Author: Trip the Space Parasite

My brain spent all the time between when I got up to use the facilities and when the alarm went off going, “Shouldn’t the alarm have gone off by now? What if you missed it? You’ll be in so much trouble!”. Of course it went off exactly on time and I did not miss it, but by that time it was too late to get the sleep back.

Read: War From A Distant Sun (Anthony James): Missiles in space with gratuitous technobabble and extremely uninteresting aliens.

Read: War of the Maps (Paul McAuley): A lawman determined to get his criminal no matter what gods and ghosts interfere, among reconstructed humans on a megastructure in the far far future. Humans are still pretty terrible.

Words: Check, kinda.

I think having Monday as a WFH day was the right choice.

Read: Spindle (WR Gingell): Sleeping Beauty as high-magic fantasy instead of fairy tale. Strong Howl’s Moving Castle and Chrestomanci vibes, which is appropriate since the book is dedicated to Diana Wynne Jones. A lot is not explained, but I liked seeing Poly get through it anyway.

Read: Girl of Flesh and Metal (Alicia Ellis): An anti-tech corporate princess gets cyberware and everything is terrible. Good verisimilitude: maybe when it’s released the tech will have a slick interface, but until then it’s underpaid geeks opening up a command line to manually edit conf files.

Read: Boneland (Jeffrey Thomas): Alternate early-C20 history in which astral-projecting aliens give humans advanced bug-based technology to bribe them into being even more violently depraved than they would naturally. Grotesque and horrible.

Words: Check.

Jeremy and Rachel have a new small curly dog, who was initially very mistrustful but I won him over by a combination of not eating him and also giving him scritches. Doge victory!

Played: Grand finale of Edie’s D&D game before she and Hazel go off to college and find newer, better gamers instead of ones that tell the same jokes. We defeated the big enemy, did not set the entire world on fire (sorry Tobinel!), and ended on what I’m told is an Agents of SHIELD reference. Maybe we’ll pick back up next summer, but apparently now Dave is going to run Lancer.

Read: Crush (Svetlana Chmakova): Sequel to Awkward and Brave, following the tribulations of yet another 8th-grader seen in previous volumes. This is the one about crushes and romance and dating, but also mostly about friends and jerks and bullying and internet security and not knowing what to do about life.

Words: Check.

I was too sleepy to get up early enough to walk to shopping, but I did shop. Also oncall 13:30-19:30, but the customers were quiescent.

Played: Zoomwarts! Bella has a date! Also there was some stuff with mermaids and pirates and visibility cloaks and deadly magic fungus and humiliating Partha, but that’s not really important, is it?

Eaten: Italian pork stew, salad, green beans, all seasoned with friendship.

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 23-24: The End! Of the season, they have barely gathered the four dragons and there is apparently much much more manga. But as far as I know, there isn’t a second season of the anime yet. Maybe we all need to read the manga so Jus can squee with us. Definitely we need to figure out what to watch next.

Watched (but not by me): Kaleido Star 7. I had to play monkey in the middle with Ken and a shrieking Nonny.

Words: FAIL. I used up all my word brain on this and Zoomwarts notes.

Marith brought over pork chops and vegetables and garlic bread and it was all much better than anything I’ve been eating for the past however long.

Watched: Avatar: The Last Airbender 3.16-17: Katara’s field trip with Zuko, and the Ember Island Players

Watched: The Case Study of Vanitas 2: The vampire establishment doesn’t believe in the book, so now the odd couple are on a quest to save the maiden they already saved.

Read: Curses (Lish McBride): Starts as gender-swapped magitech-Victorian Beauty and the Beast, but then con artists and support groups and intrigue and terrible parents and daring raids. I quite liked it even though the main romance is het.

Read: Awkward and Brave (Svetlana Chmakova): Middle-school slice of life about friendship and courage and bullying and teamwork and competition and awkwardness and unnecessary STEM-humanities conflict and sunspots. I really liked it even though (or perhaps because) the digression I got started on during the writing challenge this spring and still haven’t finished editing is also about 8th-graders but is um not as realistic.

Words: check.

I made it home in plenty of time to game because the bus was just late enough that I could catch it instead of sadly watching it pull away, but I would have been in time even without.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Well, at least we found out what happened to the crew? That’s something, right?

Read: Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir): It was very much what it was, which I guess it not a surprise to anyone who’s heard of The Martian, but I liked where it went with the fundamental idea.

Read: Devil’s Candy vol 1 (Rem, Bikkuri): Many magic high-school manga leave me meh, but I liked this one. Possibly because although the characters are mostly doofuses, they’re sincere doofuses, or because the world-building notes are pro-knowledge/anti-superstition, or because eldritch horrors are definitely the best judges for a fashion show. Apparently it’s a webcomic, so I can read more without waiting for paper to happen.

Words: FAIL.

Not only do I have to office today, I have to stay late because I swapped with Coworker k. Ugh.

Read: A Fistful of Frost (Rebecca Chastain): There are many plot threads not resolved (not all of them related to the main character’s libido), but by the end of this book all the named characters have admitted the MC is good at her job, so possibly further books would be superfluous?

Read: Fall of the Terran Empire (Brian Jeffreys): Very “missiles in space”, not well written, has a cunning plan that is not enough plan for a whole book, villains lack dimensionality.

Words: hahaha no.

Now that the week of appointments and transitions is over, it’s time for a normal week where I have to work late on Mon-Tue, but also WFH Mon-Tue. So far, so good?

Listened: I keep meaning to listen to more podcasts, so I started with Ludonarrative Dissidents, which is famous game designers analyzing games chosen by the Kickstarter backers to see what they are trying to do and whether they succeed. Episode 1: Blades in the Dark. If I didn’t already know about the game, I guess it would have been useful, but they did not have a lot of insights I had not already heard. Wum.

Read: Stillfleet Quickstart: So far in the future that Earth’s continents have changed, scavenging among the semi-comprehensible ruins of advanced and extinct civilizations. Fairly abstract system. It’s more focused than Numenera, though, in that the all the PCs start out working for the Honourable Company, which is trying to rebuild its network of teleportation routes to trade partners and exploitable hulks after a multi-decade technical difficulty. The Co is also the primary antagonist, because fuck capitalism. This game is apparently being both written and released in small chunks, so who knows when the full thing will be available.

Words: check, even though listening to podcasts is somehow not the same as writing.

I did some more walking and attempted some grocery shopping, but keeping things in stock is not really Safeway’s strong point so I went home and died in a pit all day.

Read: Hell’s Heroes (Darren Shan): The end! Does everybody die? Probably you can guess, since not much about this series was very surprising. (Apparently that’s the kind of books my new post-pandemic brain can handle.) But if I ever wondered why humans are so messed up, this series pretty much answers the question. It’s all about horrible monsters torturing and murdering humans, and the protagonists becoming monstrous (sometimes figuratively) to fight them, and no one bats an eye at it being labelled a kids’ book, but if an unclothed human was described in as much detail as one of the monsters, or any sexual act described in as much detail as one of the violent acts, the book would get chucked into the 18+ bin immediately.

Read: Mars Red vol 1 (Bun-O Fujisawa, KarakaraKemuri): Taishō (1920s) secret government vampires, and the intrepid girl reporters who will get into trouble trying to find them.

Words: Check.

Cleaners came extra-early today, but I still got to sleep in compared to yesterday, so whatever. It did mean I was up and about early enough to walk to grocery shopping and make Walkr happy.

Marith was dead from capitalism today, so I went to visit Ken and Ayse and Jus and Nonny by myself, with no Zoomwarts.

Played: Dominion (with Guilds), Super Mario Party River Survival Mode, Murder Mystery. Jus won at Dominion, which is probably Ken’s fault. I bet she’s genetic.

Eaten: Chicken, eggplant, shishito peppers, balsamic-drizzled tomatoes.

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 21-22: The big pirate battle!

Watched: Kaleido Star 6: The Jonathan episode!

Read: Dark Calling (Darren Shan): Now we know what’s going on, cosmically speaking, and why 8×8, but it’s not going to help any of the main characters. In fact, several of them have already not been helped.

Words: FAIL.

Back to the office. Moderately productive. I thought Marith asked for food, so I took some to her, but actually she only wanted sleep.

Read: Demon Apocalypse, Death’s Shadow, and Wolf Island (Darren Shan): Various characters accept their horrific destinies, various other characters die, psychological damage continues to accumulate. Now the survivors have some idea what they’re up against, which is somehow even worse than they thought.

Words: check.

Good thing I’m working from home again, because there was an even larger all-hands meeting early this morning. As usual, little information was conveyed. Then the customers attacked, but I cruelly abandoned my coworkers to go have cells sucked out of my neck. It was not particularly painful, except the part where I have to wait a week to find out if my thyroid is trying to kill me.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Yep, Iapetus is full of Nopes. One of them shot the Chi in the good body, but he survived. Njall and GML found some creepy stuff in the ship, and are going to poke it with a stick next time.

Read: The Maid I Hired Recently is Mysterious vol 1 (Wakame Konbu): The maid is hot and good at her job and works for only room and board, so the orphaned young master is certain she’s up to something. Embarrassment ensues. The maid probably is mysterious, since her eyes and a select few of her emoting effects are printed in reddish-purple instead of black and white.

Read: Bec and Blood Beast (Darren Shan): More backstory, then more modern consequences involving madness, body horror, violence, and death.

Words: FAIL

Early meeting for the new boss3 to introduce herself and tell us why the teams who are under her are under her (but not why the teams that obviously should be under her aren’t), how we are vital to the success of the company, etc. I mean, she’s not wrong, but I am, as always, skeptical that it will make any difference. As always, we’ll see what happens in practice.

Then I went to take another step in the journey of Tooth Implant. I now have a thing stuck to the implant, and the implant is well stuck in, so in a few weeks I will get measured for the crown, and sometime after that maybe get the crown installed. Then I will be able to chew on the right side of my mouth, if I remember how.

Since the dentist is even further from the office than my apartment, I made this a WFH day even though Wednesday will normally be an office day. Also I got Coworker K to switch days with me so that I can do the late thing on the days when I am WFH and not have to make the cursèd late commute from the office, and also so I can keep gaming.

Read: Bayonet Dawn (Scott Moon): Military SF, marines rather than navy, with mysterious aliens and lost siblings and apparently some kind of conspiracy, but it’s just not well-written. Multiple viewpoints are random and jarring, character motivations are dubious, I’m not sure the military works that way, etc.

Words: Check.

I was afraid the customer would never let go, but I guess it was like 2am for them so they eventually did and I got to leave at what I hope is a reasonable time for days when I don’t have to stay late. Despite the transit app having become useless, I found a route that should get me home by 19:00 (later if I stop for a burger). That’s not terrible, I guess.

Read: Demon Thief and Slawter (Darren Shan): Backstory of one of the major characters from Lord Loss, then back to current doom, with bonus magic and psychological trauma and death. Especially death.

Read: A Fistful of Evil (Rebecca Chastain): An aimless and horny 20-something gets a job hunting monsters, which she would have been trained for if she hadn’t refused to use her magic powers since they first grew in, which means she is a hapless n00b but her heart is definitely in the right place and she does her best despite being surrounded by hot guys. It’s supposed to be humorous, but is extra-funny because it is set in a suburb of Sacramento where I have often vacationed.

Words: FAIL. Technically I had time, just not any energy.

Normally I will be in the office Wed/Thu/Fri, but this week it’s Mon-Tue-Fri due to appointments scheduled before the capitalist classes randomly changed the structure of a work week, and because Boss A is on spawning leave (and just spawned today!), Monday is also a day when I have to do the thing at 18:30, which means I didn’t get home until 210239 o’clock. This is not okay.

Read: Demon Slayer vol 1 (Koyoharu Gotouge): Generic shōnen adventure about getting stronger to defend the weak, which I guess explains why it’s so popular. Would almost certainly be better if the demon-infected sister was the protagonist instead of a comatose motivator for the male hero.

Read: Lord Loss (Darren Shan): A teenaged git is traumatized by his family being eaten by demons, but eventually finds out what is up with that, and other mysteries of his ancient and weird lineage. The first of a series, but the preview of the next seems to be about someone else, so who knows.

Read: Pillar of Heaven (Kitty Shields): A barista gets a job offer she can’t refuse which draws her into the underworld of magic, psionics, and really obnoxious rich people. She must save the day.

Read: The Library of the Dead (TL Huchu): A young medium tries to make a living and also do the right thing in near-future, post-collapse Edinburgh. Lots of creepy magic and hustling and poverty and the occasional high-speed wheelchair chase.

Words: FAIL.

It is too hot out.

Played: Edie’s D&D game, in Edie’s new house. The new place is about 900% less annoying to get to, and probably also about 900% larger. It has the same combined living room-dining room-kitchen with island as the Petterson’s new place, so it has a very familiar vibe despite being full of boxes. Also it was full of gaming munchies and ridiculous refrigerators and gamers (but not Rue, they were at camp). After a lot of house talk from the grownups, we played what turns out to be the penultimate episode of Edie’s game, in which our attempts to learn the gnolls’ side of the story are in vain and we just have to murder them. We did find a larger camp, with what looks like a gang boss of gang bosses of gnolls, so probably that will be the climactic fight of the campaign.

Words: Check, although the way I’m counting words for editing is not very rigorous.

I really do mean to walk to grocery shopping, but maybe not until fall.

Played: Zoomwarts! This time it was NPCs dueling over Harry and Bella got to be mature. But she still owes the mermaid two arms or a huge pile of jewels, and the new potions professor is still up to something, and the Holiday Party is still impending!

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 19-20: Yona’s primary stat is definitely Bravery, or maybe Loyalty.

Eaten: Thai food! Ken is not here to cook, he is off hiking somewhere, so we ordered in.

Played: Super Mario Party, or at least like six of the zillion minigames. I was terrible at them, which is only to be expected from an old person who rarely plays video games, but it was fun.

Read: Over the Woodward Wall (A Deborah Baker): It’s a little like Oz, only more Seanan McGuire and philosophical and faerie bargains, and also it pretty much ends halfway through the story and the next book won’t be out until this fall!

Words: FAIL.

WFH today, although possibly I shouldn’t have. I have Mon-Tue-Fri next week, though, so it’s not like I won’t suffer for capitalism.

Read: Star Eater (Kitty Shields): A teenaged boy has a void demon and a (literal?) star living inside him, which gives him powers and ruins his life. He runs into monster mobsters, cute girls, cute boys, criminal conspiracies, unexpected crushes, chemistry, and other problems. I liked this, although it really needed to be edited at various levels.

Read: Bofuri * I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense vol 1 (Jirou Oimoto, Yuumikan, Koin): For a change, the character is not trapped in the VRMMORPG, she logs out all the time, but she found a broken part of the system and is nigh-invulnerable so doesn’t have to take anything seriously. Probably funnier to video gamers?

Words: check!

Yep, that was terrible. Being in the office was fine, even (though I hate to admit it) more productive, but four hours of commuting on top of a nine and a half hour workday is just too much, and the party with office party food did not make up for it. (Parties rarely make up for anything, IME.) Thursday is my turn in the barrel, so most days should not be this egregious

Read: Call of the Night vol 2 (Kotoyama): Our disaffected teen is probably not actually getting any closer to falling in love with his obnoxious vampire friend, but they are definitely friends. In fact, he may be up to three whole friends by the end of the volume!

Read: New Star Rising (Cameron Cooper): Unimaginative space opera. I don’t think the author knows how time or space work, maybe not numbers at all.

Words: continuing my streak of “technically not nothing”.

Welp, looks like I have to go into the office tomorrow. This will be terrible.

Read: The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman): High magic low fantasy, but it’s low fantasy because of the viewpoint character. His traveling companions are on a heroic, possibly even laudable, quest through a world that really needs fixing after three wars against genocidal goblins, but Kinch is not epic. It’s an interesting world, though.

Words: barely.

There’s an official get-back-under-the-thumb-of-the-boss-class event on Thursday, and it looks like I need to be in the office during business hours (or more) Wed-Fri from next week onward. This may not be consistent with gaming.

Read: Call of the Night vol 1 (Kotoyama): A disaffected teenager meets an obnoxious vampire while wandering the night streets, and decides he wants to be a vampire too. Unfortunately, this version of vampirism requires him to fall in love with her, and she is pretty obnoxious.

Read: King of Attolia (Megan Whalen Turner): Not as twisty as the previous books, but then we know too much about Gen by now to take anything at face value. Costis doesn’t, though. Poor Costis.

Read: White Trash Warlock (David R Slayton): Urban fantasy with extreme doom for minor characters, and moderate doom (with bonus family drama) for major characters. Being gay and having Second Sight in Oklahoma is Not So Great.

Words: check, barely.

Apparently we are supposed to be back in the office for at least three days a week starting on Thursday. Fuck capitalism.

Read: Queen of Attolia (Megan Whalen Turner): I tried to read this before and failed, but I blame the pandemic, because it is actually pretty awesome. I’m not sure what I can say that’s not a spoiler, though.

Words: FAIL. I have no excuse, I’m just dumb.

No gaming, our GM is unavailable, possibly due to moving house. Instead I shambled my way up to Mountain View to get my ichor sucked out before my doctor appointment tomorrow. Then I shambled back home to be completely useless all day.

Read: Jack Four (Neal Asher): Polity demilitarized zone, horrible humans, horrible bug monsters, amnesia, the old ultraviolence, fairly predictable twist.

Words: check, I guess.

I successfully went shopping, although I did not walk there, so that was like an accomplishment but not really? Also I ate a lunch that was not horrifying.

Played: Zoomwarts. A new love interest for Bella! A new reason to skulk about the secret passages of Hogwarts! Catalog shopping! Lizard drama!

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 17-18: You know, he has a point. And his boss is awesome.

Watched (by somebody, not me): Kaleido Star 5. I had to play Bloons TD 6 with Nonny and his parents.

Read: Dear Noman vol 2 (Neji): The end! It was fundamentally a ghost story, so the ending was always going to be sad, but it was hopeful too.

Words: Check, ish.

Jus’s virtual Shakespeare Camp presented their abridged video of the subplot of Twelfth Night (there are only four of them!), which was extremely cute. Jus played two characters who were distinct (Maria and Olivia), and Malvolio was thoroughly pranked.

After that, I went to a medical facility to have my thyroid ultrasonicated, which involved lying down in a warm, dark room and therefore almost put me to sleep. Later I will find out if my thyroid is mutating uncontrollably.

Watched: Avatar the Last Airbender 3.13-14: Prison break episodes!

Watched: The Case Study of Vanitas 1: Vampires, top hats, airships, mysterious maladies, extreme smugness.

Words: Check.

I can’t complain too much about work with a two-day work week, but I can be completely useless! Surprise: it’s new coworker S’s last day, she has to be a SAHM. Less surprise: boss A is on maternity leave after today, more or less.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. EP is really about 80% careful preparation by weight, but we managed to recover some of the casualties of the group the person we’re looking for was with, and got a little information out of them. Also, we avoided getting eaten by the horrible Exsurgent monster, so yay us.

Read: I Swear I Won’t Bother You Again! vol 1 (Reina Soratani, Haru Harukawa): Kind of like My Life as a Villainess but without isekai elements. While rotting in prison for the attempted murder of her illegitimate half-sister, a noblewoman wishes she had it all to do over again, and finds herself a year in the past. Her plan to help, rather than hinder, her half-sister and the prince getting together so she can retreat to a convent to do no more harm is definitely getting derailed by the fact that social interactions are a chaotic system.

Read: Gearbreakers (Zoe Hana Mikuta): Cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic mecha story of love, revenge, betrayal, murder, and other fun stuff. The technical bits are pretty ridiculous (because mecha) but it is very dramatic. If there were less torture, I might recommend it to Jus.

Words: FAIL.

Back from Roseville vacation (no Roseville actually vacationed in). There were friends and food and Jus got to see Elyssa again and swimming and Josh is TWENTY how is that even possible?! and board games and swimming and pirate fireworks over the back fence and Kate’s hair is so short and I only blew up the toilet once and too much heat.

Played on vacation: Roll for the Galaxy (I still suck at it), Terraforming Mars (I… surprisingly came in second?), Codenames (Jus had the insights!).

Read on vacation: Lockdown Tales (Neal Asher): Short stories, Polity or post-Polity, mostly full of violence and depravity and robots and sometimes aliens.

Read on vacation: Drifter’s Folly (Glynn Stewart): Fourth in the series about humans trying to put galactic civilization back together after destroying the alien empire, following up on the great betrayal of book three.

Read today: Artifact Space (Miles Cameron): Space opera with a plucky teenager escaping rape-culture horror to fake her way onto a giant spaceship and save the day repeatedly despite alien economic intrigue and imposter syndrome.

Words on vacation: NONE.

Words today: FAIL. I did read through what I wrote on one project, and it’s pretty terrible, so maybe not writing is for the best.