Author: Trip the Space Parasite

Everyone is covid-free, so we went to Roseville (no longer held in Rosevilla, CA)! As usual, I rode up with Ken, and we talked about gaming, listened to folk-punk music and Old Gods of Appalachia, stopped for horrifyingly greasy Mexican food, and didn’t die from traffic. We got there before the other car by like one minute, because they didn’t stop for anything.

The Petterson family has very exciting news, which you are probably not cleared for or I would have already told you. But it is all good news!

Heard much about Al’s Ptolus campaign, which is about to hit episode 100 and sounds like it has been a blast the whole way. I wish I could run something like that, but I don’t know how to do it without putting in all that work, and I’m not sure I could put that much work in even if I wanted to. Also I would probably need more reliable and interested gamers.

Dave and I finally bailed from the dying Empires & Puzzles alliance and went to Marith’s much more active alliance.

Played: Codenames.

Read: The Holy Grail of Eris vol 1 (Hinase Momoyama, Kujira Tokiwa, Yu-nagi): She’s a sincere but wallflowery noble girl, she’s the ghost(?) of someone executed for getting dumped by the prince. Together, they fight aristocratic intrigue.

Written: VACATION.

Waffled between getting up like a sensible person and sleeping in forever like a person on vacation, ended up kind of flopping around until it was time to go see the local production of that classic play, Buns In Verona. The best part was when Paris did the happy dance after being told he would get to marry Juliet, although the opening narration was well-delivered and Lord Montague was very impressive.

Tested negative for the rona, so if there is an expedition to Roseville tomorrow, perhaps I will get to go along.

Watched: Arcane 1-3: Interesting animation style, full of doom, reasonably coherent for something based on a video game, makes me think of Blades in the Dark.

Written: 452 kitten words, bringing me to 3438/3000 for the week. If we succeed in going to Roseville and I fail to write, I’m not doomed until next week!

Offloaded all my cases to coworker L who just came back from leave, did some stuff on the project with the exciting new deadline, and now it’s vacation time!

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. After derailing (SWIDT?) the plot to explode the 24:12 express to Olympus Mons, the intrepid Firewall agents meet up with the charismatic Barsoomian leader who is certain she can control TITAN nanotech well enough to make the Planetary Consortium knuckle under. Chi knows perfectly well that their sister is a narcissistic megalomaniac who definitely underestimates the rest of the solar system, and tries to talk her down from this without mentioning Firewall. Project Ozma is not shown, but is described, as something Nadine obviously has to go deal with before she can liberate Mars. Next week, we’ll find out whether this works at all.

Read: That Time I Got Drunk And Saved A Demon (Kimberly Lemming): What it says on the tin. Farmer girl rescues a demon, discovers that literally everything she thought about demons and gods is wrong, grows increasingly attached to demon, has wild sex with demon, marries demon. There’s a plot where other characters are also surprisingly quick to completely reverse their worldview and help the hot demon boys, but the spicy romance is definitely the point of the book.

Written: 331 words today, 2986/3000 this week.

Failed to put my sleep mask on, so had dreams about light stabbing into my eyes even though one of them was squinched closed and I had to keep forcing it open to see the bus stop. Brains, I’m telling you.

Read: Creepy Cat vol 3 (Cotton Valent): There’s some plot in this one, but I think it distracts from the weirdness.

Written: 665 words, across the street from the beast. (Total 2655/3000 for the week.)

I was pretty much useless today, but I did find some peach diet Snapple to alternate with the raspberry that I thought was the only flavor sold any more.

Played: Lancer, at long last! Allegedly this mission is to contain a potential grey goo outbreak, but I think something much more Horusy is going on. Also we got it all over us, so I’m sure that will come up later. We made it through two fights in one session, too.

Read: Yakuza Reincarnation vol 2 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): The honorable old-school yakuza reincarnated as a fantasy princess continues cleansing the kingdom of drug dealers, pimps, demons, and other sleazy criminals.

Written: 510 words, bringing me to a total of 3237/3000 for the week. I did make my goal, but it’s a bit lame compared to previous weeks.

Why is it so hot? Is “June” any kind of excuse?

Marith is dead from always being stressed by work and never sleeping, so no Zoomwarts, but I went over for dinner and playing with Nonny, and there was some impromptu roleplaying about a tea shop in Texas, with murder and zombies. Maybe I should make Jus go to Big Bad Con and GM in my place.

Trying to switch to Firefox, but I have so much stuff already in Chrome…

Read: Beware of Chicken (Casualfarmer): A random Canadian guy is isekai’d into the body of the lowest-ranked guy in a sect of cultivators and goes off to start a farm far away from martial arts bullshit. This works about as well as you might expect.

Read: Starfish (Lisa Fipps): Novel in blank verse about a tween being bullied because she is not thin enough for people and developing better coping strategies with the aid of therapy.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 19 (Tomohito Oda): Oops, looks like that side of the love triangle has been resolved.

Read: Hitomi-chan is Shy With Strangers vol 4 (Chorisuke Natsumi): I like this better than Furi-san, maybe because Hitomi seems more legitimately scary, but it’s still wearing a bit thin.

Written: 105 words. Brain, why?

A quick search for “Roe” on whatever’s left of Wikipedia in the reader’s dystopian future will clarify the significance of today.

Read: Lazy Dragon Queen vol 3 (Ace Arriande): It’s a monotonic progression, yep. (Although going and living in a pocket universe seems like a good plan for uterus-havers.)

Written: 458 words, for 2622/3000. Writing things that are not kitten words is so much slower!

No training meeting today, just customer cases. And lethargy.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Our octopus managed to get entangled with a terrorist plot that turns out to be masterminded by Chi’s sister and may or may not be related to our actual mission. In theory, we should probably ignore it or just tip off the authorities and move on, but none of us think very highly of the authorities and their ability to prevent atrocities, so we’re going to take care of the Purple Death Express ourselves. Somehow.

Read: Lazy Dragon Queen vol 2 (Ace Arriande): Even more ridiculous and full of cute girls and affection and cat abuse and tower defense and crafting.

Written: 89 measly words.

Watched: Persuasion (1995): I think I’ve been radicalized by the Internet, because I mostly just want to send these people to the guillotine. The military people are slightly more sympathetic, because at least they do something, even if it’s mostly sailing around putting babies on flagpoles. (Okay, Anne’s not bad, just crushed down by her shitty society.)

Read: Lazy Dragon Queen vol 1 (Ace Arriande): Isekai romance between a completely OP dragon who assumes cute human form, the pocket universe she created, and the hapless gardener she demands as tribute. More wholesome than you might expect (assuming your expectations are not that high), and also completely ridiculous.

Read: Boo! It’s Sex! (Danielle Corestto, Monica Gallagher, Mae S Keller): 96 episodes of a ghost giving woefully ignorant college freshwomen sex ed and terrible jokes.

Read: The Witch and the Beast vol 8 (Kousuke Satake): End of the Vampire Level, I think. Honestly I’m getting kind of confused. Also why are we watching this vampire bozo beat people up instead of Gideau?

Written: 88 measly words.

Boss A is partially back, yay! So are the customers, boo!

Read: Sky on Fire (Lindsay Buroker): Penultimate book in the series, and the last one is going to have multiple wars, at least one interdimensional invasion, a plague, and assorted superpowered sociopaths to take care of. Everyone’s least favorite mage got ganked in this volume, though.

Written: 559 NON-kitten words. The kitten words are a whole month ahead, so I switched to writing something else, but it’s a lot slower going. I’m not back into the right voice yet, and I keep trying to edit while writing, because I am A Idiot. Anyway, 1987/3000 for the week.

Juneteenth is a Federal holiday now, but I still have to work. Bah. Seems like Boss A is recovering well, though.

Read: My Next Life as a Villainess Side Story: Girls Patch (Satoru Yamaguchi, et al): What it says on the tin: official fancomics about Katarina and some or all (mostly all) of the female characters. Because who even needs boys? Mushy, but deniably romantic, as per the core manga.

Written: 1428 kitten words, for a total of 1428/3000 for the week. I did the writing sprints, so I can have done at least one weekly sub-challenge (it’s automated, so everybody scheduling things in Eastern time doesn’t matter), and it did increase my output. I may want to go back over those entries before posting them, but that’s a month way.

I meant to get up early to do a co-working session with the other people in the writing challenge, but I was not awake enough to read (!!) never mind write, so I went back to sleep for a few hours. Because I suck.

Watched: Moon Knight ep 6: That wrapped up this plot, but there are any things left unresolved! There should be a second season! Also Layla should get to be awesome more.

Written: 1162 kitten words, for a total of 4767 this week. Slightly less than last week, but still pretty good.

Hey, look, I’m not on call! But the tickets that I worked on yesterday are coming back, so I feel guilty. Not guilty enough to log in to work, though I would have if the on-call person (who I think is New Coworker K today) asked. Instead I was pretty much useless all day.

Watched: Romeo and Juliet in the nearby park with Ayse and Ken and Marith and Jus and Nonny. It was a modern-dress production, and Romeo (as well as several other characters) were women. This didn’t work entirely well with the lines, so they still got referred to as “men” pretty often, but since nothing was changed otherwise, it was fine. Everybody died, including 7th-graders who had to listen to bawdy jokes.

Written: 259 kitten words, for a total of 3605/3000 this week.

Still short-staffed, got a severity 1 case to take up even more time. I have no brain left, because I had so little brain to start with.

Read: Chosen for Power (Lindsay Buroker): Fourth in the series about a mother-and-son of archaeologist in a mage-supremacy dystopia with worldgates and surprise dragons and so much doom. The doom is increasing, but the main characters are (on average) getting more power.

Watched: Ms. Marvel episode 1: Pretty swell! To me, it has a significantly different vibe from the comic, and the main character seems to have a different special effect for her powers (but, in Champions, they might be written up almost the same, it’s hard to tell so far). I think I need younger eyes to get all the background animation, but it’s cool anyway. I did notice the sign with America’s Ass.

Written: 343 kitten words, for a total of 3346/3000 so far this week.

Still down two people, so other teams wanting the thing they volunteered our team for will just have to wait. Boss’s boss B was complimentary of my explanation of how the thing works during the training meeting, though.

Played: Nothing. Ken was unavailable, Vivian wasn’t up to running, and Ken would destroy us all if we played Lancer without him. Again.

Written: 413 kitten words, for a total of 3003/3000 this week.

Ugh, 7:00 all-hands meeting.

Read: In The Land Of Leadale vol 1 (Dashio Tsukimi, Ceez, Tenmaso, Ryo Suzukaze): The usual bedridden-person-gets-sucked-into-MMVRRPG setup, but hundreds of years have passed in the fantasy realm, and there don’t seem to be any PCs left. Presumably some sort of conflict will arise in future volumes, but maybe it will only be interpersonal drama.

Written: 1100 kitten words, bringing the week to 2590/3000.

Is it really a holiday if I don’t get the day off? Didn’t think so.

Boss A is definitely down with the Rona, and coworker L is still out for the next couple of weeks, so that’s great. I interviewed a guy to join the team, and he seems good, but maybe I’m just giving him the benefit of the doubt because he’s a mature white guy. In any case, even if he passes all his other interviews with flying colors and accepts our offer, it’ll be months before he’s useful.

Read: FAIL.

Written: 355 kitten words. I think I need to work on something else and also not be dumb.

Uh oh, coworker T is back but now boss A is feeling “cold” symptoms.

Read: The Art of Growing (Jacqueline Ramsden): Ridiculously cute sapphic romance despite the truly horrible family of one lady and her resulting extreme lack of self-confidence. The fake dating is never in even the slightest danger of not being real.

Read: Ghost Reaper Girl vol 1 (Akissa Saiké): A twelfth-rate actress gets drafted to hunt spirits escaped from hell by being possessed by another spirit, some reverse harem. Could have been interesting but is just too skeevy.

Written: 1135 kitten words. Not as good as Monday of the first week, but still off to a good start.

I managed to get my hair cut, I guess that’s like having done something today.

Read: No Matter What You Say, Furi-San Is Scary! vol 3 (Seiichi Kinoue): Still cute, but not very interesting.

Written: 660 kitten words, bringing me to 4778/3000 for the week. Will I be as productive next week? Possibly, if I learn to focus like I did before. The trend has definitely been downwards since the first day, though.

Why is there so much temperature? I didn’t order this! At least the customers were mostly quiet.

Played: Zoomwarts. The lizards and their mammalian sidekicks made it back into the land of the dead, to rescue everyone!

Eaten: Coq au vin and kale salad.

Watched: The Slayers 4-5: Attack of the fish-creature! Also joke which caused Jus to die of mortification, which fortunately will never be brought up again.

Written: 286 kitten words, for a total of 4119/3000 so far this week.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2, now with additional octopode action! Okay, really, octopode investigation, but since we lost Kelsey and her Titanian Science Cop, having Brand and his freelance forensics octopus is very useful. Chi being in an excessively-gendered morph is much less useful, although at least they’re somewhere their cold hard cash is useful.

Read: Micchi vs The New World vol 3 (Jammin’ Rabbit aka Tony Huo): Further adventures of the isekai delinquents looking for their former leader and being massively OP all over the place.

Written: FAIL.

Got some fillings, which didn’t hurt and was only mildly uncomfortable at the time, but then I was hungry and and the anesthetic hadn’t worn off so I was afraid if I tried to eat, I’d chew my own face off from the inside. Fortunately my nervous system recovered before I had to risk it.

Read: Encrypted (Lindsay Buroker): A fantasy cryptographer gets shanghaied into a dungeon crawl by her enemies, one of whom is handsome and not so hostile. Or maybe it’s really SF and only the benighted fascists think it’s fantasy.

Written: 840 kitten words, bringing me to 3143/300 for the week.

Coworker L’s mom died over the weekend, so no idea how long they will be out. Coworker K is on vacation until tomorrow. That leaves us at only 60% capacity, but at least the other team is back from monarchy and I only got volunteered for one urgent project.

Watched: Moon Knight 5. Now we finally know what Steven and Marc’s deal is! Also apparently there’s only one more episode!

Written: Saving my writing yesterday was apparently the right move, as I made 1455 of my 3000 weekly goal tonight.

On call all day, but the customers only attacked individually. Still, I’ll take it as an excuse for not having gotten anything done.

Read: The Fall (Alan Baxter): Five more short stories that, together with The Gulp, form a mosaic novel of cosmic horror and fungal doom.

Watched: The Owl House 2.9-10: Oh, that’s what’s going on with Luz’s mom!

Written: I signed up for the Hawai’ian Pizza Positive Writing Challenge, so if I have any ideas for writing, I should save them for tomorrow!

Marith was very flat so we didn’t have any Zoomwarts today. I did go over to help eat dinner and get hugs, and also explore the wider world of ice cream. I have long (well before the current pandemic) suspected my sense of taste is just not as good as most humans, and I think this confirms it. All the ice creams were good, and the olive oil ice cream definitely had a unique texture, but I clearly didn’t experience them in the same way as non-defective people. Still, deviled egg ice cream!

Written: 509 kitten words.

One coworker is out for family stuff, and another is on vacation. Also, one of the three teams is completely off because their monarch is very old and they live in a country with workers’ rights. Someone forgot to inform the customers, so I spent from 7:30 to 19:00 flailing uselessly at graphs and logics. Then Marith brought me a French dip sandwich, and I don’t know what was in it, but apparently none of the other beefs, grains, onions, or cheeses I’ve had recently contained what I needed. Maybe it was the meat juice? Last night’s burrito was made with pretty dry brisket.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Wizard’s Blue vol 4 (Makoto Sanda, Isuo Tsukumo): Wow, literally everybody who isn’t explicitly a villain ships them. (With good reason!)

Written: FAIL. Having to get up too early is no excuse!