Tag: monkeycat towers

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.

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.

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.

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.

Marith could not come because she doesn’t want to be sick and still have to go work in our third-world hellhole, but I fear no germs so I went to have New Year’s Eve sushi and games and movies and companionship. (There was also Korean fried chicken, but we had so ridiculously much sushi that we didn’t get to it.) There were hugs and chonky cats and eventually toasts and fireworks. Bizarrely, transit did not have after-midnight runs for partiers, so I had to beg a ride home from Ken, but that was the only flaw in an otherwise lovely evening.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 3.8: I guess that’s one thing to do while destroying the universe.

Watched: Mystery Science Theater 3000 4.21: Circus on Ice and Monster-a-Go-Go. That movie definitely earned its place in the “Worst Movies of All Time” bucket! Apparently it was built on the bones of an incomplete previous movie, but that doesn’t come close to explaining the awfulness.

Played: Innovation. I’m still terrible at this game but at least Jus didn’t beat me. (We tied for last.)

Played: Uno. Ken kept catching me out on calling uno, hmph.

Played: Poetry for Neanderthals. Another of the “try to get your teammate to say the word” games. The schtick for this one is that the prompter can only use words of one syllable, and if they mess up, a member of the team gets to hit them with an inflatable club. It’s surprisingly fun even when nobody gets clobbered! Ayse and I beat Ken and Jus, based mostly on one round where I immediately picked up everything she laid down.

Written: Holiday. Tomorrow for sure!

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.

For the first time in quite a while, I went over to Monkeycat Towers to play Minecraft. We didn’t do much, but it was fun anyway. Then we ate Frogmore Stew, which I guess is a regional variant of shrimp boil specific to one small island off the coast of South Carolina? It’s not actually stew, since the traditional method of serving is to pour it out onto a newspaper-covered picnic table and let the juice soak into the beach, leaving only Old-Bay-seasoned shrimp, sausage, potatoes, and corn to eat with fingers. It was definitely better than sitting at home in front of my computer all day.

Written: FAIL.

After sleeping in forever like a stupid lump, I went over to play Minecraft. I ran into the wilderness, then burrowed into the depths of the Earth in search of dripstone, then died horribly in burning lava. After that Nonny switched to Geometry Dash for his Youtube channel, so Ayse and I made our own world. We have bamboo and a verdant cave and a house that’s more or less zombie-proof and a desert village right next door and a paddock to lure animals into. After that, we ate delicious pork chile verde that Jus and Ken made and then I came home to write.

Written: 578 words, for a total of 2035 this week and 5416 overall. Only three weeks out of ten and I’m already halfway to my goal!

We had no Marith, but we played Minecraft anyway. The 9-Channel Lavamatic and Obsidian Condenser are done except that I need five more dripstone stalactites and when I went looking for some I ended up stuck in a cave full of lava and apparently with lots of water above me so I can’t dig out. Also Nonny built a cobblestone generator that (usually) puts the cobblestone right into a chest. After that, we ate grilled imitation meats and went to a park and searched for the lost art of conversation and Ayse tried to talk me into getting cats. I have to admit, cats are good.

Written: FAIL. That leaves me at 1647/1000 for the week, though, so I guess I set my weekly goal appropriately for my level of lameness.

No gaming, because even though we aren’t going to Roseville, we cancelled too late to reclaim the time slot. Instead I got up before noon to go grocery shopping, and then went over to play Minecraft with everyone. I’m working on a 9-Channel Lavamatic, because every town needs one, but the most accessible lava is way off thataway, so I spent most of the afternoon being very bad at Cartesian orienteering and too stubborn to just build a landmark. If I ever make it back to town, I think I have enough lava to finish filling the reservoir, but I still need enough iron to build nine cauldrons, some more stalactites, and more polished diorite and water to build the safety moat.

Since Ken, who does most of the cooking, is still at Kublacon, we had Thai food and pizza and repletion and happiness.

In my own world, I replaced some poorly-organized chests with slightly better-organized barrels. They stack better, and also don’t autocombine.

Read: Valkyrie (Craig Alanson): And then everybody died! Not really, we’re only like halfway through the series, but that was quite a twist.

Written: Only 93 words, boo. Maybe it’s okay if I write 107 tomorrow.

I was on call from 7 to 19 o’clock, because capitalism, but the customers were pretty quite so I was able to sleep in next to my phone, and also visit Ayse & fam for Eurovision 2023. Earl and Cat also put in an appearance and we ate bread and roe and borscht and pelmeni and watched ridiculous stage performances and had a good time. I didn’t like the songs as much this year; I remembered some of the spectacle, but little of the music. However, agreement was universal that Finland was robbed.

Because there were technical difficulties, it took a lot longer to get to the replay of the finals, so we spent some time watching the first semi and part of the second, and didn’t finish until well into the evening, but it’s not like I had a better use for the day.

Marith was not there because she is dead in anticipation of an upcoming trip with her abusive mother.

Written: FAIL.

Today I lay abed for most of the morning, but then played huge amounts of Minecraft. Despite the risk of horrible death germs, I went over to Monkeycats’ and we played in Nonny’s world all afternoon. I tried to do some mapping, but succeeded only in messing up Ayse’s giant map, so maybe I’ll stick to wandering aimlessly and mining things. Also Jus and Nonny opened their shops, bringing capitalism to the world of one-meter cubes, and we had a bonfire party. Then after a dinner of Ken’s Famous Turkey Chili, Nonny and I played in a copy of my world, and explored the alien landscape at the bottom of the big cave near spawn. It was blue and glittery and we never saw the actual ancient city, but the Warden saw us. Briefly.

Read: The Invisible Man & His Soon-to-Be Wife vol 1 (Iwatobineko): She’s blind. He’s invisible. Together, they work at a detective agency and flirt adorably.

Written: 207.

Went over well before dinner to play Minecraft with Ayse and Nonny. I explored a swamp and a large mountain and only died a few times, so that was fun. Then Earl appeared (Cat was not feeling up to humans) so we talked about books and ate ham and various delicious sides and there was great happiness. Not sure Ken’s heretical explanation of Easter and Ayse’s Catholic explanation left Jus any the wiser, either alone or combined.

When I got home, we played even more Minecraft, because we can do that from different places, and used a copy of my world. I’ve barely started exploring the caves of the next island over, and Ayse and Nonny built a boat right away to sail hundreds of blocks away and rampage Acacia Island!

Read: Spy x Family vol 9 (Tatsuya Endo): End of the cruise ship arc where Yor murders everyone, but the focus is more on Anya and then there’s some small stories with various characters, including Bond. It’s hard being a doggo when humans are so weird.

Written: FAIL.

grocery shopping, burger lounge chicken tenders, egg dying, dumplings, barbecue pizza

Stayed in bed all morning reading, but finally had to get up and go grocery shopping. Since I never managed to get lunch, I ended up eating at the burger place next to the grocery store, which had chicken tenders that were battered(?) instead of breaded, so that was tasty. Then I went over to dye eggs with Jus and Nonny and fam, and ended up staying for Chinese dumplings. (Also I traded Ayse a dumpling that she was already going to have in her fridge as leftovers for a slice of barbecue pizza.) It was a pretty good afternoon.

Read: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Giant Monster (Richard Roberts): Eighth in the series, third of the spinoffs about secondary characters from the first arc. This time it’s the catgirl made of glass, who has to mostly use her healing powers to fix the microfractures she gets from walking around, sitting on insufficiently-padded chairs, etc. It is thus a book about disability and chronic pain as well as having a supervillain for a brother and finding mysterious ancient artifacts and so forth. I like it at least as much …Queen of the Dead.

Written: FAIL.

Today I went to visit Ayse and Ken and everybody to play Minecraft socially. That’s definitely better. Also we had delicious Thai food and Ken made me a sugar-free chocolate cream pie, because it was nominally my birthday celebration. I could not blow out the candles with a single clap, though. I guess I need to practice up for next year!

Written: FAIL.

I thought I had nothing scheduled for today, so I lay abed for a million hours, but then I found out it’s Minecraft day! I made my shopping trip extra-short so I could make it to Monkeycat Towers by 14:00, and we crafted some mines. Literally, I think we all spent most of the afternoon underground. I found a cave with a spider spawner and a treasure chest, but that was all there was to it, so I started delving into the depths of the cartesian coordinate system, and found some coal and iron but also a vast underground realm with way too many surprise pits over lava. I put a door on it to keep the endermen from getting out and started a new minestair, but maybe I should go back and work on building walkways over the pits. I have iron pickaxes, so in theory I should be able to mine better stuff than coal and iron that far down.

I wonder if it would be any fun to play Minecraft on my own.

Written: FAIL.

Grocery shopping worked so well yesterday that I was able to sleep in until it was time to get ready to play Minecraft. Then I went over and played Minecraft and did not die hardly at all. Also we had a barbecue and stayed up partying and fighting off zombies all night. I still don’t dare go underground yet, but I chopped down a bunch of trees and dug up a bunch of sand and stuff. Then we logged out and ate Thai food.

Read: The Ascension Game vol 1 (Ace Arriande): LitRPG apparently based on some game that’s like Minecraft with more boss fights, but I’m pretty sure the ridiculous smut parts were added later. They do not help.

Written: FAIL.

No gaming, Rachel is sick enough to go to urgent care (although apparently not with anything exotic). Since my day was suddenly free, I went over to play Minecraft with Nonny and everybody. I accidentally cut down Ken’s prized birch trees, but also cut down trees from the forest and built a wooden house to keep monsters out and got killed by zombies and spiders and drowning. You win some, you respawn at home some, I guess. Also we ate food and played “IRL Among Us” which works surprisingly well.

Written: FAIL. Maybe a couple of hours of Minecraft is all my brain is capable of in a day.

Oh yeah, I don’t like going grocery shopping on Sunday because it’s way more crowded and things might be sold out. But the salads are fresher…

Ayse has germs, so Marith stayed home but I went to play Minecraft in person with Nonny and Jus and everyone. I’m still really bad at it, but at least I can go to sleep when it’s night. I put my smoker down somewhere with part of an earthen-walled compound and forgot where I put it! Then I ate some of Ken’s delicious cooking and petted three cats and heard about Jus’s love life and went home. There was rain.

Written: FAIL, but I have an idea, it just needs a bunch more ideas and an actual plot.

Played Etherfields with Ken and Dave, but not Ayse because she is sick. It has a lot of pieces, even in the tutorial, but so far is relatively comprehensible. There is a lot of it, too. Then I went to sushi with Ken and Jus, because she got a 4.0 GPA and deserves a celebration. Good work, Jus!

Read: The Agartha Loop second ed ch 1.8-1.35, 2.1-2.6 (RavensDagger): I didn’t diff the text, but it’s pretty similar to the first edition, except that it hasn’t caught up to the same point.

Read: Katalepsis ch 1.1-5, ch 2.1-6 (Hungry): Our main character has spent a decade believing she’s schizophrenic after imagining a twin sister and having a massive psychotic break, but as soon as she goes off to college, she meets a hot lady who tells her the monsters aren’t hallucinatory. Not explicitly Mythos, but lots of references. Extremely gay.

 Written: 114.

I didn’t accomplish anything today, but I did visit friends and search for the lost art of conversation and eat cheese fondue, salad, chocolate fondue, and German chocolate cake and get hugs and play Goose Goose Duck. I’m pretty sure the conversations other people had while I was playing video games with kids were better than the ones I had, but I got some good book recommendations. It was a nice evening, and now that we’ve had fondue, it can officially be 2023.

Written: FAIL.

And a Nifty Newtonmas to all!

Marith and I went over to Monkeycat Towers for dinner and presents and children and happiness, and it was very nice. Earl and Cat were also there, so we had morbid dinner conversation because we’re a bunch of weirdos. I did not get any presents in wrapping paper, but I did get delicious food, delightful company, and the Hug Assortment Pack. Also we played some Goose Goose Duck, which is like Among Us with more complicated maps and more character roles. I did not manage to be so sus that I got spaced even when that was my victory condition, which was a little disappointing.

Read: Icebreaker (Glynn Stewart): Standalone fantasy of a kind that used to be more common. Not sure about some of the worldbuilding (that seems like an awful lot of information loss), but I enjoyed it anyway.

Written: FAIL.

I really need to do more, better, works. Instead I did some works and then went over to visit Ayse and Ken and Dave and Jus and Nonny. We had vague intentions of watching something but instead we just ate Thai food and searched for the lost art of conversation and chased Nonny around. It was very nice.

Read: The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy and the Snobs; Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye; Jessi’s Secret Language (Ann M Martin, Chan Chau, Gabriela Epstein): vol 10-12, which is all that currently exists. Stacey really did leave! I guess Kristy can’t go all class warfare if she lives in a mansion too. Jessi’s language is not all that secret, although I’m sure it was more so in back in the day. She uses it for good, though.

Read: Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village (Maureen Johnson, Jay Cooper): Spoiler: The only way to win the game is not to play. Includes Goreyesque illustrations.

Written: 134 kitten words, finishing the entry I was working on. Tomorrow, if I am not dead from working and commuting, I will write things that are not that.

Today, I did one thing! I went over to play Monster Game with Nonny and family. Then I stayed for food and also the first episode and a half of Wednesday. It wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it and was sad when I had to leave to catch the bus, and finished watching the episode on my own when I got home. Then I did no more things.

When I got home, the water was out, no ETA for a fix.

Written: 386 kitten words.

Did nothing all day until it was time to go over to Ayse and Ken’s and partake in a feast which I had no hand in creating. Arguably that’s the best kind, and I know it makes my friends happy to feed people they love, so I’m probably just having an existential crisis. Anyway, it was an amazing feast, and there was even rainbow jello, so everybody was happy and also round. There may have been hugs.

Then I stayed up until a million o’clock doing pretty much nothing, so uh good holiday I guess?

Read: Talyn: Rebirth (Benjamin Medrano): LitRPG, main character is a succubus but actually tasteful, something is up with the system.

Written: 423 kitten words.

Grocery shopping worked okay, except that I skipped going to the bookstore so I could get back in plenty of time for minigolf  and then the buses are all different so I turned out to have had plenty of time. Not that I have any shortage of reading material and anyway I should redo my list of things to buy.

We had a Marith and a Jus for minigolf, so that was nice. I might even be getting slightly better at it. Afterwards I went to play Band Hero extremely badly (I just cannot sing, vocals don’t come out, because I only ever subvocalize along to music) and eat some pretty darn good hummus. Jus sang a lot of Joan Jett, which is good.

Written: 175 NaNoWriMo words, which I am supposed to celebrate even though it’s basically nothing.