Tag: office

Hm, maybe my adventure needs more sea serpents.

Got up early so I could stop by the phlebotomy center on the way into the office. Despite a longish line, it all worked out okay. Also I was the only one in the Support room so I didn’t have to mask much. Ate a chow mein, did some work.

Read: Gogogogo-Go-Ghost vol 1 (Miyako Miruzuka): Due to poor life decisions in the capitalist dystopia of modern Japan, an office worker nearly dies and ends up with a guardian spirit who is a creep but is happy to turn her grudges into actual curses and harm on people she doesn’t like. It seems like everybody is terrible and I find the art style weird.

Read: Heretical Fishing vol 2 (Haylock Jobson): Further conspiracy, further animal companions, further OP cultivation powers, further fishing exploits.

Read: Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories (qntm): Short stories about things like the horrors of uploaded personalities under capitalism, extra-dimensional waste dumping, the destruction of Earth, and the like. I liked them, but they are the opposite of cheerful.

Written: 167.

Where are my lemon drops?!

Went to the office, everybody was there so I had to mask, ate part of a huge pile of chicken bits and sweet potato fries, did some work or something, train failed so I had to ride the bus home and got back late.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Wizard’s Blue vol 2-4 (Makoto Sanda, Isuo Tsukumo): This is as far as I have read before, so everything after this will be new. Sadly, it looks like the faction that likes to dress Giselle up in gorgeous Chinese clothes is being set up as the worst of a bad lot, so probably normal outfits from here on out.

Read: [Psychokinetic] Eyeball Pulling (FreeiD): LitRPG, the MC’s anomalous class is obviously going to lead her to deep revelations about where the System comes from and what it’s for and all, but I don’t care that much.

Written: 147.

🙂 🙂 😀 🙁 T_T (old school)

Went to the office, Coworker T was there for some reason so I had to mask, but whatever. Ate some short ribs between two toasted rice things, which apparently is a Korean hamburger-equivalent, did some work, might not have looked like a complete idiot in front of my boss.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Wizard’s Blue vol 1 (Makoto Sanda, Isuo Tsukumo): Rereading so I can read all the volumes (that I have). French alchemists are kind of ridiculous, Ao is adorable, Giselle is pretty adorable too.

Read: Behind Closed Doors (WR Gingell): Further exploits of Athelas and his new gumiho buddy as they get manipulated into doing good deeds (sometimes) in the course of accomplishing their own selfish ends. So far it’s going okay, but not great, which is what we expect of book 2/5.

Written: 324

Possibly there are cats who would enjoy that, but I don’t think mine would.

Monday is my day to work late, so I usually also start late, but there was an early all-hands that seemed to mostly be an excuse for the CEO to be big mad at people who don’t come into the office enough. Then I had a meeting with a customer that turned out to be scheduled exactly so I couldn’t make it into the office between the meetings. After that, the train was late, and the moment I got into the office to find my desk had been taken over (by either my boss or boss’s boss so it wasn’t like I could shove everything onto the floor) and no one else in my team was in, a special case came in and none of the floater desks had any spare power outlets for the special case laptop. I was very cross.

After that things settled down, but then we had a team dinner because boss and boss’s boss are in town, which wasn’t bad, but it was a lot of people inside a restaurant and I didn’t escape until almost 21:00, so I got home at practically bedtime.

Read: Witch of Thistle Castle vol 3 (John Tarachine): I guess random violence at a school is more shocking in the UK (or Japan)?

Read: The Inconvenient Life of an Arousing Priestess (Makino Maebaru, Hachi Uehara): Healing magic sends the life energies into overdrive, with predictable effects. Instead of realizing this means the gods approve of sex, the main character’s homeland has gone all in on patriarchy, double standards, etc, but fortunately she falls in with someone from a better country after she gets exiled and gets to show how extremely amazing she is at every aspect of anti-monster operations.

Read: The Splendid Work of a Monster Maid vol 3 (Yugata Tanabe): Further adventures of monster maids in Spookytown looking for lost magic.

Written: 238 somehow.

Thursday isn’t a particularly cursed day, but it is sacred to Thor, so I guess Christians get -1 on saves vs lightning on Thursday the 13th?

Went to the office, ate a salad thing, did a work, made up for having a leftover lunch yesterday by taking Coworker L’s unused pork curry home for dinner. Caught up a little on journalling, but not enough to make up for all the days I failed.

Read: Across the Dark Water (Richard Kadrey): A grim cyberpunk/zombie apocalypse quest novella.

Read: Black Night Parade vol 1 (Hikaru Nakamura): Hapless convenience store worker is kidnapped by the evil black Santa (the one who brings coal and switches, and takes bad kids away in a sack) to work at the North Pole with a gang of weirdos. I feel like I’m not getting the tropes and cultural references enough to appreciate it.

Read: My Stepmother & Stepsisters Aren’t Wicked vol 1 (Otsuji): Not quite 4-koma but very short pieces about a girl who thinks she’s in the Cinderella role but her stepfamily, though scary, are actually super-nice (if somewhat eccentric). It’s cute, but seeing the same twist every two pages is a bit much.

Read: Ambassador for Mars (Glynn Stewart): The doom from Chimera’s Star is playing out in roughly the expected way, but with a lot more complications.

Read: Grimwild preview (JD Maxwell): D&D with less archaic rules, explicitly intended to be the new Dungeon World. Mostly FitD, at least what’s in the preview. The magic system needs to be better defined.

Written: 137. Instead of leaping right into throwing out the second draft of the current scene and editing the first draft to give my script a workout, I skipped to the next scene to get some momentum or something. Mostly something.

Check!

Because the office is closed on Thursday for Wellness Day and also there is no gaming tonight (Ken is on vacation), I went into the office today. It was not particularly more useful than not going to the office, but hopefully I get points for showing willingness. Ate a pizza, did a work, chatted with my boss because he’s here this week.

Read: I Married My Female Friend vol 2 (Shio Usui)

Read: Flying Witch vol 10 (Chihiro Ishizuka): That’s why I didn’t recognize the new characters in 11 and 12, because I hadn’t read 10 where they were introduced!

Played: Nothing, Ken is on vacation.

Written: 171.

Turtles are good.

Went to the office even more tiredly, ate a pork curry that was surprisingly spicy for something delivered to a corporate office, did some work, butted into my coworkers’ conversations.

Read: Alpi the Soul Sender vol 3 (Rona): Finally, backstory about Alpi’s parents and the other soul sender! Also, mundanes being terrible.

Read: Flying Witch vol 11 (Chihiro Ishizuka): The level of magic in this series keeps getting higher and higher, and yet the characters are not any more serious.

Written: 189.

Also Canadian Immigrants Day, so one for Ken and one for me.

Went to the office, ate a barbecue pork sandwich, did a small amount of work.

Read: A Cat From Our World and the Forgotten Witch vol 2 (Hiro Kashiwaba): More people in the fantasy world are converted to cat lovers, as is only right and proper. It’s a pretty grim world, though, as bad as ours.

Read: The Everything Box (Richard Kadrey): A somewhat hapless thief in the magical crime underworld gets tapped to steal a box that everybody else also wants and hijinks ensue. Lots of hijinks, some murders, inept cultists, inept angels, secret government agencies, betrayal exes who inexplicably did not develop better taste in their time apart, etc.

Read: Otherside Picnic vol 9 (Iori Miyazawa, Eita Mizuno, Shirakaba): They are getting awfully blase about going to a dimension of death and fear. Surely that is going to continue to work out well for them. Also Sorawo might be coming to realizations.

Read: “We Travel the Spaceways” (Victor LaValle): Black magic realism, I guess? I liked it, but it was weird.

Read: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Giant Monster (Richard Roberts): Reread, because who doesn’t like a book about a disabled catgirl getting extra superpowers? I am still kind of waiting for the book from Claire’s PoV, though.

Written: 134.

If it were National Pickle Day, I’d presume it meant pickled cucumbers, but it’s international, so does that mean it includes other pickled items? Or is it just pickle imperialism?

Went to the office, ate a butter chicken, did a work.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 15 (Kore Yamazaki): This is apparently as far as I’ve ever read before, and also right about where we are in the anime. Everything after this will be new and surprising!

Read: What Feasts At Night (T Kingfisher): Sequel to What Moves the Dead, Alex Easton and their henchman encounter another creepy mystery, this time in their own homeland.

Written: 116.

If I baked, my course would be clear!

Went to the office, ate a pineapple curry, did a work.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 13-14 (Kore Yamazaki): College arc continues with the field trip and the mysterious attacks, very much like the anime.

Read: The Dragon’s Soulmate is a Mushroom Princess! vol 3 (Hanami Nishine, poporucha): Finally we learn what the deal is with the mushrooms and the FL’s mysterious past and everything.

Read: “Fire Above, Fire Below” (Garth Nix): This seems familiar, but it’s not on my reading list so it must have been some other story about dragons and firefighters that I read?

Read: “The Necessary Arthur” (Garth Nix): “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain,” or in more modern terms, being a post-human entity of unfathomable power doesn’t mean you aren’t also a complete fuckup.

Written: 294. See, this is what makes me think I could increase my quota to 250.

Apparently not all the socks turned loose on No Socks Day are able to survive in the wild. Sniff!

Went to the office instead of sleeping, ate some Indian food, did a work that was not as annoying as yesterday, caught up on journaling.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 9 (Kore Yamazaki): Conclusion of the Cartaphilus arc! That is how he came to be in the place doing the thing in the College arc.

Written: 355?! That’s almost more than zero! Not really, but almost!

And yet, my cats still don’t seem to like seafood. Which is legit, it’s not like their ancestors were out there hunting tuna! I guess a bobcat could hunt salmon or trout? Probably not as effectively as rabbits, though.

Went to the office, ate a kind of cold and soggy Reuben, did a work.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 2 (Kore Yamazaki): Still zipping right along with Chise and her lack of survival instincts in the deep end.

Written: 140.

AKA Labor Day everywhere that’s not a blighted capitalist hellscape (and some places that are, I guess).

I’m the only one who goes into the office on Wednesdays, so I went in even though we had an early-morning meeting. I had to commute on the bus since the train doesn’t run very frequently outside of rush hour, but it wasn’t too much slower. Ate a Korean bento thing, did a work.

Read: Ogami-San Can’t Keep It In vol 4 (Yu Yoshidamaru): Oh no, it’s the hot childhood friend! Who is also immune to the male lead’s quirk, to add insult to insult.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 1 (Kore Yamazaki): Rereading from the very beginning because I didn’t remember much of it, but I do remember it now that I’m reading it, and also how fast it moved at the beginning. Halfway through the first volume and they’re already in Ulthar!

Written: 132.

I approve of both, although I have not seen a lot of crossovers.

Went to the office, ate a beef curry with green papaya, did a work.

Read: #DRCL: Midnight Children vol 2 (Shin’ichi Sakamoto): More hauntings, ghastly apparitions, madness, and a pretty extra Van Helsing.

Read: Witch of Thistle Castle vol 1 (John Tarachine): This is the same genre as Ancient Magus’ Bride, but the OP teenager is a boy sent to live with a London witch. Also he seems kind of gay for the cute French boy.

Read: Lieutenant Fusilier in the Farthest Reaches (Erika Chappell): It’s the British Army in the days of buying commissions, except it’s in space and all the troops are robots. Our dashing lesbian lieutenant is one of the extremely few robots to purchase an officer’s commission. Colonialism and class divides are explicitly addressed, although maybe not resolved in ways that are satisfying to modern sensabilities. Also, gay robot lady!

Written: 234. I think.

No thank you.

Went to the office, ate a salmon poke bowl, did a work.

Read: Daemons of the Shadow Realm vol 4 (Hiromu Arakawa): Yep, everybody is conspiring. Also, some daemons are just plain mean.

Read: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Saved the World Again (Richard Roberts): Ninth in the series, back to the bi poly high-school necromancer. She makes a new friend who, unfortunately, comes with a lot of baggage (but does not want to join her harem).

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 29 (Tomohito Oda): It is simultaneously the beach episode, hot springs episode, and stupid-games-for-high-stakes-because-idiots-are-in-charge episode. But Komi can actually communicate, at least well enough to defend her boyfriend!

Written: 187 but also some journal.

I hope everyone is aware of all nearby velociraptors at all times!

Went to the office again, sat on the phone with a customer, ate a falafel and a hummus.

Read: #DRCL vol 1 (Shin’ichi Sakamoto): Despite the hashtag octothorpe in the title, it is set in Victorian England and the height of technology so far is the typewriter. It is an extremely cracktastic, possibly even hallucinatory, boarding-school AU of Dracula with alternate personalities, crazy foreigners, excessive interpersonal drama, the first girl at the boy’s school, inexplicable supernatural weirdness, and general bizarre creepiness.

Read: The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise (Dan Gemeinhart): A twelve-year-old girl and her dad travel the country ina  converted schoolbus after the rest of their family has died, never talking about the past or going back to their old hometown, until Coyote hears of something she has to get home for on a tight deadline, and hatches a Cunning Plan. Emotional roadtrip hijinks ensue.

Written: 213.

I don’t recall interacting with the librarians much, but the one at my first high school would let us hang out in the library and invent space wargames during pep rallies.

Yay bats! Bats are great!

Went to the office, ate Mayan-Chinese fusion cuisine (Pollo Pibil Bao) and felt very futuristic.

Read: Monthly in the Garden With My Landlord vol 1-2 (Yodokawa): A manga editor breaks up with her girlfriend, looks for a new place to live, finds a house that is suspiciously cheap and turns out to come with an eccentric yet beautiful live-in landlady, lesbian hijinks ensue. The landlady’s colorful past is a big deal.

Read: Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc vol 1 (Sekka Iwata, Yu Aoki): Monsters randomly appear in future Tokyo, transforming technomagical heroines to exorcise them are big business, a college grad with no talents except pluck and speed-reading and eidetic memory falls in with a magical girl startup company populated entirely by weirdos, life-threatening hijinks ensue.

Written: 119.

You can do it, young writers! Don’t listen to the haters! Especially not if the hater is you!

Went to the office, ate a barbecue, did a work. Got an urgent customer call at the end of the day, but was able to make the customer happy by quitting time.

Read: Sheeply Horned Witch Romi vol 1 (Yoichi Abe): Rereading, because I tried to start vol 2 and had no idea what was going on. Depressed high-school girl gets the power to reshape the world into the metaphor of her psyche, the only person who isn’t in a coma is the boy she likes, at the end she’s entering a new instar or something. Right!

Read: Dai Dark vol 1 (Q Hayashida): There’s a teenaged kid in a wacky grim space setting full of disgustingly organic tech and necromancy, he has a skeletal life-support back, everyone is hunting him because they think his bones will grant any wish, ultra-violent space hijinks ensue.

Read: Raven’s Flag (Glynn Stewart): Number 6(?) in the series about trying to put together the remains of the alien empire that was just overthrown, starting a new arc where aliens from far across the old empire have come to ask humanity for help because they are getting their asses handed to them by mysterious attackers.

Written: 165.

I count, at least according to my HR profile.

Went to the office, ate a deep-dish pizza, did a work.

Read: I Married My Female Friend vol 1 (Shio Usui): Marriage is something everybody should try, so two friends agree that if they aren’t otherwise attached by five years after college graduation, they’ll marry each other, and they do. One of them is obviously much more into this than the other, at least initially, but there is affection and cuteness.

Read: God Bless the Mistaken vol 1 (Nakatani Nio): In a world where the laws of nature are always making an exception (giant plants growing everywhere, then the plants disappear and people can walk on air, then people are earthbound and everything is mirror-reversed), a high-school boy runs errands for his landlady who studies the glitches. I have trouble believing a society so much like ours could happen in such a world, but it’s cute.

Written: 309. This is working better.

I told them how beautiful and chompy they are, instead of reminding them that their brains are the size of walnuts, so I’ll count this one.

Went to the office, got almost the last desk, ate some Chinese(?) food, did a work. I’m not sure how this is going to work when the whole company is supposed to be in the office on Thursdays.

Read: Blood Blade vol 1 (Oma Sei): Vlad the Impaler returned to life as a cute young vampiress and protected her corner of Eastern Europe for hundreds of years until steampunk mad scientists send their minions to annoy her. Ultraviolence ensues. No, I don’t think it’s supposed to make more sense than that.

Read: Whoever Steals This Book vol 1 (Nowaki Fukimidori, Kakeru Sora): Book-hating youngest member of a famously book-loving clan discovers that when people steal books from her family’s private library, they get cursed, and she’s the curse. Adventures in surreal book worlds ensue, with a helpful dog-girl-spirit-thing.

Written: 428 terrible words.

HI JUS!

Went to the office, ate some Ethiopian mushrooms and injera, did a work, came back home.

Read: Soara and the House of Monsters vol 1 (Hidenori Yamaji): After spending her entire life training to fight monsters, Soara goes to sign up on the very day the war is cancelled. Distraught, she wanders the wilderness until she falls in with a band of dwarves who are going around doing bespoke construction for monsters who want to use this new human idea and live in houses instead of found dens. Very much the sort of manga with double-page spreads of the monster houses with the fantasy materials and monster-specific features called out. Soara’s character arc is obviously going to be learning to value herself for anything other than monster-killing power.

Read: Free Period (Ali Terese): Two middle-school troublemakers get sentenced to do something constructive with their energy, and end up coopted into/coopting the project to get period supplies in all bathrooms. It’s like 50% period equity, 50% nobody knows what to do with these girls who have so much energy, and 20% fart jokes. Having never been a middle-school girl, I have no idea whether this is accurate, but it seems plausible.

Read: Blade of the Moon Princess vol 3 (Tatsuya Endo): Look, it’s another faction on the Tainted World, and they also have a grudge against the Imperial family. What were the odds of that?

Written: 279, although maybe I should have written less and gone to bed earlier.