They can’t all be funny.

Ayse and Ken and Jus and Non went back home this morning, because they have to do work and school and all kinds of things on Monday. Dave and I stayed to entertain our hosts, or at least help Halloween Toddler throw more things down the stairs.

Played (card game): Buffer Time. After realizing we had been cheating before, we started playing correctly (it wasn’t a lot of difference) and eventually won a game. Losing the other games was approximately as fun, because it is a ridiculous and random game.

Watched (animated TV): Star Trek: Lower Decks 1.4-5: Still pretty great. Also, brain-sucking alien parasite!

Played (board game): Nippon Rails. A long and narrow crayon rails game. I am still very bad at these, because I cannot keep enough thoughts in my head to plan out a run more than one contract long. Also I forget to keep enough money in reserve to make all the rails I need and get stuck redrawing for four turns in a row to get a contract I can fulfill. Also also I suck.

Played (board game): Daybreak. We won on turn four, go us.

Played (board game): Codenames. It was very late, and we were not very clever.

Read (manga): VACATION.

Written (anything): VACATION.

Everyone is covid-free, so we went to Roseville (no longer held in Rosevilla, CA)! As usual, I rode up with Ken, and we talked about gaming, listened to folk-punk music and Old Gods of Appalachia, stopped for horrifyingly greasy Mexican food, and didn’t die from traffic. We got there before the other car by like one minute, because they didn’t stop for anything.

The Petterson family has very exciting news, which you are probably not cleared for or I would have already told you. But it is all good news!

Heard much about Al’s Ptolus campaign, which is about to hit episode 100 and sounds like it has been a blast the whole way. I wish I could run something like that, but I don’t know how to do it without putting in all that work, and I’m not sure I could put that much work in even if I wanted to. Also I would probably need more reliable and interested gamers.

Dave and I finally bailed from the dying Empires & Puzzles alliance and went to Marith’s much more active alliance.

Played: Codenames.

Read: The Holy Grail of Eris vol 1 (Hinase Momoyama, Kujira Tokiwa, Yu-nagi): She’s a sincere but wallflowery noble girl, she’s the ghost(?) of someone executed for getting dumped by the prince. Together, they fight aristocratic intrigue.

Written: VACATION.

Back from Roseville vacation (no Roseville actually vacationed in). There were friends and food and Jus got to see Elyssa again and swimming and Josh is TWENTY how is that even possible?! and board games and swimming and pirate fireworks over the back fence and Kate’s hair is so short and I only blew up the toilet once and too much heat.

Played on vacation: Roll for the Galaxy (I still suck at it), Terraforming Mars (I… surprisingly came in second?), Codenames (Jus had the insights!).

Read on vacation: Lockdown Tales (Neal Asher): Short stories, Polity or post-Polity, mostly full of violence and depravity and robots and sometimes aliens.

Read on vacation: Drifter’s Folly (Glynn Stewart): Fourth in the series about humans trying to put galactic civilization back together after destroying the alien empire, following up on the great betrayal of book three.

Read today: Artifact Space (Miles Cameron): Space opera with a plucky teenager escaping rape-culture horror to fake her way onto a giant spaceship and save the day repeatedly despite alien economic intrigue and imposter syndrome.

Words on vacation: NONE.

Words today: FAIL. I did read through what I wrote on one project, and it’s pretty terrible, so maybe not writing is for the best.