Author: Trip the Space Parasite

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.

I feel like I did so many things today, but it was all stuff like laundry, paying rent, getting the manager in to fix my kitchen light, shaving, stabbing myself with gila monster juice, blah blah. I can only conclude that if I had kids or anything else that required me to pretend to be a functional adult, I would literally die.

Played: Another session of Shop Titans with Nonny & co. If anyone is the imposter, it’s probably me.

Read: The Signal Out Of Space (Mike Jack Stoumbos): Four cadets from different species and backgrounds sign up for a cross-species exploration project and stumble upon trouble. I’m not sure what I think of the alienness level of the alien viewpoint characters, but it’s not terrible.

Written: 480 kitten words.

Nothing happened today, because Rachel’s birthday party was cancelled due to covid, which also ruled out extra gaming. Also I stayed up until 2:00 playing Shop Titans, which probably didn’t help.

No, that’s not true, the one thing that happened is that I proved I should not be allowed to use real knives without adult supervision. Fortunately Past Me thought to stock some medical tape for just this kind of injury.

Played: Dave, Ayse, and Nonny all play Shop Titans, and they just got Ken into it, so we played together over FaceTime for a while and that was pretty nice.

Written: 535 kitten words, bringing me to a final total of 2249 for the week, which is better than expected given the Corporate Superspreader event.

Instead of being at a baby shower in Roseville, I am at home being on call for twelve hours straight. It’s probably for the best, since although I am still testing negative, I spent most of the past week with humans and their virus-spewing face-holes.

Read: “Grow” (Carrie Vaughn): “Wild Cards” short story, about what the teenage impulse to show off your powers gets you.

Read: “Equoid” (Charles Stross): Reread, still the most horrifying unicorns (although Kij Johnson may beat Stross for most horrifying unicorn story).

Read: “The Silken Swift” (Theodore Sturgeon): What’s horrifying here is not the unicorn, who is actually pretty okay, but the assignment of blame, which is, um, a product of its time.

Rapid Test: Negative.

Written: 848 kitten words, 1714/3000 for the week.

Back to WFH! But my English muffins went moldy while I was away, and I have no salad, so my eating is still in disarray. I did some work, I guess, although I’m not sure I did it very well after the week of waking up early and interacting with humans. Also I have to be in the office Tue-Wed next week.

Watched: Arcane 6-7: Everyone is completely doomed, aren’t they?

Written: 245 words, bringing me to 866/3000. That’s more than zero, but…

Last day of the superspreader event! Only one session for us today, so we didn’t have to be there until mid-morning, but then we hung around for free lunch and team bonding (mostly admiring coworker UK-T’s vacation photos). Aside from the ever-present risk of viral doom, it was pretty nice. I had to log in again when I got home, but the customers were mostly quiescent.

Rapid Test: Negative.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Still trying to manipulate Chi’s sister into abandoning nanoterrorism as a viable tactic for liberating the oppressed peoples of Mars, still not getting very far because in addition to being crazy, she’s also psychic. GML, who knows nanotech stuff, nerded out with Nadine’s pet mad scientist and made some discoveries, but I’m not sure I understood them. I’m not smart enough to play this game.

Written: FAIL. But I expected that.

More stuff relevant to my job, although it was hard to stay awake for it. Boss3 S is growing on me. She is also unimpressed with the sales bros, and works well with Boss2 B, who I generally admire. Nobody on our team is testing positive yet, but I think most of us skipped the dinner anyway.

Rapid Test: Negative.

Written: FAIL. I technically had hours, just not neurons to do anything with them.

Today started the Customer Success-specific parts of the event, which I also missed a bunch of in favor of hiding in the Support cave to do work. Also somebody who my teammates rode on a bus with last night tested positive today, so that was great to hear. They are all testing negative, but of course it’s been less than a day. Regardless, we seem to have given up on not eating together, although at least we’re outside for breakfast and lunch and it’s only our team (so the company will be doomed if we all get sick at the same time). Skipped the indoors group dinner at Macarthur Park in favor of going home after I finished working.

Rapid Test: Negative.

Read: Liches Get Stitches (HJ Tolson): A simple hedge witch accidentally steals a necromancer’s lichdom and revels in it. She’s a complete sociopathic monster (preexisting condition? unclear) so she’s not exactly sympathetic, but hash tag relatable. I mean, whomst among us hasn’t wanted to rip out of the soul of someone who’s being uncooperative and raise them as an undead slave so they can finally get something done? And she only uses bodies that are already dead for crafting new and exotic shapes of zombies.

Read: I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into A Girl vol 1 (Azusa Banjo): The childhood friend seems to actually be a legitimate trans girl, but realized it after the ML used her to practice his makeup skillz. Also ML has the hots for her, but then so do a lot of people because she’s really cute in her flawless makeup.

Written: 246 kitten words, 621/3000 so far for the week. Well, I knew it was going to be a terrible week.

Had to get up at the plumber’s crack of dawn, but made it to the corporate superspreader event okay, since it’s right next to the PA train station. It was approximately as terrible as I expected, being full of salespeople (apparently the new buzzword is “sellers”) and humans in general, but not worse. Then Jeremy emailed to let me know that he had tested positive for covid after I spent all day yesterday hanging out with him. I properly notified HR and they gently suggested that I not attend the unmasked group dinner, which was 100% okay with me.

I actually missed much of the sales-oriented pep rally stuff by hiding in the Support cave doing my, you know, actual job. This feels like it should boost my Employee Rating, but probably doesn’t.

Rapid Test: negative.

Written: 375 kitten words, although I might not like them.

Played: Lancer. It turned out to be grey goo after all, but it was imitating normal matter and assimilating it. Also we had gotten sent three days into the past to avert the catastrophe, which was really confusing when we thought the time discrepancy was part of what was happening in the base. We put the grey goo ghost of the mad scientist into a jar (Dave swears he wasn’t listening to Jus’s game yesterday), which caused the base computer to freak out and send the big guns after us. This fight had lots of burn and lots of area denial, but by complete coincidence (Dave swears) there was a Full Service Robot Wash as one of the features of the battlefield and it didn’t get blown up until it had been used to negate burn a couple of times. The lava pit never did get used, but we were definitely worried about it. The battle ended with ASK punching the last enemy down to a few hit points, Kappa stomping toward it using each of her weapons as she got within range to get it down to a single hit point, and then Lena popping out of her completely destroyed mech to finish it off with her personal weapon. After that, we talked down the base and found the Horus connection, which in fact is all over ASK’s and Lena’s mechs. This was agreed to be the most climactic of all our battles, and Dave is getting tired of running Lancer, so we’ll switch to something else. Not sure what, people have to bring suggestions next fornight, or maybe to Rachel’s party next weekend.

Written: 255 words, for a final weekly total of 4447/3000. Next week looks pretty dismal, though.

Ayse has a cold, so Marith didn’t want to visit, and I was on call so I couldn’t make long bus trips. It was very sad. Especially for Ayse!

Played: Jus ran a thing! I was a crow spirit, Marith was a disgraced apprentice jeweler, we hunted ghosts! The little kid ghost was very sad, but we did the thing you do with sad ghosts. Jus is probably as good of a GM as I was in college.

Read: Legends & Lattes (Travis Baldree): An orcish adventurer retires to open the coffee shop of her dreams, which is harder than it should be because some people are jerks.

Written: 776 kitten words = 4192/3000. I don’t seem to be writing other things, do I?

The alarm saved me from a dream (memory? prophecy?) in which I was the least prepared and most boring GM ever, probably turning the teenagers I was running for off gaming for their entire lives.

Read: “Any Way The Wind Blows” (Seanan McGuire): Reread. Airship, alternate worlds, magic or maybe magitech, and the Flatiron Building. (Because why not suck up to Tor?)

Read: “In Mercy, Rain” (Seanan McGuire): Another from the Wayward Children series, how the girl who got sucked into a world of vampires and mad scientists first met her girlfriend.

Read: One Hundred Wilderness Hexes (d4 Caltrops): Twenty each of forest/mountain/swamp/desert/ocean., with a tag line (“The stone bench”, “Avalanche!”, “Necropolis”, etc) and three tables to take it different directions. Some of them are locations, some are more like events or encounters, none of them are concerned with being level-appropriate, all the monsters have motivations.

Written: 910 kitten words, 3416/3000 for the week. Will I write anything over the weekend, or will I just die of stress at the approaching Corporate Superspreader Event?

Return of the training meeting. I wasn’t completely out to lunch, although apparently I sound terrible over the Internet. Also the Corporate Superspreader Event draws ever-nearer. Ugh.

Played: The tragic conclusion of Vivian’s 189X horror scenario. From best to worst outcome: Brand’s character survived with only mental scarring, Dave’s character lost a hand, Brooks’s character died, and my character was dragged screaming into the Black Forest. It was awesome! Vivian ad-libbed great spooky descriptions.

Read: The OP Lich Is A Returnee vol 5 (Stuart Grosse): 130% exposition by weight.

Written: FAIL. Still at 2506/3000 for the week.

Got up early for an all-hands meeting and found out it was cancelled when I tried to log in. :weary emoji: Also found out the dinners and other evening events next week are mandatory. :dead emoji:

Read: Ten Earth-Shattering Blows archives (Nuclearpasta): Like Mad Max but in a fantasy world with a cursed noblewoman and a whole lot of giant lizards. Like, so many giant lizards. Extremely violent, some nudity, not all of the lizards get a happy ending.

Read: Ozzie the Vampire archives (Eric Lide): She’s a vampire. She has a sapient spellbook. Together, they fight demons that are trying to conquer the world and try to graduate from art school. But not very diligently.

Read: The Last Stand of Mary Good Crow (Rachel Aaron): Fantasy Western, the new gold rush is crystal with amazing powers which can only be mined in one extrmely haunted place, humans are all still awful, 3/4 of the viewpoint characters are women who are not what they seem, so many people die. First of N.

Written: 977 kitten words, for a total of 2506/3000 for the week. Since I’m now into September with the kitten words, and only need 500 more for the week, maybe I should set those aside and work on something else. Maybe I should even reread last year’s NaNoWriMo project and see if I can pick up progress on it. Or I could die in a pit.

Customers, why you gotta have such complicated problems? Weather, why you gotta be so hot? Brain, why you gotta shrivel up like this?

Made Spotify play me a bunch of Ego Likeness. I think musically I’m a goth or something. Mostly something.

Read: Apparently I haven’t read anything in a week?! I mean, I’ve read some, but not finished anything that goes on the list. Or even made the list visible on the Web.

Written: 816 kitten words, 1529/3000 for the week. I mean, that’s not bad, at least from a numbers perspective.

It’s Monday, I guess. We have a new coworker, C, although boss A who does the most to train n00bs is out this week. Next week is the Corporate Superspreader Event, which I am not at all looking forward to. Humans and their virus-spewing faceholes, no thanks.

Read: FAIL.

Watched: FAIL.

Written: 716 kitten words, because I cannot write words that are in any way difficult. I can barely write these.

I was backup on call for the new person (who isn’t the newest any more, but she’s the newest who can be on call) all day, but fortunately nothing happened. Also I did a lot of nothing, although I did manage to go grocery shopping and also play too much Squaredle (and also Squardle and Waffle and OG Wordle, but those are much quicker) instead of getting a real lunch. Then we went over to Monkeycat Towers and ate delicious Thai food.

Played: Zoomwarts, end of session 2! The expedition into the land of the dead was successful, because I didn’t make Voldemort terrible enough, but I supposes it’s okay for the PCs to win sometimes. I have no idea how to top that, though!

Played: Among Us. I was definitely the worst imposter ever and deserved to be spaced.

Read: FAIL.

Written: +363 = 3576/3000 for the week.