Had to get up an hour earlier than usual for all-hands song and dance. Yay us, boo them.
Read: Bridge of Souls (Victoria Schwab): I feel like this volume’s villain raises questions that should be answered, but it seems to be the conclusion of the trilogy.
Words: FAIL. Accomplished nothing useful after work, eventually decided to try going to bed at a sensible time so I can get up and go to Roseville tomorrow.
Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Because this is a game that does not have mechanics for flashbacks (and because Kelsey had been drinking all day), we spent most of the session discussing preparations for Iapetus, but did get there and see what we’re going in to by the end.
Read: Tunnel of Bones (Victoria Schwab): Our main character and her ghost go to Paris, which is also extremely haunted, and find even more terrible ghosts there, but at least they have someone to phone for advice. Pity about the reception in the catacombs.
Read: Drugstore in Another World vol 2 (Kennoji, Eri Haruno): Unnecessary drama, some mod-cons. Probably not worth continuing.
Words: FAIL.
Read: Half a Soul (Olivia Atwater): A young lady with only half a soul (which produced symptoms that look a lot like autism) tries to make the world a better place and also find love in alternate Regency England. A very anti-wealth, anti-war, and anti-cultural appropriation story, with faeries and an obnoxious magician.
Read: City of Ghosts (Victoria Schwab): A 12-year-old girl has secret ghost-interacting powers, a secret ghost sidekick, and parents that unwittingly drag her to the most haunted spots they can find (in this case, Edinburgh).
Read: The Border Keeper (Kerstin Hall): A mysterious and deeply suspicious visitor comes to the immortal guardian of the border between the mortal world and the realms of the gods, and causes a lot of trouble. Mythic and fantastical.
Words: check. This is more or less the end of the thing that distracted me from my stated goal for the writing challenge. I guess now I have to figure out how to produce a second draft. Should I edit the text I have? Should I rewrite it from scratch, knowing what I know now? Should I delete it and pretend it never happened?
Wait, is this year really almost half over?! WTF, I hoped for more from each of my few remaining years!
Read: Blood Tally (Brian McClellan): Sequel to Uncanny Collateral, our part-troll collections agent and his snarky ring get tangled up in another surprisingly important affair
Read: Death of an Irish Mummy (Catie Murphy): Third in Kit’s “Dublin Driver” series, and the main character is already taking a lot of grief for having dead bodies turn up. I’m surprised the cops don’t just throw her in jail whenever somebody in Dublin is murdered, to keep her from getting involved.
Read: A Pilgrimage of Swords (Anthony Ryan): Sword and sorcery, a protagonist with a horrible past and a cursed sword, monsters, dead gods, distant lands with strange customs.
Read: The Kraken’s Tooth (Anthony Ryan): More sword and sorcery. The main character might feel bad about his bloodstained past, but he’s still awfully hard on places he passes through.
Words: Check, barely.
Read: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London (Garth Nix): Fairly standard urban fantasy based on British myth and legend, set in 1983 because London in that year has special significance to the author, with a punk art student protagonist and a genderqueer love interest. Doesn’t stretch the bounds of the genre, but I found it fairly charming.
Read: Uncanny Collateral (Brian McClellan): Modern urban fantasy in the seedy underworld of soul debt collectors. Part-troll bruiser protagonist in over his head with only a snarky magic item and a web of dodgy contacts to help him survive.
Words: check.
Played: Edie’s D&D game. Jeremy and Rachel were doing something non-gaming-related, but Edie is perfectly capable of feeding gamers on her own and also sending creepy-crawlies to ambush PCs just because they’re completely incapable of remaining quiet when interesting mushrooms and flammable deadwood are around. We also found the gnolls that are oppressing our new friends the thri-kreen, and they don’t seem to have their own side of the story to tell unless you count grunting and howling, so I guess we need to deal harshly with them. We did get a prisoner, at least, so we can interrogate it next session, which will be at the new Gollub place much closer to Dave and I. In fact, after going to Palo Alto for gaming for like twenty years, I think this was the last time we will make that trek. The end of an era!
Read: The Tale of the Outcasts vol 1 (Makoto Hoshino): A mostly-invisible demon and an exploited urchin girl become friends in Victorian England.
Words: FAIL. What kind of excuse is “used up all energy going to gaming in Palo Alto” anyway?
The cleaners came and cleaned Marith’s old room. Now I could use it for something, if I were competent and energetic. But I’m not, so I went grocery shopping and ate some lunch and gave Marith her swamp cooler, and eventually went to Ken and Ayse’s. I had not realized it before, but Truffle has sporadic white hairs in her black coat to go with the white spot on her tummy, so she is a Night Sky Kitten!
Played: Zoomwarts. I should probably have sent in a Death Eater with a wand to focus things, but Bella was sufficiently oppressed, I think. The lizards got some leads on how to get arms for the mermaid, at least.
Watched: Yona of the Dawn 15-16: Uh oh, the new king is surprisingly competent!
Played: Squirt gun battle! Nonny finished me off by emptying the magazine of one of the large squirt guns over me, so I was pretty much the soggiest. I had to borrow a towel to sit on before Marith would let me ride in her car again.
Not watched by me: Kaleido Star 4. Jus and Marith and maybe Dave watched it, though, so that’s fine.
Words: check, somehow.
Yay, it’s Friday. But now I have a weekend full of stuff. I think weekends should be longer.
Read: Black Sun (Rebecca Roanhorse): Epic fantasy in a secondary world based off pre-Columbian Americas. Giant crows, the revenge of those whose customs were swept away to bring about the current enlightened age, anti-mermaid prejudice, and DOOOOOM.
Read: Star Eater (Kerstin Hall): Young woman vs dystopian society, but at least it’s a cannibal magic dystopia with bonus body horror that she must bring crashing down.
Words: check.
Felt reasonably productive at work, although probably it’s not true. And then in a feat of unrivaled dexterity, I yanked my arm robot right off, even though it had like four days left. Sigh.
Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Gaming is on Thursday now! We finished deciding what to do with the treasure monster from the current adventure, now that Kelsey is here, and immediately moved on to visiting the TITAN-haunted ruins of Iapetus to look for a missing coconspirator, because that is guaranteed to end well.
Words: FAIL.
How is it already Wednesday? How is it only Wednesday?
Read: Dead Star (Simon Kewin): Our heroes try to uncover the mystery behind the galactic theocracy that has carefully destroyed all previous history and is probably destroying everything. Many ancient alien artifacts are involved, as well as severe trauma, subterfuge and paranoia, and a poor understanding of gravity assist maneuvers.
Read: The Witness for the Dead (Katherine Addison): Semi-sequel to The Goblin Emperor, following the Witness for the Dead (priest/undertaker/detective) as he goes about his business far away from the imperial court and yet still gets mixed up in multiple murder mysteries.
Words: check.
No gaming, gaming is on Thursday now.
Words: check.
Read: “Wet Nails” (Shira Glassman): F/F smut, a lonely grad student is comforted by the ghost of a vintage film actress.
Read: “Practical Boots” (CE Murphy): Do not mess with the half-faerie, she will kick your ass!
Read: “Fearless” (Shira Glassman): F/F romance, older (40s) protagonists, music and flirting.
Read: Spy x Family vol 5 (Tatsuya Endo): A strong (yet ridiculous) opponent appears!
Words: Check.
Happy Father’s Day to those who deserve it!
I tried eating indoors at a restaurant, and it was slightly uncomfortable but mostly okay. Apparently I worry a lot more about the stupid stuff I do that makes people think less of me than I do about mere threats to life and health. I did wear a mask walking to the grocery store and shopping, at least.
Mostly I’ve sat in front of this computer doing nothing useful all day, which feels like a waste even though it’s a weekend. I don’t want to just take time off from doing capitalism stuff, I want to do my stuff! But that would require energy which I have never had.
Read: “Knit One Girl Two” (Shira Glassman): short modern f/f romance with extra fanfic and Judaism and cuteness and colors.
Words: check, although I really should have gotten more done.
As always, I meant to get up early and walk to shopping, but I feel less bad about it today because it was Too Hot. The heat is definitely also why I was half an hour late taking over on-call from the previous person and maybe even why there was an active case so I couldn’t run Zoomwarts. But we went over to Ayse and Ken’s anyway, and ate Provençal chicken and rocket salad, and watched anime and played freeze tag and admired the Mushroom Sisters and heard about Pierce’s great cobweb adventure.
Watched: Yona of the Dawn 12-14: Now that we’ve seen the two extremes of the Dragons, the other two will have to be sensible, well-adjusted people, right?
Watched: Kaleido Star 2-3: I’m sure it’s deliberate that Kalos is a terrible communicator, but still: terrible. Also the entire character of Fool should have been dropped.
Read: The Ever Cruel Kingdom (Rin Chupeco): Wraps up everything from The Never Tilting World, including an indictment of capitalism.
Words: FAIL.
I guess it’s Juneteenth (Observed) but it’s not like my company cares. Joke’s on them, I was pretty useless today anyway. Because it is still Too Hot.
Watched: Avatar: The Last Airbender 3.11-12: Finally, firebending!
Words: check.
It is too hot and it’s not even July yet. Why is summer?
Read: Seven of Infinities (Aliette de Bodard): A criminal scholar and a criminal starship get entangled with each other in a draconian future where criminality is easy to fall into and difficult to survive.
Read: The Loot (Craig Schaefer): A recently discharged vet discovers she really does need a lot of money and seizes an opportunity which is sort of a metaheist. Almost no one in this book has a moral compass, and the ones that do are pretty skewed. First of a series, but apparently only available through (spit) Amazon.
Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 13 (Tomohito Oda): Conclusion (for now?) of the arc with Komi’s smol cousin, back to the usual wackiness.
Words: check. I need to figure out how to publish these, though. I am still writing them in plain HTML files, which is not what WordPress uses.
Read: Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer (Kelly Jones, Katie Kath): An epistolary middle-grade story of a girl who ends up living on a farm surrounded by white people, and her very unusual chickens.
Read: The Never-Tilting World (Rin Chupeco): Post-apocalyptic fantasy based on the myth of Innana and maybe A:tLA. First of at least a duology, because so much is not resolved by the end.
Words: check.
The water to the building exploded in the middle of the night, so there was no washing of any kind until the end of the work day. I used this excuse to get lunch out, because why not? Apparently the water will also be out for part of tomorrow to install a more permanent fix, but at least we have warning this time.
I did not succeed in doing more than the most trivial amount of work, because my brain is too small.
Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Apparently we can argue forever about the most ethical and practical course of action, but in the interests of fun, we decided to foist the AI off on some other Firewall people. (Maybe we could have come up with a better solution if we had been able to make Research rolls, but Kelsey was busy being oppressed by hierarchical capitalism.) Next week: maybe something else!
Read: Lagoonfire (Francesca Forrest): The decomissioner from “The Inconvenient God” gets into another mess, and we see that her government is every bit as horrible as hinted at, and also she has a Backstory.
Words: FAIL.
As proof that all corporate execs are sociopaths, we had a company meeting announced on Friday for the following Monday with no details. Fortunately my boss’s boss let us know that it was not anything that needed an emergency announcement, just a reorg. My boss’s boss now reports to a different person, but that’s not expected to have any effect on people at my level, at least not until the new CCO starts and wants to make everything just like at her old (huge) company. Whatever. (I know, I’m a bad capitalist unit.)
Read: “Cinnamon Blade: Knife in Shining Armor” (Shira Glassman): An unpowered but cool superheroine finally gets to spend some quality time with the woman she keeps rescuing. In detail. My.
Read: “The Inconvenient God” (Francesca Forrest): A bureaucrat responsible for decommissioning obsolete gods runs into an unexpectedly complex case.
Words: check.
Today was full of walking in the excessive heat, but at least I got to play D&D? This was the second session of Edie’s summer campaign, and we finally met the local sophonts, who want to get us involved in their war against the other local sophonts. This is bound to go well. Also we fought some ugly monsters, which would have worked better if I had remembered my character takes only half damage from being clobbered/stabbed/sliced while hopped up on combat drugs.New theory: I don’t like D&D not because of the binary resolution or stat-centricness, but because I’m not smart enough to play it. Anyway, after walking back in the heat, I walked around some more trying to grocery shop and get chicken strips for dinner, and then was a useless melted lump for the entire evening.
Words: check.
I meant to get up early since I have to get up early tomorrow and the day after, but failed completely. I still managed to do most of my grocery shopping and eat lunch and stare blankly into the void before going over to Ayse and Ken’s to visit the Mushroom Sisters and run Zoomwarts and eat Thai food and watch anime.
Zoomwarts: We jumped ahead to December. There’s a new History of Magic curriculum from the Ministry (everyone hates it), a new Potions teacher with Opinions on Aesthetics and Blood (everyone loves her), Snape is still in a coma, and the mermaid still wants arms.
Watched: Yona of the Dawn 11: Poor White Dragon. No one should have to put up with Hak like that.
Not watched: Somali and the Forest Spirit 6: Cannibalism was on the table, but we didn’t expect to see it onscreen! Deemed “Unsuitable for Jus”.
Watched: Kaleido Star 1: Oh yes, America as seen from Japan.
Words: Check, since I’m counting anything as a success now.
Slow day at work. I should probably have done the things but I was too sleepy. (This may be an ongoing theme.)
Read: Aetherbound (EK Johnston): It could have been an exciting tale of space magic, intrigue, love, betrayal, rebellion, &c, but it only talked about feelings instead of showing them and the characters were very sensible despite the feelings, so it ended up feeling a little bloodless.
Words: check.
I still did not manage to do the thing. It’s not clear I was successful at doing any things, although I sent email to customers and stuff. I would rather sleep.
Read: Legendborn (Tracy Deonn): Urban fantasy based on Arthurian myths, but the main character is a black girl and it’s set in the South. I suppose the twists would not be very surprising to a more critical reader but I thought they were well-done.
Read: Hard Reboot (Django Wexler): A hapless scholar visits Earth to study its antique software, and gets mixed up in giant robot gambling and also yuri.
Words: check. I finally wrote more Samuel journal, but I still don’t know how to automate getting it all posted here.
I did not manage to do the thing for work. Maybe I can blame it on having to spend so much of yesterday dealing with that customer. Or maybe I just suck.
Read: Heaven’s Design Team vol 4 (Hebi-Zou, Tsuta Suzuki, Tarako): More biology facts, this time featuring turtles, penguins, and naked mole rats (freaky!).
Words: check.
I think I made a customer happy today, although I did not exactly fix their problem. I’ll call it a victory, anyway. Decided not to join From Written To Recommended because I no longer have any delusions that I could someday write something worth publishing. Ordered a new toaster oven so I can give the old one to Marith for her new apartment.
Read: Eniale & Dewiela vol 3 (Kamome Shirahama): More hijinks, Eniale defends her love of fashion, Dewiela almost gets away with something, they’re still friends (somehow), the end!
Played: Eclipse Phase 2: I think we’re about done here, as we have found a suitable disposition for the alarming artifact we discovered, which should protect transhumanity without infringing on any person’s rights. Next session: we go somewhere creepy! Gaming might be moving to Thursday nights. We talked about in-person, but we’re so spread-out and carless that it might not be feasible.
Words: FAIL.
Nothing much to report today. Work was work. Marith thinks she can have all her stuff out by the next time cleaners come, which is nice because then I can have them clean all the parts of that room that were under the bed or otherwise off-limits and start using it. Maybe I’ll even put a bed in there!
Words: check.
Look! Another journal entry! But this one is very boring, because I was useless today. I meant to get up at a reasonable hour and go shopping, but instead slept in and read manga and got chicken tenders for lunch and otherwise futzed around until it was maximally hot. Then I went shopping, and still couldn’t find any double-fiber english muffins anyway. Bah, capitalism, why have you failed me? Into the alligator pit with you!
Read:
Words: Check, although this conversation is not coming together.
It looks like I might be able to import my old journal entries if I can convert them to XML of the right format, but right now that seems like a lot of work, so I’ll just start from today (okay, yesterday as I type this) with new entries.
Marith moved out yesterday (mostly) so I was only shopping for my own groceries, which was both less than usual and not as much less as I expected. I should probably still get food for her when everything is not confused, so that she does not die before getting a better job. Or maybe I should stay under my rock forever and never speak to her again. Difficult to tell which is the most diplomatic option.
We went over to Monkeycat Mountain to see friends because we are living in the future when such things are possible again! Instead of starting season 2 of Zoomwarts, though, we showed Jus Labyrinth. Being a child of her generation, her first question on seeing obvious male romantic lead was “…how old is he?” Good job being age-gap aware! She seemed to like the movie, though, and it gives me an extra week to figure out the doom of Zoomwarts.
Ken fed us vaguely Moroccan tomato fish, bacon cabbage, scallops, and rocket salad, which was all very good, and also did not make the robot spy on my arm unhappy, and we watched Yona of the Dawn 9-10. Yay, new party member! Marith had to leave after that, so she can get abused by capitalism before dawn tomorrow, so the rest of us played the Temple of Elemental Evil board game and successfully escaped despite Ken having accidentally shuffled the big scary monsters into the deck. Then I rode the bus home and was almost completely useless the rest of the evening.
Words: check.
Inaugural post! Or perhaps, the first test post.