Category: Life of a Space Parasite

Don’t want to work. Want to sleep. But sleep pays so poorly.

Played: Lancer. As usual, we ended in the middle of a fight, but it’s pretty close to over. Then we get to start grilling the other team to see if their story matches. Dave mentioned a twist, but I bet that will be on the third data point we try to gather.

Written: FAIL. It’s not like I even went to bed early after gaming, I just suck.

It’s only 90% of a Monday, because I have Friday sort of off! But this did not get me more functional.

Read: Betrayed (Lindsay Buroker): Further adventures of the half-dwarf who just wants to know what happened to her mother and live her life, and the unfairly hot elven assassin she totally doesn’t have a crush on. Also conspiracies and bounty hunters and overfunded villains.

Read: SHWD vol 1 (sono.N): Extremely buff women hunting down outbreaks of brain-melting monsters and having interpersonal (but pretty good-natured) drama. No, buffer than that.

Written: 374 words.

I got up and went grocery shopping and got lunch in a timely manner, and then didn’t manage to do anything the rest of the day. I am really not good at getting anything done, ever.

Read: Ophelia After All (Racquel Marie): After getting a crush on a new boy about every month since she was in third-grade, a Cuban-American high school senior has to face that she might not be as straight as she thought, while dealing with love polygons, prom and graduation, and general friend-group upheaval.

Written: 281 words.

Nobody likes going into the office in 2022, but Ken very kindly gave me a lift to Mountain View, so I did not have to get up so early, and I hid in a small conference room most of the day so I did not have to breathe with people. I did come out and unmask to eat holiday lunch (salad, roast veg, mashed spud, roll+horseradish+roast beast, so not sure what holiday tradition that is, maybe British? Tasty, though.), which hopefully did not fill me with plague. I also got grilled a lot in the training meeting, because I was sitting right across from the instructor, but fortunately I knew many answers.

Read: Magister’s Bane (Yvette Bostic): The main character starts off ugly to the point of deformity but then is revealed to be actually super-hot as soon as she is brought into the magical world. I am not sure what think about that plot twist. At least she still has severe self-esteem issues from spending her entire life with people avoiding looking at her face.

Read: “Haley and the Miraculous Potion” (MCA Hogarth): Christmas episode, so of course it’s even more overtly Christian that usual. (IMHO, it’s super-weird how Christians take Jewish scripture telling ancient monoloatrous Jews not to worship the gods of other tribes and try to make it relevant to their monotheism, but this sentence could have ended after the word “scripture”.)

Read: Yakuza Reincarnation vol 3 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): Old-school yakuza reincarnated into a fantasy princess continues to beat the snot out of people doing crime wrong.

Written: 385 words, no kittens.

I really need to do more, better, works. Instead I did some works and then went over to visit Ayse and Ken and Dave and Jus and Nonny. We had vague intentions of watching something but instead we just ate Thai food and searched for the lost art of conversation and chased Nonny around. It was very nice.

Read: The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy and the Snobs; Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye; Jessi’s Secret Language (Ann M Martin, Chan Chau, Gabriela Epstein): vol 10-12, which is all that currently exists. Stacey really did leave! I guess Kristy can’t go all class warfare if she lives in a mansion too. Jessi’s language is not all that secret, although I’m sure it was more so in back in the day. She uses it for good, though.

Read: Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village (Maureen Johnson, Jay Cooper): Spoiler: The only way to win the game is not to play. Includes Goreyesque illustrations.

Written: 134 kitten words, finishing the entry I was working on. Tomorrow, if I am not dead from working and commuting, I will write things that are not that.

Early-morning meeting that was fairly useful, although we mostly didn’t have any questions, so maybe it should have been a video? We might have had questions, though.

Read: The Baby-Sitters Club: Dawn and the Impossible Three; Kristy’s Big Day; Boy-Crazy Stacey; Logan Likes Mary Anne!; Claudia and the New Girl (Ann M Martin, Gale Galligan, Gabriela Epstein): vol 5-9, with weddings, crushes, more crushes, what would be a crush in something written with completely modern sensibilities, and a zillion adorable but sometimes ill-behaved kids.

Written: 669 kitten words, but you know? I could just not. It is perfectly reasonable for a kitten to get busy and fall out of the habit of journaling. It’s even happened before.

What do you mean, another day? Already?

Read: No Honor In Death (Eric Thomson): Missiles in Space, but at least half about internal corruption and lack of morale. The space navy is very retro, and the main character is probably not entirely healthy either.

Read: The Baby-Sitters Club: The Truth About Stacy; Mary Anne Saves The Day; Claudia and Mean Janine (Raina Telgemeier. Ann M Martin): further adventures in baby-sitting and middle-school friendship and family drama. I am hoping this will make my own writing about similar-aged protagonists less terrible, but the genres might be too different.

Written: 541 kitten words.

Played: Dark Matter. We fought our way through the decoy treasure room full of exploding robot spiders and other fun stuff, discovered the hidden drive component (2/4), and then found the real treasure room which was full of the books we were looking for and also ANCIENT DRAGON!!! We beat feet back to the librarian to let her know we had found the books, but although Sesamina was rooting for her, she did not seem to have enough Hit Dice to do anything about it at this time. We do get to level up to 4th level, though.

Read: “The Garden” (Tomi Champion-Adeyemi): Part verse, part prose, all literary, only arguably spec-fic.

Written: 223 kitten words.

I managed to get up and go grocery shopping at pretty much the time I intended, but then was completely useless. Around midafternoon, I realized I was yawning and yawning, so I took a nap, but when I woke up it was already dark so I was very discombobulated and even more useless.

Fortunately the customers were extremely quiescent. Hopefully that will hold through the holiday season.

Read: The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy’s Great Idea (Raina Telgemeier. Ann M Martin): I never read the originals, but the graphic novel version is pretty cute and full of period-appropriate landlines.

Read: My Best Friend is Dense Harem Main Character-kun, But Why Am I The Heroine?! (Shintaro Mofujin): I’m usually here for a story about a boy getting turned into a girl, but this one was not great, and I get the feeling she may turn back, so what even is the point?

Written: 839 kitten words.

Oh yeah, I did order Christmas presents for some people. Good job, past me!

Fortunately I was able to reuse the nature fact about tarantulas keeping pet frogs this week, but I definitely need to get some new facts. Maybe dinosaur facts, everybody likes dinosaurs.

Watched: Amphibia 9-10: Apparently there is some structure to this world besides one village surrounded by deadly hazards, and also, there’s clearly going to be doom.

Read: The Tryout (Christina Soontornvat, Joanna Cacao): Semi-autobiographical retelling of the author trying out for middle-school cheerleading squad as a nerdy Thai-American girl in a small Texas town.

Read: “The Difference Between Love and Time” (Catherynne M Valente): The space-time continuum reimagined as a kind of surreal, terrible boyfriend.

Read: Cotton Tales vol 1 (Loputyn): I’m not that familiar with the Gothic genre, but this seems like it: a young boy who has no idea what’s going on or who any of these people are, allegedly because he has amnesia; a huge house with a special tower to keep a mysterious relative in; sinister houseguests; unicorn rabbits that only some people can see, that seem to be at war with each other.

Written: 623 kitten words.

Put a container of precooked vegetables and several sliced-up sausages onto a baking sheet and put it in the over for a while. This counts as cooking N/N?

Read: “Undercover” (Tamsyn Muir): Maybe not necromancy per se, and not space, but lesbians and death and terror and betrayal!

Read: Freestyle (Gale Galligan): Graphic novel about 8th-grade breakdancers in NYC and drama around new friends and school and parents and yo-yos.

Watched: Amphibia 7-8: So basically female frog-people are terrifying. Seems legit.

Written: 670 kitten words.

Back to getting up early, but it was a useful meeting this time.

Watched: Amphibia 5-6: Not really any kind of plot, but who needs a plot when you have snailmobiles?

Read: How To Get A Girlfriend When You’re A Terrifying Monster (Marie Cardno): Apparently the answer is, hang out in your home dimension trying to not get absorbed until an intrepid explorer of fixed yet oddly hot shape shows up and follow her home. Screaming, hiding, and general panic may ensue, but there is a possibility of smooches.

Written: 390 kitten words.

 

Today’s early-morning meeting was cancelled, but I didn’t realize until I was already awake, so I spent the extra hour being useless instead of really sleeping. (But do I ever really sleep? Signs point to no.)

Played: Lancer. Vivian wasn’t able to make it, so we let Ken play TWO mechs since it’s his game after all. That’s probably why we trounced the all-flying team despite none of us being able to fly for more than a couple of rounds. Tinca was appalled that everyone else went,  “secret offworlder underground mech fight ring, okay, seems legit”.

Read: “Touching Divinity” (Benjamin Medrano): It has more than one scene, so I guess it’s technically not a vignette, but it’s very short and pretty much only one thing happens. It is gay, though.

Written: 226 kitten words.

Got my time off for the holiday season sorted. I have a lot of time off from the 23rd through the 2nd, but a few miscellaneous days not off, or not completely off. Should be fine unless we try to go to Roseville or something.

Read: “The Sufficient Loss Protocol” (Kemi Ashing-Giwa): Extremely evil corporate goon vs xenoarchaeology. I know it’s short, so not a lot of characterization, but wanting to stay in bed forever is only relatable, not actually sympathetic.

Read: The Red Scholar’s Wake (Aliette de Bodard): Also conflict in space, but much better. Pirate abductions, a human getting married to a space ship, feelings, corrupt officials, pirate utopia, more feelings, intrigue, ethical debates, family feelings, assorted murders, daring rescues, human-spaceship smooches, all the good stuff.

Written: 278 kitten words.

Got up earlier than I would like for cleaners, but then managed to take a nap and get up a second time to go grocery shopping at a reasonable hour. Then I was a massive lump.

Watched: Amphibia 1-2: Jus recommended I watch it after finishing The Owl House, but I don’t like it as much. I guess I like a world of giant bones and bile magic better than one of human-sized frogs and giant insects. Maybe if there were more insects.

Written: 569 kitten words.

Wait, what happened to November?!

Two nights of fireplace noises has shown that this is not a good sleep aid. I think I need just plain white noise.

Despite my brain being shriveled from excessive dreams, I did three works today.

Read: Beesong Chronicles Omnibus vol 1: Sting & Song, Webs & Words, Hives & Heroism (Benjamin Medrano): For chaos god reasons, some fraction of the giant bees in a LitRPG world turn into beepeople. One of them gets kicked out of her hive, falls in with adventurers fighting against the Demon Lord, and is weird and cute and selfless and murdery and ace and bee-like for three books. The story is complete, but it’s labelled “vol 1” because the author hopes to write more.

Read: Hammered (Lindsay Buroker): A spinoff from the “Death Before Dragons” series, following another half-human Seattle resident who gets mixed up with interdimensional skullduggery when she just wants to renovate houses and have a normal life. Tragic backstory, magic weapons, elf-dwarf romantic tension.

Read: “How I Stole the Princess’s White Knight and Turned Him To Villainy: Miracle 1” (AJ Sherwood): A knight goes to an unlicensed sorcerer to help protect the people from the horrible princess, extravagant flirting ensues. The sorcerer is cute and eccentric in the best tradition of wizards who are so powerful they don’t have to care about dignity.

Watched: The Owl House 2.18-19: Revolt, revolt! OK!

Written: 319 kitten words. Too much reading, not enough writing.

I finally remembered to download an app for noise for sleeping instead of running the fan all night. Crackling fireplace noise was pleasant, but I don’t know how much it actually helped.

Watched: The Owl House 2.15-17: Flashbacks and also concrete information about King’s past. I was right about Belos.

Written: 170 kitten words, bringing me to around 12000 words for the month. That’s not as bad as I thought, even though most of them were not NaNoWriMo.

Back to work! If only taking a vacation made me more instead of less energetic…

Played: Lancer. How does this game work again? And why do our enemies(?) have a fake beach set up in an underground bunker along with a wrestling announcer and a bird-themed mech squad?

Read: Talyn: Descent (Benjamin Medrano): Further adventures of a gay LitRPG succubus, featuring an incredibly nerve-wracking of leveling way up as well as the resolution of the mysterious problem. Third book not out until late next year, though.

Written: 383 kitten words, and I’m caught up through November 29, but just barely.

I have today off because in the original plan I was going to need it to recover after coming back from Roseville and I never changed my vacation plan. I meant to get up at a normal hour so I would be ready for tomorrow, but failed miserably. I did manage to do one thing, and then another thing, and finally the water is back on so I could take a shower and do dishes and stuff. I should not dread tomorrow, but I do.

Read: Illuminations (T Kingfisher): A young girl lives in a family of magic artists, who follow a tradition of painting practical enchantments into weird pictures, but some of their ancestors were more ambitious and did not follow safe disposal procedures. It has the T Kingfisher kids’ book feel, but it’s just not one of her strongest.

Watched: The Owl House 2-13-14: Luz and Amity are very cute but also kind of terrifying. Willow is pretty awesome too.

Written: 322 kitten words.

Today, the one thing I did was go over to the Gollubs’ to game and eat my body weight in cheese.

Water was still out all day.

Played: Dark Matter. Our castaways befriended two more factions, the Engineers and the Farmers, restored four whole books to the Library, checked out three books and had one of them immediately vanish, and collected a gang of kobolds who worship Jaseen. Then they broke into the mysterious room covered in warnings and craziness, and almost got the snot beat out of them by a giant metal skeleton and its radioactive ooze. Sesamina is still not getting anywhere with the librarian, but we probably have one more session this year.

Watched: The Owl House 2.11-12: Oh yeah, Luz and Amity are the cutest thing ever, and the emperor has a terrible plan. Also, I have a suspicion about the emperor’s background. And what happened to human solidarity?

Written: 101 kitten words, which is technically not nothing, but only technically.

Today, I did one thing! I went over to play Monster Game with Nonny and family. Then I stayed for food and also the first episode and a half of Wednesday. It wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it and was sad when I had to leave to catch the bus, and finished watching the episode on my own when I got home. Then I did no more things.

When I got home, the water was out, no ETA for a fix.

Written: 386 kitten words.

Did nothing all day until it was time to go over to Ayse and Ken’s and partake in a feast which I had no hand in creating. Arguably that’s the best kind, and I know it makes my friends happy to feed people they love, so I’m probably just having an existential crisis. Anyway, it was an amazing feast, and there was even rainbow jello, so everybody was happy and also round. There may have been hugs.

Then I stayed up until a million o’clock doing pretty much nothing, so uh good holiday I guess?

Read: Talyn: Rebirth (Benjamin Medrano): LitRPG, main character is a succubus but actually tasteful, something is up with the system.

Written: 423 kitten words.

I meant to get up early and voluntarily do a bit of work to finish up from yesterday but instead was a useless lump for the entire morning. Eventually I did get up and go to buffet and kittens with Ayse and Ken and Jus and Nonny. There were a lot of kittens, but although I spent a long time petting a purry grey boi named Howl (after the wizard, I presume) and getting my hand kneaded, none of them were the right kitten to come home with me.

Read: The Thousand Eyes (AK Larkwood): Sequel to The Unspoken Name, wraps everything up but not until after a lot of suffering and perseverance and even personal growth on the part of the main characters. Also, gay smooches.

Written: 705 kitten words. When I am caught up (if I ever manage that) maybe I will have enough brain cells to work on the thing I meant to NaNoWriMocate.

I ended up staying logged on to work until forever trying to focus enough to get everything squared away for holiday, but didn’t do a very good job. I guess it can wait until after the holiday, since most of our customers are US.

Read: “Haley and Nana’s Best House” (Maggie Hogarth): Thanksgiving episode of the calligraphy/Christianity/heartwarming LitRPG serial. The cat is doing well.

Written: 688 kitten words.