AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! There, how was that?
Had to be on call in the afternoon, and there were annoying customers, but I escaped to Monkeycat Towers for anime night anyway.
Watched: Princess Tutu 5-6: Uh oh, Fakir is getting suspicious! Although he was pretty sus to begin with.
Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 8: Hah, called it!
Written: 177. Got to a point in planning where I diverge from the first graph, so that’s probably something.
Yay, I finally get a day!
Did a grocery shop, was useless and dumb. Fed the cats, though.
Watched: Princess Tutu 4: More feelings for Mytho, but Fakir is becoming suspicious. (He was always pretty sus, to be honest.)
Watched: The Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts 7: Well, okay, I guess.
Written: 122.
Yum, peanut butter.
Did not go to the office, was dumb, did a work.
Watched: Hilda 3.7-8: That was quite a finale! I was not expecting that much backstory or that much adventure or that little Frida and David!
Written: 139.
The weather was so nice today, I did actually buy tortilla chips and guac and salsa. Also ate my pastrami sandwich outside.
The traffic was not so nice when an accident forced us to double back and wander lost in the maze of brightly-lit car dealerships, but if I were not so dumb, we would have been fine.
Watched: Princess Tutu 2-3: Anteaterina! Also some plot stuff about why Ahiru’s necklace glows or something. Jus concurs that Drosselmeyer is not a good substitute for a cute animal companion, though.
Read: Wear Wolf (Murphy Lawless, Zoe Chant): The most recent Virtue Shifters book. When the blurb said the FL also had a secret, that is not what I was expecting!
Read: “It Answered” (Anastasia Kirchoff): Maybe we shouldn’t have asked… But hey, how can you complain about utopia?
Written: 121. Could possibly have been more if I hadn’t had to finish reading somebody‘s book about a fashion designer and a schoolteacher with a secret.
I actually did eat banana bread today, since I still had some left over from the gaming feast on Sunday.
Fortunately the presentation that got cancelled yesterday was repeated today for the other side of the globe and I only had to skip the team meeting to attend. It was even a little useful, although more sales-oriented than I wished.
Watched: Hilda 3.4-6: A new friend! An old acquaintance! An extremely scary monster, possibly from another genre!
Written: 243.
Hurray for pangolins! I don’t know why I like them, but I do.
Apparently I also like being a useless lump, because that’s what I did today. I was on call in the afternoon and had to do some work, but only for a little while. Then in the evening we accomplished anime night again. Huzzah!
Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 5-6: You can tell that new character is no good, he was mean to Amit!
Watched: Princess Tutu 1: Apparently we aren’t showing Jus Utena just yet, but Tutu seems weird enough for now.
Read: Crawljammer vol 4-6 (Tim Callahan, et al): More space adventure nonsense for DCC, random tables and adventures and random tables and classes and random tables.
Read: Dog of the Dead (Delia Marshall Turner): A no-nonsense middle-aged English teacher is bequeathed a mysterious giant egg by a student she sort of recognizes, and then everything goes downhill. Way downhill. Everything is eventually explained, but it is dream-like and elliptical getting there. I liked it, but it was pretty weird.
Written: 190. No, still not right.
It’s a day for Marith!
Did not go to the office today, did some work, I guess?
Watched: Hilda 3.1-3: Looks like we know what this season’s mystery is! Also, the return of Wood Man. This is such a good weird show.
Read: The Stick Princess (Delia Marshall Turner): Finally, after like thirty years, I get to read the last book of the trilogy! Unsurprisingly, it is also about a young woman with an unusual relationship to magic, although she is even more at the center of what’s going on, and it crosses over with the big even at the end of the other two books. It also has an epilogue, establishing that it really is the end. I am surprised by how low in the text, if not actually subtextual, the F/F relationship is, compared to the open M/M relationships in the first book.
Read: Crawljammer vol 1-3 (Tim Callahan, et al): A regular zine for DCC, expanding it into a habitable solar system without being any less gonzo. Want to be a Red Martian Psychic Knight and steal from the Pirate Kings of Pluto? Now you can do that! But you can also be a dwarf or a thief or whatever. In spaaaaaace!
Written: 137. This is still all wrong again.
Year of the Dragon, which is definitely auspicious and not a sign of doom.
I was too lazy to go grocery shopping before getting back to be on call all afternoon, and even if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been able to go to the ice cream store. Instead I flopped around and then had to do some work and complain bitterly and throw out five bags of food from the fridge that was no longer trustworthy after the power outage. Eventually that ran out and Marith and I went over to Monkeycat Towers. We meant to go for anime, but instead we had really good Chinese food from Ken and Among Us with Nonny, which was all pretty great. I managed to win as the imposter! Then we switched to hide-and-seek mode, which I didn’t really understand because I’m old. Seeing people makes me happy.
Read: “Stubborn Stains” (Delia Marshall Turner): Turner wrote two books of an interesting fantasy/SF trilogy and then apparently disappeared, but now I learn that she has written the third book and this short story about a schoolteacher who gets involved with magic and a whole book about the schoolteacher! (The books are only available on Amazon, boo, but I’ll probably buy them anyway.)
Written: 125.
If only we could get all the disasters to happen on Feb 5th, planning would be a lot easier.
The power was still out when I woke up, and didn’t show any signs of being restored, so I ended up going to the office at the suggestion of the boss³ who was worried that we aren’t putting on enough of a show of being office team players. Well played. There was no lunch because only Tue-Thu are the official office days, but Pocky is like a healthy meal, right? Right?
Still no power when I got home, but at least I had realized that I could use my full-charged work laptop as a power bank for my phone, to read books I had already downloaded.
Marith was also grouchy about the lack of power so we went to Cheesecake Factory outside the Land of No Power and ate things that weren’t cheesecake. We could not bring leftovers home, because no refrigeration!
Read: The Savior’s Book Cafe Story in Another World vol 2 (Kyouka Izumi, Oumiya, Reiko Sakurada): The super-mage tries to keep living her quiet life uninvolved with anything except books and customers and one customer in particular, but of course that never works.
Read: The Yakuza’s Bias vol 2 (Teki Yatsuda): More yakuza stan hijinx. It doesn’t feel to me like there are any new jokes, so I probably won’t keep reading, but maybe that’s just because I’m old and not cool.
Read: The Drab Princess, The Black Cat, and the Satisfying Breakup vol 1 (Rino Mayumi, Machi): Light novel about a princess who tries to become an archmage so she can get out of her arranged engagement and make room for her younger sister who her fiancé obviously likes better, and the hapless archmage she dragoons into helping her. A lot of people get involved, and no one has any idea what anyone else is feeling, because that’s the genre.
Written: Still THWARTED.
I had the ice cream for lunch dessert, but it was Humphrey Slocombe “Secret Breakfast”, so I’m saying it counts.
Apparently my new Saturday routine is to go to Togo’s and eat a pastrami sandwich and drink multiple flavors of Diet Dr Pepper from the drink robot, on the way to the book store and grocery store. The ice cream store doesn’t open until noon, and I usually try to get my act together before then, so it will have to be intermittent.
Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 10-12: The end! Jus was appropriately emotional at finding out Homura and Madoka’s deal. Not sure what to show her next, maybe Revolutionary Girl Utena.
Written: 122 of outlining. I don’t know what these aliens should look like. I wrote some stuff down, but it’s probably not right.
Still not feeling great. Tried to do some work, with mixed results.
The cats were still not eating any of the food I had, so I went and bought some different food, and apparently that is somewhat acceptable. I hope it’s not just that it’s new, because there are a limited number of brands I can buy.
Watched: Hazbin Hotel 1.7-8: Season finale! The power of friendship prevails! But there is lots left for the next season, because even if Charlie saved Hell, it’s still Hell.
Read: Blade of the Moon Princess vol 2 (Tatsuya Endo): More running around in enemy bases and learning to use the sword and also some backstory on the rival princess.
Written: 174.
But does “chocolate cake” mean chocolate crumb and any kind of frosting, any kind of crumb and chocolate frosting, or chocolate crumb and chocolate frosting?
Today I ate a pastrami cheesesteak, which was okay, did some grocery shopping, and was a massive lump because I felt lethargic and headachey and bleah. My guess it was side effects from the vaccination yesterday. Still better than anything I’ve ever heard about shingles.
Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 7-9: Oh good, Jus was appropriately disturbed to find out how the magical ecosystem works and what Kyubey’s role is.
Written: 147.
Penguins! They exist! Had you heard?
Today I accomplished all the things I planned to do, surprisingly. I did get up too early to get phlebotomized, then made it to the bookstore, a sandwich shop, and the grocery before arriving back home in plenty of time to be on call all afternoon. I was even able to almost entirely ignore customers and travel to Monkeycat Towers to watch more Madoka Magica. So yay me, I guess.
Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 4-6: We finally got to the episode where Kyubey explains what’s really involved in becoming a magical girl. “Why does everybody react the same way when they find out? I don’t understand humans.”
Read: D&D5e Tome of Beasts 3 (Scott Gable, Richard Green, Kelly Pawlik, Sebastian Rombach, Mike Welham, et al): A pretty good monster book, although like all modern D&Ds it takes a Linnaean approach to monsters.
Written: 175.
Where would we be without them?
Spent most of the workday on a customer call where I contributed little, but not quite nothing.
Watched: Hazbin Hotel 3-4: Okay, it’s better, especially since we got both Angel Dust and Husk doing things.
Read: Call the Name of the Night vol 2 (Tama Mitsuboshi): This volume reminded me a lot of Witch Hat Atelier, with the magic medicine lessons.
Written: 189.
Today was a day of uselessness I mean relaxation.
In the evening, we had anime again, so I at least had to leave the apartment, even if it wasn’t exactly useful.
Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 1-3: Jus is now old enough to see this! We got to the all-important third episode, so she wants to keep watching.
Written: 254.
I’m RIGHT HERE! But bald enough I probably don’t count any more.
I had to quote the lines of output to a customer that said exactly what he wanted to know and clearly labeled it, and then I had to repeat that those lines meant what they said. Yes, okay, ESL, but he was completely fluent otherwise, just not willing to read. Customers, ugh.
Watched: Hazbin Hotel 1-2. I feel like they put it into too many focus groups and everything interesting got scraped off. None of the characters are nearly as interesting as the ones in Helluva Boss, possibly because all their problems are external (except maybe Angel Dust). I hope it does well anyway, but I was definitely hoping for more.
Written: 199.
Hurray for birbs!
I did manage to have a functional metabolism all night, although I still didn’t like getting up in the morning and doing some work.
Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 7-8: Yep, that’s a Scott Pilgrim plan, all right. I can’t help but think that Ramona could do better, but of course that will be a different timeline. Anyway, musical theater, massive battle, the end!
Read: Frogkisser! (Garth Nix): A young princess goes on a Quest to defeat the evil sorcerer who is trying to take over her kingdom, which involves a lot of transformation spells. The Quest gets pretty complicated and also smelly, but she has an assortment of friends and allies and it’s not like she can go home until she’s done.
Written: 252, although half of it was terrible and half was just notes. Actually maybe all of it was terrible.
Happy Merry to all who celebrate!
I celebrated by doing nothing useful all day and then going over to Ayse and Ken’s to eat food and see people and admire Jus’s presents and stuff. Poor Nonny is pretty sick, but I risked the germs for companionship. Even Marith did!
Despite most of the food being carbs, my arm widget didn’t freak out. It’s almost like eating a real meal made of real food is better than microwaving one unit of Capitalism Chow. (Also, ham.)
Written: FAIL.
Darn, I’ve run out of chocolate-covered chocolate.
Somehow I got up and did things today. Not sure how that happened, but here we are, with fresh produce and bao and flu antigens and the return of anime night and everything.
Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 2.3-4: Looking for Kipo’s backstory, but getting Wolf’s along the way.
Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 1-4: Our first show for revived anime night! It’s pretty fluffy, with hardly any humans being devoured on screen, and so far the princess is only being compassionate, not getting into administration like rumor has it she will. It’s a full season, though, so we have plenty of time yet. Probably not enough for the cat princess to redeem herself, though.
Read: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom vol 8 (Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka): More of the same, including a flashback to Katarina’s earlier teen years when other girls were just as unable to deal with her. Apparently next volume they graduate and get jobs, but I can’t imagine it will change Katarina at all.
Written: FAIL.
Is two a herd? They certainly sound like it when they stampede in the middle of the night!
I did several works, but feel like I should have done more. Oh well.
Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 4-6: An entire subplot to tie in to the original story, sure. Get it, Wallace! But now Ramona has solved much of the mystery, so it’s time for another plot twist!
Read: Blackguard vol 1 (Ryo Hanada): Zombie apocalypse of the future, the arcology’s greatest defender fights alone with a sword and has a death wish, he gets partnered with a more orthodox bad ass, etc.
Read: The Shiunji Family Children vol 1 (Reiji Miyajima, Reiji Yukino): Forbidden teenage love that’s suddenly not forbidden. Despite the ML complaining that living with five stunning sisters isn’t like a harem romcom, it’s obvious where this is going.
Read: Paladin’s Faith (T Kingfisher): Another of the ex-paladins gets tangled up in the problems of a beautiful woman, in this case the mysterious best friend from the first book in the series. Intrigue, espionage, romance, and demonolatry ensue. I liked it, but it didn’t seem like the espionage adventure and the demon adventure had any connection except one happened right after the other. It could have been two novellas just as easily.
Written: FAIL.
I keep resisting the urge to buy More Dice. Maybe I’m a bad gamer. I mean, for more reasons than previously mentioned.
Finally managed to start using the new bloodometers (the kind you stick on and leave in place for two weeks), so at least I could tell the doctor I was doing it. She probably would have been happier if I had done it months ago like I said, though.
Also finally dragged my computer desk into my bedroom so I could plug it back in. Fortunately it is not too far from the wifi router.
Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 1-3: After the end of the first episode (which was suitably surprising to Marith), it’s all the other characters all the time! I heard that this show is partially a response to people who esteemed Scott too highly (looking at you, SP) and now I believe it.
Written: Regular FAIL.
Nightvale counts, even though he is partly stars!
Getting two cats got me two weeks of Fact Or Share, but this time I had to use a fact, which is that deepsea anglerfish are not the size of a Nerf football, they are big enough to swallow you whole.
Watched: My Happy Marriage 10-12: We find out what’s up with the secret family and why whatsisface is being so creepy and how you should definitely not underestimate Miyo. Happy ending!
Read: System Collapse (Martha Wells): Oh man, poor Murderbot! I’m glad it has a terrifying friend to watch media with, and also that it is developing non-murdery skills for saving the day. Plus, “capitalism sucks” never grows old as a theme.
Written: FAIL.
My theory: Everything wrong with the US today is a result of insufficient Sesame Street.
Watched: My Happy Marriage 6-9: It was nice to see the random rich guys who thought they were so great pick a fight with an actual military monster hunter, but Cinderella still needs to communicate better!
Read: She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat vol 2 (Sakaomi Yuzaki): It’s kind of adorable how Nomoto (the one who likes to cook) is just “Welp, guess I’m a lesbian, I should check the Internet to find out how that works” and now she has a pocket friend to discuss things with. Plus, new character with a completely different relationship to food than the main couple.
Written: 184, although it took me like two weeks to accumulate what should be half a night’s work. Neither kitties nor germs are conducive to writing. (Also I suck.)
I went back to my usual grocery store this week, which is next to my usual bookstore, which was full of things to buy, because I haven’t really converted to reading manga digitally, because I’m dumb. Also I ate chicken tenders to prepare my digestive system. I was on call in the afternoon to cover for coworker M who was trapped by the perfidy of automobiles, which boss B made a big deal of appreciating even though it was only for like 45 minutes.
In the evening, Ayse finally came over to meet my cats, and then we all* went to Brazil Meat Center (which is actually called Taurinus) for meat and more meat and grilled pineapple that tastes like peach pie and more meat and dessert because Marith hadn’t gotten a birthday celebration yet. Happy Lizard Day!
*Except Nonny who is sick and Dave who was keeping an eye on him and doesn’t like eating out much anyway.
Written: Still FAIL.
I have nothing to say about Cliche Day, my writing says it all for me.
Watched: My Happy Marriage 1-5: It’s like Meiji Cinderella, but then suddenly it’s a different genre and the ML isn’t awful and the FL is healing from abuse. If only the patriarchy would leave her alone!
Written: FAIL.
Ah, maybe that’s why I failed to obtain a black cat today, I’m in the US. Which is built around cars and the adoption people would not hand over the cats when I said I was going to carry them on the bus. I will have to make a better plan and try again.
Fortunately work was pretty quiet so my taking a few hours off to fail miserably wasn’t a problem.
Watched: Marith and I tried watching some Adventure Time, because apparently it is still a huge cultural phenomenon, but even with what Marith could remember of the curated episode list, it was still pretty uninteresting. Then we tried watching the pilot of the new cultural phenomenon, The Amazing Digital Circus, which was also not very interesting. It was just weird things happening to the main character that she can’t do anything about.
Written: FAIL.
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.
But don’t worry about that, being superstitious is bad luck.
I had no brain and accomplished no things today.
Watched: Murder Drones 1.4-6: Rewatching the two episodes before the latest only helped a little bit. It is still very confusing. They have a human to take care of now? But also robot dinosaurs! (The robot dinosaurs are also cursed.)
Written: FAIL.
Do they mean the small woodland mammal, or something else? I guess I’ll have to ask them over and over and over to clarify.
Watched: One Piece 1.8: Yeah, the thing with Garp should have been much more drawn out, although of course streaming shows can’t ever delay gratification more than a few episodes. It was a decent season finale, with lots of yelling and the boss’s body never recovered.
Read: “The Air In My House Tastes Like Sugar” (ZZ Claybourne): African witches, mother and daughter, travel the world and get varying receptions from white people and their haunts. The oven thing totally makes sense in context.
Written: FAIL.
I understood that reference!
No work today, only decompression and weekend stuff like grocery shopping. And birthday sushi with Jus! So much sushi. No, more sushi than that. Also cake. But I am glad everybody is done being sick and able to socialize and listen to my terrible con stories. There may have been hugs.
Read: “The Dragon Project” (Naomi Kritzer): Some people don’t deserve dragons.
Written: Writing down what I actually did over the extended weekend should be trivial, and yet it is using all my words (I don’t have very many).