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.
Jus is now a teenager, so she got enormous quantities of sushi, and then we went back for cake and presents. The clear winner was signed original art and pins and stuff from the creator of one of her favorite webcomics. Did I have feelings that strong when I was 13? Then we played some Super Mario Party and dispersed, because Jus and Nonny and Ayse and Ken have to get organized to leave for Portland tomorrow.
Written: FAIL.
Bizarrely, people signed up for my events at Big Bad Con, so I guess now I have to come up with an adventure. I have several elements, I just have to put them together into a small point-crawl with some kind of ending.
Endings, my old foe, we meet again.
After fighting with the signup system, I ran to play mini golf with Nonny and Dave and Ken. It was very sweaty, but I think I did better than before. At this rate, I may someday be as good as the nine-year-old. (Except he’ll have leveled up by then.) Then I hung out at their place for a while until talking about food in Portland made me want to crawl home and eat Chinese food. As always, they gave me so much bonus food I didn’t even make it to my entree.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 11-13: End of season 1! A surprisingly strong showing by the forces of evil (now under new management)! Star is still her own worst enemy, though.
Written: 405 words, not all of them kitten words.
I was backup on call in case the customer who said they wouldn’t call over the weekend called, but they never did. Good on them for sticking to the plan.
Marith’s car is not actually on fire yet, so we went to wave to Ayse as she lay in bed practicing viruses and eat beef mushroom sweet potato dandelion green beets. Then Marith had to go home because of capitalism, but I stayed to play Minecraft and Sneaky Statues and then went home. It was pretty nice.
Written: FAIL.
I was too dumb to get up and do things in a timely fashion, but they did eventually get done. Marith was dead from capitalism, so I went over by myself to eat desi pizza and play yard soccer and Among Us with various combinations of Ayse, Ken, Dave, Nonny, and Soccer Star Jus who is undefeated in actual games.
Read: The “Imperial Hammer” omnibus, containing Hammer and Crucible, “An Average Night on Androkles”, Star Forge, Long Live The Emperor, Severed, and Destroyer of Worlds (Cameron Cooper): A band of misfits against multiple interstellar power structures to save the day. The moral of the story is, it does matter how you treat people. The technobabble of the story is sub-par, however.
Written: FAIL.
Bah, getting up. Bah, being on call. But bouillabaisse and shishito peppers are good!
Played: Among Us. I think we might be getting better at this, although I still pay way too much attention to performing my tasks and not enough to establishing an alibi. Also apparently bodies don’t get autoreported?!
Read: “Porgee’s Boar” (Jonathan Carroll): Only arguably spec-fic. Also an example of why psychological attacks don’t necessarily work on truly terrible people.
Written: 518 kitten words, which brings me to 3446 for the week so far.
Still sleepy and no brain, didn’t get up in time to go grocery shopping, barely got lunch at a reasonable hour because I had to play Squaredle. Pharmacy didn’t have my distilled gila monster spit, and although they found another pharmacy that had it, they couldn’t guarantee they could make them send it by Monday. Marith, hero of the revolution, agreed to detour to pick it up on the way to Monkeycat Towers.
Jus was busy having teenager fun all day, so we didn’t have Zoomwarts. Marith and I went over for dinner, though (delicious home-made ratatouille and salad and berry cobbler for most of us, In-n-Out for weird non-eggplant-eaters), and searched for the lost art of conversation for a while.
Played: Among Us. I was the imposter twice, and actually won once. The other time I got caught because somebody saw me sneak through the vents from the security center. I blame the unfamiliar map!
Written: 554 kitten words for 3176 so far this week.
I was backup on call for the new person (who isn’t the newest any more, but she’s the newest who can be on call) all day, but fortunately nothing happened. Also I did a lot of nothing, although I did manage to go grocery shopping and also play too much Squaredle (and also Squardle and Waffle and OG Wordle, but those are much quicker) instead of getting a real lunch. Then we went over to Monkeycat Towers and ate delicious Thai food.
Played: Zoomwarts, end of session 2! The expedition into the land of the dead was successful, because I didn’t make Voldemort terrible enough, but I supposes it’s okay for the PCs to win sometimes. I have no idea how to top that, though!
Played: Among Us. I was definitely the worst imposter ever and deserved to be spaced.
Read: FAIL.
Written: +363 = 3576/3000 for the week.
I got up and went shopping even earlier, since I didn’t even have the excuse of needing to wait for the bookstore to open. I guess that was like being awake at a reasonable time? Anyway, I’ll claim I slept okay even though I felt lethargic later in the day.
Played: Zoomwarts, at long last. You’d think a game with only two players plus a GM who has no life would be easy to schedule, and yet… Bella and Rosamund and the lizards have found most of the students and conned a hapless psychopomp into helping them escape, but now two of the four are unconscious and a partially-overlapping two are trapped in a cave full of slugs and bubbles with an evil octopus who hates them.
Played: Among Us. I am still terrible at this game, and also after playing like ten rounds I have never been an imposter, but I will keep playing because it makes people happy.
Played: Uno Flip. What name should we give to the most greenish of the colors on the dark side of the cards? Ayse maintains it’s teal, but it doesn’t seem blue enough to be teal to me.
Read: The Maid I Hired Recently is Mysterious vol 3 (Wakame Konbu): Still has no socially redeeming value, but the bystander who ships the two leads has finally suggested a name to give to their feelings.
Written: 505 kitten words, resolving the Existential Dreads and bringing me to 3414/3000 for the week so far.
Why is it so hot? Is “June” any kind of excuse?
Marith is dead from always being stressed by work and never sleeping, so no Zoomwarts, but I went over for dinner and playing with Nonny, and there was some impromptu roleplaying about a tea shop in Texas, with murder and zombies. Maybe I should make Jus go to Big Bad Con and GM in my place.
Trying to switch to Firefox, but I have so much stuff already in Chrome…
Read: Beware of Chicken (Casualfarmer): A random Canadian guy is isekai’d into the body of the lowest-ranked guy in a sect of cultivators and goes off to start a farm far away from martial arts bullshit. This works about as well as you might expect.
Read: Starfish (Lisa Fipps): Novel in blank verse about a tween being bullied because she is not thin enough for people and developing better coping strategies with the aid of therapy.
Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 19 (Tomohito Oda): Oops, looks like that side of the love triangle has been resolved.
Read: Hitomi-chan is Shy With Strangers vol 4 (Chorisuke Natsumi): I like this better than Furi-san, maybe because Hitomi seems more legitimately scary, but it’s still wearing a bit thin.
Written: 105 words. Brain, why?
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.
Marith was very flat so we didn’t have any Zoomwarts today. I did go over to help eat dinner and get hugs, and also explore the wider world of ice cream. I have long (well before the current pandemic) suspected my sense of taste is just not as good as most humans, and I think this confirms it. All the ice creams were good, and the olive oil ice cream definitely had a unique texture, but I clearly didn’t experience them in the same way as non-defective people. Still, deviled egg ice cream!
Written: 509 kitten words.
Gaming cancelled due to plague (not that plague) at the Gollubs’, so I slept in without having to reset my alarm repeatedly, which was more restful than some alternatives, and then did a huge amount of nothing, including eating fried food and reading the archives of Pterrible Dinosaur Drawings. Eventually I went over to hang out with Ayse and Jus and Nonny for a while,
Watched: The Owl House 2.5-6: Horrible children! A conflicted villain! A horrible monster! Kisses!
Read: FAIL
Written: FAIL
I don’t actually need to shop for groceries until Monday, but I ended up buying some less-perishable stuff because I had to go to the bank to get quarters anyway, and then the bookstore is right down the street, and I didn’t have to be on call until the afternoon…
A few weeks ago, Nonny wanted a “My books are calling and I must go read” shirt like mine, which was I was finally able to deliver. Now we’re Book Buddies.
Played: Zoomwarts, although not very energetically. Jus had a sleepover last night so of course very little actual sleep occurred, and Marith is always oppressed by work.
Eaten: Japanese food, but it wasn’t great. Or maybe I was just wrong about that being what I wanted. I’m not sure about this whole “eating” thing, TBH.
Read: The Gulp (Alan Baxter): Five linked stories about an extremely creepy town on the Australian coast and the horrible things that happen there: fungus, mutation, ancient dreams, inbreeding, eyeball eating, murder, the usual fun stuff.
Read: Babalon’s Hangover 2 (various): 100+ pages of horrible things, places, people, and happenings for the doomed, decaying world of Mörk Borg.
Written: FAIL.
Skipped looking for new manga to rush through grocery shopping, so I could get to Ayse and Ken’s in time for Eurovision! It’s finally streaming legitimately in the US, so it has a real start time and everything, and we had a very nice afternoon. Even Marith showed up, although Eurovision is not her thing, and we ate frittata and something involving garlic anchovy olive oil to dip veggies in,
It is no surprise that Ukraine won, but their entry was actually good, so that’s fine. Much more surprising, the UK came in second, getting possibly more points than in every previous Eurovision combined! No one knows what to make of that. There were too many ballads, but also bangers like Moldova. Norway was the Maximum Eurovision this year with the masked banana wolves, but Australia and Serbia were also up there, albeit in completely different genres. France was totally robbed, their entry was a banger. Spain was okay, but did better than they would otherwise due to the butt floss visuals. The American presenter was very fabulous and had angel wings.
Nonny showed me a bunch of Splatoon stuff, and eventually I played a little Zoomwarts with Jus and Marith, and then Dave kindly fetched us burgers from down the street and we ate and played three-square until it was time to disperse.
Played: Zoomwarts! Bella and Rosamund and the lizards seem determined to find out what happens when you blow off Bellatrix Lestrange-Riddle’s explicit instructions. I’m sure that will go well for them, especially if I manage to prepare for their expedition into the land of the dead.
Read: “Min Zemerin’s Plan” (Katherine Addison): Short story set around Witness for the Dead.
Written: FAIL. I did not accomplish anything after I got home.
Marith had to get her mouth fixed today, so I went along to keep her from wandering into traffic when they threw her out still full of anesthetic. It was all fine, just time-consuming. I managed to do a little work before going over to Ayse and Ken’s for the Amerivision finale, so I guess it all worked out, or something.
Eaten: Sushi! Apparently I joined in the grand tradition of ordering too much.
Watched: American Song Contest 2022 ep 8: What are these juries smoking?! Or perhaps better asked, who are they to be so out of touch with America? (10 regional juries assigning 12/10/8/… points like Eurovision, then 56 states/territories doing the same thing and almost turning the list upside down.) We were all very sad when the 70s soft-rock guy from Washington topped the jury chart, but then AleXa won with “Wonderland” because every K-pop stan in the US voted for her or something, so it was all okay. They had the regional jury representatives videophone in to announce who got the 12 points, just like Eurovision. Not all the reps (all previously-eliminated contestants) had the proper Eurovision spirit, but it made me happy.
Played: Living room soccer.
Read: Beyond The Eyes Of Mars (Glynn Stewart): 12th in the series where FTL, stealth in space, and antimatter production are all literally magic. The heroic Martian navy is still cleaning up breakaway factions of the great revolt, and still learning increasingly horrible things about the rebels (which possibly should have been obvious to readers, but I don’t think was telegraphed at all). Also something that came up as being extremely important about 6 or 8 books ago was finally mentioned again, although none of the viewpoint characters knew the significance.
Written: FAIL.
Instead of sleeping in, I got up at the usual work time and walked to grocery shopping. The sun supported me in this by mostly not coming out until I was done, so thanks! More walking to get lunch and finish off the parts of my shopping list that could be done on the way. Then I was on call, so I did a little work stuff until I realized I had started off completely wrong and gave up to go to Ayse and Ken’s for pizza and hugs. Marith was flat, so that was more walking, and then a lot of playing foursquare in addition to socialization. A surprisingly full day, even if we didn’t get any anime or gaming.
Read: Nettle & Bone (T Kingfisher): A little grimmer than many T Kingfisher books, maybe, but full of possessed chickens, fairy godmothers, sturdy practical women, muscular men with tragic pasts, terrifying underground labyrinths, and all the other paraphernalia of fairytales.
Written: FAIL.
What the fuck, Democrats? We elected you to stop this shit, not stand around wringing your hands and pretending bipartisanship has been a thing in this millennium!
Did some work to keep the capitalist machine feeding blood to its fascist masters. But I didn’t enjoy it!
Eaten: Tasty Vietnamese food.
Watched: Amerivision semifinals part II, up until the point where Nonny threw a temper tantrum about not getting to stay up indefinitely late. We’ll have to watch American Samoa’s entry and the final jury results another time.
Written: Continued FAIL.
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
The new system is in place at work. Eventually it will even be complete!
Watched: Amerivision semifinals, part 1. Since we are watching at the time of transmission (I don’t think it’s “broadcast” any more), we get to vote, although only Ayse has an NBC account, so we only got one vote for the whole party. Our rule was “no haters” so we didn’t give anyone anything below a 5, but only “New Boots Goofin'” and “Wonderland” got the coveted 10.
Eaten: Cronchy chickens. Also fancy shortbreads.
Played: Not so much twirling, fortunately.
Words: FAIL.
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.
Even earlier meeting. Customers. No brain.
Watched: Amerivision week 4 (which is actually last week, because last week we didn’t watch). Double Washington action! Laser-dispersing bodysuits! Twins! The 70s!
Eaten: Greek food.
Read: False Value (Ben Aaronovitch): Peter vs techbros with what even Douglas Adams would have said was an unhealthy fascination with Hitchiker’s Guide.
Read: Tales From The Folly (Ben Aaronovitch): A collection of short stories and vignettes, which are cute but don’t necessarily add much.
Words: FAIL.
No gaming, Jeremy is down with the Gastrointestinals, so I was able to do grocery shopping. Ill wind, etc. Marith and I still went over to Ken and Ayse’s for delicious Easter dinner.
Eaten: Delicious Easter dinner, including ham and glazed shallots and many deviled eggs.
Played: Nonny Dance Contest, which gets Nonny some exercise and lets the grownups sit around like lumps while they cheer and clap and play music on phones and do Howard Cosell impressions.
Read: Whispers Under Ground (Ben Aaronovitch): This one doesn’t seem to have been edited as much, or maybe I just don’t remember it as well.
Words: FAIL.
I was on call all day, which annoyingly prevented me from going grocery shopping, but the customers remained quiescent.
We did go over to dye eggs with Ayse and Ken and fam, and also eat delicious Thai food and exercise Nonny. No gaming or anime, though.
Words: I think I figured out how to upload and link the thing I’m not currently revising. Also, 303 kitten words.
Watched: Amerivision, part 3! I liked Louisiana’s entry the best, but perhaps I was the only one who did. Nonny has very definite opinions on what’s rock vs mere pop-rock.
Eaten: Korean delivery.
Played: Basketvolley? Maybe just monkey in the middle.
Read: Dragonbreath: Revenge of the Horned Bunnies (Ursula Vernon): Summer camp with jackalopes.
Read: Dragonbreath: When Fairies Go Bad (Ursula Vernon): Christiana is surprisingly okay with traveling through Faerie. “It was an hallucination” is an all-purpose excuse, I guess.
Read: Dragonbreath: Nightmare of the Iguana (Ursula Vernon): The inside of Wendell’s head is actually pretty much what you’d expect.
Read: Dragonbreath: The Case of the Toxic Mutants (Ursula Vernon): Diplomacy!
Read: Dragonbreath: Knight-napped! (Ursula Vernon): Just because knights and dragons are both endangered species doesn’t mean they get along.
Words: FAIL.
Jus and Ayse have to go ziplining tomorrow, so Jus and Ken had to play D&D today, so there was no Zoomwarts or anime. Unrelatedly, my gaming for tomorrow is also cancelled.
For no detectable reason, my ankle decided to start hurting like I had twisted it, in response to checks notes sitting down for 15 minutes. Also my esophagus jammed for several minutes. I guess I got “Roll twice and suffer both results” on the Wandering Decrepitude Table.
Eaten: Chicken stuff. Also kohlrabi-carrot stuff and dinosaur kale.
Played: Pool Noodle Battle Royale. Treachery is mandatory.
Watched: RWBY 1.5. I had forgotten that Blake and Yang were the first to meet each other’s eyes. Also Ruby and Weiss, of course.
Words: 529 kitten words. No revisings.
Eaten: Delivery sushi, which is not as great as fresh sushi, but still very luxurious.
Watched: Amerivision, part 2! I think agree with Dave that the songs this week were slicker than last week, but the Oregon guys had proper Eurovision spirit.
Read: “Girl Oil” (Grace P Fong): Social expectations about Chinese diaspora women + magic beautifying potion with side effects = tragedy.
Read: “The Last Truth” (AnaMaria Curtis): A thief has to sacrifice her memories to open locks. Funny how her contract is almost up at the same time there’s almost nothing left…
Words: FAIL. No time to write, must get up early tomorrow.
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 took off work today, because my managers keep telling me to take more time off, and it seems as good an excuse for a holiday as any. Ayse insisted on taking me to kittens and lunch; how was I supposed to resist? The kittens were very rambunctious, which made it hard to befriend them, but they were adorable anyway.
I went home to vegetate for a while, and then went to Ayse and Ken’s for delicious Thai food and friendship and non-cursed frogurt and then Amerivision. It was actually Eurovisiontastic, despite our worries! Not all the acts understood how to use the stage, and there were a probably excessive number of half-dressed backup dancers, but overall it was properly campy and had a good variety. Oklahoma K-pop was good, the pink one with the keytar solo was good, fire was good, cowboy boot rap was just weird. There were some technical difficulties and I stayed up too late, but it was lots of fun. Nonny also got to stay up late.
Words: FAIL. I meant to do some writing during the afternoon, but instead I did pretty much nothing. It was not an auspicious start, but it was very on-brand.