Tag: office

Today started the Customer Success-specific parts of the event, which I also missed a bunch of in favor of hiding in the Support cave to do work. Also somebody who my teammates rode on a bus with last night tested positive today, so that was great to hear. They are all testing negative, but of course it’s been less than a day. Regardless, we seem to have given up on not eating together, although at least we’re outside for breakfast and lunch and it’s only our team (so the company will be doomed if we all get sick at the same time). Skipped the indoors group dinner at Macarthur Park in favor of going home after I finished working.

Rapid Test: Negative.

Read: Liches Get Stitches (HJ Tolson): A simple hedge witch accidentally steals a necromancer’s lichdom and revels in it. She’s a complete sociopathic monster (preexisting condition? unclear) so she’s not exactly sympathetic, but hash tag relatable. I mean, whomst among us hasn’t wanted to rip out of the soul of someone who’s being uncooperative and raise them as an undead slave so they can finally get something done? And she only uses bodies that are already dead for crafting new and exotic shapes of zombies.

Read: I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into A Girl vol 1 (Azusa Banjo): The childhood friend seems to actually be a legitimate trans girl, but realized it after the ML used her to practice his makeup skillz. Also ML has the hots for her, but then so do a lot of people because she’s really cute in her flawless makeup.

Written: 246 kitten words, 621/3000 so far for the week. Well, I knew it was going to be a terrible week.

Had to get up early so I could commute and wear a mask all day and watch people booze it up and not be able to properly collaborate with my teammates. If I were still a useless post-college git, maybe I’d be impressed by free food, but apparently I’m a grownup now.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. I did not contribute much, but at least a Navy Puke got fragged.

Read: Rare Swords Are Only Good Until You Lose Them (August): Third in the series, MC is still OP, although he’s burning through his reserves. Also, we finally find out what Elsa’s deal is.

Read: Stars and Steam (Anthea Sharp): Five short stories, not much more than vignettes, in a universe where aliens give humans advanced technology on the condition they can make their society stable, by which they mean Queen Victoria always rules (and apparently mores never change).

Read: The Field Guide To The North American Teenager (Ben Phillipe): A black French Canadian teenager moves to Austin, where he hates everything at first, which understandably makes him kind of a jerk. Sadly, he both stays kind of a jerk even after making friends, and leaves written evidence, so then he gets a comeuppance.

Read: Catch These Hands vol 1 (murata): Years after they were high-school delinquent rivals, two women meet again, and it turns out the one that had a crush on the other still does, so they start dating. It seems very Japanese in that dating is purely a social status, almost no visible affection. Also hardly anything happens.

Words: FAIL.

Had to go into the office today, which was definitely less good than working from home, except that apparently it made my boss’s boss’s boss happy to have us all there. Since we had to unmask to eat lunch together, presumably the entire team has Covid now.

I did make it home at a reasonable time, but then was completely useless.

Read: The Babysitters Coven (Kate Williams): A high-school girl discovers she has magic powers, which does not thrill her, especially when she finds out they come with obligations and sketchy new friends and doom. The magic system/cosmology is as incoherent as you’d find on TV, alas.

Read: “The Terracotta Bride” (Zen Cho): Reread, because somehow I didn’t record it the first time. A robot girl comes to the household of a rich man in an Asian afterlife, and chaos ensues.

Read: KNiP #1-220 (Sarah Simon-Blum): Cute comic about a small saucer alien who has to study humans and do jobs, but really just wants to wear pretty dresses and avoid anxiety-inducing things like human politics and retail work.

Words: 508 kitten words, I guess.

I got up two hours early (which is actually three hours early because it’s still Spring Forward Week) to go to the office, and it was worse in every way than working from home. I’m sure there are some jobs where being together in one place isn’t worse, but mine is not one of them. Home is more comfortable, has better food, has fewer interruptions, and doesn’t pointlessly waste four hours of my day on commuting. If I want to communicate with my coworkers, I will ping them on Slack like someone who lives in the 21st century.

My boss, who is from India, asked what St Patrick’s is about. I told her it was just white people nonsense, which is not an answer I’m sure she was happy enough, but “beer” was enough of an explanation.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. More of Nom’s ghosts (she will never live that down, ever), more shooting of zombies, and now the people we left safe at the base camp are freaking out. Yet, somehow, all the Marines are still alive and nominally sane.

Read: “The Backbone of the World” (Stephen Graham Jones): Mysterious prairie dog issues, uncanny strangers, impending doom on various levels, a clever plan.

Read: The Kaiju Preservation Society (John Scalzi): Just what it says on the tin. There are kaiju, somewhere, and they need preserving. It’s a little implausible that the secret is kept so well, but that’s fine. It’s a good romp and terrible people get their comeuppance.

Read: Ogres (Adrian Tchaikovsky): Sadly, the setting twist was obvious from the very beginning, although there is also a plot twist that I did not see coming.

Read: I Can’t Belive I Slept With You vol 1 (Miyako Miahara): A (hot, young) out-of-work game developer gets offered forgiveness of her back rent if she’ll sleep with her (pretty, even younger) landlady, and free rent if she lets her move in and rent out her old apartment. Super-problematic, obviously, but the leads get along and honestly seem to like each other. The twist I thought was going to be there seems to not be, but maybe it’s just unreliable narrator?

Words: FAIL.