Tag: cleaners

Hey, where’s my creativity and innovation?

Had to get up early again for the cleaners and then still do work. Bah. Also discovered Mysterious Shoes. The cleaners disclaim them, and Marith says she doesn’t recognize them, but nobody else is ever in my apartment because I’m a failure at people.

Read (manga): Mysterious Disappearances vol 5 (Nujima): All their messing around with mysteries has attracted the attention of the Queen of Cats and her truck-sized minions. Nobody is mean to a cat on-screen, but there is nevertheless cat-related sadness of a familiar kind.

Read (anthology): Covenants: Four Tales of Agreements (Moe Lane):Four stories that are not horror, but are in horror settings. A couple are in C19 Europe ravaged by undead of various kinds, there’s one in the same setting as Ghosts on a Alien Wind, and one in a Mythos far future. Okay, maybe they are horror after all.

Written (catgirl): 160 of notes. Maybe they shouldn’t use cell phones at all? But so convenient, even if they aren’t smartphones!

Apparently one I am unable to celebrate, because I am too horrible.

Read (graphic novel): We Called Them Giants (Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, Clayton Cowles): Two girls try to survive in the post-apocalypse, which goes different than they expected. Not a happy story, but only a normal amount of sadness, I think. Could get taught in school.

Written (catgirl): 161.

I am ahead of my time! (I ate tortilla chips yesterday, along with way too much cheese.)

Did not manage to get up for the optional early meeting, even though I probably really should have. Too many customers, not enough brains.

Cleaners came in the afternoon and rearranged everything.

Read (manga): My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today vol 2 (Kiyoko Iwami): Like the author says, this is a manga about cheating! None of these girls is a particularly great person, not even the one being cheated on, but that’s how you get the mega-drama.

Written (catgirl): 161.

Definitely not legal to commemorate any more.

Wasted my time doing low-level crafting in Shop Titans to get the event tasks that only care about how many of something, not tiers.

Watched (live action): Lockwood & Co 3: I thought that plot was going to last longer, but nope!

Read (manga): Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 1 (Itaru Kinoshita, Shin-Ichi Fujiwara): Zookeeping x dinosaurs, with a real paleontologist to make sure the dinosaurs are right. There’s some plot involving the humans and their finances and devotion to dinosaurs, or something, but that’s not really important.

Written (game design): 103.

I’m not really celebrating this one today, although I certainly expect to do so at various times during the coming year.

Since I had no work to do today, I let the cleaners in, went shopping for cat supplies, made a big order from Target, waffled about what hat(s) to get, and was generally useless. When I tried to be useful by downloading the past year’s books from Kobo, I blew up my ADE installation and to reinstall from scratch. I did get about a quarter of the backlog into calibre, though.

Read: Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You vol 3 (Jinushi): Nope, he still doesn’t know.

Written: 164.

What? How is that not on Thanksgiving?

Why did I tell the cleaners it was okay to come so early? I didn’t know I was going to sleep so badly due to arm widget and furry legsnugglers, but it was pretty early even so. Blugh.

Work is still much the way I left it, although all my coworkers have more cases than I remember. I need to remind them to assign me the ones that don’t come in when I’m assigning.

Read: The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen vol 3 (Bunko Matsuura, Tenichi, Suzunosuke): Time is passing, the main character is growing up and maybe even learning something about leadership.

Written: 332, more notes. Probably all dumb.

Hi Kit!

More customer calls today, but at least I could do them from my own pit, with a black cat on top of me. (I don’t know why Nightvale was suddenly the snuggly one today, but no complaints.)

Read: I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl vol 4 (Kashikaze): Yay smooches! Shifting focus to another couple, maybe? Probably not that one, but maybe there will be more.

Read: There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… vol 6 (Musshu, Teren Mikami, Eku Takeshima): Gaah, MC, just admit you’re super-gay already and revel in the number of exceptionally hot girls who are into you! (Internalized heteronormativity is a hell of a drug, as they say.)

Written: 230.

I have some of those!

Read: Monster Psalms (Matt Guss): 31 standard D&D monster types (goblin, dragon, skeleton, naga, sphinx, …) each with half a dozen tables for unique origins, appearances, motivations, powers, mutations, etc. No stat blocks, but when mechanics come up, it’s clearly generic OSR. Unedited prerelease version, but already has some good bits.

Written: 172.

I did wear underwear today, so I guess that’s all right.

Got trained on our new procedure for replacing the automatic case assignment popup with manual assignment, just like I did twenty or thirty years ago. Proof that software doesn’t have to be AI to be awful.

Cleaners helpfully swept up my almost-entirely-empty balcony, and then I found the trash dumpster had been emptied this morning so I was able to throw away the last two boxes. I have more boxes that should get dumped, but they are not blocking maintenance so I can do that later.

Read: Navigational Entanglements (Aliette de Bodard): A different space-Vietnamese empire, where hyperspace navigation overlaps with supernatural martial arts. Four navigators who are neurodivergent or suck up too much or not enough or otherwise are unpopular get sent to hunt a monster. Politics and lesbian crushes ensue.

Written: 297.

I end up typing as much as I can these days, but I still carry a mechanical pencil with me, just in case.

Today I was still on vacation again, and also it was very hot, so I didn’t get much done IRL. I did relocate my Nether portal to be on the same elevation as the other portals on the Nether side, and created a portal for the skeleton farm so it’s easier to reach. My interior design was so bad that Ayse had completely rebuild the Overworld side, but it did work, and now I have a full set of enchanted diamond tools and only 9 credit left at the AWCAB.

In the evening I bestirred myself to finally, finally, go and get a new phone. In one swell foop I more than doubled my iPhone level, and hopefully now I will see fewer messages about support being discontinued. The saleslady was very helpful in putting on the screen protector (which I usually misalign) and transferring everything over, and also I got a free Android tablet. However, the bus was very unhelpful on the way back, so you win some, you lose some.

Also the cleaners came, which took up a chunk of the afternoon but made my apartment less gross.

Read: I’m In Love With The Villainess vol 4 (Aonoshimo, Inori, Hanagata): Both class warfare and forbidden love in one volume! The MC’s obsessive memorization of the game is pretty OP, but it’s all for love, or something.

Written: 168.

Apparently I am not a good atheist, because I got no hugs.

I did get up early because Friday is now the day of regular 8am meeting to go with the regular 9am meeting and people who have the late schedule on Friday just get to suffer. (The alternative is to make it a different person every week, which would be even more annoying.) Someday I will learn to sleep, maybe.

After mining three zillion iron to make a zillion buckets, I finally got my entire lava lake picked up (four chests full of lava buckets!), but I can’t figure out how to put it down so that it’s all smooth.

Read: Service Model (Adrian Tchaikovsky): A robot valet, having lost his job for obvious yet mysterious reasons, must make his way in the world, finding out what it is like (not good) and why it is that way (also not good).

Written: 105.

Humans have flying into space, however clumsily, for about sixty years. I wonder what it will look like after another sixty? (“Spaceflight? Oh, yeah, we used to do that before World of Warcraft XXXVII came out.”)

Used a fact about shark eyes in the meeting today, but I’m running low on facts.

Read: D&D5e Monsters of the Multiverse (Jeremy Crawford, et al): I usually like monster books, but maybe corporate D&D books don’t count. It wasn’t bad, but most of the monsters were familiar from previous editions (gnoll flind, Zuggtmoy, etc) and 5e writeups are kind of boring because they have to be very mechanical for the proper videogame feel. I do like that the new PC race writeups don’t have stat modifiers, only size/move/darkvision/special powers. Now you can play any class as any of these races without hamstringing yourself.

Written: 252. Main Character, why are you not making the terrible decision? Do I need to put the flashback off until later?

Within a reasonable confidence interval.

Brain? Brain? What is “brain”? If I had anything like that, I would not have had the cleaners come at the same time I was having a meeting.

Marith and I wanted to watch the new season of Our Flag Means Death, but it’s on some streaming service somewhere, not the streaming services on my TV. Fuck capitalism.

Watched: One Piece 1.1-2: I’d say it must get better later, or else there wouldn’t be 1087 episodes, but the first two were not good enough to make us want to watch any more. Maybe it’s just the bias of seeing it first, but I liked the opening of the live-action series way more.

Written: FAIL. Maybe I need to go back to 100 words per day.

 

Okay, I got this one covered! As long as it’s not finish an ebook day.

Cleaners came early in the morning so I did not get to sleep in like I sometimes do on Monday, but I’m not sure lying abed actually does me any good. Also had a video appointment with a doctor who said my neck is not actually mutating further, but was willing to order a test to see if it’s doing chemisty. Also she reminded me to do all the things I should be doing. Ugh.

Read: “Headphone Boy” (Nana Afadua Ofori-Atta): Someone reminisces about meeting their husband in one of the many magical realism timelines in which that happened.

Written: 320.

Had to wake up early for cleaners, but then managed to go back to sleep like a useless lump for a while. My body refused to produce medical samples, so eventually I gave up and went grocery shopping. The UPS place is open tomorrow morning, so if my body cooperates before then, I can drop the sample off before gaming tomorrow.

Thought some more about game design. I think I had some of these ideas before. They weren’t any good then either.

Written: 267 new words, plus a little editing.

American date style is stupid.

Cleaners came early in the morning, so I was up to go grocery shopping before being on call all afternoon. There were some customers, and a lot of uselessness. I tried to take a nap, but didn’t do a very good job.

Read: The Accidental Summoning (Kos Play): Teenage boy discovers the secret LitRPG world somehow hiding behind modern life, tries to summon a magic teacher and ends up with a cute teenaged girl, learns that his magic is the Forbidden Ultimate Power, etc. Except for being set in the US and a book, it would be a cheesy shōnen anime.

Written: 253/1247/10794. Not sure this is going anywhere useful, though.

Yay, no commuting! Lots of customers, but whatever. I did at least as much work as I would have in the office, so bite me, capitalists.

Also I can have cleaners in when I’m not at the office, so my apartment is slightly less squalid.

Watched: My Hero Academia 6.24-25: Uraraka finally got to do something, even if it was only make a speech, and now the team is back together. Apparently the next season will consist of a single scene that takes 25 episodes.

Watched: RWBY 9.1: Well, that’s better than what it looked like was going to happen at the end of season 8. Maybe. Also, brightly colored!

Read: Zero Hour (Craig Alanson): Even more shenanigans, but Skippy’s quest has advanced by one milestone. Also everybody is even more doomed than they were before they tried to fix things.

Read: Trouble on Paradise (Craig Alanson): Side characters from book three get into extra trouble, but the explosions don’t damage human-alien relations. Much.

Written: FAIL.

Back to capitalism, although maybe not very competently. Really I was pretty useless all day, but I did manage to brave the freezing Californian cold to get Taiwan special beef noodles. They were really good, although possibly I shouldn’t have eaten them all in one meal. I think not eating for a couple of days shrank my stomach.

I am too lame to clean up my own mess (also I have no cleaning supplies) but I got the regular cleaners in a bit early and now all my floors are walkable again.

Read: Katalepsis ch 15.1-19, 16.1-9, 17.1-15 (Hungry): Back to Earth, then lots of new friends (although friendship means different things to different entities), and another appearance of a rat bastard.

Written: FAIL.

Got up way too early at a sensible hour for the cleaners, then went back to bed, then got woken up by Ken texting that he is still sick and NYE fondue party is cancelled. Festive food was a 90-minute wait and it was raining out, so I stayed home and ate food from the fridge and did nothing. I was on call in the afternoon, but nothing happened.

Read: Love Crafted ch 45-80 (RavensDagger): The end! Pretty abrupt and the commenters didn’t like it, but whatever. Omnipotent tentacles can only go so long without solving the Inquisition problem for good.

Read: Dreamer’s Ten-Tea-Cle Café ch 1-44 (RavensDagger): Spin-off, mostly for the purpose of crossovers with other web serials, but also to follow the personal development of Dreamer’s pamphlet-distributing clone.

Written: FAIL. No more words for 2022.

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.

Interviewed a candidate, which was not a terrible experience, although of course I cannot say anything about them.

I finally read a bunch of stories from Apex Magazine that I had bookmarked, and they were pretty uncheerful. Content warning for death, despair, slavery, animal death, and assorted misery.

Read: “Nine Theories of Time” (Spencer Nitkey): Sadness about humans.

Read: “Hank in the South Dakota Sun” (Stephanie Kraner): Sadness about trains.

Read: “The Fruit of the Princess Tree” (Sage Tyrtle): Surprisingly, not unmitigated sadness. One character manages to emerge from the slough of despond.

Read: “On The Day You Spend Forever With Your Dog” (Adam R Shannon): Sadness about dogs.

Read: “Copper, Iron, Blood and Love” (Mari Ness): Sadness about ravens.

Read: “Lazarus and the Amazing Kid Phoenix” (Jennifer Giesbrecht): Another story in which the characters can change things, although it’s not clear how much they do. Also less abstract than a lot of the others. Definitely my favorite of this lot.

Written: 566 kitten words (one block over from the Beast), 1843 so far this week.

The cleaners were here at 7:00, so since I was already up, I bit the bullet and walked to grocery shopping, came home, took a shower, and got lunch, all before 13:00. Unfortunately there was then chaos so I didn’t know what to do next for a while until visiting got planned, but it was still a productive morning.

Watched: Amerivision ep 5, final round of the qualifiers. Finally we got California’s song, which used the power of sexy young women but was somehow defeated by Michigan’s teenaged singer-songwriter. I think we’ll come back in the popular vote, though. Semifinals start on Monday!

Eaten: Santa Maria tritip, pinquito beans, rice, salad, corn with peppers.

Played: Spinning. So much spinning. Possibly ill-advised after the eating, but all’s well that ends well, right?

Read: Spy x Family vol 7 (Tatsuya Endo): I’m not entirely comfortable with a secret policeman being a sympathetic and even comic character, but then the leads are a James Bond-style “spy” and a professional murderer, so it’s not like the violence isn’t inherent in the system.

Words: 517 kitten words.

Cleaner showed up early, so I was able to go grocery shopping in the morning instead of halfway through the day, but it was still just grocery shopping. I did, however, while getting Thai lunch, snag the last three packs of Diet Snapple at Bevmo!

We didn’t even try to go over to Ayse and Ken’s place. I don’t even know, man. Between Marith being exploited and abused by her job and Delta everywhere and everything, does life even happen any more?

Played: Zoomwarts. More canon contents, with dementors, but the PCs turned their prisoner over to Dumbledore and got grounded. Also Bella got dumped?! That can’t be right! Why is Heron acting so weird? Is everybody doomed?

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.