Author: Trip the Space Parasite

Also Explode the King Day.

As is the custom of the land, we had burgers and then spent a long time trying to park at the fairground early in order to get shaved ice for the children. It seemed like the fireworks portion of the evening was very short, but that was probably enough explosions, especially for the kids in the crowd. All children now have noise-cancelling headphones, like we’re in the future or something.

Played (board game): Terraforming Mars. After getting a card for slave labor, I tried to do a heel turn, but it didn’t do me any good and, as usual, Ken dominated.

Played (board game): Sagrada. A much more even game. We all ended up with one space unfilled by the end, although I still lost.

Read (from the shelf): VACATION.

Written (anything): VACATION.

But I did not start eating choco cubes, because I was in Roseville and there were too many other things that needed eating, such as the newly-invented Cerritos sandwich (jalapeñ0-artichoke dip, avocado, pastrami, and cheddar) and grilled chicken and tofu. I went swimming with Ken and Non and learned the secret to knowing which stars rise where and when, which is Stellarium.

Played (card game): Race for the Galaxy. Dave got 76 points, which is an insane score for RftG, but Ken still beat him with 84. I had like a quarter of that and was completely irrelevant.

Played (board game): Daybreak. This time we got our act together and started shedding dirty power generation right away, and won on turn four.

Played (card game): Star Trek Fluxx. Had all the important TOS bits, including mirror-universe doubles. The new gimmick in this one is cards that attach to other cards, usually Creepers. We played until after midnight, because who needs a brain anyway?

Read (from the shelf): VACATION.

Written (anything): VACATION.

I slept in until 10, which left me plenty of time to pack and then catch the 16:17 train, which performed its duties admirably, and then Dave and I were in Roseville (which is not Roseville) eating Chinese food and playing Daybreak. Due either to complacency or a shortage of cards with the Grid icon, we lost! It took until turn five, but the writing was on the wall much earlier.

Everyone in Roseville is doing well, or at least as well as can be expected. Toddler is still a big fan of fans and other things that spin.

Read (from the shelf): VACATION.

Written (anything): VACATION.

And yet, the Earth continues to support both life and data centers.

Went to the office, ate a burrito and some birthday cake, did some work, learned no Kubernetes.

Read (manga): After God vol 7 (Sumi Eno): Well, now we know what his deal is. But everything is still terrible.

Read (novel): Unaccounted For (AE Dooland): A heroic search-and-rescue butch in Australia accidentally becomes famous and gets stuck with an infuriating goth PR consultant. They have differently-terrible families and very different risk tolerances and yet there is still smooching. Also intrigue, crime, emotional conflict, and more smooching. I liked Under My Skin better, but this was still pretty good. Also, Froggy.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 125.

But not me, don’t marry me.

The cats helped me stay in bed, but eventually I did manage to get up and do an errand and read a Maidens of the Fall and go to an anime.

Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.12-13: Into the snake cave of the ancient chrysomorphs! Accommodations for trauma brought on by bad pedagogy! Plummeting and doom!

Read (from the shelf): FAIL.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 179.

Your dog deserves a Thai-Ethiopian fusion wrap!

Did some work, but sadly would have done more work if I were in the office, I suspect.

Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 1.8: It wouldn’t be a haunted house if they didn’t make all the mistakes. Serves them right for sidelining Cassandra, though.

Read (graphic novel): When I Arrived at the Castle (EM Carroll): Catgirl vs vampire, in a hallucinatory castle full of blood and doom and corpses and nudity.

Read (novel): The Ethersmith vol 2 (Matias Kallio):MC finally makes it to a city where she can wow them with her ethersmithing skills, but surprise! Her grandfather isn’t dead, so there’s a quest and also impending doom.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 224.

I was technically working today, but feel like I accomplished about as much as a fairly drab catfish.

Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 1.7: An obvious antagonist, given the Arthurian connections, but not where one would expect her to be.

Read (novel): I’m Not the Chosen One (Richard Roberts): She’s the Chosen One’s little sister, so of course she takes the magic ship and catgirl follower for a joyride. The quest to restore the broken world ensues.

Read (comic collection): Eat the Rich (Sarah Gailey, Pius Bak, Roman Titov): Not subtle, but that’s fine, because fuck those guys.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 176.

Went to the office, did some work, ate a chicken tikka masala burrito, reviewed some Kubernetes troubleshooting.

Read (graphic novel): Zatanna: The Jewel of Gravesend (Alys Arden, Jacqueline de Leon): An origin story for Zatanna as the daughter of a stage magician at Coney Island, not apparently related to the Galaxy books and also unnecessarily heterosexual.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 141.

When they get all hopped up on those tiny brine shrimp, there’s no telling what they’ll do!

Went to the office now that I have my brain pills, somehow walked all the way up the stairs without taking a break, attending a work meeting, spaced on a remote doctor meeting, ate some coconut chicken noodles, finished learning about kustomize, started practicing troubleshooting Kubernetes.

Read (from the shelf): FAIL.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 147.

They’re good at crawling into small ducts!

Did some work, learned a little kubernetes, did not actually die.

Read (comic collection): Trees vol 3 (Warren Ellis, Jason Howard: Set in the ass-end of nowhere, Russia. Very Russian in that almost everybody dies. Maybe a hint about what the Trees are, but ghosts are notoriously bad at explaining.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 227.

Also Father’s Day, so good news for druid dads, I guess?

Played (Hero 6E): Kaiju Academy. Labyrinth shenanigans result in the cohort ending up on an English airship headed for a commando strike to steal the new French dreadnought, the Emperor Napoleon. There’s some initial nervousness about the giant spider and women on an airship, but soon the girls are all in on assaulting the dastardly and inflammatory French in exchange for a lift back to the flying mist-form labyrinth. Surely nothing bad can come of May feeding an anti-air Frenchman through the port engine, right?

Watched (anime): Kill la Kill 15-16: Finally, the dreadful secret behind the Life Fiber!

Read (manga): Dandadan vol 19 (Yukinobu Tatsu): That thing where parts of the world just disappear is getting kind of serious. I wonder if this means we’re getting near the end. Will Denji die some more? Will he achieve ultimate power? Will these be distinguishable?

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 306, although both today’s and yesterday’s numbers are bogus because I accidentally deleted something and had to restore it. Also, even though it’s Tall Girl Appreciation Day, I was mean to my MC. (It’s some time in November for her anyway.)

They’re refugees because their asteroid is drying up and they can’t surf, so they need Arcturian Brandy.

I woke up at some point in the morning before I meant to, but although I could have gone back to sleep, I found some scraps of executive function under the dust bunnies and made the slog up to Mountain View to get my fluids medically extracted. Then it was time to provide the cats with gooshy brunch, and I was up and moving so I went shopping and read Maidens of the Fall and ordered a bunch more comics.

No anime, it’s Shakespeare in the Park night! This year’s production is Two Gentlemen of Verona in the 80s, which was silly, and hopelessly patriarchal/heteronormative, but the bicycle bandits wanted their two dollars, which makes up for a lot. Also, bizarrely, I won the raffle so now I have two tickets to the Winchester Mystery House. Not sure what to do with them.

Read (graphic novel): Bad Dream (Nicole Maines, Rye Hickman): Is an alien living on Earth and passing as human while she run away from home a metaphor for transness if she’s actually trans? Part of the same subcontinuity as the Galaxy books, full of queerness and superhero battles and alien family drama. Interfamily drama, even.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 466. MC definitely needed more to stress over.

Logged in to work early to attend the meeting about using AI in our company. I managed to hold on by muting and yelling at the screen for a while, but then someone started going on about “when Claude is an AGI” and I had to drop. Holy shit, why are people so dumb? (People, of course, are going “holy shit, why is Trip so dumb?”)

Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 1.5: For a brief moment, it looked like Ezekial and Jenkins were going to get along, or that Flynn was going to return, or that Cassandra was going to go full supervillain, but no. Still pretty good, and further confirmation about Dulaque.

Read (from the shelf): FAIL.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 283. Do I need the astronomy knowledge now? Maybe I can put it off longer.

Apples are fruit, which is healthy, right?

I was much too slimy to even try to go into the office today.

Read (graphic novel): Sunflowers and Lavender (Maisy Valais): A lesbian meet-cute gone horribly wrong leads into extensively cute shenanigans. Set in a New Zealand in which apparently everyone is queer and adorable.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 561.

I managed to order meds to be delivered in the mail (which I should have done ages ago), and also put laundry through the exclusion machines. And did work, of course, although I’m not primary on-call this week.

Read (manga): Sanda vol 3 (Paru Itagaki): I’m as opposed to trying children as adults for any crime as the next sane person, but this seems like a little much. Nicely strikes at Sanda’s disads, though.

Read (novel): The Fall is All There Is (CM Caplan): Bisexual autistic prince trying to deal with his horrible family in a gross biomagic world that’s had at least two apocalypses already. The family infighting makes me think of Amber, but a lot of noble infighting in fantasy does. Very gritty, the main character’s expensive and painful augmentation does not give him superpowers and really barely compensates for his disadvantages. Nothing can make up for his family.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 108.

I think the bourbon means it has to be National (US).

Slept in a lot, did one shopping expedition, that’s about it for today. Did not manage to rally against fascism.

Watched (anime): Kill la Kill 12-14: I’d say that’s it for the school fighting drama arc, but really the national conquest arc is pretty similar.

Read (from the shelf): FAIL.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 282.

Usual shopping and Maidens of the Fall (back from hiatus!) despite the 90° heat, returned home with a pile of comics. A pocket frond live-slacked an extremely alarming yet eventually okay saga that she dealt with much better than I would have in the same circumstance, I’m sure. Ken gave me sausage bean cabbage when we went over for anime, which was quite nice.

Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.11: Start of the escort quest test, whether Richeh likes it or not! Also, introduction of the world’s shittiest teacher.

Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.12-13: The hero’s sword stuck in the rock is introduced. Will that be important later? Who can say? But finally Frieren’s party has a cleric, and is up to four members which is the standard for heroic adventures. Double mages instead of double warriors like her last party, though.

Read (manga): Sanda vol 2 (Paru Itagaki): This world is even weirder about youth than it originally seemed, probably because it’s not just cracktastic, it’s also social commentary.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 109.

Still hot.

Watched (movie): Project Hail Mary: That was surprisingly awesome for hard SF in movie form, and also a pretty good adaptation of the book. (I had read the book, Marith had not.) Several xenonite appendages up!

Read (manga): Chainsaw Man vol 21 (Tatsuki Fujimoto): The devils are still killing everyone, Denji is still being led around by his dick, and every page is that much closer to the end of the world.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 117.

Tried to work, did some work but it was too hot for thinking.

Read (graphic novel): Belle of the Ball (Mari Costa): The wallflower inside the mascot costume has a crush on the head cheerleader who is dating the star soccer player who… High school senior lesbian love triangle! The art is extremely pink and cute.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 206. Not that dirty or beautiful, alas.

I do not actually know the date on which Earl was awarded his doctorate. I have a vague recollection that it was actually off-cycle, not at the end of the school year, like that even matters for grad students.

I had the best of intentions about going in to the office today, but the early morning hours included operatic solos, gladiatorial combat, and going right back to sleep after the alarm. Apparently I should just give up on being employed and go live in a cardboard box behind the bus station. Actually, I think the bus station may be full.

I did do a bunch of work for the customer with the problem while I was at home, at least. I don’t think Sage was pleased about being dislodged from her position so I could type madly.

Read (from the shelf): FAIL.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 146.

That’s giving the ice cream to the children, not trading away your offspring for tasty tasty frozen desserts.

No gaming, only Zuul.

Watched (anime): Mistress Kanan is Devilishly Easy 4-5: Still no redeeming social value

Read (comic collection): Unnatural vol 3 (Mirka Andolfo): Okay, they did get the line about some animals being more equal than others in there. More creepy fascist conspiracy, past life possession, final confrontation, The End.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 162.

It’s always sad when being on call means getting called. I couldn’t even draw a black bear to eat the customers, because I can’t draw worth beans. Fortunately I eventually stopped being on call and could go over to watch anime. Ayse is Abroad, for Tourism, so we did not get distracted, and also Marith’s laundry took a long time, so we had plenty of anime.

Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.10: Turns out that able-bodied people being ableist doesn’t make disabled people any less competent.

Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.9-11: The issue with the demon diplomats is resolved, thanks to Frieren’s special technique, which is presented in such a way as to be legitimately kind of terrifying. Turns out you can get really good at something if you practice it constantly for a thousand years.

Read (novel): Ladies in Hating (Alexandra Vasti): Rival gothic novelists in C19 England, sapphic longing, a mysterious and decrepit manor in the countryside, some light haunting, more sapphic longing. Apparently part of a larger series but the other books seem to be about men or something, so whatever.

Read (from the shelf): FAIL.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): Finally wrote an email about astronomy resources.

But what if there are no atheists in donut holes?

Played (Changeling the Lost): Berkeley 94. Meetings with stupid vampires, tracking stupid vampires to their lair, discovery of magical defenses, plotting and scheming. Apparently the stupid vampire is also involved in the viral quest for the Grail, but nobody thinks that should get him any sympathy. Siddy casts “summon punk guitarist” by making dinner.

Read (art book): The Art of RamonN90 (RamonN90): I like his stuff on Artstation, so I threw him a few bucks for his artbook.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 143. Still putting off trying to get astronomy resource advice.