Month: September 2024

Originally for teenage ninja turtles, but I’m sure anybody with a genome can get in on the action.

Since the bus I take to gaming is always late, I tried taking the one before that, which of course was right on time, but being early gave me a chance to get a sandwich before going to eat 95849 servings of gaming munchies.

Played: Librarians Errant. Reshelving Squad Upsilon goes to find Kars Hevel and ask him about Volume 3 (and maybe very cautiously allude to the possibility that he is a Masked Lord), but the kobold village has migrated to the depths, leaving only a few guards to pretend to build defenses. They’ll send word to the depths, but in the meantime, the squad decides to poke around the sewers like adventurers even though they have day jobs. They do find the lair of someone (probably a hobbit halfling based on the gourmet trail rations) who has obviously been keeping an eye on the kobolds, but he legitimately outwits them and escapes, so they continue on and find a soggy fungus-filled cave. Some of the fungi scream, some are infested with giant centipedes, the corridor has a trapper that falls on Grim, and the stagnant pool is full of froghemoth, so it’s an exciting few rounds, but although Thaïs can’t banish the froghemoth, she can electrocute the Flint out of it, and blast the trapper off of Lili before it crawls away to digest her, and then everyone can gather up a surprising amount of loot. Now they understand why people become adventurers! However, they still have a day job, so they go back up to finish tracking down Gladys’s Musketeers and offer them the deal of Volume 2 in exchange for a copy of Volume 1. This isn’t hard, as musketeers are known for frequenting pawnshops, of which there are a finite number, but before the Reshelving Squad can offer the deal, the Musketeers offer the real Volume 1 in exchange for a copy of Volume 2. Huh.

Written: I forgot to count up, but apparently today and tomorrow are 212 total, so call it 106.

Something that should definitely be observed more widely, hint hint.

I slept in a lot, but managed to accomplish one errand. Did not play any Minecraft because I’m too stupid, and didn’t watch any anime because Marith wasn’t feeling well.

Read: Lightning Strike and Shell Game (Terry Mixon, JN Chaney): At least they gave lip service to the idea that the highest-ranking officer should not be going off and doing things before sending the highest-ranking officer off to do things.

Read: Secrets of the Silent Witch vol 3 (Tobi Tana, Matsuri Isora, Nanna Fujimi): Wrapup of the embezzlement plotline, which had a dark turn completely foiled by the heroine being completely OP, and then some more intrigue. Still not sure whether she’s supposed to have a specific neurospiciness diagnosis.

Read: More Teeth (Jim Rossignol, Marsh Davies, Jamie Brittain): Expansion and adventures for Teeth, including one where you play as the hogmen trying to drive the humans out. Just as grotesque as the core book.

Written: 125.

Did we mention that white supremacists suck?

Today I did not go to the office, but I was very sleepy anyway.

Read: God Bless the Mistaken vol 2-3 (Nakatani Nio): Kon’s backstory! Probably there were hints in the first volume, but I was surprised. Also many weird bugs, including an apparent repeat. I really don’t see how our concept of science could develop in that world.

Read: Implacable Resolve and No Retreat (Terry Mixon, JN Chaney): That’s not going well.

Written: 178

Also Compliance Officer Day, which on some slacks immediately leads to the question, is a compliance officer a kind of dumpling?

Went to the office yet again, ate a brisket sandwich of Protein and Death, did more customer calls.

Read: Monthly in the Garden With My Landlord vol 3 (Yodokawa): The fallout from the confession at the end of vol 2! Friends are consulted! Things are said! Decisions are made!

Read: Bite (Bill Schutt): Nonfiction about teeth. The bits about animal teeth, the evolution of teeth and vertebrate superiority, etc are more interesting than the horrors of human dental history. Also, shrews are terrifying.

Read: Operation Liberty and Under Siege (Terry Mixon, JN Chaney): Now that some alien invasions are getting cleaned up, the human-on-human violence needs to be resolved. Surely that will not be difficult.

Written: 138.

Dreams, I has them. Rarely can they be used for writing, though.

Went to the office, did a long customer call, ate some plov (rice with raisins and chickpeas, reminds me of Afghan pillaw in name and composition, which apparently is not a coincidence because it’s from Uzbekistan), survived having a coworker in the office with me.

Read: The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society (CM Waggoner): So why does that small town have so many murders without everyone moving away, and why is it always the mild-mannered middle-aged librarian who solves them, anyway?

Read: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou omnibus 5 (Hitoshi Ashinano): Time goes on, people we first saw as kids grow up and have kids of their own, but not enough to keep humanity from continuing to dwindle, the series ends, Alpha goes on.

Written: 111.

I checked, I am still registered! But I’m not in a state with a red government, so it wasn’t likely I would have been disenfranchised.

I thought I was being clever in getting two medical appointments on the same morning so that I would only have to take half a day off work, but then I biffed it. The second appointment needed me to not eat or drink anything for three hours previously, so I had early breakfast, but when I went to check in for the first appointment, I found out that I was supposed to have been fasting for that too. Had to reschedule for a month from now, on the first day of my Big Bad Con vacation. I did manage to get the infrasound(?) test taken successfully, and then since the clinic is right there in Mountain View, went to the office to eat Thai food and do a work. The office isn’t any different on Tuesdays than on Thursdays, it turns out.

Read: Galaxy: The Prettiest Star (Jadzia Axelrod, Jess Taylor): An alien princess in exile and her retainers are hiding out on Earth of the DC universe. The magic disguise avocado has turned her into a boy human, which is not what she wants at all, but her retainers insist on not breaking cover no matter how miserable she is. Then she meets a girl.

Played: Perils and Princesses: The end! The princesses successfully resolved the problem in a completely different way than the first group. After that, we talked about Ken’s proposed Changeling: the Lost game. I have no idea how to be a human in the East Bay in the 90s, or even a 90s human at all.

Written: 241.

 

It’s officially Autumn in this hemisphere. Other things happening today: World Rhino Day, Elephant Appreciation Day (why are they on the same day? Elephino!), World Car-Free Day, and National Ice Cream Cone Day. All excellent things!

I did four errands today and also had a bookstore accident, so I guess that was better than yesterday. The cats are provisioned for a while, anyway.

Read: Teeth (Jim Rossignol, Marsh Davies): It is 1780, and you are a gang of daring criminals who have come to the most grotesque, cursed, and monster-infested place in England to accomplish your secret mission while disguised as freelance monster harvesters. If you overstay your one-year permit, or worse, get any of it on you, you’ll be stuck forever. Forged in the Dark, with bonus rules for occult corruption, monster dissection, and cursed pies, and a lot of extremely questionable people, places, things, and… motile things. Definitely not for the squeamish.

Written: 200 exactly.

 

I never manage to go to museums myself, but I’m still glad they exist and happy to have my tax dollars go to supporting them.

Completely useless today. Do people even like the presents I bring them?

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 15-17: End of the extended flashback, where we find out what Dazai’s deal is, and then back to the present where the two newbs are screwing up their mission massively.

Written: 106.

Around here, every day is gibberish day in one form or another!

Watched: Murder Drones 6-8: The end! I still have very little idea what was going on, but we did get to see Uzi’s mom (kind of).

Read: Beyond the Reach of Earth (Ken MacLeod): Oh, that’s what the deal with the alien artifacts is. The third book should be exciting.

Written: 167

I observed it in my heart, since I didn’t actually talk to anyone today.

Hoped to go into the office and eat a Reuben, but no.

Read: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (Carolyn Mackler): A 15-year-old girl tries to deal with being the only overweight and normally chill one in her family of skinny, beautiful, kind of shitty overachievers and fatphobic society in general. From 2003, so it seems a little dated now, and also pretty heterocentric..

Read: Beyond the Hallowed Sky (Ken MacLeod): Near future, everybody’s dealing with lfe on Earth, exploring Venus, and suddenly some people discover that the major powers have had good FTL travel since the 20th century, WTF? Alien artifacts(?), insufficiently-alien biomes, intrigue!

Written: 154

That’s every day!

I did not go to the office today, because I had the gastrointestinals and did not want to be away from my bathroom for the length of a workday or even a commute. Sadly I still had to work.

Read: Alien Clay (Adrian Tchaikovsky): Academia under totalitarianism, extrasolar incarceration under totalitarianism, an alien biosphere that totalitarian thought can never comprehend.

Written: 212.

Am an IT professional? Probably not? Maybe?

Played: Perils and Princesses. We only had a short time to game, because Ken has a 5am class tomorrow, but the princesses dealt with the people and reached the thing and are ready to make their escape. Next week for sure!

Read: Long Live Evil (Sarah Rees Brennan): Our terminally ill MC is put into the body of the doomed temptress from the famous series of epic tragic over-the-top fantasy, the night before she is scheduled to die. If she can get the maguffin of infinite healing, she can live in the real world, and it’s not like anybody cares what happens to characters in a book, so she decides to be completely evil and suborn other characters and betray as needed to get what she wants. This almost immediately goes off the rails, she goes more over-the-top, people catch feelings, people ponder the nature of evil, people die horribly, the plot changes or was never what she thought it was, and there is so, so much doom. Unresolved doom, because of course if the MC is stuck in a trilogy, this must be a trilogy too.

Written: 187.

I guess the idea is to do all the things one has been promising to get around to “someday” but I didn’t do anything at all useful.

Played: Librarians Errant. After Shia was disintegrated into a pile of pages and then eaten by a shoggoth in the form of a book last session, the team wraps up their visit with Professor Demigod Wick and returns home without being further assaulted by bibliospace fauna. Martin gets the shoggoth to disgorge a person, but it’s not Shia, it’s somebody who claims that Grim Abyss is his real name, despite sounding like something Thaïs would called herself when she was fourteen. He offers to join the team to repay them from freeing from death or whatever it was that befell him on his last adventure, and after they learn (but do not tell him) that he is a fictional character from a series of adventures novels dating back more than two hundred years, they decide they need to keep an eye on him after all. Since their goal seems to require the text of The Magical Education of Beatrix Fogtower, but not the volumes themselves, tasty a magic item set as they are, the new plan is to try to get the third volume, copy it, and then trade it to Gladys for a copy of the first volume. Divination magic (4th-level spells, baby!) points to Tokda Snir, their kobold acquaintance and crime lord of the freshman class, but before they can track her down, things with the appearance of Grim’s fellow book characters show up and try to steal him, then blast everybody with extremely meta antibackstory powers before being reduced to ink and inscriptions. This will need to be investigated, but first they finish meeting up with Tokda Snir, who upon hearing that volume 3 may have once been given to a Masked Lord of Waterdeep, mentions that her grand-relative, the kindly kobold priest, is a Masked Lord. Talk about a cliffhanger!

Read: The Masquerades of Spring (Ben Aaronovitch): Another non-Peter story from the Folly, set in 1920s New York where a young gentleman who would be perfectly at home in the Drones Club is trying to live his fabulous life abroad in the land of jazz but his old school chum the Nightingale shows up asking for his help.

Written: 174.

Also National Eat a Hoagie Day, which I did.

Played a little Minecraft after failing to do anything for weeks, checked out Marith’s base which is a maze of lava and villagers and art and now fish, still not sure what if anything I want to do next. I could build another thing now that Dave has told me how to make copper bulbs light up. Marith offered to let me build it in her Cavern of Wonders, but it might actually belong on  top of the ridge of cherry trees. I could try the trial chamber that Ayse and Dave found, but I’m pretty sure that I would just die instantly with my basic enchanted diamond gear and no skillz.

Ayse has been doing lots of writing, because she is smart and talented and her brain has the basic functionality of doing things, which mine doesn’t. Good for her!

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 13-14: Extended flashback to when Dazai was a Port Mafia bigwig. Unsurprisingly, this looks like it’s going to end poorly.

Nightvale might have made a small miau? It would be noisy, yet adorable, if he learned that from Sage.

Written: 172, for all that’s worth (which is nothing).

 

Also Video Game Day, which seems fitting on both sides.

Went to the office, people were there, customers wanted me to call them, ate some boneless chicken wings, whatever.

Read: HoverGirls (Geneva Bowers): I read this online at some point in the past, but it was cute enough I didn’t mind getting and reading it on paper. Two cousins move to the big city, one to become a fashion designer and model, the other to brood and watch soaps, mysterious aquatic manifestions ensue, the world is saved, etc.

Written: 127.

For obvious reasons, but still valid.

Went to some office, ate some assorted dumpling guys, did some work.

Ordered some Catan pieces to use to make a tiny hexmap of the island when running Perils and Princesses in person. Then ordered some more when the first one fell through because the first person couldn’t find them. eBay, manne.

Read: I Married My Female Friend vol 3 (Shio Usui): The cute girl from the one wife’s past (they were roommates!) showing up could have been drama, but mostly wasn’t, because it’s not that sort of manga.

Read: Tuesday (Draith): Many many iterations of the Tuesday on which the Earth is scheduled to be destroyed, evil misunderstood and badly-raised clones, emotional reunions, clever plans, external brains, the end!

Read: Ogami-San Can’t Keep It In vol 6 (Yu Yoshidamaru): Not cool, old middle-school friend! But the main couple are actually doing okay together, given what freaks they both are.

Written: 295 words of torturing my protagonist. It builds character!

In other words, Dystopian Future Day, but at least we get to choose a subgenre.

Played: Perils and Princesses. Our princesses (and their tagalong) explore the island some and finally meet the NPCs who are also on the island. I need to railroad more and have less exploration and more interaction, was the consensus.

Written: 109.

There are probably two birds that are more different (penguins! ratites!) but this is pretty good.

Read: The Western Shores and To Stand Between Sea and Sky (Draith): 4-5/7 in the series, the main character is now OP enough to time travel, meet historical aliens on other planets, accidentally mind-control hapless fascists, make a pocket dimension to hang out in with her girlfriend, etc. Also Earth, which was threatened at the beginning of the first book, has not been saved.

Written: 151.

Another day that should be every day.

Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 1.8: FInal showdown with the biggest villain! Or at least the most antagonistic, the Night Nurse might technically be bigger, and her supervisor definitely is, but they’re also more reasonable. The end! Everything is good for another season, but I guess Neil Gaiman is cancelled for being a sex creep, so apparently there won’t be one. (This is why men should never be allowed to be involved in anything ever.)

Read: ShipCore (Erios909): I don’t think it’s technically litRPG, even though it has large blocks of robotic text in square brackets. Also no magic, unless you count forcefields and FTL travel and dubious nanotech. However, there are also no male main characters.

Read: Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc vol 3 (Sekka Iwata, Yu Aoki): Magical girl magitech convention, which you would think would be the best place for a monster attack, but it does take some work to save the day. Also possibly there’s a plot.

Written: 140. I came up with a name, which might not be the most nominatively-deterministic, but that’s okay. People just have names sometimes, even in the superhero genre.

Despite it also being Be Late For Something Day, I had samosas so promptly I ate them yesterday! Today I ate hipster onigiri/rice sandwich things. Maybe I did some work. There were coworkers.

Read: Alpi the Soul Sender vol 4 (Rona): Well, that’s not good.

Read: To Pierce the Heart (Draith): Romance subplot! Also more main plot, and lots of powerups.

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 2 (coolkyousinnjya): Racism, murders, the party grows, more murders.

Written: 176. Also I need a name.

Also World Sexual Health Day, but probably best to not try to combine them.

Got up too early, went to the office, ate too much spicy chicken biriyani, did a work or something.

Read: How Do I Turn My Best Friend Into My Girlfriend? vol 1 (Syu Yasaka): High-school girl realizes her feelings for her best friend aren’t platonic any more, best friend is oblivious, other friend is supportive and doesn’t find the gayness noteworthy. That seems to be a trend in newer yuri manga, there’s no “but we’re both girls, how can it be?”. Don’t know if it’s the same for BL but I hope so. Also don’t know if actual Japan is becoming any less homophobic, but this has to be a good start.

Read: Glitch vol 4 (Shima Shinya): The end?! Several things are resolved, but a lot is left open, which could be for a sequel, or just artisticness.

Read: Villain’s Vignettes vol 1 (Drew Hayes): Actually three novellas(?) about Hephaestus and/or Fornax from the “Villain’s Code” series, between books 2 and 3, two holiday specials and one in which Fornax gets isekai’d.

Written: 145.

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.

Three cheers for the NLRB!

We even had some strike events come up in Lunar Rails, although I was so far behind that it didn’t help me at all. I don’t think I made any plays that were actively bad, but people who knew what they were doing were so much more efficient that it came as a great shock when Dave used the connect-the-cities victory condition to win.

Finally it was time for Dave and I to return, which did not go as smoothly as going out. The bus from Roseville to Sacramento was very late, although not so late we missed the train connection, and the train to San Jose was not quite early enough to catch the second-to-last bus. We ended up walking to my place and getting there at like 22:30, and then Dave had to catch the very last bus to get to his place. It did work out in the end, though.

Sage and Nightvale were taken very good care of by Marith, although it turned out to have been a mistake to given them a spare litterbox without a top, and mybathroom is now full of litter. Seems like a problem for Tuesday Me.

Read: The Fallen City of Lescado (Draith): Book 2/7, OP isekai girl is making friends and killing zombies and clearing dungeons and leveling up.

Written: VACATION

I do not have a ginger cat of my own to appreciate right now, and if I did they would be at home, but I can still appreciate them in general!

Car people (Ayse and Ken and Jus and Nonny) departed today, but Dave and I stayed to play more board games. I was terrible at them all, but that’s okay. We played Thurn and Taxis, which has nothing to do with taxicabs but everything to do with postal routes in early Germany; Sagrada, which would have gone better if the dice hadn’t failed to fit a very important spot in my pattern; and Spirit Island, which is complicated but it’s satisfying to crush the white plastic colonizers. Somewhere in there we had grilled dinner, but really it was all about the board games.

Read: What If? (Randall Munroe): I didn’t read it in order, but I think I got every chapter, so I’m counting this as a reread.

Written: VACATION