Author: Trip the Space Parasite

Make sure your cat gets proper medical care!

I don’t have any cats. This should probably lead me to question my life choices.

Boss B is back from vacation. He has a dinosaur-patterned shirt, so is entitled to declare victory.

Played: Lancer. We had to escape from the self-unearthing menace, which was not that hard because even not counting the Sunzi that teleports and teleports and teleports (sometimes transitively, sometimes intransitively), we’re a really mobile team. Probably for the best that it didn’t take long, because Ken was feeling poorly.

Read: “MUGWUMP 4” (Robert Silverberg): An early example of human minds being exempt from time loops, which turns the comedy into horror.

Written: FAIL.

 

They’re an important source of protein for bats!

Finally managed to produce a medical sample and get it to UPS. Now I can stop worrying about getting it done and worry about the results!

UPS was so efficient that I did not have to wait for a next bus and was early to gaming, but that’s okay (I say as the person not hosting). It was a special gaming session, though, because after approximately 90745934 years, Chrisber has gaming with us again! Also he brought his offspring, Teo. Chrisber has a mustache now, and a lot of white in his hair, but he is still very much Chrisber. I don’t know Teo well yet, but he seems okay for a, you know, young person.

I didn’t have any brilliant ideas, and Dave’s idea did not garner sufficient support, so Jeremy is running D&D5 again (sigh). We are playing random university bozos who are about to be recruited into the Librarians Errant where we will track down dangerous, rare, or overdue books. My character is the result of an ethical experiment that turned her into a shadow magic sorcerer, so once again I am the only one without Charisma as a dump stat.

Written: FAIL. Apparently making up one (1) D&D character uses all my creativity for the day. I definitely blame capitalism for this.

Had to wake up early for cleaners, but then managed to go back to sleep like a useless lump for a while. My body refused to produce medical samples, so eventually I gave up and went grocery shopping. The UPS place is open tomorrow morning, so if my body cooperates before then, I can drop the sample off before gaming tomorrow.

Thought some more about game design. I think I had some of these ideas before. They weren’t any good then either.

Written: 267 new words, plus a little editing.

Yeah, I suck.

Had to work until 19:00 today, but at least there wasn’t an ongoing customer emergency and I was able to log out and die in a pit. I tried making nachos, which sort of worked, although the chips got completely soggy so obviously something wasn’t quite right. Maybe I need to melt the cheese substance separately and pour it onto the chips, instead of microwaving them together?

Written: FAIL.

Everybody loves the void!

Traffic was horrible, probably because parents all drive their children to school in individual vehicles, so I didn’t make the transfer to the train, but the long bus got me there like twenty minutes later, which isn’t too bad. Customers were still somewhat numerous, but not like yesterday. I did a command line thing, it was okay.

I could not find the things I was looking for in my useless room of useless piles of useless comics.

Watched: Good Omens 2.3: Oh good, more ominousness!

Read: A Restless Truth (Freya Marske): It’s the same magical intrigue from A Marvellous Light, but the quest has extended to America, which can only be reached by water, so it’s time for the ocean liner murder mystery! With enthusiastic sapphic interludes.

Written: FAIL.

Friends are good!

Finally found out enough about what was up with the office that I don’t feel entitled to more information, and also probably I won’t die tomorrow.

Played: Lancer. After our downtime, we went to check out some mysteries, and one of them turned out to be a robot army. I guess we’re about to find out whether we made the right choices when levelling up.

Written: FAIL.

Why are there so many customers, and why do they all think our product should function correctly? Ended up staying late because it’s Monday and then an hour later than that so the next person wouldn’t be alone.

Tried to get more information about why the office was closed last week, but no dice.

Written: Didn’t write any, but moved stuff around and edited a little and got things set up to edit more if I ever become less stupid.

Accomplished mostly nothing today, but have to be on call for special customers all night.

Written: 134 words, bringing me to 1522 for the final week and 15275 for the ten-week-long challenge. That is right at 150% of my goal, so that’s good, except my goal was 1/3 of what it was last time, so that’s bad. (The frogurt is also cursed.)

I mostly did nothing today, but finally in the hottest part of the day I bestirred myself to do a thing and another thing and a bonus thing and also get dinner. Now I only have to do some of the things tomorrow, not all of the things.

Read: Battle of the Linguist Mages (Scotto Moore): Wow, that was quite a thing! More deranged than Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You, at length like Wild Massive (and with a crossover of sorts) so it just keeps getting more and more craziness.

Written:176/1388/15141. I made it over the 150% mark with one day to spare!

Mine was several days ago, but close enough!

After telling everybody in the office “Go home for the rest of the week. No reason.” the company told everybody “Get back in the office this week. No reason.” That does not make me confident that they have identified and mitigated any safety issues.

Watched: Good Omens 2.2: I am in awe of the beard. Also, angels r dum.

Written: 220/1212/14965.

Read: Yokohama Station SF vol 1 (Yuba Isukari, Gonbe Shinkawa): After humans get tired of always doing construction work on the Yokohama train station (I assume), they make it self-constructing. Centuries later, the island of Honshu is a single giant train station and humans have built a new civilization in its depths. A hapless youth from one of the scraps of unbuilt land around the edges must go into the station and navigate its capitalist dystopia. This feels like it would be better as prose.

Written: 316/992/14745.

No commuting for me! Yet somehow sleeping in until the normal time did not make me alert and awake and functional and useful.

Read: Bloody Sweet vol 1 (NaRae Lee): A bullied Korean high school student ends up with a vampire servitor who turns out to be an emotional support vampire, to both of their surprise. Probably there will also be some kind of supernatural nonsense.

Written: 285/676/14429.

The most blessed day of the year!

Our new office is not blessed, however, since in the middle of the day, everyone who was there got sent home and the office is closed for the rest of the week. No reason. I asked, but really, no reason. So that’s not worrying at all.

Played: Lancer. This session was all downtime, but we got to level up, and also we fixed our ship and made some kind of contact with one of the groups we’ve been fighting. Brooks’s character is probably going to get eaten by the rogue NHP lurking somewhere across the ocean.

Written: FAIL.

I have friends! Somehow. But I am not gaming with them because Dave is still full of germs and Jeremy is slightly under the weather. Not that I have any brilliant ideas for what we should game. I could not even come up with an idea for a 4-hour con game. Perhaps it is time to give up entirely.

Read: Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You (Scotto Moore): A music blogger discovers a band that plays the most amazing music ever. It is straight downhill at ever-increasing speed and weirdness from there.

Read: Unbreakable (Mira Grant): This is not actually Madoka Magica fanfic, but that’s about where it is in terms of genre. The last two surviving magical girls in a world that no longer needs them find out the real story behind the fluffy magical advisors and improbably-named enemies.

Written: 290 words, for 1283 this week and 13753 in nine weeks. Tomorrow is the last week of the challenge.

 

Obviously not a very important holiday, right?

Back to the office, it was not any better or any worse to have teammates there. We learned about the upcoming release, which will obviously be the best thing ever, ate pasta, and did not die. Commute still okay.

Read: A Half-Built Garden (Ruthanna Emrys): Aliens show up and are all like, “Oh good we got here before your planetary ecosystem collapsed entirely! Come with us if you want to live, which of course you do!” and the anarcho-environmentalist humans are like, “It still needs a little work, but we’re not abandoning our homeworld just because you did.” Negotiation and cultural exchange and internal conflicts ensue. It’s a good solarpunk future, though.

Read: “Compulsory” (Martha Wells): Unsatisfyingly short Murderbot vignette.

Read: “Detonation Boulevard” (Alastair Reynolds): Cyborgs race across Io’s hellscape in nuclear trucks, and capitalism ruins everything.

Read: The Secrets of Insects (Richard Kadrey): Horror short story collection, with a few pieces from the “Sandman Slim” universe, but mostly serial killers/cultists/monsters (not well-delineated categories). Some people get theirs, but it’s almost always the greater of two evils that remains.

Written: 200/734/13204.

Finally went to the new office, completely forgetting there was an all-hands meeting during commute time, so I ended up sitting out back for an hour listening on the phone before finally experiencing the new very small space. I don’t care about not having my own desk, but having too many humans breathing the air is annoying. Lunch delivery is the same.

Overall, the commute is a lot better, because it’s one leg shorter.

Written: 269/534/13004.

Remember when there was more than Google and Amazon and Facebook?

Went to get my teeths cleaned, found out that some fillings had escaped and need to be replaced.

Played: Lancer. Boss fight! We stopped the fiery berserker just before before its reactor exploded and also just before my mech melted into a puddle from all the burn loaded onto it. Not only do we level up, but there’s a promise of information next session.

Written: FAIL.

Why am I not a tiger? What am I doing wrong?

I went grocery shopping and stuff, which I don’t think tigers do, and then I laid around the rest of the day, which is a step in the right direction.

Read: The Hungry Dreaming (Craig Schaefer): An intrepid reporter, her steadfast partner, and a teenaged runaway get tangled up in the secret history of New York dating back to the Revolutionary War. Despite the investigation and existential dread, it’s not Lovecraftian at all, but I was wondering for a while there. Apparently the start of a series, although I’m not sure where it can go from here.

Read: “That One Night” (Emily Rath): Straight-up one-night-stand smut, although apparently the prologue to another book or series. I dunno, choking still seems weird to me. Shows what I know about sex, I guess.

Written: 266, 1250 for the week, 12339 overall. No weird sex stuff.

“Cut down, not across.” (Like anyone remembers alt.sysadmin.recovery these days.)

Usually I don’t get much grief from vaccine side-effects, but the old-person vaccines I had to get yesterday are more obnoxious than most. Still better than either shingles or pneumonia, I’m pretty sure.

Even had I been minded to, I couldn’t have reasonably taken the day off sick since two people were out and one called in sick, but whatever. Fatigue and headache build character, right?

The high point of the day was definitely going with Marith to see Barbie. That was really quite something, even if I’m just Ken. (Actually, people said I have Allan energy, so :shrug emoji:.) Apparently some of the thing it was is Innana’s journey to the Underworld, so that’s awesome.

Written: FAIL.

No confirmation from the office that we have valid Internet, so we’re all WFH today. This turned out a little annoying for me, as I had to go to my afternoon doctor appointment in Mountain View from way down in San Jose, instead of from just down the street, but hey, if the company can’t be arsed to get network working before trying to make people go in to the office…

Now I have many referrals to specialists which this time I will definitely follow up on and not ignore for months on end, right? Right?

Written: 170/984/12073.

I did not go into the office because I have to be available until 19:00 which makes commuting a pain, so I missed the office-opening brunch but also missed going all the way to Mountain View only to find that the network is rubbish.

Read: No Matter What You Say, Furi-San Is Scary! vol 4 (Seiichi Kinoue): Furi-san is just not that scary any more, so it’s become a pretty generic high-school romance manga.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Jack Flash and the Faerie Case Files vol 1 (Yu Godai, Mako Oikawa, Kore Yamazaki): Another spin-off, this one about a fae detective and her werewolf brother in New York. I don’t know if the author doesn’t understand American prices, or if they’re supposed to be grossly underpaid, but yikes.

Written: 198/814/11903.

But I don’t want to get up.

Played: Nothing, Ken’s household is full of plague and woe.

Read: She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat vol 1 (Sakaomi Yuzaki): What it says on the tin! A lady who likes to cook but lives by herself and has no one to eat her cooking notices that the lady down the hall has a huge appetite. A beautiful friendship ensues, and might become something more. Do not read this when you are hungry, though.

Read: “After the Animal Flesh Beings” (Brian Evenson): The robots that survive humanity have their own problems. It is not a happy story.

Written: 616 for the day and week, 11705 overall.