Category: Life of a Space Parasite

It’s officially Autumn in this hemisphere. Other things happening today: World Rhino Day, Elephant Appreciation Day (why are they on the same day? Elephino!), World Car-Free Day, and National Ice Cream Cone Day. All excellent things!

I did four errands today and also had a bookstore accident, so I guess that was better than yesterday. The cats are provisioned for a while, anyway.

Read: Teeth (Jim Rossignol, Marsh Davies): It is 1780, and you are a gang of daring criminals who have come to the most grotesque, cursed, and monster-infested place in England to accomplish your secret mission while disguised as freelance monster harvesters. If you overstay your one-year permit, or worse, get any of it on you, you’ll be stuck forever. Forged in the Dark, with bonus rules for occult corruption, monster dissection, and cursed pies, and a lot of extremely questionable people, places, things, and… motile things. Definitely not for the squeamish.

Written: 200 exactly.

 

I never manage to go to museums myself, but I’m still glad they exist and happy to have my tax dollars go to supporting them.

Completely useless today. Do people even like the presents I bring them?

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 15-17: End of the extended flashback, where we find out what Dazai’s deal is, and then back to the present where the two newbs are screwing up their mission massively.

Written: 106.

Around here, every day is gibberish day in one form or another!

Watched: Murder Drones 6-8: The end! I still have very little idea what was going on, but we did get to see Uzi’s mom (kind of).

Read: Beyond the Reach of Earth (Ken MacLeod): Oh, that’s what the deal with the alien artifacts is. The third book should be exciting.

Written: 167

I observed it in my heart, since I didn’t actually talk to anyone today.

Hoped to go into the office and eat a Reuben, but no.

Read: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (Carolyn Mackler): A 15-year-old girl tries to deal with being the only overweight and normally chill one in her family of skinny, beautiful, kind of shitty overachievers and fatphobic society in general. From 2003, so it seems a little dated now, and also pretty heterocentric..

Read: Beyond the Hallowed Sky (Ken MacLeod): Near future, everybody’s dealing with lfe on Earth, exploring Venus, and suddenly some people discover that the major powers have had good FTL travel since the 20th century, WTF? Alien artifacts(?), insufficiently-alien biomes, intrigue!

Written: 154

That’s every day!

I did not go to the office today, because I had the gastrointestinals and did not want to be away from my bathroom for the length of a workday or even a commute. Sadly I still had to work.

Read: Alien Clay (Adrian Tchaikovsky): Academia under totalitarianism, extrasolar incarceration under totalitarianism, an alien biosphere that totalitarian thought can never comprehend.

Written: 212.

Am an IT professional? Probably not? Maybe?

Played: Perils and Princesses. We only had a short time to game, because Ken has a 5am class tomorrow, but the princesses dealt with the people and reached the thing and are ready to make their escape. Next week for sure!

Read: Long Live Evil (Sarah Rees Brennan): Our terminally ill MC is put into the body of the doomed temptress from the famous series of epic tragic over-the-top fantasy, the night before she is scheduled to die. If she can get the maguffin of infinite healing, she can live in the real world, and it’s not like anybody cares what happens to characters in a book, so she decides to be completely evil and suborn other characters and betray as needed to get what she wants. This almost immediately goes off the rails, she goes more over-the-top, people catch feelings, people ponder the nature of evil, people die horribly, the plot changes or was never what she thought it was, and there is so, so much doom. Unresolved doom, because of course if the MC is stuck in a trilogy, this must be a trilogy too.

Written: 187.

I guess the idea is to do all the things one has been promising to get around to “someday” but I didn’t do anything at all useful.

Played: Librarians Errant. After Shia was disintegrated into a pile of pages and then eaten by a shoggoth in the form of a book last session, the team wraps up their visit with Professor Demigod Wick and returns home without being further assaulted by bibliospace fauna. Martin gets the shoggoth to disgorge a person, but it’s not Shia, it’s somebody who claims that Grim Abyss is his real name, despite sounding like something Thaïs would called herself when she was fourteen. He offers to join the team to repay them from freeing from death or whatever it was that befell him on his last adventure, and after they learn (but do not tell him) that he is a fictional character from a series of adventures novels dating back more than two hundred years, they decide they need to keep an eye on him after all. Since their goal seems to require the text of The Magical Education of Beatrix Fogtower, but not the volumes themselves, tasty a magic item set as they are, the new plan is to try to get the third volume, copy it, and then trade it to Gladys for a copy of the first volume. Divination magic (4th-level spells, baby!) points to Tokda Snir, their kobold acquaintance and crime lord of the freshman class, but before they can track her down, things with the appearance of Grim’s fellow book characters show up and try to steal him, then blast everybody with extremely meta antibackstory powers before being reduced to ink and inscriptions. This will need to be investigated, but first they finish meeting up with Tokda Snir, who upon hearing that volume 3 may have once been given to a Masked Lord of Waterdeep, mentions that her grand-relative, the kindly kobold priest, is a Masked Lord. Talk about a cliffhanger!

Read: The Masquerades of Spring (Ben Aaronovitch): Another non-Peter story from the Folly, set in 1920s New York where a young gentleman who would be perfectly at home in the Drones Club is trying to live his fabulous life abroad in the land of jazz but his old school chum the Nightingale shows up asking for his help.

Written: 174.

Also National Eat a Hoagie Day, which I did.

Played a little Minecraft after failing to do anything for weeks, checked out Marith’s base which is a maze of lava and villagers and art and now fish, still not sure what if anything I want to do next. I could build another thing now that Dave has told me how to make copper bulbs light up. Marith offered to let me build it in her Cavern of Wonders, but it might actually belong on  top of the ridge of cherry trees. I could try the trial chamber that Ayse and Dave found, but I’m pretty sure that I would just die instantly with my basic enchanted diamond gear and no skillz.

Ayse has been doing lots of writing, because she is smart and talented and her brain has the basic functionality of doing things, which mine doesn’t. Good for her!

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 13-14: Extended flashback to when Dazai was a Port Mafia bigwig. Unsurprisingly, this looks like it’s going to end poorly.

Nightvale might have made a small miau? It would be noisy, yet adorable, if he learned that from Sage.

Written: 172, for all that’s worth (which is nothing).

 

Also Video Game Day, which seems fitting on both sides.

Went to the office, people were there, customers wanted me to call them, ate some boneless chicken wings, whatever.

Read: HoverGirls (Geneva Bowers): I read this online at some point in the past, but it was cute enough I didn’t mind getting and reading it on paper. Two cousins move to the big city, one to become a fashion designer and model, the other to brood and watch soaps, mysterious aquatic manifestions ensue, the world is saved, etc.

Written: 127.

For obvious reasons, but still valid.

Went to some office, ate some assorted dumpling guys, did some work.

Ordered some Catan pieces to use to make a tiny hexmap of the island when running Perils and Princesses in person. Then ordered some more when the first one fell through because the first person couldn’t find them. eBay, manne.

Read: I Married My Female Friend vol 3 (Shio Usui): The cute girl from the one wife’s past (they were roommates!) showing up could have been drama, but mostly wasn’t, because it’s not that sort of manga.

Read: Tuesday (Draith): Many many iterations of the Tuesday on which the Earth is scheduled to be destroyed, evil misunderstood and badly-raised clones, emotional reunions, clever plans, external brains, the end!

Read: Ogami-San Can’t Keep It In vol 6 (Yu Yoshidamaru): Not cool, old middle-school friend! But the main couple are actually doing okay together, given what freaks they both are.

Written: 295 words of torturing my protagonist. It builds character!

In other words, Dystopian Future Day, but at least we get to choose a subgenre.

Played: Perils and Princesses. Our princesses (and their tagalong) explore the island some and finally meet the NPCs who are also on the island. I need to railroad more and have less exploration and more interaction, was the consensus.

Written: 109.

There are probably two birds that are more different (penguins! ratites!) but this is pretty good.

Read: The Western Shores and To Stand Between Sea and Sky (Draith): 4-5/7 in the series, the main character is now OP enough to time travel, meet historical aliens on other planets, accidentally mind-control hapless fascists, make a pocket dimension to hang out in with her girlfriend, etc. Also Earth, which was threatened at the beginning of the first book, has not been saved.

Written: 151.

Another day that should be every day.

Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 1.8: FInal showdown with the biggest villain! Or at least the most antagonistic, the Night Nurse might technically be bigger, and her supervisor definitely is, but they’re also more reasonable. The end! Everything is good for another season, but I guess Neil Gaiman is cancelled for being a sex creep, so apparently there won’t be one. (This is why men should never be allowed to be involved in anything ever.)

Read: ShipCore (Erios909): I don’t think it’s technically litRPG, even though it has large blocks of robotic text in square brackets. Also no magic, unless you count forcefields and FTL travel and dubious nanotech. However, there are also no male main characters.

Read: Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc vol 3 (Sekka Iwata, Yu Aoki): Magical girl magitech convention, which you would think would be the best place for a monster attack, but it does take some work to save the day. Also possibly there’s a plot.

Written: 140. I came up with a name, which might not be the most nominatively-deterministic, but that’s okay. People just have names sometimes, even in the superhero genre.

Despite it also being Be Late For Something Day, I had samosas so promptly I ate them yesterday! Today I ate hipster onigiri/rice sandwich things. Maybe I did some work. There were coworkers.

Read: Alpi the Soul Sender vol 4 (Rona): Well, that’s not good.

Read: To Pierce the Heart (Draith): Romance subplot! Also more main plot, and lots of powerups.

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 2 (coolkyousinnjya): Racism, murders, the party grows, more murders.

Written: 176. Also I need a name.

Also World Sexual Health Day, but probably best to not try to combine them.

Got up too early, went to the office, ate too much spicy chicken biriyani, did a work or something.

Read: How Do I Turn My Best Friend Into My Girlfriend? vol 1 (Syu Yasaka): High-school girl realizes her feelings for her best friend aren’t platonic any more, best friend is oblivious, other friend is supportive and doesn’t find the gayness noteworthy. That seems to be a trend in newer yuri manga, there’s no “but we’re both girls, how can it be?”. Don’t know if it’s the same for BL but I hope so. Also don’t know if actual Japan is becoming any less homophobic, but this has to be a good start.

Read: Glitch vol 4 (Shima Shinya): The end?! Several things are resolved, but a lot is left open, which could be for a sequel, or just artisticness.

Read: Villain’s Vignettes vol 1 (Drew Hayes): Actually three novellas(?) about Hephaestus and/or Fornax from the “Villain’s Code” series, between books 2 and 3, two holiday specials and one in which Fornax gets isekai’d.

Written: 145.

Not that there are even any skyscrapers in San Jose, at least according to Wikipedia. The minimum height is 100m or 150m depending on who you ask, and downtown San Jose is close enough to the airport that nothing is over 91m.

It was very clever of me to have taken today off to do weekend stuff. A bunch of the morning was unproductive because there was a cat on me and I couldn’t get out of bed, but then I vacuumed up a bunch of stray litter, went shopping, got a new screen door for the balcony installed, and did some laundry.

Sage was very loud today. I probably deserved the yelling for being so cruel as to abandon her.

Played: Perils and Princesses. A short session because Ken was feeling poorly, but they did get to the Cursed Isle and level up.

Written: 172.

Three cheers for the NLRB!

We even had some strike events come up in Lunar Rails, although I was so far behind that it didn’t help me at all. I don’t think I made any plays that were actively bad, but people who knew what they were doing were so much more efficient that it came as a great shock when Dave used the connect-the-cities victory condition to win.

Finally it was time for Dave and I to return, which did not go as smoothly as going out. The bus from Roseville to Sacramento was very late, although not so late we missed the train connection, and the train to San Jose was not quite early enough to catch the second-to-last bus. We ended up walking to my place and getting there at like 22:30, and then Dave had to catch the very last bus to get to his place. It did work out in the end, though.

Sage and Nightvale were taken very good care of by Marith, although it turned out to have been a mistake to given them a spare litterbox without a top, and mybathroom is now full of litter. Seems like a problem for Tuesday Me.

Read: The Fallen City of Lescado (Draith): Book 2/7, OP isekai girl is making friends and killing zombies and clearing dungeons and leveling up.

Written: VACATION

I do not have a ginger cat of my own to appreciate right now, and if I did they would be at home, but I can still appreciate them in general!

Car people (Ayse and Ken and Jus and Nonny) departed today, but Dave and I stayed to play more board games. I was terrible at them all, but that’s okay. We played Thurn and Taxis, which has nothing to do with taxicabs but everything to do with postal routes in early Germany; Sagrada, which would have gone better if the dice hadn’t failed to fit a very important spot in my pattern; and Spirit Island, which is complicated but it’s satisfying to crush the white plastic colonizers. Somewhere in there we had grilled dinner, but really it was all about the board games.

Read: What If? (Randall Munroe): I didn’t read it in order, but I think I got every chapter, so I’m counting this as a reread.

Written: VACATION

We had bacon! And also waffles! And later in the day, the traditional Chinese takeout. In between, there was Everdell and swimming, and afterwards, those of us who were keen on astronomy went up to a remote airfield for a star party. Alas, my eyes are just not good enough, even with a 10″ telescope.

I was also not good enough at Everdell. I blame the large number of places to put a worker that I had to keep track of and could not easily read, some of which were hidden in other players’ tableaus. Obviously it’s something of a skill issue on my part, but I think it’s also a problem with the design.

Stayed up too late reading a copy What If? (by the xkcd guy) that was in the room where I was sleeping.

Written: VACATION

Dave and I took the train to Roseville, which involved dealing with zero traffic and got us there in good time for pizza, but did not involve any whale sharks whatsoever. People who went by car got there very late and kind of frazzled, although probably in better shape than when the kids were smaller.

The small child who cannot be named is toddling now, but not entirely clear on the concept of numbers.

Started off the weekend of board games with Dominion, which went oddly because we had several special treasure cards from the Prosperity expansion but no extra actions.

Written: VACATION

You know, like the right of women to not be pregnant

Went to the office, did some work, ate an Impossible burger and coleslaw. Too many humans.

Read: I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl vol 2-3 (Kashikaze): The good student is not only getting school-skipping girl to go to school, but luring her into the friend group. Also, is it normal to not mind smooches?

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 8 (Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe): Back on the road, finally getting to the northern hellscape that they needed the mage certificate to enter.

Written: 247, but not on the vampire unicorn space princess book. Possibly that’s for the best; do we really need vampire unicorn space princesses?

I have quite a few dreams, but still waiting for the one I can just write down as a best-selling novel.

Went to the office, ate some spicy Indian chicken and roti, and I guess did a work.

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 6-7 (Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe): The rest of the first-class mage test, and the sponsor behind it all, who is at least as scary as Frieren. Also, apparently when you’re a high-level mage, murder and manslaughter are no longer crimes.

Read: The Old Guard (Glynn Stewart): Sequel to The Exodus Gambit, our survivor of the murderous usurpation of her minor system hatches schemes to get the might of the great powers to help her restore her rightful government, one way or another.

Written: 170.

No work today, only riding the bus. Also a visit with a hepatologist (I probably have a liver) and a thyroid ultrasound (will find out about having a thyroid later), but mostly riding the bus. I read a lot of manga.

Also no gaming, Kelsey’s job is being horrible.

Read: The Tiger Won’t Eat The Dragon Yet vol 2 (Hachi Inaba): The title doesn’t mean nobody else is getting eaten, and now we know why everybody hates dragons. But also interspecies adoption, which always makes me happy.

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 4-5 (Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe): Mortal life is made of meetings and partings, and also finally getting around to testing for first-class magedom even though it’s not like mage guilds last long enough for it to be worth the bother.

Read: The Duke of Death and His Maid vol 1 (Inoue): A boy cursed to kill everything he touches lives in a remote manor with only a hot maid who delights in taunting him, and some other servant who isn’t important because he doesn’t have cleavage.

Read: Mysterious Disappearances vol 2 (Nujima): The school mystery is finally resolved, but it’s still not clear what’s going on with Mysterious Boy and Mysterious Girl. Still pretty raunchy.

Written: 222,

Almost as good as cats!

Read: That Full Moon Feeling (Ashley Robin Franklin): Graphic novelette(?) about a witch and a werewolf going on three dates. There are monster attacks on each one, but I think it may count as slice-of-life anyway because that’s just their life.

Read: The Knife and the Serpent (Tim Pratt): Interdimensional shenanigans with bonus BDSM and evil exes. Actually kind of a lot of evil people all around, although not the first MC. The different dimensions remind me of the “Doors of Sleep” books by the same author, but also of Wild Massive by Moore. This is not a bad thing!

Written: 100 exactly.

I was completely useless today, so probably I sat in front of a fan with no shirt, but that’s not really going topless is it?

Read: Beware of Chicken vol 3 (Casualfarmer): Sadly, the MC’s attempt to live a quiet life is foiled by his pets and minions going out into the world and being excessively awesome. Of course getting great power by living righteously in harmony with the world is going to attract attention from a corrupt society, even if he isn’t thinking of it that way.

Read: To Play With Magic (Draith): Isekai litRPG, but this time there’s a reason our young woman kidnapped from Earth and her variously alarming companions have totally OP abilities and there is obviously something going on with the System. Also, four-armed, four-eyed catgirls, which sounds freakier than cute.

Written: 190.

Also Ken Day (Observed) but he doesn’t like people to make a big deal of it. We went over to help him watch MST3K, though.

Watched: MST3K: Space Mutiny. Mutiny on a generation ship is a simple concept that should be doable even in the 80s, so how did they make it so bad? Even in South Africa? The frame story was pretty nonsensical too. Because MST3K.

Written: 242.