Author: Trip the Space Parasite

I used a suggestion from a pocket friend for the team meeting activity, and it wasn’t quite a disaster. Now I have five weeks to find something I can do better at.

Played: Both Eclipse Phase and Lancer. Oh no, are we crossing the streams? Anyway, the PCs on the Jovian station who were not whatever the hell Brooks’s second character were successfully exfiltrated due to multiple critical successes to avoid complications (I told you, Chi is too fabulous to die!) and went back to the scum swarm where GML made an isopod-cat hybrid. Its name is Smooth Randy and everyone who is not a heartless spider robot loves it. Then we got Ken’s progressive technopriest integrated with the rest of the Lost University weirdos and got mechs set up on Comp/Con. Now we can have a giant robot fight someday!

Written: 348 kitten words.

It’s kind of like Monday, only I’m on call during the day because it’s Tuesday. V confusing!

Read: Wish Upon A Satellite (Sophie Labelle): Further queer adventures of Ciel, Stephie, et al, in a Montreal high school that has both cuties and assholes, not easily sorted. The cuties are pretty cute, though.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Wizard’s Blue vol 3: Reread, so that now I know where they were and why Giselle was finally telling her story.

Watched: The Owl House 7-8: Oh my gosh, they’re all so cute! Except maybe Hooty.

Written: 504 kitten words.

I was extremely not useful on my day off. I mean, I accomplished my two important chores of grocery shopping and laundry, but that wasn’t really very much. I started mutant jotto with a pocket friend, which I will inevitably lose because I’m dumb. Also I saw a butterfly and despaired of what we’ve made of the world.

Watched: Moon Knight 3-4: Marith was finally able to come over again (with pizza!) so we watched another couple of episodes. That’s not actually the best way to get that information, but I understand they had limited time. Also, middle of episode 4, ?????

Read: In/Spectre vol 15 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): Looks like a lot of people have cunning plans, but if you come for the God of Wisdom, you best not miss.

Read: Babalon’s Hangover (Liva Jensen, Stein Hansen): More (if I can say that when it’s actually previous to the other) horrible things to meet in Mörk Borg.

Written: 413 kitten words.

Gaming cancelled due to plague (not that plague) at the Gollubs’, so I slept in without having to reset my alarm repeatedly, which was more restful than some alternatives, and then did a huge amount of nothing, including eating fried food and reading the archives of Pterrible Dinosaur Drawings. Eventually I went over to hang out with Ayse and Jus and Nonny for a while,

Watched: The Owl House 2.5-6: Horrible children! A conflicted villain! A horrible monster! Kisses!

Read: FAIL

Written: FAIL

I don’t actually need to shop for groceries until Monday, but I ended up buying some less-perishable stuff because I had to go to the bank to get quarters anyway, and then the bookstore is right down the street, and I didn’t have to be on call until the afternoon…

A few weeks ago, Nonny wanted a “My books are calling and I must go read” shirt like mine, which was I was finally able to deliver. Now we’re Book Buddies.

Played: Zoomwarts, although not very energetically. Jus had a sleepover last night so of course very little actual sleep occurred, and Marith is always oppressed by work.

Eaten: Japanese food, but it wasn’t great. Or maybe I was just wrong about that being what I wanted. I’m not sure about this whole “eating” thing, TBH.

Read: The Gulp (Alan Baxter): Five linked stories about an extremely creepy town on the Australian coast and the horrible things that happen there: fungus, mutation, ancient dreams, inbreeding, eyeball eating, murder, the usual fun stuff.

Read: Babalon’s Hangover 2 (various): 100+ pages of horrible things, places, people, and happenings for the doomed, decaying world of Mörk Borg.

Written: FAIL.

Ugh, commuting is the worst. Being in a warm office with a bunch of other humans is also the worst. Free barbecue lunch, whatever. But I knew many several a few things when I imprudently sat across from former boss M in the training meeting.

Played: Ken is going to a con or something (they still have those?) so we worked more on Lancer characters and determined that our characters are actually ex-university cast into the future by spatial anomaly research, not ex-military, and have been recruited by the people who took over the university station after everyone ran off to become Horus.

Read: Enemy Action (Terry Mixon): Third in the series about a refugee from genetically-engineered commieland who becomes a space marine for the empire ruled by wild-type hereditary aristocrats (which is somehow better?). It’s fifteen thousand years in the future, so naturally all cultural references are to the mid-20th century, and makeup is a surprising revelation. It’s a good thing these books are free, because old white guys are dumb.

Written: Wait, I’m an old white guy!

When I went to Target yesterday and decided to buy an Ocular Photon Excluder (With Cooling Gel Action Grip), that was a good decision. When I decided I had enough flat sheets at home that I didn’t need to buy any more, that was a poor decision. I was able to mitigate it, but it took up a lot of my evening.

Watched: The Owl House 19: End of season 1! With Pyrrhic victories to set up season 2!

Read: The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School (Sonora Reyes): A very gay, very closeted Mexican-American girl from a poor family ends up going to Catholic private school with rich white people while still having to deal with her family and capitalism and also an epic crush.

Written: Too dumb to write anything.

I slept in, which was probably a mistake, but oh well. I did manage to get to The Table and get a Reuben, which I have been wanting since one of my pocket friends mentioned them yesterday. It could have done with a little less pastrami and more kraut and dressing, but it was still good. Then I went to Target, which only had some of the things I wanted. If you check in the store, they say “only online” for a bunch of stuff, but if you look on line, they try to get you to go for in-store pickup! Make up your mind whether you’re succumbing to the failure of brick-and-mortar stores already, capitalist scum!

Read: Creepy Cat vol 1-2 (Cotton Valent): Mostly one-page strips about an artist who moves to a creepy old mansion which is inhabited by a bizarre nonphysical cat-thing and ghosts and dreams and general weirdness. It’s very cute, and doesn’t not remind me of kitten words.

Watched: The Owl House 17-18: Oh, no, Luz is definitely she/her. Also, in a lot of doom!

Written: 406 kitten words, some of them about Creepy Cat.

Ken and Ayse and their household are full of plague and woe, so we didn’t go visit them.

Played: Zoomwarts, over zoom, but very badly. I had so many hopes for the Land of the Dead arc, but I am very dumb in addition to my numerous other failings.

Watched: The Owl House 15-16: Amity has feelings! Also what is going on with Luz’s mom? And is Luz nonbinary? I thought they were a girl, but I didn’t notice any pronouns this time, and that Grom outfit was not particularly binary.

Written: 635 kitten words.

I answered almost every question that came to me in the training meeting correctly, and the one I missed was one the expert running the meeting had missed the first time he encountered it, so it was hardly a great blow to my standing as somebody who has a clue what’s going on.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Fortunately the character who has to decide what to do with mine and Vivian’s current character is played by Brooks, who is the opposite of a hard-ass, so we’re just getting kicked off the station, not murderized. Events may still hose us, but so far it looks we’re okay, as is Dave’s character. That just leaves Brooks’s character to face the replicants. We were joined by Vivian’s friend Brand, who will make a character for the usual team when we finish this side arc, probably next week. They seem cool.

Read: FAIL.

Written: FAIL.

Read: Unpregnant (Jenni Hendrix, Ted Caplan): Valedictorian in Missouri gets pregnant and has to go on a chaotic thousand-mile road trip with her estranged best friend to get a secret abortion. (Yes, there is screaming about how that’s the closest place without parental notification laws.) It’s still funny, but was probably funnier when it was being written and edited prior to this month.

Read: Hitomi-chan is Shy With Strangers vol 2 (Chorisuke Natsumi): Further slices in the life of the huge, terrifying, shark-toothed, secret cinnamon roll and her shrimpy cinnamon roll senpai.

Written: 664 kitten words. Marith kindly volunteered me to write Jus into the kitten words, so I’m trying.

I still suck, but in a more productive fashion today. Slightly.

Started the new brain pills (and decreasing the old brain pills) today. Next change in two weeks.

Read: FAIL.

Written: FAIL, but I finally watched the full editing video. It was a pretty good advertisement for the $500 full course, so kudos to Angela James‘ marketing powers. However, I am not anywhere near the point of having that much of a need for editing. I did learn the name for what I would need if I ever finished anything, though, which is “developmental editing”. Also “line editing”. Also “a brain”.

The only useful (…) thing I managed to do was go the bookstore after gaming to make up for not going yesterday. It’s not that I need more books, but at least now I know I could go grocery shopping after gaming if I completely failed on a Saturday.

Played: Lancer. We had the fight that was foretold last time, and showed that the opposition’s careful setup was useless against modern mechs. Unfortunately, that was pretty much it. At least we got to level up again, and can claim to have made the Lancers look good.

Read: Starship For Sale (MR Forbes): A young man dying of brain cancer and his best friend get sold a spaceship far beyond their tech level for complicated reasons that result in them being embroiled in a Star Wars-like universe of scams and blaster fire with only a single, vaguely trustworthy, native guide. Theoretically things will be explained, but I’m not sure it will end up making much sense.

Written: FAIL, although I listened to part of a zoom presentation on being a good editor. Possibly my problem is that I have to get better material to work on.

Skipped looking for new manga to rush through grocery shopping, so I could get to Ayse and Ken’s in time for Eurovision! It’s finally streaming legitimately in the US, so it has a real start time and everything, and we had a very nice afternoon. Even Marith showed up, although Eurovision is not her thing, and we ate frittata and something involving garlic anchovy olive oil to dip veggies in,

It is no surprise that Ukraine won, but their entry was actually good, so that’s fine. Much more surprising, the UK came in second, getting possibly more points than in every previous Eurovision combined! No one knows what to make of that. There were too many ballads, but also bangers like Moldova. Norway was the Maximum Eurovision this year with the masked banana wolves, but Australia and Serbia were also up there, albeit in completely different genres. France was totally robbed, their entry was a banger. Spain was okay, but did better than they would otherwise due to the butt floss visuals. The American presenter was very fabulous and had angel wings.

Nonny showed me a bunch of Splatoon stuff, and eventually I played a little Zoomwarts with Jus and Marith, and then Dave kindly fetched us burgers from down the street and we ate and played three-square until it was time to disperse.

Played: Zoomwarts! Bella and Rosamund and the lizards seem determined to find out what happens when you blow off Bellatrix Lestrange-Riddle’s explicit instructions. I’m sure that will go well for them, especially if I manage to prepare for their expedition into the land of the dead.

Read: “Min Zemerin’s Plan” (Katherine Addison): Short story set around Witness for the Dead.

Written: FAIL. I did not accomplish anything after I got home.

Blew off work in the afternoon to go meet my new Primary Care Physician, who is astoundingly perky and cute-sounding and swapped recommendations for SFF books and how can anyone be that energetic? Anyway, I have referrals for sleep and brain and a prescription for brain pills and am probably not dead.

Watched: Moon Knight 1-2. Okay, that’s pretty interesting, even if the implications re free will are unexplored. (I have no idea what ancient Egyptian theology thought about free will, if anything.)

Read: Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor (Xiran Jay Zhao): Contains approximately 300% more Chinese history than Iron Widow, but 90% less murder, 100% fewer threesomes, and 75% less Wu Zetian. And it’s set in the near future on Earth and full of magic and written for middle-schoolers. Probably already banned in most red school districts.

Written: 422 kitten words.

Teeth cleaning, wheee. At least I have apparently been doing a good job with the flossing and the brushing.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. As was foretold by the decahedral oracles, my first character was eaten by a bush robot. Then Brooks’s character, the last remaining of the original set, went mad and ran off into the depths of the TITAN to protect his team. My new character and Vivian’s second character, like Dave’s second character, all turned out to be transhuman infiltrators not particularly concerned with the Jovian project, so now we just have to get out of there and all will be well.

Read: Yakuza Reincarnation vol 1 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): An old and old-fashioned yakuza is done in by scuzzy modern gangsters and reincarnates into the body of a princess in a fantasy world beset by the kind of problems that need yakuza honor (and punching) to solve.

Written: FAIL.

Marith had to get her mouth fixed today, so I went along to keep her from wandering into traffic when they threw her out still full of anesthetic. It was all fine, just time-consuming. I managed to do a little work before going over to Ayse and Ken’s for the Amerivision finale, so I guess it all worked out, or something.

Eaten: Sushi! Apparently I joined in the grand tradition of ordering too much.

Watched: American Song Contest 2022 ep 8: What are these juries smoking?! Or perhaps better asked, who are they to be so out of touch with America? (10 regional juries assigning 12/10/8/… points like Eurovision, then 56 states/territories doing the same thing and almost turning the list upside down.) We were all very sad when the 70s soft-rock guy from Washington topped the jury chart, but then AleXa won with “Wonderland” because every K-pop stan in the US voted for her or something, so it was all okay. They had the regional jury representatives videophone in to announce who got the 12 points, just like Eurovision. Not all the reps (all previously-eliminated contestants) had the proper Eurovision spirit, but it made me happy.

Played: Living room soccer.

Read: Beyond The Eyes Of Mars (Glynn Stewart): 12th in the series where FTL, stealth in space, and antimatter production are all literally magic. The heroic Martian navy is still cleaning up breakaway factions of the great revolt, and still learning increasingly horrible things about the rebels (which possibly should have been obvious to readers, but I don’t think was telegraphed at all). Also something that came up as being extremely important about 6 or 8 books ago was finally mentioned again, although none of the viewpoint characters knew the significance.

Written: FAIL.

I woke up at the usual time, wandered around a bit, settled back in with a bunch of screens, and then it was four hours later. Apparently I used up all my thing-doing power yesterday. I did finish the work thing from yesterday, but that’s it.

Read: Huntress (Glynn Stewart): Fifth in the series about space pilots fleeing assassins to become mercenaries, in which the assassins apparently have not given up at all. Also, space Quakers.

Read: “Balefire” (Glynn Stewart): Paladin vs demon, before the village has to be destroyed to save it.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 18 (Tomohito Oda): I mostly don’t care about these other characters, give me more Komi and Manbagi!

Written: 309 kitten words. I still have not managed to reread last year’s NaNoWriMo project so I can continue it, because I know 100% of it is terrible and needs to be redone, but I can’t start it over because that way lies never finishing.

Instead of sleeping in, I got up at the usual work time and walked to grocery shopping. The sun supported me in this by mostly not coming out until I was done, so thanks! More walking to get lunch and finish off the parts of my shopping list that could be done on the way. Then I was on call, so I did a little work stuff until I realized I had started off completely wrong and gave up to go to Ayse and Ken’s for pizza and hugs. Marith was flat, so that was more walking, and then a lot of playing foursquare in addition to socialization. A surprisingly full day, even if we didn’t get any anime or gaming.

Read: Nettle & Bone (T Kingfisher): A little grimmer than many T Kingfisher books, maybe, but full of possessed chickens, fairy godmothers, sturdy practical women, muscular men with tragic pasts, terrifying underground labyrinths, and all the other paraphernalia of fairytales.

Written: FAIL.

The morning training meeting ran more than an hour over, but except for the last bit where even the presenter was losing focus, it was all really good information, so I’m not mad.

When I went to get tacos to eat before gaming, I was reminded of the date. I can’t object in principle to… Modern Mesamerican? drumming and dancing, but it was very loud.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. For some unfathomable reason, the Jovian Marines went looking for trouble, and definitely found some. They also found a spaceship that is probably not at all a trap. Next session, my character gets to die heroically to save the squad. It’ll be great.

Read: FAIL.

Written: FAIL.

Today was the online portion of the company customer conference summit thing, so I spent the day half listening to presentations, half answering cases, and not doing a good job of either.

Read: “The Long View” (Susan Palwick): Not sure what I think about this, it does seem a little like a slam on the worldview that the new generation shouldn’t have to suffer just because previous generations did.

Written: 586 kitten words. I guess that’s something, but meh.