Tag: vacation

*thows up sign of the horns*

Knowing that Saturday would be traveling, and Sunday would be gaming, I cleverly took today off to do weekend things, by which I mostly mean grocery shopping and eating chicken tenders. That went okay. I also read manga and performed my most vital duty, feeding the cats.

Read: Spy x Family: The Official Guide: Eyes Only (Tatsuya Endo): The usual recaps, character info, setting info, promotional art, interviews, etc.

Read: Spy x Family vol 10 (Tatsuya Endo): Loid backstory!

Written: FAIL.

While I was on vacation, I saw a very cute baby who can stand up while holding onto things (which lets him get off the Baby Preserve), went on a three-mile hike with Ken and Dave, got help with Squaredle, ate a million unhealthy foods, saw many people I rarely see, and stayed up too late playing board games. I slept more than I wanted although not as much as my body wanted. It was a good vacation, but now, despite traffic, I am back. Marith did a great job taking care of Sage and Nightvale, because she is Best Lizard, but she was not in a position to feed them three gooshy meals a day, so they were glad to see me.

Played: Dominion. I did not win, although maybe I could have if the game had gone on longer.

Played: Ra. New to me, all about drawing tiles from the bag and bidding on them with numbers. As often happens, I seized the lead in the first epoch and then got no more points the rest of the game.

Played: Holiday Fluxx. Like all Fluxx variants, it is fundamentally Fluxx, and this is the rule of Fluxx.

Played: Puerto Rico. Moral depravity and I wasn’t even good at it! (Although neither was anybody else; it was a really close game and late at night.)

Played: Dungeon World. Jus wanted to play D&D, but nobody else volunteered and I wasn’t going to do that, so I compromised with an iron fist. An immolator, a rogue, a druid, and a wizard walk into a dungeon… and SET IT ON FIRE! Also there was some tussling with mooks and mutant frogs and traps, but by the time they got down to the heart of the dungeon, Jus had run out of gas. However, we stopped in a good place, and only had four players who are all likely to be up for gaming next visit, so I kept the character sheets and my terrible notes and maybe we’ll pick it up again.

Read: Perils & Princesses: You are fairy-tale princesses, going on D&D adventures. You have Resolve, Grace, Wit, a fairy godmother, a magic gift, one magic die per level(max four), and the contents of your inventory slots, because despite the fairy-tale theme, it’s a GLOG game. It has the usual D&D problems of “roll d20 to have nothing happen” and “everybody’s a bucket of hit points” but the system is simple and mostly player-facing. Also, because all lists and examples are numbered, it’s possible to create a character entirely randomly, which makes me want to try it for a con game.

Written: VACATION

I understood that reference!

No work today, only decompression and weekend stuff like grocery shopping. And birthday sushi with Jus! So much sushi. No, more sushi than that. Also cake. But I am glad everybody is done being sick and able to socialize and listen to my terrible con stories. There may have been hugs.

Read: “The Dragon Project” (Naomi Kritzer): Some people don’t deserve dragons.

Written: Writing down what I actually did over the extended weekend should be trivial, and yet it is using all my words (I don’t have very many).

How is she FOURTEEN?!

Made it back from the con, although there was a lot more walking than I expected. Transit is not the greatest on Sunday evening. (Okay, transit around here is never the greatest, we should tax Google and eBay and all those suckweasels however much they’re spending on their own busses.)

CON REPORT!

Thursday was just opening ceremonies (which I missed most of because my credit union wanted to protect me from sketchy weirdos using my card to pay for hotel rooms in Burlingame) and such. The fashion show was delightful, because it was normal people in whatever strange outfits and everybody got straight 10s from the judges. I had stupid feelings about some of the femme-presenting people in the fashion show being attractive, but they were just as stupid as the feelings about none of the gamers I know being interested in BBC. There was some kind of dance party, but I went to bed at a reasonable time so I could game all weekend.

Read: Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting (Roseanne A Brown): The daughter of a Ghanaian-American vampire hunting family gets stuck in middle school while her parents are off doing important stuff, and has to cobble together a completely illegitimate vampire-hunting team from the kids she’s stuck in racist detention with, whether the gods want to help or not. Ghanaian vampires have a firefly theme instead of a bat theme, but are not any less horrible.

Friday, I had three games scheduled and they all went off according to (somebody’s) plan.

Played: Invisible Sun. I played Crystal, a Stalwart Ardent of the Order of Makers who Writhes and Squirms. The player to my left played literally three raccoons in a trenchcoat, and the one to my right played someone who wanted to become a bodyless miasma, and we met an NPC who had a star for a head, so having no bones was comparatively normal. The GM warned us this game is not ideal for one-shots, because it’s lore-heavy and is supposed to have lots of collaborative worldbuilding and some of the classes (like the Makers) are heavily reliant on downtime actions, but we had fun anyway. As recent returnees from the false world of Earth, we got sucked into a lucrative but crazed heist that involved going into the Noösphere to recover a secret that had been known only by someone now dead. Instead of deciding what my magical glass weapon was, I used the one spell I had available for immediate use to vanish from everyone’s perceptions and my minor ability to have sticky tentacles instead of arms to yoink the physical embodiment of the secret while everybody else faffed about with the guardian memory-construct.

Played: Dreamland. I played Bazun, barmaid (Servant) to the traveling Wineseller. We also had a Ratcatcher who pretty much stole the show, and halfway through, the last player joined and played an Industrialist. Feeling in need of money, we set out for the House of the Gnoles deep in the Enchanted Wood, past even the zoogs. Along the way, we caused a British Cultural Appropriation Orientalist’s palace of decontextualized exotica to disintegrate, and then got caught up in a plot where the queen of Dream London was trying to steal her adopted daughter’s skin to create a map of new Dream territories to conquer. Surely the bridge troll falling in love with Bazun (who turned out to be a middle-aged male cult leader in central Asia in the waking world) would not go on to cause any problems whatsoever.

Played: Dungeon Crawl Classics. Okay, this one was pretty much D&D, but I figured I would check it out since it uses d5s and d7s and other potentially cursed random number generators. I played Enzo, a level 2 Warrior. Since it was a two-hour slot, the cleric got a vision to go to a location and recover a relic to save the world and we skipped right to it. It was the kind of dungeon where a room is just filled with living terrain that knows you aren’t worthy, don’t ask why your cleric can’t make that, very old-school. The stained glass constructs that shot at us were a pain, but really we got through the dungeon without much combat except the wizard sniping them from range. Spellcasters can be powerful, but the effect of a spell, from bare minimum to ridiculous, depends on how well they roll on their spellcasting check, and they have a chance of failing and possibly losing the spell, so I don’t know whether they’re actually more powerful than fighters. Too small a sample size. Anyway, we saved the world and I went to bed at a reasonable time again.

Saturday I hadn’t been able to get into anything I wanted for the morning slot, so I went to Games on Demand.

Played: Slugblaster Turbo X. I played Riya, who had Grit and a Robot Companion. This is the streamlined version of Slugblaster for two-hour one-shots at cons and the like. The GM was the creator of Slugblaster, so that was great. We went to a party in another dimension, got chased by a mutant dinosaur, almost caused a giant mecha rampage, got my robot Ziggy smashed up more than once, and made a connection with another crew. Also I got to talk to the cool girl running the music at the party, although I did not actually save her from the hand missiles.

Played: Plant Girl Game. I played Veria the Echeveria plant-girl. This is possibly the coziest game ever written. You are all plant-kids (“You don’t have to be a girl, but you do have to be a plant.”), maybe your mom is a witch, you must save your town from some kind of ecological disaster. In our case it was an infestation of ground squirrels due to the drought, and we put so much work into getting the town to relocate the squirrels instead of killing them. Fortunately we had the help of the awesome old punk librarian. There was an interesting two-dimensional age thing (social/developmental age vs how long since you came out of the ground) that didn’t get explored much because we only had four hours.

Played: Confluence: the Living Archive. I played Whispering Gallery, the fallen god of stage secrets, because this was not actually about Space Library, but non-European secondary-world fantasy. I think there were technically humans, but nobody played one, we had salamander-people and shark-rabbit people and mouse-people and people made out of living colors and whatnot. Also there was a barter/reputation economy, gravity magic, decentralized-to-nonexistent government, and skywhales. We got drafted by the social welfare org to help recover a botanist’s experimental samples stolen by a notorious villain, despite being kind of sketchy. Best line of the con: “From above, you hear a mousy gasp of gay panic!” That was when Whispering Gallery was swooning into the villainous axolotl-lady’s arms to distract her while the big bruisers surrounded her.

I had something planned for Sunday morning but it got cancelled because the GM caught a cold, so I was back to Games on Demand.

Played: Slugblaster (full-fat version). I played Octa, the Heart with Riftninja Sneakers. This wasn’t run by the creator of the game, but by some people from the company doing the new edition, and we had time to go through the whole process of choosing playbooks and signature gear and rolling up our gear and faction relationships and making a map of what dimensions we knew portals to. The map almost made a loop, so our adventure was trying to find portals to complete it. The Chill made friends with a giant eel, the Smarts took pictures of the custom board-maker’s tools, the Grit exploded a giant robot worm from the inside, and we all just tried to make it through the dimension of squabbling giants and their slug-pope. I got a lot more Style than in the last game, but also more Trouble.

Played: Heart. I played Tenacity, gnoll priestess of the Moon Beneath. Heart is set in the eldritch subway that was built for Spire but immediately went feral and started digging for Hell, and the other horrifying realms it pierced along the way, and it is absolutely a horror game. We started out investigating a rat problem for a tavern so they’d owe us a favor, and ended up facing an agglomeration of undead rats animated by the crown of an ancient god. The weaselly magic-eating vivisectionist swore fealty to the Rat King because he was fine with things growing in his brain, but then I figured out about the crown and started a fight by speaking the secret name of the Goddess. It was horrible and awesome and I did in fact gain a dozen times ultimate power, which was probably not consistent with remaining a person as the word is commonly understood, so the win and loss condition were the same. It was great. Second-best line of the con: “So you just squish your face into the mass of undead rats?” “Once I have the power of a god, I can make a new face.” I did make one mistake along the way, though, since I would have gotten an advance for not leaving the rival priest to be eaten alive by dimension-gnawing rats.

The End!

Things I did better this year than last year:

  • Eating in my room instead of in the loud expensive hotel restaurant full of virus-spewing face holes, so I had time to decompress and play my pad games between scheduled events.
  • Bringing my own food. I only came up with this idea at the last minute, so I didn’t have a lot of variety and ended up getting takeout from the restaurant several times, but if nothing else, it made the morning faster which let me sleep in longer.
  • All mostly lesbians all most of the time (Enzo was a guy, but maybe he was gay, it never came up). Why? Because I want to and nobody can stop me.
  • Spoke up more. Even though I’m a mediocre white guy, I can safely talk more than I did last year, and have more outgoing and active characters. Or maybe people were just humoring me, but nobody kicked me under the table or anything. Whispering Gallery was practically flamboyant!

Things I should do better next year:

  • Hydrate! Hydrate! OK!
  • More masks. There wasn’t a lot of breathing, so it was probably okay, but ideally I would have changed to a new mask halfway through each day.
  • New shoulderbag. The one I have isn’t quite large enough to hold my dice bag along with everything else. Or maybe that means I need a smaller dice bag? No, that’s obviously nonsense!
  • Notebook. If I had had to read any of the notes I chicken-scratched into the margins of my character sheets, it would not have gone well.
  • Contribute to the con. Running a scheduled game didn’t work well last year but maybe I could do Games on Demand or general volunteering.

Written: VACATION.

I like chocolate milk, but too many carbs and also it gives me an upset stomach so I rarely indulge.

Took today off for con prep and also general laziness, accomplished way more of the latter than the former.

Read: “FORM 8774-D” (Alex Irvine): Paperwork for people with superpowers can be much more exciting than regular paperwork.

Written: FAIL.

Accomplished nothing today, but it’s nominally okay because I’m still on vacation?

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 25 (Tomohito Oda): The entire volume is a Nerf war of grade against grade, full of new characters that I cannot keep straight. Maybe I shouldn’t have started a series that was guaranteed to have at least 101 named characters.

Written: 286 for the day at week, 7684 overall. Past the three-quarters mark!

We went to the park to see Jus’s Shakespeare camp production of Twelfth Night, Abridged Cowboy Version. Obviously she was brilliant, but also it was 897582 degrees outside so we all died and I didn’t come back to life until Marith came over for pizza and anime.

Watched: Mob Psycho 100 3.9-12: This time, Mob must face… his own heart! The end (of season 3).

Read: Micchi vs The New World vol 4 (Jammin’ Rabbit aka Tony Huo): We finally find out why the long-lost senpai of the main character has been doing all these terrible things, and everything is resolved. Also a lot of people get severely clobbered because seriously, don’t fuck with Micchi. The end.

Written: Only 176, but that’s more than my daily goal, and brings me to 1420 for the week, 6836 overall. More than 2/3 of the way to my 10-week goal!

Wasted the whole day either abed or reading web serials again. Managed to step out in the evening to look for steamed pork buns, but neither the Chinese restaurant I normally go nor the sketchy-seeming one near Marith’s work had them, so I ended up with pizza slices instead. They were okay, but not what I really wanted.

Yes, I am aware that being unproductive is a powerful anticapitalist action, but 1) I want to do my own stuff, not work, and 2) that only applies to other people anyway.

Read: I’m the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire vol 1 (Kai Nadashima, Yomu Mishima, Nadare Takamine): The isekai MC, having died broke, betrayed, and alone on Earth, determines to make the worst (for everyone else) of being reincarnated as the ruler of a planet, and the entity that reincarnated him is entirely in favor of this plan, but somehow he’s not being a terrible ruler or a terrible person.

Read: Cinnamon Bun ch 269-329 (RavensDagger): Time to grind the Hugging skill! And save the world by telling people to stop being so mean.

Written: Continued FAIL.

With nothing on the schedule, I ended up sleeping until after noon and then not doing anything at all, because I fundamentally suck. I guess I did manage to go grocery shopping, but that hardly counts.

Read: Cinnamon Bun ch 194-268 (RavensDagger): Continuing wholesome adventures. The wand of cure hysteria has shown up a few more times, but nobody can bear to explain what it actually is to the MC, so she continues on in innocence, leaving appalled expressions in her wake (which is what she does most of the time, regardless of whether any magic items are involved, because PCs).

Written: FAIL.

I have today off because in the original plan I was going to need it to recover after coming back from Roseville and I never changed my vacation plan. I meant to get up at a normal hour so I would be ready for tomorrow, but failed miserably. I did manage to do one thing, and then another thing, and finally the water is back on so I could take a shower and do dishes and stuff. I should not dread tomorrow, but I do.

Read: Illuminations (T Kingfisher): A young girl lives in a family of magic artists, who follow a tradition of painting practical enchantments into weird pictures, but some of their ancestors were more ambitious and did not follow safe disposal procedures. It has the T Kingfisher kids’ book feel, but it’s just not one of her strongest.

Watched: The Owl House 2-13-14: Luz and Amity are very cute but also kind of terrifying. Willow is pretty awesome too.

Written: 322 kitten words.

I meant to get up early and voluntarily do a bit of work to finish up from yesterday but instead was a useless lump for the entire morning. Eventually I did get up and go to buffet and kittens with Ayse and Ken and Jus and Nonny. There were a lot of kittens, but although I spent a long time petting a purry grey boi named Howl (after the wizard, I presume) and getting my hand kneaded, none of them were the right kitten to come home with me.

Read: The Thousand Eyes (AK Larkwood): Sequel to The Unspoken Name, wraps everything up but not until after a lot of suffering and perseverance and even personal growth on the part of the main characters. Also, gay smooches.

Written: 705 kitten words. When I am caught up (if I ever manage that) maybe I will have enough brain cells to work on the thing I meant to NaNoWriMocate.

I finished grocery shopping before the time I even got out of bed yesterday, so I guess that’s something. Then I didn’t accomplish much the rest of the day, because I’m still useless. Also the pharmacy is persistently failing to restock on the gila monster venom I’m supposed to inject tomorrow.

Played: Nothing, Ken and Brand are both not up to gaming.

Read: Fangs and Fennel (Shannon Mayer): Second in the trilogy about a mild-mannered church-going baker who gets turned into a giant snake monster and has to try to keep what she can of her life while dealing with cheating husbands, hot vampires, racism, and divine intrigue.

Read: Magic Artisan Dahlia Wilts No More vol 1 (Megumi Sumikawa, Hisaya Amagishi, Kei): An engineer from modern Japan dies of overwork after being given a nontechnical job and is reborn as the daughter of a magic artificer in a fantasy world. Life ensues, including stupid men, patent disputes, and general sexism, but she gets through it.

Written: 613 words. I’m not sure I like any of them, but they were written, so 2334/3000 for the week.

Okay, this is not right. I should sleep better in my own bed than when travelling, and yet. Maybe I need a softer mattress? Maybe I need better/different food? Maybe I need to not drink caffeine at lunch? Better fan placement?

Despite sleeping in until forever, I did get laundry and some chores done, and Thai takeaway for dinner, but that was about it.

Read: Aerial Magic season 1 (walkingnorth): Lovely watercolor slice-of-life comic about witches in a broom repair shop, with soundtrack. All feelings and soft colors.

Written: 924 words, bringing me to 1721/3000 for the week, which is on track for Wednesday.

I did not sleep as well this time, for no obvious reason. Too many people? Didn’t hydrate sufficiently yesterday? Minor sunburn through the remnants of my hair where the sunscreen didn’t take as well? Stars are wrong? But it’s going-home day, so whatever.

There was almost a board game, but Dave badgered me into eating a brunch instead, and then he helped Sherilyn reinstall her dishwasher, so everyone was occupied until Josh emerged to be sung at and becaked. He is now old enough that it means something when he refuses to buy beer for people! Not that any of his younger relations seem interested yet.

On the way home, I was too sleepy to entertain the driver, but despite this shameful dereliction of duty, we made it home in good time.

Then I was completely useless for the rest of the day.

Read: Cage of Souls (Adrian Tchaikovsky): A person from the last city in the world is sentenced to a fairly brutal prison where strange things happen, and reveals his backstory and world through flashbacks. It’s more similar to Gene Wolfe’s “Severian” books than to Vance’s “Dying Earth”, although not quite like either. It’s also surprisingly hopeful for Earth if not for humanity, given how much of a wreck the planet is.

Written: 797 words, which is not enough to make up for yesterday by itself, but is a good start.

I woke up on the first try again, and this time I got up right away! What is going on?!

Today I tried to learn One Deck Dungeon along with Ken and Jus but failed on the first set of doors, ate a bunch more food that was really tasty even if not metabolically appropriate, went swimming in a chilly pool with many splooshy children, played Among Us for the first time and did absolutely terribly at it, stood at the back deck admiring the night sky and its relative lack of fireworks, and stayed up until midnight playing Dominion.

I had nothing to do with it, but the jigsaw puzzle that was started before the pandemic has finally been finished.

Written: VACATION.

There was an available mattress, which might be why I slept much better than usual for a vacation. Or maybe it’s the new brain pills, or having something other than capitalism to get up for. Anyway, I was surprisingly functional.

Important vacation activities today: Playing Tomb of Annihilation (same engine as Castle Raveloft/Temple of Elemental Evil) with Ken and Jus, watching kids swim, eating grilled foods, playing Super Smash Bros with everybody, playing Lords of Waterdeep until midnight. I did so badly at Waterdeep that even Jus, playing for the first time after an exciting day of vacationing, beat me. This is because I am dumb, but I like playing Waterdeep anyway.

After smashing a bro, Nonny went to play Splatoon with Josh and Ollie and some online friend of theirs, and apparently stomped all over the three adult videogamers. To the point where the one who wasn’t local got on voice chat with him and wanted to know if he’s really nine. I tend to think poorly of Nonny a lot of the time because I mostly see him when he’s wound up and sleep-deprived and nine, but he really is great at video games.

Written: VACATION.

Everyone is covid-free, so we went to Roseville (no longer held in Rosevilla, CA)! As usual, I rode up with Ken, and we talked about gaming, listened to folk-punk music and Old Gods of Appalachia, stopped for horrifyingly greasy Mexican food, and didn’t die from traffic. We got there before the other car by like one minute, because they didn’t stop for anything.

The Petterson family has very exciting news, which you are probably not cleared for or I would have already told you. But it is all good news!

Heard much about Al’s Ptolus campaign, which is about to hit episode 100 and sounds like it has been a blast the whole way. I wish I could run something like that, but I don’t know how to do it without putting in all that work, and I’m not sure I could put that much work in even if I wanted to. Also I would probably need more reliable and interested gamers.

Dave and I finally bailed from the dying Empires & Puzzles alliance and went to Marith’s much more active alliance.

Played: Codenames.

Read: The Holy Grail of Eris vol 1 (Hinase Momoyama, Kujira Tokiwa, Yu-nagi): She’s a sincere but wallflowery noble girl, she’s the ghost(?) of someone executed for getting dumped by the prince. Together, they fight aristocratic intrigue.

Written: VACATION.

Waffled between getting up like a sensible person and sleeping in forever like a person on vacation, ended up kind of flopping around until it was time to go see the local production of that classic play, Buns In Verona. The best part was when Paris did the happy dance after being told he would get to marry Juliet, although the opening narration was well-delivered and Lord Montague was very impressive.

Tested negative for the rona, so if there is an expedition to Roseville tomorrow, perhaps I will get to go along.

Watched: Arcane 1-3: Interesting animation style, full of doom, reasonably coherent for something based on a video game, makes me think of Blades in the Dark.

Written: 452 kitten words, bringing me to 3438/3000 for the week. If we succeed in going to Roseville and I fail to write, I’m not doomed until next week!

I was extremely not useful on my day off. I mean, I accomplished my two important chores of grocery shopping and laundry, but that wasn’t really very much. I started mutant jotto with a pocket friend, which I will inevitably lose because I’m dumb. Also I saw a butterfly and despaired of what we’ve made of the world.

Watched: Moon Knight 3-4: Marith was finally able to come over again (with pizza!) so we watched another couple of episodes. That’s not actually the best way to get that information, but I understand they had limited time. Also, middle of episode 4, ?????

Read: In/Spectre vol 15 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): Looks like a lot of people have cunning plans, but if you come for the God of Wisdom, you best not miss.

Read: Babalon’s Hangover (Liva Jensen, Stein Hansen): More (if I can say that when it’s actually previous to the other) horrible things to meet in Mörk Borg.

Written: 413 kitten words.

No work, but I did manage to do a couple of chores today, including figuring out how to run CGI scripts on the new site.

Read: The Sheep Dragon (LG Estrella): Another volume of side stories and backstory. The title story is about a baby dragon making friends with magic sheep, so I approve.

Listened: Ludonarrative Dissidents 9: 13th Age: They agreed (or at least didn’t disagree) that if you must play a D&D, 13th Age is the one to play, which is pretty much how I feel about it.

Words: Not words as such, but I did work on publishing stuff (to the web, not real publishing) so it’s not actually a failure.

Finally Jus and Ayse and I made it to the kitten café, and kittens are wonderful! Sadly most of the kittens that came over to say hi (because we are the right sort of people who sit in the cafe) are already spoken for, but Rotini lovingly savaged my arm, and Bullet climbed all over me and snorfled my ear extensively. I wanted to get to know Katya, who is orange and not stripy and quite chill, but our time was up and we had to let other people adore the kittens. Perhaps we will go again next week.

Kittens give life, so I was energetic enough to walk a few kilometers to Trader Joe’s, which was only out of one thing I wanted (not counting the things that are never in stock because 2021)

Watched: Cowboy Bebop 3: Spike is composed of 117% self-destructive decisions by weight, but Jet is not a whole lot better.

Words: 320.

Today was going to be Kitten Café, but Jus banged up her foot, so instead it will be tomorrow, and today will be lying in bed forever until I DIE. But I will be a warm and cozy corpse.

Read: Burning Bright (Melissa McShane): In an alternate England, a young lady’s father tells her she can either marry the title he picks out for her or spend her life locked in the attic, so she takes her strongest-ever fire powers and joins the Navy. Despite it being the Napoleonic wars, she gets sent to the Caribbean to incinerate pirates. Adventure and (sadly het) romance ensue.

Read: Failed Princesses vol 2 (Ajiichi): The leads are already sacrificing social standing for each other, but additional potential love interests are appearing! Oh no!

Watched: Sorcery in the Big City: A ridiculous OAV about a sorceress bringing things to life at Christmas in NYC, a teddy bear becoming a superhero, a sympathetic NYPD officer, ancient evils awakening, and other such nonsense.

Words: 571 words about kittens, although they seem a little substandard. 227 words of revision, but I think they’re all pretty much wrong and need to be thrown away.