Tag: vacation

Except fear itself, of course.

Meant to take another load of books to find new homes, but failed. Meant to get cat supplies, but failed. Did not manage to do much of anything.

Read (short): “Our Dead Selves Lie Like Footsteps in Our Wake” (Jeff Isacksen): Wizards contend with the mess life makes of all young dreams, and also with patriarchy and ablism.

Read (manga): Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon vol 1 (Shio Usui): She pays attention to fashion and presentation to get a good son-in-law to make her parents happy, she has given up all hope of romance because everything is for her little sister’s sake after they were orphaned, together they have no idea that they are going to be in a workplace yuri story.

Written (catgirl): 194. I think most of this last bit is filler that can be expunged, but that’s a problem for Future Me.

No, not “happy”.

A holiday is like Saturday, so I did my usual shopping and lunch and reading Katalepsis, and also my usual being very useless. Monkeycats came home today, so I didn’t have to visit the cats, but they just got home from an expedition today so there was no anime.

Read (novel): Necrobane (Daniel M Ford): Second book about the necromancer who gets assigned as the sheriff of a frontier village where someone has just woken up all the undead left over from the recent war and also maybe Tom Bombadil. Nothing that can’t be solved with a lot of magic and a daring heist– oops.

Written (catgirl): 332, which is a lot for present me, but really next to nothing.

Turtles are good.

I am on vacation, because I didn’t retract my request for days off even though I am not worthy to go to Roseville.

Slept in until forever because I stayed up too late reading last night, then took some books to the used book store. They didn’t keep as much this time, but on the other hand I was finally able to move a bunch of stuff from the couch onto shelves. Not sure those couch shelves will ever recover, though.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 3: Not a lot happened in this episode, or at least it didn’t have an arc. Not sure what Gurathin’s deal is, but I don’t think he’s just being pointlessly creepy.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.17-18: Season finale! The one with Nate’s dad and the patent office and the return of the guy from before (who sucks). I thought this was the end of the original series and was bummed that there was no OT3, but actually there’s a whole season yet.

Read (manga): Sachi’s Monstrous Appetite vol 1-2 (Chomoran): Middle-school boy discovers that the high-school girl next store he has a crush on is actually a giant whale(?) monster and he smells delicious to monsters. Together, they fight crime keep the local monster population under control and have feelings.

Written (catgirl): 271.

D’oh, I completely forgot!

Randomly took the day off work, since I was owed a day from working on President Day. Meant to get up and listen in on Friday morning training anyway, but completely failed and ended up sleeping in until I felt bad about not feeding the cats. Then I was moving so I fed myself with Pakistani-Indian Fusion Cuisine, spicy chicken qorma and less-spicy samosas and butter garlic sesame-seed naan. It might have been sufficiently celebratory.

I could possibly have done something useful, but mostly I cleaned up browser tabs, quite a few of which were short stories I had been meaning to read. Watched some TV with Marith, who is sick as well as having no computer. Probably I didn’t catch her cold. I hope my computer didn’t catch anything either.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.7: The one with shady funeral home family, where Parker has an honest-to-something feeling.

Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 19 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): A bunch of one-chapter stories. Kuro tried to star in one, Rikka played a horrible prank, assorted yōkai caused trouble.

Read (short): “Victory Citrus is Sweet” (Thoraiya Dyer): A spacer who is actually kind of a jerk gets himself and his apprentice in trouble by cutting corners to show somebody up.

Read (short): “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” (Caroline M Yoachim): A future in which the current American medical system is still in place. Story in the form of a choose-your-own-adventure.

Read (short): “When the Yogurt Took Over: A Short Story” (John Scalzi): Definitely a different spin on the “enough computers together form a mind” trope.

Read (short): “Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor” (Grady Hendrix): Did you want your AI to be useful? Sorry, your timeline stems from the Trump-Musk presidency, you only get a chatbot.

Read (short): “Wikihistory” (Desmond Warzel): Everybody who gets access to time travel does it, then some long-suffering admin has to revert their changes.

Read (short): “In the Forests of Memory” (E Lily Yu): A sad story about an old lady in a cemetery of holographic grave markers, living off the offerings.

Read (short): “Presence” (Ken Liu): A sad story about an emigrant visiting his dying mother in the old country via telepresence.

Read (short): “The Thief of Memory” (Sunyi Dean): What is identity but memory? Also not a happy story, although you can’t blame a desparate teenager for making a rookie mistake.

Read (short): “The Dark House” (AC Wise): A haunted house, a haunted photographer, haunted photographs.

Written (game design): 136.

Yes, a World Day of Peace would be a great idea! Not going to get one in the next four years, though.

Slept in until 12:30, flopped around, went for another walk and considered whether D&D is actually moribund because 5th ed was mostly a regression to 3rd, and there isn’t a 6th. I should probably inform myself on the changes in 5.24 or whatever it’s called before making any declarations, though.

Watched: Jentry Chau vs the Underworld 4-6: Field trips to set more of Texas on fire! Skullduggery! Smooches! Social pressure! Fire!

Read: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! vol 10 (Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka): New characters and new doom from the sequel game, but how is she getting this information?

Written: 172. Starting a new year!

To celebrate, I ordered two hats. One is more outdoorsy, one is more fashiony.

Went for a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health, thought dumb things about D&D.

New Year’s fondue was very nice. We didn’t have Vivian, but we did have Earl and Cat, and Marith for a while. We ate cheese fondue, more cheese fondue, and chocolate fondue, searched for the lost art of conversation, and at midnight went out to admire the fireworks. Then we dispersed to our various beds. Friends are nice.

Read: Gamma Draconis (Benoist Simmat, Eldo Yoshimizu): Occult conspiracies across France and Japan, reaching to the highest levels of corporate power. Proper occult, too: it starts with stealing the shewstone of John Dee, so the hermetic secret society can contact intelligences from higher dimensions, etc.

Written: 185.

 

I’m not really celebrating this one today, although I certainly expect to do so at various times during the coming year.

Since I had no work to do today, I let the cleaners in, went shopping for cat supplies, made a big order from Target, waffled about what hat(s) to get, and was generally useless. When I tried to be useful by downloading the past year’s books from Kobo, I blew up my ADE installation and to reinstall from scratch. I did get about a quarter of the backlog into calibre, though.

Read: Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You vol 3 (Jinushi): Nope, he still doesn’t know.

Written: 164.

Hopefully panettone counts.

We actually managed to gather to play boardgames during the holidays! No Kelsey, but we had Brooks and Vivian (who is less imposing than I expected, but very cyberpunk) and delicious posole, and played Terraforming Mars and Poetry For Neanderthals and a new game called Inhuman Conditions about trying to figure out whether someone is a replicant. I am not a robot, or at least Professor Herman T Schnitzelweiner isn’t. It was fun!

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 9 (coolkyousinnjya, Johanne): Mikoto backstory.

Written: 135.

But what do they drink in other countries on this day?

Had to work the first half of the day, because someone has to. It was dead.

Went for a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health. Tried to also do some shopping, but failed.

I tried to get Chinese takeout for Marith and myself, but OMG it was so crowded! I did eventually get the food, but it took over an hour. I have definitely made better plans in my life, but also worse ones.

Watched: Ranma 1/2 (2024) 1.7-9: The rhythmic gymnastics fight with Kodachi with the famous line “Use of brother: valid” and then the skater pair and “I can win anything if it has martial arts in the name”.

Read: My Clueless First Friend omnibus 1 (Taku Kawamura): It’s not chunibyo if you’re in 5th grade! Declarations of eternal friendship are not romance if you’re in 5th grade either, at least if you’re as clueless as this boy.

Read: How to Survive at the End of the World vol 4 (RC Joshua): Now everything that was accomplished in book 3 is in danger, because the universe is just like that. I’m not sure about how the System is depicted in this one.

Read: Heart Gear vol 1 (Tsuyoshi Takaki): Centuries after WWIII wipes out humanity, an inexplicably surviving young girl activates an ancient robot and ends up going on a quest through the dangerous world of leftover robots to save a friend.

Written: 121.

 

 

Hurray for genetic diversity!

The calendar says it’s Monday, and I did laundry, but I also got trapped in bed by cats until forever and went grocery shopping like a Saturday. Then I got very many kittysnuggles.

Read: I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 2 (Yutaka): More shenanigans, also the main character gets to look hot in fancy dresses and encounter more people in the male lead’s life who treat her like somebody instead of nobody, if not exactly positively.

Read: The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen vol 2 (Bunko Matsuura, Tenichi, Suzunosuke): Our reincarnated tween otome heroine saves the day, which is not entirely well-received. She keeps trying to lift people up instead of dragging them down, even though she doesn’t know if she’s going to be forced to be a villain later, as is traditional for this genre.

Written: 305, mostly notes on the space school project.

 

Literally, “Day of the place in the other direction from bears”.

All vacations must come to an end unless you’re rich, so we drove back to San Jose this morning in the haze and glare, and only got slightly lost around 80/Business 80/50. Got home around noon despite Dave’s attempt to kidnap me, adored my cats who Marith took very good care of, delivered a cooler full of leftovers to Marith because Sherilyn found the right containers to actually fit the cooler, replenished all the cat nourishment, cleaned all the cat litterboxes, went to buy more cat supplies, paid my rent, sent email to my doctor, and caught up here.

I think this is the energy I’m supposed to bring to work after a vacation, but I like my cats more than I like any customers.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.11: Wow, there is actually some kind of consequences to blatantly and repeatedly breaking the rules. I wasn’t sure there was ever going to be. Time for Octavia to overthrow Hell, I guess!

Read: I Can’t Belive I Slept With You vol 3 (Miyako Miahara): The secret past meeting is revealed, everything is okay, lesbian smooches forever, the end!

Read: The Hunters Guild: Red Hood vol 1 (Yuki Kawaguchi): A young boy whose village is threatened by werewolves defeats them and joins up with the organization that hunts monsters with cleverness and special weapons. The art and worldbuilding remind me a lot of Soul Eater and Jing: King of Bandits and probably other shōnen manga from that period.

Written: …20…40…60…VACATION

Pretty sure Thanksgiving food is not the route to longevity.

Everybody except Dave and I went back to San Jose today, because they have to prep the kids/be prepped for school on Monday. Dave and I stayed to play Martian Rails (I am so bad at Crayon Rail games) and Waterdeep with Undermountain (again), which meant we got to see Kate. I forgot how great Kate is, she pretends my jokes are funny! Went to bed around midnight again.

Read: VACATION

Written: VACATION

I did some of that! Also I bought nothing (possibly because I was far away from the computer I use for shopping, but it still counts).

Ate way too many waffles, admired Non’s racing game tracks (because it’s 2024 and kids can just construct 3D environments on their notepads), played Everdell with the tree replacement expansion and Settlers of Catan and Lords of Waterdeep (again) and Holiday Fluxx, ate too many leftovers, played SPANC again because Ayse didn’t get to play last time, managed to get to bed not long after midnight. I’m sensing some themes to this vacation.

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Happy Thanksgiving!

There was a lot of cooking, which I was completely useless for, but I did some of the eating. So much Thanksgiving food! Also played Takenoko and went to bed at a sensible time.

Read: Beware of Chicken vol 4 (Casualfarmer): We finally get backstory on the major conflict of the setting, but also a lot of coziness.

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Turtles deserve loving homes too!

I was inept so we didn’t get going until after 9, but it was still early enough to miss the vast majority of the traffic and make it to Roseville by noon. Yay friends! Yay toddler!

Played Lords of Waterdeep with Undermountain, and SPANC (which I got a new copy of after having lost my original copy on a train platform many years ago), ate the traditional Chinese food, visited the gaming store which had only corporate and vintage RPGs, went to bed by midnight.

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Good grief, why am I so useless?

Slept way in again, ran a few errands, ate a Thai food for dinner, snuggled a cat, wrote a journal, did a little packing.

Read: I Can’t Belive I Slept With You vol 2 (Miyako Miahara): Tenant is still doing “favors” for Landlady, but she really doesn’t mind and might even be catching feelings. After the first volume I thought the favors might have stopped short of third base, but no, definitely steamy.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.10: Millie is the best, so great she can even make Blitzø suck less! Also apparently she can kill anything.

Written: 210. I’m now over 30k total, which should be somewhere between a full story (novella) and a big chunk of story (novel), so apparently I need to go back and take a bunch of words out to get a higher density of story.

It is the anniversary of the day Sage and Nightvale came to live with me. Many of my life decisions are questionable, but this one was good.

I have to go to work tomorrow, so today I had to do a bunch of shoppings after Sage let me get up. Annoying, but now I have the things.

What did I learn from running games this time? Definitely that railroading is my friend, and I don’t even need very many stations on that line. This time, after character creation, we had the announcement of the quest, pootling around in Lizard Bay looking for information, and then about two places on the Cursed Isle. Character creation should probably have been slightly shorter, but that wouldn’t have recovered enough time for a whole other scene. There were also only about five NPCs/encounters, counting all the old people in town and the mermaid and her pirates as one each.

A less welcome lesson is regardless whether I was ever smart enough to remember all the things, I’m not now. I definitely needed a checklist of things to take to the con, because I forgot several of them, even ones that are basic to any running-a-con-game expedition. I also needed better notes of both game setup (I completely spaced on mentioning the X-card in the second session) and specific important information for the PCs to appreciate the shape of their doom. Just winging it from vibes is not the way to get everything covered!

Even with my decrepit brain, it did go well enough that I must do it again next year. I might even remember these lessons.

Written: 262.

More importantly, it’s National Black Cat Day in the UK, but neither I nor Nightvale is there.

Between fan noise and two nights of games ending early, I was much more alive this morning than at this point last year, which is good because I had to pack up and then run a game in the first slot of the day.

Ran: Perils and Princesses. In a turn of events that was only surprising because I did not know he came to BBC, one of my players was the designer of Princess World, but fortunately I am not prone to fangirling. He played Clik-Clok the daughter of the Tin Woodsman, so that was cute. This time I got things moving along well enough, but somehow the antagonists were not creepy enough, and the princesses almost let them get away with it, but someone remembered they had a dodgy mushroom in their inventory and used it to contact their fairy godmother who only appears in dreams and visions and ask for better instructions. The day was saved! They used the same solution as the second test group, so that was reassuring in some way.

Played: A magical girl search of terrible things to fight in Wandering Crows. Along with a half-merperson deathly afraid of water and a necromancer who could only bear to raise animals, she wandered a world recovering from fifty years of war and deprivation. We were hired to escort a box of paprika to a partially-underwater city than had been deprived for two generations, which involved keeping loud-mouthed cops from starting a paprika riot and fighting through gangsters (our merperson Squid literally barfed a lizard gangster to death), but turned out to be only half the job. The priest of the temple we were delivering to needed the paprika for a specific ritual in a specific, dangerous place to save the city, and we had the choice of going through paprika thieves or necromancers to get there. We chose necromancers, which our necromancer defeated by laying their zombies to rest instead of having a massive undead battle. As a reward for maintaining the life-support system of the city, we got information about our personal quests, a huge favor from the important temple, etc, but most importantly, the ancient dinosaur priest threw off his robe and flexed for us. (No, really, rainbow feathers!) Wandering Crows is a card-based that’s intended to be simple and portable, but it’s also a little abstract for me. I would prefer what you write on your character sheet to be more than flavor text. I should send a comment to the designer.

And that was it for Big Bad Con 2024! I did not play all lesbians all the time this year, but close enough, and I only played games I’d never played before. The games I ran went much better than last time I ran two years ago, because I was ruthless about railroading. Will I run Perils and Princesses again next year? Maybe! But maybe something I like more will come along.

I managed to resist buying any dice in the dealer’s room, despite the many beautiful colors on offer, because I do not need more dice. I did buy a bunch of games in hardcopy (Ryuutama, which I might already own but couldn’t find at home; Follow, ditto; For the Queen; CBR+PNK; The Lost and the Jammed; Sapphic Space Pirates, Rebels of the Outlaw Waste because the PDF doesn’t have the stickers for character advancement; Cloud Empress and some adventures) and a small plush squid with eldritch sigils (their name is Devil Squid and they are Baby Lizard’s friend).

Criminal Cat Onion’s human was allegedly at the con, but I did not manage to meet her.

I just made the train home, and my cats were there and I fell over dead.

Written: VACATION

Played: A pseudo-Islamic knight with a giant chicken (actually a Southeast Asian jungle fowl) in Gubat Banwa. A rich king hired us to pillage and/or kill the idealist king who was stealing his excessive wealth to fund an artistic community, but when we found out from a captured minion that they used to be close until the falling out, we had to drag him back and force them to repair their relationship. Gubat Banwa is very board-game-grid in the manner of D&D4e, but the part between battles seems cooler, and also you don’t want to kill random spuds because it’s better to have them beholden to you. Hurray non-European fantasy!

Ran: Perils and Princesses. Somehow, despite forgetting character sheets, of all things. Fortunately, there was a printer in the hotel and I still had the files on a thumb drive. Once we got past that, it went okay. I failed to deliver all the important information in a timely manner, and the princesses were so entertaining that I forgot to move the plot along and we had to resolve it in a rush right before our time was up, but it did get resolved, and people appeared to have fun, so I’m willing to count it as a partial success. The laminated handouts were handy for character creation, although I think there may have been too many of them. If I did this again, I’d probably move some things from random generation to pregen or player choice, although I don’t know what.

Played: A horrible little wrecking ball of a goblin in Wicked Ones in Gaming on Demand. I did okay at biting legs off and overcharging generators, and the fire demon and kobold ninja were also good, but the mad scientist slime demon totally stole the show and also won by getting lasers for our dungeon to fend off the forces of light when they came to complain about the human blood we used to wash off our curses.

I had a burger that was more satisfying than any recent burger, although it was real cow meat, so I probably shouldn’t have.

Written: VACATION

Funny how getting up early to do things I like is more appealing than getting up early to make rich fuckwads richer.

Played: A blue devil sorceress composed of 47% noodles by volume in Broken Worlds. The other 53% was unsupported assertions, but her plan to deal with the giant rolling sphere of hate and gold coming to destroy her neighborhood was in fact perfect, or at least very successful. Also implicated: a mendicant monk, a gang boss, an insufficiently-renegade angel, and an acupuncturist abandoned by her divine mother.

Played: A merchant hurrying out of town after an embarrassing mishap in Ryuutama. There could have been fighting, but instead we were very reasonable and helped the homesick witch with her cafe on the sky island of dragons. It was very Kiki’s Delivery Service. The GM provided tea and cookies, which I had not expected at an all-masking con but was very nice.

Played: Follow is more of a story game than a role-playing game, but I was responsible for the grizzled cybered-up old space dog and the AU space pirate captain. We didn’t make a very good SF story, but we did somehow make it onto the treasure asteroid and not get eaten or enslaved by the slime princess who formed from the slime tribbles, despite the loss of the captain and other characters. There were only three people out of four slots, so we ended early and that was okay. Sleep is good.

I tried eating chicken tenders and fries, because that sounded warm and filling and also celebrated Greasy Food Day, but no, I really don’t like regular chicken tenders any more.

Written: VACATION

I did eat some food. I also worried a lot and packed some. I didn’t make a list, I’ve done this often enough that I can remember everything I need before getting on the train.

Got to the hotel and realized I had forgotten all the office supplies like index cards and blank paper and pens, but that’s not a big deal, I can scrounge substitutes.

Spontaneously interacted with some nice enbies from Boston, ate something called a quesabirria, applauded the opening ceremonies, admired how much of Big Bad Con is dedicated to giving opportunities to people not like me, half-listened to a game show thing run by people from the Internet while reading up on games I am soon going to play, went to bed.

After however many years of failing to sleep in unnaturally quiet hotel rooms and being disappointed in white noise apps, I finally realized that all I had to do was type “fan noise” into YouTube.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 8-9 (Ryoko Kui): Bizarre transformations! Elf shenanigans! Chilchuk backstory! Giant mushrooms! Laios using his brain! Marcille backstory (and disturbing psychological insight)! Buddy dungoneers! Succubus attack! Mystic visions! Elf backstory! Dungeon backstory!

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 10: Horrifying demon backstory to explain why this conflict is happening.

Written: VACATION.

Perfect that square! Square that perfection!

Got all the laminated things from Marith, surely I am now completely ready to run a game.

In the evening, we went to hear Lus in her school production (which was actually a community theater production with high school drama class as chorus) of Les Miserables. I understand we can’t demand too much of community theater, but I would like whoever was running sound that night to be sent to the labor camp in Jean Valjean’s place, because that was WAY TOO LOUD and also somehow screechy even when the manly men were singing their solos. (Jus was fine, of course.) My poor head.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 7 (Ryoko Kui): Ninja bonding! Elf trouble! Senshi’s traumatic backstory!

Written: VACATION.

Use your knees to avoid goose-stepping!

I am on vacation so it’s okay that I’m mostly useless. I did get my flu and COVID shots, though, and pretend to do some prep for the con.

We finally managed to have some Tuesday gaming. Now we’re making characters for Ken’s 90s East Bay Nostalgia Changeling game. I think I have failed. My character, despite having a good name (Tiffany “Theophania” Whitney) is not enough unlike me, so will be terrible. On the other hand, it’s Changeling, so maybe the characters are supposed to be terrible.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 6 (Ryoko Kui): More old friends! More intrigue! More ninjas! More trouble! New quest!

Written: 326.

Not that there are even any skyscrapers in San Jose, at least according to Wikipedia. The minimum height is 100m or 150m depending on who you ask, and downtown San Jose is close enough to the airport that nothing is over 91m.

It was very clever of me to have taken today off to do weekend stuff. A bunch of the morning was unproductive because there was a cat on me and I couldn’t get out of bed, but then I vacuumed up a bunch of stray litter, went shopping, got a new screen door for the balcony installed, and did some laundry.

Sage was very loud today. I probably deserved the yelling for being so cruel as to abandon her.

Played: Perils and Princesses. A short session because Ken was feeling poorly, but they did get to the Cursed Isle and level up.

Written: 172.

Dave and I took the train to Roseville, which involved dealing with zero traffic and got us there in good time for pizza, but did not involve any whale sharks whatsoever. People who went by car got there very late and kind of frazzled, although probably in better shape than when the kids were smaller.

The small child who cannot be named is toddling now, but not entirely clear on the concept of numbers.

Started off the weekend of board games with Dominion, which went oddly because we had several special treasure cards from the Prosperity expansion but no extra actions.

Written: VACATION

No work today, only riding the bus. Also a visit with a hepatologist (I probably have a liver) and a thyroid ultrasound (will find out about having a thyroid later), but mostly riding the bus. I read a lot of manga.

Also no gaming, Kelsey’s job is being horrible.

Read: The Tiger Won’t Eat The Dragon Yet vol 2 (Hachi Inaba): The title doesn’t mean nobody else is getting eaten, and now we know why everybody hates dragons. But also interspecies adoption, which always makes me happy.

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 4-5 (Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe): Mortal life is made of meetings and partings, and also finally getting around to testing for first-class magedom even though it’s not like mage guilds last long enough for it to be worth the bother.

Read: The Duke of Death and His Maid vol 1 (Inoue): A boy cursed to kill everything he touches lives in a remote manor with only a hot maid who delights in taunting him, and some other servant who isn’t important because he doesn’t have cleavage.

Read: Mysterious Disappearances vol 2 (Nujima): The school mystery is finally resolved, but it’s still not clear what’s going on with Mysterious Boy and Mysterious Girl. Still pretty raunchy.

Written: 222,

I end up typing as much as I can these days, but I still carry a mechanical pencil with me, just in case.

Today I was still on vacation again, and also it was very hot, so I didn’t get much done IRL. I did relocate my Nether portal to be on the same elevation as the other portals on the Nether side, and created a portal for the skeleton farm so it’s easier to reach. My interior design was so bad that Ayse had completely rebuild the Overworld side, but it did work, and now I have a full set of enchanted diamond tools and only 9 credit left at the AWCAB.

In the evening I bestirred myself to finally, finally, go and get a new phone. In one swell foop I more than doubled my iPhone level, and hopefully now I will see fewer messages about support being discontinued. The saleslady was very helpful in putting on the screen protector (which I usually misalign) and transferring everything over, and also I got a free Android tablet. However, the bus was very unhelpful on the way back, so you win some, you lose some.

Also the cleaners came, which took up a chunk of the afternoon but made my apartment less gross.

Read: I’m In Love With The Villainess vol 4 (Aonoshimo, Inori, Hanagata): Both class warfare and forbidden love in one volume! The MC’s obsessive memorization of the game is pretty OP, but it’s all for love, or something.

Written: 168.

I really should have taken that advice, because it was 105 degrees (that’s 40 for our prospective Canadian overlords), but I did a couple of errands because I finally tested negative and wanted to get out of the apartment. Now I mostly just want to pack myself into the freezer.

Also planted some Minecraft plants, although I do not have the fancy automated farms like Dave and Ayse.

Read: Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans (Isi Hendrix): Being 12 and an orphan is bad enough without sudden evil magic busting out and everyone who could help having disappeared, never mind having to save the world. African setting, although horrible white people are invading.

Written: 221.

But more importantly, it’s the day Jus gets promoted out of middle school!

Since Support can’t all take Wellness Day off, I took today in lieu so I could go see Jus wear a spiffy dress and walk across a stage and get a certificate. There was surprisingly little shrieking, but a lot of slinky dresses for 8th grade. Afterwards, we waited until restaurants were open and had sushi and ice cream of celebration.

My niece is a high-schooler now. That can’t be right!

Played: Lancer. We defeated the last iteration of the boss and triumphed, but that didn’t really help all the people who had already been killed or were now abandoned by their corporate supply chain or whatever. It’s almost like summoning unfathomable intelligences from beyond space and time to commit war crimes is not as good an idea as Second Committee though. Now we have to figure out what to play next, and it’s probably going to be Kelsey running D&D5e. Maybe I should have volunteered, but nobody wants that.

Read: Strictly No Heroics (BL Radley): A high-school lesbian in a world where some people have superpowers and are basically police with all the corruption of mundane cops and less oversight gets mixed up in an exceptionally villainous plan and there’s a hot girl and many people who need to get what’s coming to them.

Written: 271.

Celebrated by going grocery shopping, because it’s the weekend, and doing laundry, because it’s Tuesday. Also by sleeping in a lot and being extremely useless,

Watched: Bee and Puppycat 1-10: The first series was on Youtube, it turns out. Also not as good. The writing and especially the art improved significantly from the pilot to the series, and then another leap forward when it was remade as Lazy in Space. Now that the remake exists, the original is really only of historical interest.

Written: FAIL.