Author: Trip the Space Parasite

After getting to bed at 2, I had to get up at 7 to start on-call for work, but then I was able to go back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that turning my phone alerts all the way up would definitely wake me up if anything happened. But nothing did. Eventually I got up and read more Cursed Princess Club.

Read: Love & Other Natural Disasters (Misa Sugiura): More high-school lesbian romance, this time a Japanese-American girl with a messed-up life that she is not dealing well with even on her summer in San Francisco. This manifests by coming up with rom-com plans to make everyone’s love life better, and also being extremely dumb. I guess that’s on-brand for teenagers?

Read: Failed Princesses vol 3 (Ajiichi): Looks like “I don’t have feelings like that for [her]” is just as true as every reader suspected.

Words: 612.

Didn’t do much during the day, although at least my shopping expedition yesterday gave me the knowledge to warn other people that Trader Joe’s closes early on NYE so they should go shopping sooner rather than later.

In the evening I got dressed in normal-person clothes and transited over to Monkeycat Towers for a party. Earl and Cat are hiding from Omicron, and Marith has to start work at 03:00, so it was a pretty small party, but cozy and full of friends and feasting and kitties and geeking about Cursed Princess Club.

Eaten: Cheese fondue, roast duck (by Ken, who doesn’t even like duck, but does love Ayse), and chocolate fondue with cocoa cream cheese balls. None of it was healthy, but a bit of indulgence to see off 2021 is okay. Right?

Played: Laser tag, lightsaber thwacking, noncompetitive Dizios, and Roll for the Galaxy. Jus won RftG, crushing me like a space insect.

Words: FAIL. I could have been writing all day before the party, but instead I was lounging in bed and then reading CPC.

Had to deal with an actual customer case today. Shouldn’t they all be on vacation? But at least it’s virtual Friday.

Read: Drama (Raina Telgemeier): Graphic novel about drama, the middle-school club, and drama, middle-school feelings. Crushes, dumb boys, their dumb girlfriends, special effects, and bonus emergency singing.

Read: The Stonekeeper’s Curse, The Cloud Searchers, and The Last Council (Kazu Kibuishi): Volumes 2-4 of the “Amulet” graphic novel series. Our heroes find out more, including that grownups are kind of useless and also there’s a lot of doom, but Emily trains her powers and Navin gets to pilot more vehicles.

Words: 977 words of revision, somehow.

Ugh, not just back to work, but two hours earlier than usual. Fortunately the customers were dormant all day. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Read: The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor (Shaenon K Garrity, Christopher Baldwin): Graphic novel about a girl who reads too many gothic romances and stumbles into a universe where her genre knowledge is useful. Pretty amusing even though I knew nothing about gothic romances.

Read: Everyone Knows You Shouldn’t Rescue Maidens In Alleyways (AUGUST): Sequel to Even a Hero Needs a Vacation Every Now and Then, in which the hidden hero continues to attract trouble and also accumulate beautiful young women as employees in his tavern. Evil plots are definitely afoot.

Read: Chesire Crossing (Andy Weir, Sarah Andersen): Dorothy, Wendy, and Alice meet as teenagers and find out that they have actual dimension-travel powers. Swashbuckling interdimensional adventure ensues! Alice is the delinquent, Wendy is the tomboy, Dorothy is the sensible one, the adult supervision is somewhat terrifying. The villain teamup is not as terrifying as they want to think, but not bad.

Read: The Stonekeeper (Kazu Kibuishi): Two kids get sucked into a strange fantasy universe with creepy mysterious art and have to save their mom. First of like eight volumes, so there will probably be a lot more plot than that.

Read: “Time Capsule”, “The Captain’s Log”, and “New Girl” (Svetlana Chmakova): Three shorts about other characters from Awkward, Brave, and Crush. Very cute.

Read: Let’s Play #1-150 (Leeanne M. Krecic aka Mongie): Nominally a romance webcomic, and not not romance, but really more about the characters learning and growing as people (despite a lot of mistakes) than pairing up. The heart meter that sometimes gets shown for the female lead is definitely not correlated with any romance. Sadly all the romances so far are het, but I like all the characters anyway. Even the brash, excessively busty, excessively made-up fashion blogger who initially appears to be an antagonist is very awesome.

Words: 283, which I guess is okay for having gotten up at 7:00 and also being very dumb.

Another day of complete mega-uselessness! The most I accomplished all day was to walk next door and yoink back the lamp I gave Marith so I could have light in my computer corner.

Watched: My Cousin Vinny: Someone mentioned this on the slack and I remembered I had never seen it, so I made a streaming service show it to me. I hated everyone except Mona Lisa, although I was feeling a little more charitable toward Vinny by the end. I liked the movie despite that, though, although some of the things we thought were funny in the 90s…

Words: 577.

I was not much more useful today than yesterday, but it was an actual holiday, so that’s okay, I guess? Marith and I went over to Monkeycat Towers to help them eat Christmas food and play with presents. It was extremely nice despite Nonny being full of mucus.

Eaten: A very nice ham, many leeks, assorted other vegetables, coffee panettone.

Played: Othello, Gnomes at Night, Nerf target shooting, and something that involved running around yelling “there’s a ghost! get it!”.

Words: 388.

Almost a double on-call shift today, so I couldn’t really go places or do things, but apparently going two places and doing two things yesterday was about all I get this week anyway. I mean, I guess I resolved some browser tabs, but that’s not much of an accomplishment.

Read: The Okay Witch (Emma Steinkellner): Graphic novel about a middle-schooler who finds out that she’s a witch and then has oodles of trouble with her family, her family’s enemies, her own insecurities, possessed cats, etc. It’s hard being thirteen.

Read: Even a Hero Needs a Vacation Every Now and Then (AUGUST): Light novel about the Great Hero of Prophecy going into retirement as a nonmagical tavernkeeper after defeating the demon lord, and how trouble does not stop finding him, because people suck.

Words: 329.

Finally Jus and Ayse and I made it to the kitten café, and kittens are wonderful! Sadly most of the kittens that came over to say hi (because we are the right sort of people who sit in the cafe) are already spoken for, but Rotini lovingly savaged my arm, and Bullet climbed all over me and snorfled my ear extensively. I wanted to get to know Katya, who is orange and not stripy and quite chill, but our time was up and we had to let other people adore the kittens. Perhaps we will go again next week.

Kittens give life, so I was energetic enough to walk a few kilometers to Trader Joe’s, which was only out of one thing I wanted (not counting the things that are never in stock because 2021)

Watched: Cowboy Bebop 3: Spike is composed of 117% self-destructive decisions by weight, but Jet is not a whole lot better.

Words: 320.

Today was going to be Kitten Café, but Jus banged up her foot, so instead it will be tomorrow, and today will be lying in bed forever until I DIE. But I will be a warm and cozy corpse.

Read: Burning Bright (Melissa McShane): In an alternate England, a young lady’s father tells her she can either marry the title he picks out for her or spend her life locked in the attic, so she takes her strongest-ever fire powers and joins the Navy. Despite it being the Napoleonic wars, she gets sent to the Caribbean to incinerate pirates. Adventure and (sadly het) romance ensue.

Read: Failed Princesses vol 2 (Ajiichi): The leads are already sacrificing social standing for each other, but additional potential love interests are appearing! Oh no!

Watched: Sorcery in the Big City: A ridiculous OAV about a sorceress bringing things to life at Christmas in NYC, a teddy bear becoming a superhero, a sympathetic NYPD officer, ancient evils awakening, and other such nonsense.

Words: 571 words about kittens, although they seem a little substandard. 227 words of revision, but I think they’re all pretty much wrong and need to be thrown away.

Yay, it’s virtual Friday! Boo, I have extra on-call on calendar Friday!

Read: Dead Jack and the Pandemonium Device (James Aquilone): Humorous fantasy about a zombie PI in an NYC-flavored world of demons, monsters, and undead. Alas, the main character is very unsympathetic: zombies might be people too, but that doesn’t preclude them from being narcissistic assholes.

Read: Say Yes To The Cheerleader (Abby Crofton): High-school lesbian thinks the head cheerleader who she has crushed on since forever might be flirting with her. Spoiler: totally. After going “but she’s so pretty! and I thought she was straight!” for a suitable number of pages, she listens to literally everyone in her life who all ship them. There is one argument, which is soon resolved, and no actual conflict. I guess this is what they mean by “fluff”?

Words: 281 revision.

Monday is better when you know the week is only two days long.

Read: The Henna Wars (Adiba Jaigirdar): Bengali high-school lesbian in an Irish all-girl Catholic school falls for her archenemy’s Brazilian cousin and has to face racism, homophobia, cultural appropriation, and capitalism. She has a pretty good sister to help her get through it, though.

Read: Evasion (Glynn Stewart): Unusually for milSF, the hero is gay. He and his increasingly-serious boyfriend and their crew get targeted by organized crime, which of course is a massive mistake on the crime lords’ part. Also they become space dads to a rescued kid. This is a spinoff of one of the author’s series I didn’t read, set in a universe where the tech level declines precipitously toward the fringes of settled space where tramp freighters are viable.

Words: FAIL. I am very dumb.

My fridge calendar for scheduling the next two weeks now extends into 2022 aka “2020 part III”. At least several of the dates are circled to indicate no work, but some have notes reminding me to show up for work two hours early, and there’s also three shifts of on-call.

Read: Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit (Jaye Robin Brown): A very out high-school lesbian from Atlanta has to more to a small town and spend her senior year in the closet to avoid conflict with her new stepmother’s close-minded family. Of course it takes her about fifteen minutes to fall in love and then the drama and deception and misery start.

Words: net 360 words of revision.

No side effects, except a minor headache. I hope this means my immune system is quietly competent, and not slacking off. “New antigen? Throw it on the pile, we’ll get around to it. Probably.”

Omicron is not so prevalent (yet) that Marith and I cannot visit Monkeycat Towers, so we did.

Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.1-2: Rewatching because now Jus is old enough to appreciate it.

Watched: Fruits Basket 2.1-2: Ayse and Ken have only seen season 1, so we are rewatching it with them, and then eventually we will all watch season 3 together.

Eaten: Delicious Thai food! Also like one seasonal ginger cookie. It was good!

Played: Zoomwarts. Since we changed the schedule to game when Marith is both tired and allergic, maybe it was best that all her characters were petrified? (No, it was not best.) But Bella continued to be heroic despite the IMMENSE DOOM closing in from every side and now she has an excuse to look for Harry.

Words: 208. I think I used all my brain socializing.

Went and got my booster today, right before a weekend when I have no on-call, so I won’t be missing work if I get horrible side effects. It will be 100% my own time I lose. What a good employee.

Read: It’s Not Like It’s A Secret (Misa Sugiura): A Japanese-American high-school lesbian with a horrible mother moves to a new school, finds new friends, tries hard to ruin her life, discovers family secrets, and eventually comes out.

Read: Ghostflame (Alex Raizman): Second in the series about a dragon’s adopted daughter fighting alien invaders. Had plenty of great ideas, but holy crap did this book need editing at various levels from proofreading on up.

Words: 481.

Too many meetings. Nobody even likes meetings.

Apparently the fine needle is not enough, so the medical apparatus needs to take core samples of my thyroid, because nodules. This is sounding alarming geological. I hope the next step isn’t strip-mining.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Vivian’s adventure concluded with moderate bloodshed and no existential threats to the solar system, so we’ll call that a win. It’s nice when some Firewall alerts turn out to be just regular shenanigans and not TITAN shenanigans. That was probably the last game of the year, since Dave is out next Thursday and the Thursday after.

Read: Gürlz (Serge Birault): Cartoony style. Young women in modern or postapocalyptic clothes. Improbably large melee weapons with eyeballs and bad attitudes. The author as a vaguely octopoid blob, sometimes with his wife/dog/childblobs. Skull-faced robots, or their decapitated heads. Much more cheerful than this sounds!

Words: FAIL.

Watched: Cowboy Bebop ep 2: Spike really is a complete asshole. I don’t know why Jet puts up with him. At least he’s not as much of a loser as Vicious, though. Never mind the Teddy Bomber.

Read: The Spaceship Next Door (Gene Doucette): A spaceship lands in a small Massachusetts town. Years later, doom ensues, mostly centered around one teenaged girl. The doom was good, the main character was good, but I feel like the description of the aliens confused philosophical levels.

Read: The Night Sheriff (Phil Foglio): Yes, that Phil Foglio. The story of the horrible phobophagic monster who protects that world’s version of Disneyland, and how his past comes back to haunt him. It’s weird to see Foglio in prose, but it was pretty clearly the same mind as Girl Genius.

Read: “My Name is Benny” (J Rose): Teaser novella I ended up with for some series. Not very interesting, heavy on threats of rape, and in dire need of proofreading.

Words: 713.

Played: Lancer. I mean, mostly we talked about kids these days and how the world is going to hell and made dreadful jokes, but also our characters found a crater and a crashed spaceship and a giant cockroach-base and a mad scientist. Rumble!

Read: Chamomile #1-243: 20-something retail slice of life, with only minor surreal elements (like brush-eating hair), very cute.

Read: Looking For Group (Alexis Hall): What if the hot elf girl in WoW Totally Fictional MMORPG turns out to be played by a guy, but you still kind of like him, and everything is great until you listen to your asshole friend too much and screw everything up? Not at all deep, but cute.

Words: 689, but I’m not sure they’re right.

Visited: Ayse and Ken and Jus and Nonny and Dave, because everyone is vaccinated now, and some people are even boosted. Yay, human contact! Grown-up conversation!

Played: Zoomwarts. The PCs went into the plumbing to show the teachers where the basilisk lair was, and I let the dice do their thing. Now Bella is frozen, somewhere under the castle, with a bunch of petrified or half-dead people and limited firewood. I wonder how she’s going to get out of this?

Eaten: The turkey chili of happiness.

Watched: Nothing, but maybe we have a plan for next time.

Words: 364 words about kittens.

Yay, we made it to Friday. Somehow, despite the cleaners having to reschedule so I was up two hours early this morning. I didn’t need that brain anyway.

Watched: Cowboy Bebop ep 1. It’s grimy and pretty much everybody dies, so they got the aesthetic perfectly. Casting is also good, at least for the main trio.

Read: Ascension (Minister Faust): Random school teacher from Edmonton gets swept up into the doings of aliens from counter-Earth, complete with unspeakably hot alien princess, urchin in need of rescue, and super-powered warrior monks with glowing weapons. First of a trilogy.

Read: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (Judy Blume): Probably revolutionary back when puberty was a mystery never to be spoken of. Both the writing style and the protagonist’s thinking seem young compared to more recent books about characters of a similar age, but maybe that’s because she’s not being dragged to a magical realm in need of saving.

Read: Hover Girls (GDBee): Enthusiastic magical girl plus reluctant magical girl vs flying fish monsters! Complete.

Words: 618 words of actual writing! I have established a reason for my MC to hate the person she went to for help, so her problem doesn’t have to be addressed completely and sensibly. Writing in first person again after writing intensively in close third for a month is weird.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Ken is just back from San Diego, so Vivian started her adventure and Ken’s character will get involved in the mess next week. (Actually, his character is probably one of the people we’re trying to rescue, so technically they’re already involved.)

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 16 (Tomohito Oda): Cultural festival, and Komi is not the princess in the play. Well, not the play where the princess has lines. Also, Manbagi seems to have just realized the shape of her doom.

Words: 269 words about kittens.

Read: A Marvellous Light (Freya Marske): Early C20(?) hidden world of English magic plus gay romance and perfidious conspiracy. The magic has enough detail to not seem too handwavy, and the romance is steamy. Except for the two leads and one of their sisters, all aristocrats can go straight to the guillotine, magic or not.

Words: 1136, split across two projects. I’m not sure I used pomodoros properly, but apparently it was better than not using them at all.

Because we lost coworker k from the on-call rotation, and coworker S was lost before ever joining it, I had additional on-call fun today. It was not actually fun, mostly it was an excuse to not leave the apartment and waste my entire day trying to manage my browser tabs. It seems Sisyphean, but it took me years to build up this list, it’s not going to get wrangled in a day or two.

Let’s see if I can link my favorite songs of 2021 (according to Spotify) works: CLICK HERE FOR K-POP (and some other stuff, I guess).

Read: “Sand” (Jasmin Kirkbridge): Generational trauma made concrete in metaphor. Humans, how do they even?

Read: Failed Princesses vol 1 (Ajiichi): Otaku girl is nice to gal girl when she gets dumped, and they become friends. Seems likely that “she’s so cute” will soon evolve into yuri smooches.

Words: 465. No pomodoros, only browser tabs.

Ugh, customer, was waiting until I was trying to do something useful with my afternoon and then sending a bunch of messages that required nothing but acknowledgement really the best use of your Saturday? None of that couldn’t have waited until Monday.

Played: Zoomwarts, finally! I forgot how everything works, but at least there was a flood of rats. That’s something, right? Right?

Words: 554 words about kittens. I got distracted by trying to manage my thousands of browser tabs.

Why is it December already? Is this really it for 2020 II Pandemic Boogaloo?

Read: Cytonic (Brandon Sanderson): Yeah, it’s pretty much entirely Spensa’s fault that aliens think humans are bloodthirsty, isn’t it? But it gets results, including finding out the secret behind the setting’s big bad.

Read: Detached #1-55 (Angela Oddling): Whimsical and gritty? I really like it, but it’s definitely strange.

Words: 874 words, and research in previous writing, but I feel like I’m writing too much of this thing in particular.