Just because we could, we gathered at Ayse and Ken’s place to eat delicious lamb date stuff and cake and tell Ayse happy birthday some more. Also we watched the antepenultimate episode of Sailor Moon Stars and clobbered people with rubber balls.
Watched: Sailor Moon Stars 198: Everybody’s dead, next two episodes will just be drifting petals and sad music.
Written: Nothing, although I made a few notes for the con.
Happy happy Marith Day!
We celebrated by going over to Monkeycat Towers to eat Thai food and watch the first three episodes of Revue Starlight. The Thai food was delicious, the anime was not what we expected. Things it reminded us of include: Revolutionary Girl Utena, Kaleido Star, Princess Tutu, Star Driver, AKB0048, and Strawberry Panic. It is of the inherently cursed yuri-for-boys genre, and also seems to rely on knowing the characters from other parts of the sprawling multimedia franchise, so we probably don’t need to watch any more.
Read: Crusade (Glynn Stewart): Completes the trilogy with Exile and Refuge. The humans and their friends defeat the great enemy with the power of archaeology, while also dealing with first contact with assholes.
Written: 348 kitten words.
Why is there so much temperature? I didn’t order this! At least the customers were mostly quiet.
Played: Zoomwarts. The lizards and their mammalian sidekicks made it back into the land of the dead, to rescue everyone!
Eaten: Coq au vin and kale salad.
Watched: The Slayers 4-5: Attack of the fish-creature! Also joke which caused Jus to die of mortification, which fortunately will never be brought up again.
Written: 286 kitten words, for a total of 4119/3000 so far this week.
In the morning I went to watch Nonny run approximately a million laps for fundraising at his school, as Jus did in years before. It was a pretty nice day for being outside, aside from minor tree orgies. I didn’t manage to eat breakfast or lunch, but I did manage to go grocery shopping, so whatever.
Watched: Slayers 1-3. Jus and Nonny are old enough to appreciate it now, possibly because everybody loves explosions and antiheroes.
Eaten: Dandan noodles and velvet chicken with snap peas in lemon ginger sauce.
Played: No Zoomwarts, Marith is too flat.
Words: FAIL
Cleaners came at 7:00 this morning, so I had to get up, but then I took a nap thing, or maybe was just a huge useless lump for a while. I managed to shop for a grocery and then visit friends to get hugs, though.
Played: Zoomwarts. Bella isn’t dead, nobody is a vampire (although Emily is also not alive), the ministry is taking credit for saving the day, the surviving eight and a half students are going on winter break early, everyone else has been sucked into a pit to the underworld. Maybe we’ll stop here and let Ken run D&D so Nonny can fight monsters, or maybe Bella and Rosamund and the lizards will have to go get everyone’s soul back.
Eaten: Tasty kebabs, tasty feta-cucumber salad, tasty chocolate splenda cream pie. But we do also love Ken for himself! Really!
Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.9: No parasol will protect Rikka from Nibutani talking about feelings!
Watched: Azumanga Daioh 1: Still ridiculous! Also, the fluffy temptation of wheat.
Watched: RWBY 1.4: Sproing!
Played: Zombie ball tag. If a zombie catches a human, they turn into a zombie, but if a zombie gets hit by the ball three times, they turn into a human. Seemed to be reasonably well-balanced in that sometimes the humans won and sometimes the zombies. Also not nearly as contentious as Sneaky Statues.
Words: 554 kitten words about nothing in particular.
I didn’t really get up earlier than usual for grocery shopping, but I did it with less whining, so that’s good, right?
On-call in the afternoon, but the customers were blessedly quiet.
Read: Rackham Vale (Brian Saliba, Craig Schaffer): An OSR sandbox based on (and including many examples of) the art of Arthur Rackham, featuring many faeries of various scales, mutant alligators, curses, ambitious witches, and party trees, among other fey goings-on.
Played: Zoomwarts. Surprisingly, trying the same plan again worked better. Everybody got killed, but some of them got over it, so that’s good, right? Possibly we’re going to start alternating Zoomwarts with D&D run by Ken, so that Nonny can fight monsters.
Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.7-8: Beach episode! But more importantly, we find out what Rikka’s deal is. Also, both positive and negative examples of romantic behavior which may be of use to Jus now that she is a middle-schooler and practically a teenager.
Eaten: Ribs! (Also brisket, burnt ends, collard greens, etc.) Apparently Jus took a break from wanting sushi 24/7 to demand ribs, and nobody was going to object.
Played: Laser tag.
Watched: RWBY 1.1 for Jus. She liked it, and we aren’t even to the trauma part yet!
Words: FAIL. I did a little revising because I figured out what one of the slang terms should be, but not very much.
Although I was on call today, I managed to have a fun day anyway by staying within 15min of my computer and only getting texted once. Whee!
Played: Minigolf and air hockey. I am terrible at minigolf, but we weren’t keeping score, so nobody knows exactly how terrible, and that’s like winning, right? Also I got to display my maturity by not asking if it was my turn to putt every time someone else went.
Played: Catch. It’s a classic for a reason!
Eaten: Muslim Chinese food. It was really good
Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.6:
Played: Super Smash Bros. I am also terrible at this game. I just try to face somebody who’s not on my team and mash the basic attack button until I get kicked off the edge three times. But I’m willing to be useless if it makes Nonny happy.
Read: FAIL
Words: FAIL
Surprisingly, I’m not on call for any part of today! Not that it had any impact on my complete uselessness.
Played: Zoomwarts. Bella, Rosamund (now conscious), and the lizards are making progress, but nothing is ever easy. Now they’re all in the vampire room (aka morning solarium), although only Baby Lizard and Bella are actually chained to the wall.
Eaten: Instant coq au vin, romanesco (not tesco fresco), goat brie, etc.
Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.3: Rikka has a minion!
Played: Murder Mystery until Nonny got frustrated, then Sneaky Statues.
Words: FAIL.
Today was going to be Kitten Café, but Jus banged up her foot, so instead it will be tomorrow, and today will be lying in bed forever until I DIE. But I will be a warm and cozy corpse.
Read: Burning Bright (Melissa McShane): In an alternate England, a young lady’s father tells her she can either marry the title he picks out for her or spend her life locked in the attic, so she takes her strongest-ever fire powers and joins the Navy. Despite it being the Napoleonic wars, she gets sent to the Caribbean to incinerate pirates. Adventure and (sadly het) romance ensue.
Read: Failed Princesses vol 2 (Ajiichi): The leads are already sacrificing social standing for each other, but additional potential love interests are appearing! Oh no!
Watched: Sorcery in the Big City: A ridiculous OAV about a sorceress bringing things to life at Christmas in NYC, a teddy bear becoming a superhero, a sympathetic NYPD officer, ancient evils awakening, and other such nonsense.
Words: 571 words about kittens, although they seem a little substandard. 227 words of revision, but I think they’re all pretty much wrong and need to be thrown away.
No side effects, except a minor headache. I hope this means my immune system is quietly competent, and not slacking off. “New antigen? Throw it on the pile, we’ll get around to it. Probably.”
Omicron is not so prevalent (yet) that Marith and I cannot visit Monkeycat Towers, so we did.
Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.1-2: Rewatching because now Jus is old enough to appreciate it.
Watched: Fruits Basket 2.1-2: Ayse and Ken have only seen season 1, so we are rewatching it with them, and then eventually we will all watch season 3 together.
Eaten: Delicious Thai food! Also like one seasonal ginger cookie. It was good!
Played: Zoomwarts. Since we changed the schedule to game when Marith is both tired and allergic, maybe it was best that all her characters were petrified? (No, it was not best.) But Bella continued to be heroic despite the IMMENSE DOOM closing in from every side and now she has an excuse to look for Harry.
Words: 208. I think I used all my brain socializing.
Monday after a long weekend and I really didn’t wanna, but I had to anyway, so I kinda did. I managed to claim some days during the holidays as vacation, although on other days I have to work or at least be on call.
Eaten: Sheet pan chicken with pancetta, garlic, and tomatoes.
Watched: My Hero Academia 110-113: Sometimes, when you have two problems, they don’t cancel each other out.
Watched: RWBY Fairy Tails 4-5: The one about the princess in the tower, and the one about the wise king.
Read: I Think I Love You (Auriane Desombre): More high school F/F romance, with Cunning Plans and Rival Movies and Conflicting Views Of Romance and Coming Out and also boys who suck.
NaNoWriMo Words: 26832 + 742 = 27574. It turns out socializing and writing don’t work together well. Also feelings are still stupid and hard.
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.
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.
Today’s major lifestyle change: added a different kind of packaged protein to my packaged salad lunch. Not a better kind, at least not environmentally, just different.
Read: Sunreach (Brandon Sanderson, Janci Patterson): Novella between the second and (upcoming) third books of the “Skyward” space opera series, following other characters as they try to make progress on their problems while the main character is off doing the thing.
Watched: My Hero Academia 99-102: End of the class A vs class B competition, on to next round of internships!
Words: Check
Now it’s Friday again and I haven’t accomplished anything all week. I mean, I did some capitalisms, and sustained my pointless life, but whatever.
Read: Shatter the Sky (Rebecca Kim Wells): Recommended in the acknowledgments of Iron Widow. A girl from the mountain that dragons used to come from has her girlfriend stolen by the Bureau of Creepiness from the empire that stole all the dragons and makes a terrible plan to get her back. Dragons and ghosts and perfumery are also involved, but not much questioning of the social order. Much more standard YA than Iron Widow.
Watched: My Hero Academia 95-98: Mostly shōnen combat, but we did get some One for All plot. Also Bakugo was somehow not 100% awful
Words: FAIL. I have no excuse, I’m just very dumb.
Read: Kingdoms at War (Lindsay Buroker): Start of a fantasy series where mages rule everything and treat the non-magical about as well as Africans during the age of empires. Non-magical archaeologists uncover something that everybody wants, even before they find out what it really does and the dangers thereof. Intrigue and adventure ensue. Also like four romance subplots, but they all seem to pretty slow-burn.
Watched: My Hero Academia 90-94: We got one episode of Endeavor trying to redeem himself to his family and Hawks plotting, but then it was back to UA and class 1A vs class 1B in not-entirely-lethal combat so everybody can show off their new techniques.
Words: Continued FAIL. Apparently my brain has to be useless for a certain number of hours every day, even though those hours could be used for writing.
Apparently I forgot how to sleep again, but fortunately there was not a lot that needed to happen at work today.
Eaten: Creamy lemon dill chicken, zucchini, and snap peas.
Watched: My Hero Academia 87-89: Last two of S4 and then the first one of S5, a lot of which was recap anyway. Can Endeavor really be redeemed, though?
Read: Pahua and the Soul Stealer (Lori M Lee): Another from the “Rick Riordan Presents” line of middle-grade fantasy in non-white-people mythoi. This one is Hmong, about which I knew nothing going in, but was not surprised to find it similar to other E/SE Asian cultures.
Read: Amelia O’Donohue is So Not a Virgin (Helen Fitzgerald): Scottish all-girls boarding school drama. I saw the big plot twist ahead of time, although perhaps not at the very first clue.
Read: Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Diseases (Kristen O’Neal): It is in fact about both those things, and also Internet support groups and friendship and love and family and life goals.
Words: FAIL. I am not smart enough to write.
Read: The Night Raven (Sarah Painter): Outlying daughter of one of the four magical crime families of London comes back to wait out fallout from her non-magic-crime job in Scotland and gets sucked right back in with missing cousins and horrible uncles and ghosts and hit men and hot detectives.
Read: Days of Love at Seagull Villa vol 3 (Kodama Naoko): Sorry, [character], you had literally years to ask [other character] out, but all you did was neg her and pretend to be straight, so now you’re stuck with a dumb boy while [other character] gets all the girlsmooches. The end!
Watched: The Case Study of Vanitas 7-10: Lots of backstory, more eccentric characters, and a final, season-ending, terrible reveal. Also vampire bites, which seem to count somewhere between kissing and sex.
Words: FAIL.
Eaten: Balsamic salmon and broccoli, balsamic tomatoes and mozzarella.
Watched: The Case Study of Vanitas 4-6: Who this Domi person is, Noé’s tragic past, and the curse-bringers step up their offensive.
Read: Embers of War (Gareth L Powell): In the aftermath of an interstellar war, veterans (human, AI, and alien) in basically the French Foreign Search & Rescue have to deal with their pasts, the fallout of the past conflict, and the assholes who are happy to start new wars. The ending looks pretty good for all except the last category, but this is apparently the first of a trilogy, so I’m guessing it’s not as great as it looks.
Read: Darling (K Ancrum): A reimagining of Peter Pan, in the modern day and a completely different genre. I think it’s well done, but like all reimaginings, how you like it depends on how attached you are to the original, and I’m not very.
Words: FAIL, but I am getting a lot closer to being able to publish past words!
The cleaner was efficient this time, so I managed to go grocery shopping and only then implode into a useless lump. There is still plague of all flavors all over everywhere and especially at Ayse and Ken’s, so no visiting. I was on call for the afternoon, but nothing happened.
Played: Zoomwarts. We were not very focused; I blame Jus’s new phone or maybe my old brain. We got some drama, but Dumbledore retconned it. Surely this will not come back to haunt anyone at all.
Watched: Fena, Pirate Princess 1-2: You’d think a show called “Pirate Princess” would be more kid-friendly, but the first episode has a brothel and rape threats and numerous murders. After that, it seems to mellow out.
Read: Broken Blade (JC Daniels): After being kidnapped and tortured in the previous book, the main character puts herself back together, partially with the help of friends but mostly because there’s a really big problem that needs her special murderizing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.