to get the things done tomorrow! And not stay up forever the night before getting up early to commute.
Played: Lancer. We spent the entire session trying to make a plan to accomplish our really stupid goal, without managing to make it any less stupid. It is both what we clearly need to do to find out what’s going on and what the module expects us to do, though.
Written: Only 118, but I got to talk to a Real Writer about ideas I wasn’t having and now can move that tiny bit forward.
Please regard me as a cautionary tale rather than a role model, in this aspect (as all others)
Did some work, had no brain.
Written: 162.
I mean, not exactly, but resigned, I guess? Apparently being me does not involve smooches.
Since I didn’t yesterday, today I did my grocery shopping routine which now involves a pastrami sandwich, multiple flavors of Diet Dr Pepper, and a book store. I ended up with a lot of groceries and it still doesn’t come close to refilling my empty fridge, but hopefully less of this food will languish forever and more of it will get eaten.
Written: 128.
Year of the Dragon, which is definitely auspicious and not a sign of doom.
I was too lazy to go grocery shopping before getting back to be on call all afternoon, and even if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been able to go to the ice cream store. Instead I flopped around and then had to do some work and complain bitterly and throw out five bags of food from the fridge that was no longer trustworthy after the power outage. Eventually that ran out and Marith and I went over to Monkeycat Towers. We meant to go for anime, but instead we had really good Chinese food from Ken and Among Us with Nonny, which was all pretty great. I managed to win as the imposter! Then we switched to hide-and-seek mode, which I didn’t really understand because I’m old. Seeing people makes me happy.
Read: “Stubborn Stains” (Delia Marshall Turner): Turner wrote two books of an interesting fantasy/SF trilogy and then apparently disappeared, but now I learn that she has written the third book and this short story about a schoolteacher who gets involved with magic and a whole book about the schoolteacher! (The books are only available on Amazon, boo, but I’ll probably buy them anyway.)
Written: 125.
But I ate the pizza yesterday! It was pretty international pizza, though.
Watched: Nothing, Marith was dead from work.
Read: House of Stars (saltacuentos, Lion Illustration): Very adventure, much fairy tale, wow. The romance is unfortunately het, but the art is very nice. Complete.
Written: I’m writing the new chapter, but that doesn’t mean I know what’s going on or if this is even the right thing to write. Maybe I should work on the project that has an outline, although I still haven’t decided what the aliens should look like. Anyway, 149.
It has been a really long time since I flew a kite.
Today I did go into the office and eat butter chicken pizza. It was okay. Also I did my job or something. Whatever.
Read: The Moon on a Rainy Night vol 1 (Kuzushiro): High-school yuri, but the deuteragonist is very hard of hearing, and yes, it causes actual problems, and yes, she has a lot of feelings about it. I don’t know anything about the hard of hearing, especially in Japan, but the author seems to have done their research judging by the existence of a bibliography.
Read: Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Witchcraft and Mayhem (Roseanne A Brown): After discovering the other part of her heritage at the end of the first book, the MC leans hard into it, which causes even more trouble than she already had. But it’s okay, now she has a plan for paying off the debt she just incurred to [SPOILER] in the third book, which surely cannot go wrong!
Written: 123. I have finished the chapter (not that I have chapter divisions) so now I have to write another one and I have no idea what needs to happen next.
One of the characters in Kitten Words likes to put things in order, so he’s named Dmitri after the person who put the ATOMS in order. This makes me happy, because that’s what self-indulgence is for.
The early-morning meeting that was going to be yesterday and got displaced by the surprise meeting was today, but this time I did not order lunch and then fail to get it.
Spent a lot of time trying to catch up on email that kept arriving even when I couldn’t get to it.
Written: 113. But not kitten words.
Or is it Canadian Maple Syrup Heist Day?
I was expecting to not have power until sometime today, based on the PG&E status page, but in fact it was restored overnight and I did not end up having to go into the office today. That’s good, because there was a surprise early morning meeting that would have made commuting a pain. This makes twice that I’ve ordered goat curry and then not gone into the office. I will eat you someday, goats!
Everything in my fridge and freezer has become untrustworthy, so I had to get pizza while getting gooshyfood for the cats. Fortunately I liked the pizza and they like the gooshyfood.
Played: Lancer. We got to make some decisions as both groups, but then the entire situation was overtaken by events. Well, this module is advertised as being about the traumas of war.
Written: 157.
If only we could get all the disasters to happen on Feb 5th, planning would be a lot easier.
The power was still out when I woke up, and didn’t show any signs of being restored, so I ended up going to the office at the suggestion of the boss³ who was worried that we aren’t putting on enough of a show of being office team players. Well played. There was no lunch because only Tue-Thu are the official office days, but Pocky is like a healthy meal, right? Right?
Still no power when I got home, but at least I had realized that I could use my full-charged work laptop as a power bank for my phone, to read books I had already downloaded.
Marith was also grouchy about the lack of power so we went to Cheesecake Factory outside the Land of No Power and ate things that weren’t cheesecake. We could not bring leftovers home, because no refrigeration!
Read: The Savior’s Book Cafe Story in Another World vol 2 (Kyouka Izumi, Oumiya, Reiko Sakurada): The super-mage tries to keep living her quiet life uninvolved with anything except books and customers and one customer in particular, but of course that never works.
Read: The Yakuza’s Bias vol 2 (Teki Yatsuda): More yakuza stan hijinx. It doesn’t feel to me like there are any new jokes, so I probably won’t keep reading, but maybe that’s just because I’m old and not cool.
Read: The Drab Princess, The Black Cat, and the Satisfying Breakup vol 1 (Rino Mayumi, Machi): Light novel about a princess who tries to become an archmage so she can get out of her arranged engagement and make room for her younger sister who her fiancé obviously likes better, and the hapless archmage she dragoons into helping her. A lot of people get involved, and no one has any idea what anyone else is feeling, because that’s the genre.
Written: Still THWARTED.
Another one that should be every day.
Successfully made it to gaming despite the weather, then successfully made it home despite the intense weather. It, as they say on the Internets, fucken WIMDY.
Unfortunately, when I got home, I had neither Internets nor electricity. Usually PG&E gets it fixed pretty quickly, but everything was still out after I took a nap, so I went back to sleep. This was probably not the best thing I could have done, but it was easy.
Played: Librarians Errant. A two-fight session! First, as the team was seeing off the astral pirates, their ship was attacked by a dragon made of evil books and its sycophants in a literal flame war. They drove off the dragon and saved the books, but now the githyanki are stuck in Waterdeep trying to arrange transfer credit at the university. Then Shia was accosted by an origami butterfly that led the team cross-country to a deserted mill/smuggling den where Gladys’s minions were up to no good. They managed to set an ambush instead of just charging in, which was only partly successful because 5e doesn’t let you block enemies’ movement but did involve Grumman stealing a coach with a hootin’ and a hollerin’. The villains escaped, but the senior librarian was rescued in good shape and admitted the team might be worthy to be called librarians, but only very junior ones and only until next time they screw up.
Written: THWARTED.
I had the ice cream for lunch dessert, but it was Humphrey Slocombe “Secret Breakfast”, so I’m saying it counts.
Apparently my new Saturday routine is to go to Togo’s and eat a pastrami sandwich and drink multiple flavors of Diet Dr Pepper from the drink robot, on the way to the book store and grocery store. The ice cream store doesn’t open until noon, and I usually try to get my act together before then, so it will have to be intermittent.
Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 10-12: The end! Jus was appropriately emotional at finding out Homura and Madoka’s deal. Not sure what to show her next, maybe Revolutionary Girl Utena.
Written: 122 of outlining. I don’t know what these aliens should look like. I wrote some stuff down, but it’s probably not right.
Still not feeling great. Tried to do some work, with mixed results.
The cats were still not eating any of the food I had, so I went and bought some different food, and apparently that is somewhat acceptable. I hope it’s not just that it’s new, because there are a limited number of brands I can buy.
Watched: Hazbin Hotel 1.7-8: Season finale! The power of friendship prevails! But there is lots left for the next season, because even if Charlie saved Hell, it’s still Hell.
Read: Blade of the Moon Princess vol 2 (Tatsuya Endo): More running around in enemy bases and learning to use the sword and also some backstory on the rival princess.
Written: 174.
I failed at today. When I got up to try to commute, I felt pretty bleah, so I stayed home. On the one hand, nobody could complain about how I lowered the tone of the office, but on the other, I had ordered goat curry and samosas for lunch, and my coworker had to eat it instead.
The cats seem to have decided to scorn all the food I bought for them, including the like 50 cans of gooshyfood I just bought. Maybe if they get hungrier, they’ll eat it?
Written: 201.