Yay it’s Friday. Even though it was a short week, I’m glad it’s over.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.20-21: The end! It was an actual ending, too, although it didn’t have enough Hekapoo.
Written: 567 NaNoWriMo words, trending in the wrong direction.
For a change, I didn’t have to get up early! Well, not earlier than usual, which still seems too early, except that if I stay in bed any longer, it’s definitely too late.
Read: “Skeleton Song” (Seanan McGuire): Another quick portal fantasy, full of love beyond death and spooky beauty.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.17-19: On the plus side, all plot all the time! On the downside, still the wrong ship.
Written: 649 NaNoWriMo words. Still not very many, but if I keep increasing at 300 words per day per day, I should finish in plenty of time! (That would be 18 days of writing, with the last day being 5400 words, which is totally an amount a real writer could do. Just not an amount I could do.)
Another early-morning meeting, bah. Also customers.
Read: Candy & Cigarettes vol 1 (Tomonori Inoue): A cop reaches mandatory retirement age but still needs an income stream for medical treatment for his grandkid, so doesn’t put up much fight when he gets recruited by the secret government agency in charge of murdering bad people and partnered with a terrifying 5th-grade assassin. It helps that all the targets are super-sleazy.
Read: Command Authority (Terry Mixon, JN Chaney): Fifth in the series. New discoveries continue to be made and tested without mounting a scratch battleship, the military continues to be entirely corrupt.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.15-16: What the heck, Hekapoo? Did you do that on purpose?
Written: 385 NaNoWriMo words, which is not even close to a NaNoWriMo day.
Someone I went to college with is now a grandparent. (Probably more are, but this one I still know!)
Also, it’s Halloween, so I saw a lot of costumes while I was out trying to run all my weekend errands, but although I had candy, no one came to get it.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.13-14: All hail the queen!
Written: FAIL, just stuff about Big Bad Con.
I did not manage to do anything at all useful today. I stayed in bed reading until well after noon, and didn’t leave the apartment all day. That would be fine if I were just vegatating for my vacation, but I should be getting ready to go to Big Bad Con tomorrow. I guess making sure my vaccination record is packed and also taking a picture of it counts as prep, but only barely. Fortunately I don’t have to be there until tomorrow afternoon.
Read: Bonds of Blood and Alpha Strike (Terry Mixon, JN Chaney): Having finally gotten their giant space battleship moving, the heroes now have to do extremely unwise stuff with it, so the opponents this time are mostly physics and time, with a bunch of politics and crime and even a little space combat.
Read: “Haley and the Spooky Dungeon” (Maggie Hogarth): Well, what kind of dungeon do you make at Halloween, if not a haunted house?
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.11-12: That wasn’t suspicious at all, Eclipsa. Also, did Marco just deprive Mewni of most of its knights?
Written: More pointless notes, nothing else.
It’s like Friday, except I have to get all my customer cases in order to hand off to other people while I’m out. Also I had to get up too early for the weekly meeting.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.8-10: All Mewni politics all the time! Except the callback to when Marco and Star started getting shipped.
Read: The Last Hunter (Terry Mixon, JN Chaney): It’s a Missiles In Space setting, but the enemies for most of the book are neglect, corruption, and logistics. Points off for society, gender roles, etc being very C20, but still entertaining.
Written: More gaming notes, I guess. They’re very stupid and my game will be awful, though.
Today, the one thing I managed to accomplish was printing out character sheets and move references for the con. There’s still some folding that needs to happen, but together with the pens and pencils and index cards, I think the player supplies are sorted. If I were clever, I would have gotten dice, but it’s way too late for that now.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.5-7: Gee, it’s almost as if restitution isn’t popular with the colonizers. But Kelly seems pretty cool.
Read: Black & White: Tough Love At The Office vol 1 (Sal Jiang): Up-and-coming corporate rivals Shirakawa and Kuroda have to work together while plotting against each other, but when they’re working late, their rivalry devolves into fist-fights and extremely rough lesbian sex. It’s not really my kink, but I’m hoping they’ll get married and become masked avengers beating up all the high-ranking men in the corporate world, or something like that.
Written: 370 kitten words.
I did not have to get up earlier than usual today, but I still had to get up. Hmph.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 4.2-4: Now we know more about Eclipsa’s moral compass.
Read: Hitomi-chan is Shy With Strangers vol 5 (Chorisuke Natsumi): A very slice-of-life volume in which not much happens except that Usa finds Hitomi’s hotness very distracting.
Written: 316 kitten words.
Ate so much banana bread today. Also cheese.
Played: Dark Matter episode 5. As usual, Jeremy apologized for not having an adventure and then it was pretty great. This time, our hapless PCs met two new factions (the Bridge Crew and the Librarian, who is a faction all by herself), were almost eaten by spiders, accidentally damaged several books, were almost eaten by kobolds and alligators, seized a plasma launcher +1 for one of the gadgeteers to integrate into their exoskeleton, and brought a book back to the library in triumph. LEVEL UP. One of my characters finds the Librarian horrifying and thinks she’s probably a system of oppression all by herself, the other finds her moderately terrifying but apparently is into that. Next session, they have shake down the door guards for late library books and also go to the Farm to get materials to repair the books that were damaged in the Great Spider Fight. Also there was banana bread.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 3.21, 4.1: That was arguably the right thing for Star to do, but I think they’re treating the legitimacy of the monarchy as more of a thing than it deserves.
Written: 565 kitten words.
No visiting today, only sitting around waiting to see if customers will attack. (They didn’t.)
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 3.18-20: It’s all plot all the time! I still do not ship that pairing, though.
Written: 533 kitten words. Not very good for a day with no other demands on my time.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 3.10-14: Hah, I’m not the only one who thought Marco and Hekapoo had chemistry! Not that it did him any good in the end, because he’s a doofus.
Written: 295 kitten words.
I did manage to go grocery shopping, eventually, but that’s about all I accomplished today.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 3.9: Okay, those princesses weren’t so terrible. That time.
Read: Exile and Refuge (Glynn Stewart): First two of a series I had not previously read, seem like earlier works. Dissidents and rebels have to set up their own society on an unknown but suspiciously habitable world and deal with all the things they find in their new section of the galaxy.
Written: 424 kitten words. I need to get my act together for NaNoWriMo, though.
I meant to get up early and go grocery shopping in plenty of time for going to see Jus’s soccer game, but none of that came to pass. Then I was on call all afternoon, and customers rudely wanted me to fix their problems. It wasn’t intense work, but anything else beyond pad games and light reading wouldn’t have worked well anyway. Bah.
I didn’t have anything else I wanted to sign up for, so I forgot, but the final round of signups for Big Bad Con was tonight. I’m up to four people in my Friday session and five in my Saturday session, so I better get this glass mountain filled with [SPOILER] and [SPOILER] and DOOM.
I don’t know whether it was the weird mayo-chicken-salad filling of the arepa I ate tonight or the ranch dressing I put on my chicken nuggets last night, but for a bit it looked like it was going to be a sad night. Fortunately it cleared out quickly and I did not have to spend the night with my forehead on the cool bathroom counter.
Read: Spy x Family vol 8 (Tatsuya Endo): An army of hit men trapped on a cruise ship with Yor. That’s definitely going to end poorly for someone.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 3.4-8: Wait, wasn’t that the end? No, apparently Marco has to be a doofus and also the writers have to ship him with Star for no good reason. Hmph.
Written: 330 kitten words.
Huh, Friday.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 2.22, 3.1-3: No more hanging around Echo Creek having teenaged hijinx, it’s all Mewni adventure now! Also, new opening and closing and more tadpoles.
Read: Chapter 8 of “Rodeo Clown“: No death can be so impending that Blitzo and Stolas will keep their pants on.
Written: 274 kitten words. Remember when my daily goal was 250 and I made it almost every day? Me neither.
How is it already only Thursday? Why has nothing useful happened this entire week?
Read: The Genesis of Misery (Neon Yang): Star travel and mecha based on mysterious artifacts and substances, excellent. Declaring them holy, making a Catholic-style religion around them, and murdering everybody who regards them in a different light… yep, humans suck. In fact, almost all the characters are pretty terrible, including the MC. Sure, she honestly believes that she’s the next messiah, but everyone around her believes it too, and history shows us how that goes. It looks like the next book will be a lot more about her enemies, which honestly seem somewhat less terrible, so I’ll probably read it.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 2.18-21: There’s starting to be more plot, not just wackiness.
Written: 383 kitten words.
Got up early for a training that was cancelled at some earlier date, only the external vendor was too incompetent to remove it from the calendar. I’m sure the training will miraculously be a good use of my time when it finally happens, though.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 2.16-17: So all of that experience Marco gained is just dropped between episodes? At least he gets to get rid of the mark of Hekapoo along with it. Which is too bad, Hekapoo seems like quite a catch.
Written: 677 kitten words.
It’s a good thing that Ken is too busy having fun in Portland to game, because I got stuck at work forever. I think we need to explain to New Guy M about knocking off when shift is over. But maybe he’s angling for a management position, which does require working 24/7.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 2.13-15: Wow, actual progress! And not just in Ludo’s evil plan!
Read: Yashahime vol 1 (Takashi Shiina, Rumiko Takahashi): The daughters of the major characters of Inu-Yasha have adventures. Unfortunately I either didn’t watch far enough or wasn’t invested enough in the original series to care deeply.
Written: FAIL.
Tried to sign up for more Big Bad Con events, but as usual, their backend was not up to handling a few hundred requests in the same minute. It took about 45 minutes to get things sorted, but I got into the Leverage-only-getting-revenge-for-non-supers. It was enough of a mess that I should wait until tomorrow before obsessively checking to see if anyone signed up for my games.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 2.12: Disembodied flying unicorn heads are kind of the worst.
Written: FAIL. I still don’t know how to do horrible revelations. Or feelings.
I realized today that ice cream costs like a dollar an ounce at the ice cream place. But, ice cream!
Played: Dark Matter episode 4. Beat up more undead that were minding their own business, had drinks with another underdead who was minding his own business but very politely, went back to the first faction to try to broker a swap but they had too many yellow question marks, set out for the library and got ambushed by the faction that everybody hates. Jeremy told me to draw a battlemap like that time Obi-wan and Whatsisface got jumped by Darth Maul, and all I remembered of the scene was that it made me think of live-action Roborally so I drew a bunch of catwalks and moving platforms and pneumatic tubes and waterfalls of molten metal. It was difficult to justify being in the bowels of an asteroid ship (ammunition manufacturing?) but made for a great fight scene. It might have been more glorious if I had remembered Bolt gets to reroll natural 1s, but it all worked out in the end.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 2.9-11: Disembodied flying unicorn heads are kind of the worst.
Written: 575 kitten words.
The knocking off at 17:30 seems to be meeting with general approval, so probably it will continue. Oh the other hand, my rent is going up.
Read: The Shorter Part of Valor (Tanya Huff): Small collection of short stories in the world of the “Valor” and “Peace” series.
Read: Chapter 7 of “Rodeo Clown“: Blitzo has a plan and is taking charge. Surely everything will be okay now.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 2.5-8: Nice to see Ludo coming back to cause problems. Not that he’s needed.
Written: 476 kitten words.
Yeah, okay, knocking off work earlier is nice.
Watched: Our Flag Means Death 9-10: Well, one of them dealt with that a lot more constructively than the other. Good thing season two is shooting, or there might be riots.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 2.4: What, why would you expect either Ludo or Star to learn anything?
Read: Remnant Faction (Glynn Stewart): Fifth and probably last of the missiles-in-space series about a navy commander and diplomat trying to put the galaxy back together after overthrowing the alien conquerors broke everything.
Written: Knocking off work earlier did not make me any productive.
So the new plan to avoid burnout at work is for everybody to get kicked off-shift at 17:30 except the person who has to do the handover at 18:30 (unless everything is terrible, of course). Admire how I just switched my after-work activity to the day when I have to do the evening handover. (It’s fine, it’s not any worse than before, it’s just not any better.)
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 2.1-3: We do get to see what happened to Ludo after the last season finale. Also Star is definitely her own worst enemy.
Read: I Became a Succubus, and the Only Way to Level is to… What?! vol 1 (Jammin’ Rabbit aka Tony Huo): It is exactly what you would expect, and full of what seems like the tropes from mainstream porn (which I actually don’t consume, being a failure as an American bachelor, but it seems like the stuff I hear about.) Meh.
Read: “These Alien Skies” (CT Rwizi): I mean, yeah, colonists of African descent refusing to have anything to do with people from the Earth they left is legit.
Written: 301 kitten words.
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.
Seems to be a generally lethargic day. There is no visiting, only Zzzuul.
Tomorrow is the first round of signups for Big Bad Con. I need to figure out what to sign up for. The pickings seem slim, but I guess that’s to be expected the first year back after the pandemic outage.
Watched: Star vs The Forces of Evil 7-10: I remembered how to watch this because Jus is also watching it, although she’s probably finished all seasons by now. It’s still extremely ridiculous.
Read: “Quandary Aminu vs The Butterfly Man” (Rich Larson): Modern cyberpunk: crime, drugs, climate catastrophe, astounding levels of technology used for the most sordid purposes.
Read: Silver Under Nightfall (Rin Chupeco): Vampires vs vampires vs humans, courtly intrigue, romance, battles, unwholesome biology, romance, horrible old men, trauma, and of course doom.
Written: 659 non-kitten words. Some of them were apparently from before and didn’t get logged, but whatever.
I had no brain at any point today.
Something I read on the Internet suggested that opening links in new tabs is usually not the right path, especially when thinking about accessibility, so I guess I’ll change how I do things.
Played: Lancer, at long last. I leveled up my invisibility, but sadly, we had to make Unity look good, so the whole session was diplomacy and investigation, and we only got to the pre-fight cliffhanger. Next fortnight for sure! Probably.
Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 6-7: Yep, still ridiculous. I want to see Star’s next instar.
Written: 520 kitten words.
Apparently getting up early makes me look so wretched that even my boss noticed. I am a Bad Employee.
Read: FAIL.
Watched: Star vs The Forces of Evil 4-5: Still ridiculous, but the two leads are good friends.
Words: FAIL.
Apparently this is the weekend day to do nothing.
Watched: Star vs The Forces of Evil 1-3: Very ridiculous. Pretty much TFOS: “Here’s your interdimensional exchange student who has vast magic powers and doesn’t know how to use them, have a relaxing high-school experience”. Bonus points for no obvious romance between the leads, and for the human lead not being helpless.
Read: “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” (Stephen Graham Jones): He totally had it coming.
Words: 243 kitten words.