Category: Life of a Space Parasite

Started the day with brunch at The Table with Ayse and Ken and Jus (who skipped school and is now an anime girl). It was good, I should go there more often! Then I traveled with Ken to Roseville (which hasn’t been in Roseville for several years now) and because we left before noon, the traffic was not terrible and we arrived in good time. Everyone else, who had to pack children and wait for Nonny to finish school and such, had to fight through holiday traffic and didn’t arrive until dinner time. (Marith was defeated by capitalism and could not go at all.)

We searched for the lost art of conversation and played Dominion with Nocturne (vampires and raiders and bats, oh my!) and also the My Hero Academia card game (a combination of Guillotine and Lords of Waterdeep but at least Mineta still sucks) and ate Chinese food until everyone was unconscious.

Josh and Oli didn’t arrive from Land of Plague until super-late, but their tests were negative so Ayse and Ken did not have to pack up the children and flee. Josh and Oli remained isolated in their room for the whole time they were in residence, though, which seems like a terrible way to spend Thanksgiving.

NaNoWriMo Words: VACATION.

I got tomorrow off for traveling, so today was like Friday, only with more stress because I have to pack and go to a different place and interact with humans and feel bad for not being good at coming up with Hexarchate characters for Ken’s game and be unnecessarily mean to Marith and die in a pit.

Read: Sex Ed 120% vol 2 (Kikiki Tataki, Hotomura): Addressing a miscellany of subjects like menstruation, circumcision, feminine gender presentation, consent, and pickup artists. The teacher who has been ardently pursuing the school nurse since the beginning of vol 1 asks whether she’s been acting like a PUA, so points for self-awareness.

NaNoWriMo Words: 22021 + 2030 = 24051. I can definitely make it to half a No by the end of the month, because I can ramble endlessly about stupid detail that would all have to be cut out if there were to be a second draft.

We had an extra bonus meeting with boss2 today, so I had to use my last shark fact, which he already knew anyway. Time to scribble more cryptic notes on postits!

Both my coworkers were on customer calls most of the day, but fortunately not much other stuff came in for me to have to handle.

I have successfully scheduled a booster shot, but not for almost a month. It’s probably fine, I’m not in a high-risk job like Marith.

Read: Satoko and Nada vol 1 (Yupechika, Marie Nishimari): A Japanese girl and a Saudi Arabian girl are roommates at American college. Cultural exchange and some amount of hijinx ensue. They are not exaggeratedly cute, just regular cute.

NaNoWriMo Words: 15799 + 1216 = 17015. I’m accumulating a lot of FIXME add this thing I just thought of everywhere it should have been in the whole document, so maybe I should go back and do some of that, but it seems like an inefficient use of writing time, with all the hopping around and maybe revising existing text which doesn’t help my word count.

Early-morning meeting today, so of course I stayed up late last night. I am SMRT.

Read: Elder Race (Adrian Tchaikovsky): It’s old story of an advanced interstellar traveller being mistaken for a wizard by the people of the lost colony. He really does try to explain, but the difficulties of translation render every term like “scientist” or “scholar” as “wizard”, and when he explains there’s no such thing as magic, only a deeper understanding of the laws of nature, the locals nod and agree that’s what magic is. It’s no wonder he spends most of his time with the emotion-dampening brainware cranked all the way up, even before he finds out what they need his help with.

Read: Ms. Walters #1-86 (Hannah K Davis): An unemployed nurse ends up working for a mad scientist, in a town where the mad scientist feels right at home. It’s reasonably amusing, and I find the art style very charming.

NaNoWriMo Words: 12721 + 1587 = 14308. Despite being sleepy, I did an extra cycle of focus and produced another word or two compared to yesterday. However, they are terrible words, and I might be at the point where I have to write FIXME nobody cares about this scene move on.

Read: Tidecaller (Scout Cross, Alex Raizman): LitRPG, but entirely in-world, so the game elements don’t add much and arguably make the main character’s sacrifice less sacrificial. Short.

Read: Smoke & Ashes (Alexis Hall): Fourth in the series about a half-faery private eye in London. After spending a year drunk after foiling the last plot against reality, she now has to sober up and deal with all the symbolic magical murder chickens coming home to roost on the dead bodies of her new squeeze’s family.

NaNoWriMo Words: 11449 + 1272 = 12721.

I managed to do the thing I couldn’t get working on Friday, so that’s like work, I guess.

Read: Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls (Kaela Rivera): Secondary-world fantasy based on Mexico and Pokémon, befriending the hated, punk hairstyles, horrible monsters lurking in the desert, very disappointed parents, curses that aren’t curses, cute somewhat age-appropriate guys and no action whatsoever.

NaNoWriMo Words: 10005 + 1444 = 11449! I finally remembered that I had a Pomodoro-type app on my phone (Be Focused is the one I have, but there are a jillion of them) and tried it, and it turns out that knowing I should focus for 25 minutes and then can take a break works out a lot better than thinking I should focus for 12 hours and then focusing for none of it. Who would have thought that this technique used by millions of people to enhance their productivity would actually be helpful?!

The cleaners came extra early, but I was able to go back to bed for a while and still walk to the grocery store.

Played: Nothing, Jus is indisposed again. Apparently, it’s hard being a teenager.

Read: The rest of Shootaround which is both finite and complete, as well full of queer romance and hijinx and occasional murders and adorableness.

NaNoWriMo Words: 8297 + 892 = 9189. Not much for a day with no work and no gaming.

I was energetic, or at least bored with sitting at the work computer, all afternoon, and then became lethargic and sleepy as soon as I was free of work. Bah.

Read: The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities (ed Rick Riordan): One story from every one of the RRP series (possibly non-canonical), plus a new Celtic one from Riordan. Reminded me to check for new books in all the various serieses.

Read: Shoot Around season 1 (suspu): Six high school girls and their basketball coach. Suddenly there is a zombie apocalypse. They are still all teenaged goofballs, so it is a good mixture of DOOOM and ridiculous teenaged drama. The doom is not optional, though.

Read: Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares (Tehlor Kay Mejia): Friends are hard. Learning why you have the dreams that get you involved in adventures in also hard. On the other hand, road trip! The road trip is also hard.

NaNoWriMo Words: 7742 + 555 = 8297. Just barely under the quota for NaNoWriQua.

I guess I did a work, or something.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Only little, mostly followup from the last adventure(s) while trying to get our NPCs to stay on track. Then we started thinking about characters for the playtest version we have of the Ninefox Gambit RPG. I’m afraid it may require an actual character concept, so I’m probably going to have to drop out.

NaNoWriMo Words: FAIL. I tried to write some after gaming, but my brain is too dumb.

Luckily the company meeting was first thing in the morning, so I was able to hear how the financials are doing great and everybody loves the Sales team before going off to the dentist. My expedition was not all poky bits and horrible fluoride gunk, though, because I encountered a wild Ayse! She is not dead! She is not a ghost! She is still my friend! Someday, there will be visiting again.

NaNoWriMo Words: 6980 + 762 = 7742. 700 per evening seems to be about what I’m good for.

We had five people on our team, one of them not really present due to easing back in from maternity leave and also about to go on an extended trip twelve time zones away, and one just got fired. From the sounds of it, he was really not coming up to speed, but this is definitely the wrong trend. (I guess I should feel better that I wasn’t the least productive member of the team, but what if I am now?)

Read: The Drones of Keldora (Alex Raizman): Conclusion of this series, with extremely ominous last line, but apparently one of the major characters is going to visit the series with dinosaurs, so maybe I’ll read that one.

Read: Wrath and Pride (Alex Raizman): First two books of the series with dinosaurs. I mean, dinosaurs! Yay! But the dungeon core stuff is all so arbitrary that it’s basically made entirely of deus machina. It’s so weird that D&D leveling, which was supposed to be an abstraction of the actual process of learning from experience (okay, very abstract in some editions) has become its own thing by being filtered through derivative computer games.

NaNoWriMo Words: 6267 + 713 = 6980. It’s not nothing, I guess? But I know I used to be able to write more.

Forgot to do laundry. Or much of anything.

Read: The Guns of Keldora (Alex Raizman): Fourth book of the series, and things are getting even more ridiculously OP on both sides. It’s clearly supposed to be a book about the MC being clever, and he’s not not clever, but mostly he’s just using free stuff that gets handed to him because he got handed enough free stuff to make the Maguffin of Infinite Upgrades, which undercuts that.

NaNoWriMo Words: 5559 + 708 = 6267.

People were doing some kind of fun thing on my street, disrupting bus service, but I managed to go grocery shopping anyway. (Many of the things I wanted to buy were out of stock, but that seems to be normal for 2021, because fucking rich people and their yacht money.)

Read: The Motors of Keldora (Alex Raizman): More crafting, more threats, more OP, beginnings of entanglements with the author’s other litrpg series. Roll on the Random Limb Loss table!

NaNoWriMo Words: 4416 + 1153 = 5559. That’s even better than yesterday, although still not great considering I still had nothing to do today. What’s a plot? Can you eat it? Have I used this joke already?

On-call all day, so no shopping. No anything, only dumbness and sloth.

Played: Nothing, Jus is too sick for Zoomwarts.

Read: Apocalypse: Dungeon System (Macronomicon): Third book in the series, further delving into the deep mysteries and getting annoyed by OP wizards, fairies, birds, children, and gasoline-drinking babes.

Read: Spy x Family vol 6 (Tatsuya Endo): Love is hazardous for both adults and first-graders, apparently. I bet the dog could have helped if they had listened to him more.

Read: The Wastes of Keldora and The Trains of Keldora (Alex Raizman): More litrpg, lots of crafting that makes me think Minecraft the way it’s described but could be from any of a million games, cricket-elves, mental health issues, snarky teenagers, exponential growth.

NaNoWriMo Words: 3788 + 628 = 4416, which is pretty sad considering I had literally nothing else to do today, but still better than yesterday.

Yay, we made it to Friday. I wish I had some brain left.

Watched: RWBY Fairy Tales 1: Don’t got into the forest, geez!

Watched: My Hero Academia 107-109: Some disturbing information about the Nomus, then back to the League of Villains, who haven’t been idle all this time!

Read: Apocalypse: Generic System and Apocalypse: Fairy System (Macronomicon): Isekai/litrpg with magic crafting and subterfuge, then getting screwed over and having to survive in the post-assimilation world, with some delving into the deeper mechanics underneath what is presented to mortals as classes and levels and stats. Also fairy bargains, mad science, and video games. I stayed up until forever o’clock reading, so I guess they’re engaging, at least at the level my brain can handle.

NaNoWriMo Words: 153 words, which is pretty much a FAIL. Marith thinks writing even a single word during the month of November qualifies for winning NaNoWriMo, but I’m a purist. Or maybe just grumpy. 3635 + 153 = 3788 total.

Hurray, Nonny got immunostabbified! We do not have to send hippos to eat the CDC!

I felt smart in the training meeting today, which I’m pretty sure means Dunning-Kruger. (Not that we can believe the Dunning-Kruger effect exists, because no social science results can be replicated, sigh.)

Played: Nothing, Brooks has to get up early tomorrow because his mom has medical stuff.

Read: Venomous (Christie Wilcox): Animal venom! All different kinds! Combinations of thousands of different molecules each carefully evolved to interact with a specific biochemical pathway! Just waiting to be mined for new drugs! Venoms of death! Venoms of pain! Venoms of zombification! One of my prescriptions is based on gila monster spit! (Sadly, I have not grown blackpink beaded scales to make the K-pop fans jealous, but I’ll keep taking it anyway.)

Read: Galaxy Stop 910 (Soya S Holm): Nonbinary feelings in spaaaace.

NaNoWriMo Words: 2359 + 1276 = 3635 total. Still feeble, but a step in the right direction. It’s still possible I will trip on a plot hole and die, though.

I don’t want to help the annoying customer, I want to sleep.

Read: Schoolbooks and Sorcery (ed Michael M Jones): Anthology of stories about teenagers learning different kinds of magic in different contexts, most of them explicitly queer (mostly lesbian or trans, for whatever reasons). Variable in quality, but none of them were a waste of time.

Read: It Stems From Love (Soya S Holm): Complete story about romance and coughing up flowers and near-death experience.

NaNoWriMo Words: 1618 + 741 = 2359. Still pathetic, but at least I’m not losing half my wordcount every day.

No customer calls today, and also coworker k is back from vacation

Read: Prince Charming (Rachel Hawkins): Set just before Her Royal Highness, an American high school girl gets mixed up with obnoxious royalty and unwanted fame when her sister gets engaged to the crown prince of Scotland (which has its own royal family in this AU). Sadly het.

Read: Into the Odd (Chris McDowall, Johan Nohr): Shiny new edition of a very simple system for exploring weird dungeons in search of mysterious artifacts. Combat involves only damage rolls, stats are used only for saves to avoid unpleasantness and decrease the more you get abused. Prequel to Electric Bastionland.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 15 (Kore Yamazaki): Unfortunately I am not able to keep all these characters straight, because I am a dumb, so much of this story arc is being lost on me.

NaNoWriMo Words: 535 + 1083 = 1618 total. I am less than half a functional NaNoWriMoer.

I spent most of my workday on an 8-hour customer call that was probably at least 80% pointless. Listening to people chatter away in Hebrew with English technical terms interspersed is only entertaining for the first hour or so.

Apparently I’m doing NaNoWriMo now? I blame Kit. I was going to do “what if Hogwarts but space pirates instead of wizards” but decided I should work on the project that has been languishing for months, which is already kind of like that and has some plot laid out.

Read: Her Royal Highness (Rachel Hawkins): High school senior lesbians, at an exclusive private school in the wilds of Scotland, one of them is a normal girl from Texas, one of them is an actual princess with more rebelliousness than foresight, some smooches, no guillotines.

Read: Pink Lemonade 1-120 (Derppycat.Amaya): Starts off as humorous, how can she be so dense that she doesn’t realize he’s asking her out and thinks of her as a girlfriend, but eventually gets into her tragic backstory and why she doesn’t think anyone can love her. Ongoing.

Read: Rainbow and Black vol 1 (Eri Takenashi): A young Japanese woman prone to black and white thinking becomes owner of a peculiar, adorable, vocal, possibly semi-sapient pet, and perhaps starts to experience personal growth.

NaNoWriMo Words: 0 + 1083 = 1083 total. I’m not going to make it at this rate.

Got all my cases caught up again, even the one that required someone smarter than me to solve.

I forgot how to read books again. Maybe I need to find more YA lesbian romance. Maybe I need to start Hands of the Emperor. Maybe I need to slam my head in a door until all the vacuum comes out.

Words: Check, surprisingly. Also I realized that the easier project is probably easier because it has almost no description or dialogue.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Why is the space station made of meat allergic to us now? We didn’t do anything!

Read: ReDawn (Brandon Sanderson, Janci Patterson): second of the three novellas between the second and third books of the main trilogy. These are not at all side stories, major alien butt is being kicked plot developments are occurring! Despite how the other characters talk up the MC, they have no problem doing the thing or the other thing.

Words: FAIL.

I got all my cases responded to, although not necessarily sensibly.

Read: Daughter of the Deep (Rick Riordan): The descendant of Captain Nemo finds out about her legacy and all the people who want to steal it. Yes, apparently Nemo really was that over the top. Adventure ensues.

Words: Check, but what even is the point when people like my pocket fronds in #notwriting exist?

The customers attacked in great profusion, but only one of them demanded a call.

Eaten: Chinese food to celebrate Marith’s birthday!

Watched: My Hero Academia 103-106: One swimsuit episode, some intrigue plot, some Endeavor family plot, some work-study. Fuyumi got so many sparkles when she appeared, I was sure Deku or Bakugo was going to have a crush on her, but apparently not.

Read: Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating (Adiba Jaigirdar): Bengali-Irish high school lesbians, fake dating, horrible white girls, racist administrators, the freedom of completely disappointing one’s parents, almost no boys because who even needs them.

Read: The Case Study of Vanitas vol 5 (Jun Mochizuki): Any French supernatural murders must involve the Beast of Gévaudan! Also it looks like the Jeanne-Vanitas thing is really a thing, not throw-away.

Words: Check.