Author: Trip the Space Parasite

Back to work! If only taking a vacation made me more instead of less energetic…

Played: Lancer. How does this game work again? And why do our enemies(?) have a fake beach set up in an underground bunker along with a wrestling announcer and a bird-themed mech squad?

Read: Talyn: Descent (Benjamin Medrano): Further adventures of a gay LitRPG succubus, featuring an incredibly nerve-wracking of leveling way up as well as the resolution of the mysterious problem. Third book not out until late next year, though.

Written: 383 kitten words, and I’m caught up through November 29, but just barely.

I have today off because in the original plan I was going to need it to recover after coming back from Roseville and I never changed my vacation plan. I meant to get up at a normal hour so I would be ready for tomorrow, but failed miserably. I did manage to do one thing, and then another thing, and finally the water is back on so I could take a shower and do dishes and stuff. I should not dread tomorrow, but I do.

Read: Illuminations (T Kingfisher): A young girl lives in a family of magic artists, who follow a tradition of painting practical enchantments into weird pictures, but some of their ancestors were more ambitious and did not follow safe disposal procedures. It has the T Kingfisher kids’ book feel, but it’s just not one of her strongest.

Watched: The Owl House 2-13-14: Luz and Amity are very cute but also kind of terrifying. Willow is pretty awesome too.

Written: 322 kitten words.

Today, the one thing I did was go over to the Gollubs’ to game and eat my body weight in cheese.

Water was still out all day.

Played: Dark Matter. Our castaways befriended two more factions, the Engineers and the Farmers, restored four whole books to the Library, checked out three books and had one of them immediately vanish, and collected a gang of kobolds who worship Jaseen. Then they broke into the mysterious room covered in warnings and craziness, and almost got the snot beat out of them by a giant metal skeleton and its radioactive ooze. Sesamina is still not getting anywhere with the librarian, but we probably have one more session this year.

Watched: The Owl House 2.11-12: Oh yeah, Luz and Amity are the cutest thing ever, and the emperor has a terrible plan. Also, I have a suspicion about the emperor’s background. And what happened to human solidarity?

Written: 101 kitten words, which is technically not nothing, but only technically.

Today, I did one thing! I went over to play Monster Game with Nonny and family. Then I stayed for food and also the first episode and a half of Wednesday. It wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it and was sad when I had to leave to catch the bus, and finished watching the episode on my own when I got home. Then I did no more things.

When I got home, the water was out, no ETA for a fix.

Written: 386 kitten words.

Did nothing all day until it was time to go over to Ayse and Ken’s and partake in a feast which I had no hand in creating. Arguably that’s the best kind, and I know it makes my friends happy to feed people they love, so I’m probably just having an existential crisis. Anyway, it was an amazing feast, and there was even rainbow jello, so everybody was happy and also round. There may have been hugs.

Then I stayed up until a million o’clock doing pretty much nothing, so uh good holiday I guess?

Read: Talyn: Rebirth (Benjamin Medrano): LitRPG, main character is a succubus but actually tasteful, something is up with the system.

Written: 423 kitten words.

I meant to get up early and voluntarily do a bit of work to finish up from yesterday but instead was a useless lump for the entire morning. Eventually I did get up and go to buffet and kittens with Ayse and Ken and Jus and Nonny. There were a lot of kittens, but although I spent a long time petting a purry grey boi named Howl (after the wizard, I presume) and getting my hand kneaded, none of them were the right kitten to come home with me.

Read: The Thousand Eyes (AK Larkwood): Sequel to The Unspoken Name, wraps everything up but not until after a lot of suffering and perseverance and even personal growth on the part of the main characters. Also, gay smooches.

Written: 705 kitten words. When I am caught up (if I ever manage that) maybe I will have enough brain cells to work on the thing I meant to NaNoWriMocate.

I ended up staying logged on to work until forever trying to focus enough to get everything squared away for holiday, but didn’t do a very good job. I guess it can wait until after the holiday, since most of our customers are US.

Read: “Haley and Nana’s Best House” (Maggie Hogarth): Thanksgiving episode of the calligraphy/Christianity/heartwarming LitRPG serial. The cat is doing well.

Written: 688 kitten words.

Today I have been successful, by dint of putting only two items on the to-do list.

I should probably be putting more things on the to-do list, though, since as it turns out I will not be out of town Wed-Sun, and instead have to feed myself at home. However, there might be gaming next Sunday, which would be nice.

Read: Chained Soldier vol 1 (Takahiro, Yohei Takemura): No redeeming social value.

Read: Anastasia At Your Service (Lois Lowry): Anastasia has to deal with people who are simultaneously good and not so great, which is confusing, and gets carried away with some plans.

Written: 396 kitten words.

 

Oh no! For the first time in many years, Al and Sherilyn will not be hosting Thanksgiving, as their household is full of assorted unhealths. I hope everyone afflicted recovers soon and completely.

Ayse and Ken will do Thanksgiving dinner for those of us in San Jose, which has the advantage of Marith being able to attend, but does not have the friends we see rarely, and no baby Finley.

Played:  Way, way too much angband.live. I am terrible at it, but that doesn’t stop me much.

Watched: Murder Drones 1-2: Cute robots do ultra-violence to each other. I suspect Jus will want to cosplay either Uzi or V.

Read: Anastasia Again! (Lois Lowry): Anastasia, now 12 and with a terrifyingly precocious little brother, has to move to the suburbs. Drama ensues.

Written: 429 kitten words.

Pretty sure this is just usual weekday tiredness, not vaccination side effects.

Read: Bloodmarked (Tracy Deonn): Things are, as expected in a second book, getting worse and worse for our main character, as basically everybody involved in the secret conspiracy to save the world turns out to be horrible, even the ones who aren’t overtly racist. Now she’s back almost to square one.

Written: Exactly 700 kitten words.

No gaming, Jeremy has to go to his dad’s 98654932nd birthday. Instead I slept in and went grocery shopping and did nothing whatsoever all day. And yet, tomorrow is still work. At least the grocery store people were amused by my procrastination shirt.

Read: Sex Ed 120% vol 3 (Kikiki Tataki, Hotomura): Final volume, more about the frame story than the education.

Read: Stand Up, Yumi Chung! (Jessica Kim): A Korean-American girl wants to be a comedian, but her parents want only an American Success Life for her. Conflict and minor identity theft ensue.

Read: “And What Can We Offer You Tonight” (Premee Mohamed): Working in a cyberpunk brothel isn’t a good way to have a long life, but then one unlucky worker comes back to life and turns the whole city upside down. It is not a story about explanations.

Read: Anastasia Krupnik (Lois Lowry): A ten-year-old girl reacts to normal 1970s life in slightly ridiculous ways, but her parents are also kind of ridiculous, so it all works out.

Written: 649 words that are still not NaNoWriMo. I made the mistake of reading too much and got infected with real writers’ styles.

I finally got my act together enough to go and see Jus play soccer! Her team did not win, but she did strike the sphere decisively with her foot. Also, based on her team name and colors and her uniform number, she is apparently some kind of witch monster, which comes as no surprise. I am terrible at yelling, because for all those years of school I only mouthed along with the cheering. Probably related to my inability to sing.

Avalon’s system is visiting Ayse, which was a little weird but not too awkward. We interacted like grownups and then went our separate ways.

After that, I accomplished nothing useful whatsoever.

Read: Did I Seriously Just Get Reincarnated as My Gag Character?! vol 1 (Kanade Otonashi): Sometimes isekai light novels are entertaining, but sometimes they are just full of grossness.

Written: 513 words, none of them NaNoWriMo.

Read: Enemies (Svetlana Chmakova): More middle school adventure with a main character who was a side character in previous volumes, and is having a rough time because getting things done is the worst and everybody is always getting upset and she has a little sister. It does work out in the end, though.

Read: The Cool Code (Deirdre Langeland, Sarah Mai): A homeschooled girl goes to middle school for the first time, but fortunately she wrote an app to tell her how to be cool. Trouble ensues, but it works out in the end.

Read: The First Rule of Punk (Celia C Pérez): A Mexican-American-Punk girl has to go to middle school in a new city where everybody thinks she should be more Mexican, with only punk music and hand-made zines to cope. It works out in the end.

Read: Mihi Ever After (Tae Keller): An elementary(?)-school girl who really wants to be a princess despite not being thin or blonde or white makes a couple of new friends and gets sucked into Fairy-Tale-Land, where they offer to train her to be a princess, but things get much worse before it all works out in the end. Something about the style made this very unengaging, but maybe that’s just because it was younger than I usually read?

Written: 769 words, but mostly not NaNoWrimo. You’d think reading about middle-schoolers would make me more able to write the travails of my middle-school-aged protagonist, but apparently not.

Read: Ocean’s Echo (Everina Maxwell): Same universe as Winter’s Orbit, but not otherwise related. A disaster of a politician’s kid gets drafted because nothing else will keep him out of trouble and partnered with an extremely dedicated and honorable complementary psychic who wants nothing to do with him. Together, they fight crime, and also find out what their powers are made of and change the course of history. There might be some romance, too.

Written: 511 words, although they weren’t all NaNoWriMo words.

I did manage to do some work, although probably not as much as I should have, and also got a flu shot so I’m immunologically qualified to go to Thanksgiving and see Finley. I scheduled a fourth covid shot as well, which I probably should have done before Big Bad Con, but some weirdo in a long scarf hijacked my time machine so now I can’t do that then. Anyway, time to begin stressing about how I am a failure at life due to having no children or child-related activities to talk to real grownups about!

Written: 410 NaNoWriMo words. So trending in the right direction, but still very feeble.

I could not find any helpful information on the judicial confirmations, but was able to form opinions on everything else up for a vote. (The partisan offices were easy, because the time to go “well, even though he’s a Republican, he seems reasonable” is long past.) Looks like many other people nationwide also declined to vote for fascism, possibly even enough. Also nice to be able to point and laugh at the (rich, male) pundits who said abortion wasn’t important to people.

Written: 326 NaNoWriMo words.

I should be doing more work but instead I am going blurgh. I should be filling out my ballot, but instead I am going blurgh. I should be writing a terrible novel, but instead I am going blurgh.

Read: The Iron Gate and The Flood Circle (Harry Connolly): Hurray for more Twenty Palaces! Annalise is becoming almost human, but Ray… not so much. Also everything is on fire and we don’t know when the final book will come out!

Written: 205 NaNoWriMo words, which is at least going in the right direction compared to yesterday. Blurgh.

Grocery shopping worked okay, except that I skipped going to the bookstore so I could get back in plenty of time for minigolf  and then the buses are all different so I turned out to have had plenty of time. Not that I have any shortage of reading material and anyway I should redo my list of things to buy.

We had a Marith and a Jus for minigolf, so that was nice. I might even be getting slightly better at it. Afterwards I went to play Band Hero extremely badly (I just cannot sing, vocals don’t come out, because I only ever subvocalize along to music) and eat some pretty darn good hummus. Jus sang a lot of Joan Jett, which is good.

Written: 175 NaNoWriMo words, which I am supposed to celebrate even though it’s basically nothing.

Too lazy to go grocery shopping. I hope tomorrow isn’t terrible.

Watched: Alex Roberts: advice on designing prompt-driven games: That’s not the sort game I’m interested in, but things like character creation often use prompts in the games I’m interested in. Three key things for prompts: provide interesting information; leave a gap in the information; add a twist. “You think you may be the queen’s favorite. Why do you think this? Why does this worry you?” Two questions for game design: What is your game about? What experience do you want people to have playing it? One key thing for playtesting: note how your players react in the moment, more than what they say after it’s all over.

Read: Lich, Please (HJ Tolson): Third in the series about a village witch who inadvertently becomes a lich and totally retains her human perspective and morality. In this volume, she finally has a showdown with her rival lich, and murder ensues.

Read: Twilight Kingdom (HJ Tolson): An oppressed girl who seems to lack the magic all humans have runs away from home and finds new friends and a long series of revelations about how the world actually works. Also, numerous murders.

Written: 286 NaNoWriMo words. That’s not going in the right direction at all.

For a change, I didn’t have to get up early! Well, not earlier than usual, which still seems too early, except that if I stay in bed any longer, it’s definitely too late.

Read: “Skeleton Song” (Seanan McGuire): Another quick portal fantasy, full of love beyond death and spooky beauty.

Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.17-19: On the plus side, all plot all the time! On the downside, still the wrong ship.

Written: 649 NaNoWriMo words. Still not very many, but if I keep increasing at 300 words per day per day, I should finish in plenty of time! (That would be 18 days of writing, with the last day being 5400 words, which is totally an amount a real writer could do. Just not an amount I could do.)

Another early-morning meeting, bah. Also customers.

Read: Candy & Cigarettes vol 1 (Tomonori Inoue): A cop reaches mandatory retirement age but still needs an income stream for medical treatment for his grandkid, so doesn’t put up much fight when he gets recruited by the secret government agency in charge of murdering bad people and partnered with a terrifying 5th-grade assassin. It helps that all the targets are super-sleazy.

Read: Command Authority (Terry Mixon, JN Chaney): Fifth in the series. New discoveries continue to be made and tested without mounting a scratch battleship, the military continues to be entirely corrupt.

Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.15-16: What the heck, Hekapoo? Did you do that on purpose?

Written: 385 NaNoWriMo words, which is not even close to a NaNoWriMo day.

Apparently there was a super-extra-early departmental meeting at 7. I guess I was still on vacation until 8, when I did attend the normal early meeting. Then I got a bunch of cases to replace the ones I handed off when I went on vacation. Some of them are the same ones.

Played: Lancer. We leveled up and did downtime and that was pretty much the entire session. At least I got a spaceship out of it.

Written: FAIL. Not doing too great at this whole NaNoWriMo thing.

Someone I went to college with is now a grandparent. (Probably more are, but this one I still know!)

Also, it’s Halloween, so I saw a lot of costumes while I was out trying to run all my weekend errands, but although I had candy, no one came to get it.

Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.13-14: All hail the queen!

Written: FAIL, just stuff about Big Bad Con.