Once again, I have spent the entire day either sleeping or hiding in my small corner of internet with space heater, doing absolutely nothing. (Not counting some on-call work, which is just capitalism.)
Read: The Prettiest Platypus #1-232: Semi-autobiographical trans emergence drama, with untrained art but plenty of heart.
Words: 439
Penzey’s newsletter finally got me to read Letter From a Birmingham Jail in its entirety, so I’m all set for tomorrow, right? Right?
Marith found this description of evolution on Tumblr. As far as I can tell, it is 100% accurate.
Words: 321 of revision.
Why is getting out of bed so hard? I must be doing something wrong. On the other tentacle, chewing and swallowing both work better than yesterday.
Played: Zoomwarts, over zoom. Bella and the lizards did save some people, but now they’re facing down an irritated vampire in a hallway full of black pudding. This will definitely go well.
Read: Equilibrium and Fortitude (Glynn Stewart): 3rd and 4th in the series, and apparently the end? Not that the main characters won’t have more adventures, but maybe they can be slightly less outclassed and existential, thus less bookworthy.
Words: 503 kitten words.
I had to get up two hours earlier than for normal work, but transit to the hospital where the experts in core sampling hang out worked very well. Then I got about fifteen big metal needles stabbed halfway through my neck, which was less good. Not bad at the time, but afterwards things like coughing and swallowing were definitely not great. Fortunately neither of those was really needed to do a work. And at least my mouth feels better?
Read: Conviction and Deception (Glynn Stewart): First two of a series I bounced off originally, but then came back to after reading the spinoff about a character who briefly passes through and declines to get involved in the first book. Definitely missiles-in-space genre despite the relative lack of missiles, but also political intrigue.
Read: Click (Kayla Miller): A 5th-grader has lots of friends, but no special group of BFFs to work with in the talent show, which makes her sad until she gets inspiration from her cool aunt with dyed hair and goes meta.
Words: 469.
Although I had no meetings scheduled for the afternoon, that did not actually make it a good time to take off work because I had meetings all morning which made it hard to find time to get ready to go. But, somehow, I did it and made it to the dentist for crown replacement. Apparently now crowns are while-U-wait instead of just taking measurements for a later appointment, but I made it back in time to pretend to do some work and even get a soft dinner of chicken tenders. Which I then chewed on the side of my mouth I have rarely used this millennium, to protect the (abused flesh around the) new crown, probably hurting myself more than if I had just chewed on the crown side. You’d think I’d know how to eat by now, but no.
Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Apparently this station is even creepier than the marines originally thought. Also, daily survival rolls to go with the daily SAN rolls! Dave’s character failed, but we managed to keep him from being dissolved by acid. This time.
Words: FAIL. Did I mention I have to get up two hours early tomorrow?
Read: Leah On The Offbeat (Becky Albertalli): A spin-off from the famous Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda, following one of the other characters in her high-school senior lesbian romance. The main character is kind of obnoxious, but the book was cute enough that I will pick up the first one even though it is about boys.
Read: Mage & Demon Queen #1-155 (Color-Les): Other adventurers go into the lower levels of the Demon Queen’s tower to get treasure, or protect humanity from demons, or other nonsense like that, but Malori fights her way to the top level every week to confess her love to the Demon Queen Velverosa. Good thing she gets a student discount on resurrections. At the beginning, Malori is a jerk and Vel is a hardass, but they experience significant character growth over the 2½ seasons out so far. (Currently on hiatus in the middle of season 3, sniff!) Ridiculous but also cute, slightly steamy.
Read: Local Star (Aimee Ogden): Novella about a mechanic who ends up having to save her space station while also dealing with poly romance drama and obnoxious inlaws.
Read: Mao vol 3 (Rumiko Takahashi): More about the title character’s checkered past is coming to light and coming back to haunt him.
Words: FAIL.
Read: “Merlin’s Gun” (Alastair Reynolds): Have I read this before? Anyway, relativistic wars, ancient artifacts with misleading labelling, the dead hand of the past stirring the brains of the present.
Read: Quantum of Nightmares (Charles Stross): Follows immediately on from Dead Lies Dreaming, with the same crew of billionaires and supervillains trying to make their way in Nyarlathotep’s England, while cultists engage in supermarket-based horror. I certainly don’t not like it, but I will be glad to get back to Bob and/or Maureen in the next book (hopefully).
Read: “The Tower At The Edge Of The World” (Victoria Goddard): Apparently a prequel to the famousThe Hands of the Emperor. Ayse said reading this made her more inclined to read THotE. A young man lives in mysterious, ritual solitude without worldly knowledge, which he doesn’t let stop him.
Read: Mao vol 2 (Rumiko Takahashi): More demons, more time travel, more mysteries around the main character’s traumatic past.
Words: FAIL.
Weekly reminder: it’s not Monday that sucks, it’s capitalism.
Read: Truly Tyler (Terri Libenson): Another graphic novel about two of the characters from the earlier volumes, who are also making an alternating-chapters comic of their own, while going through all the other drama of middle school. But one of them is… a boy!
Read: The Big Reveal (Jen Larsen): A really good dancer at a small arts high school needs money to get to the amazing position she’s won in Milan, so she and her friends stage an underground burlesque show, which brings the slut-shaming, fat-phobia, and generalized misogyny inherent in the system out into the daylight. There’s a romance subplot, because teenagers, but mostly it’s about the main character getting shit for being fat and overcoming it.
Words: 644.
I managed to get out of bed and go grocery shopping, but mostly I suck.
Played: Nothing, Dave is isolating.
Read: “L’Esprit de L’Escalier” (Cathrynne M Valente): Greek myth in modern setting: what if Orpheus didn’t look back?
Read: Square3 (Seanan McGuire): Suddenly, the universe breaks, kaiju rampage, random places become impenetrable hellscapes, all of physics is revealed to be a special case, sisters are separated forever– or are they?! Also, humans with power continue to commit atrocities without even slowing down.
Read: No Matter What You Say, Furi-San Is Scary! vol 1 (Seiichi Kinoue): It’s the standard looks-like-a-gangster-really-a-cinnamon-roll trope. This time it’s a girl, and everybody except the male lead knows that she’s a cinnamon roll and has a huge crush on ML, and is cheering her on.
Words: 366. I had to squack about CPC with Jus, which took time away from writing. Also I’m very dumb.
For some reason, my body did not want to get up early today. Maybe because I got up early almost every day the past week? Nah, can’t be connected.
Played: Zoomwarts! Virtually, because Jus’s entire household is isolating due to plague, but the game is called that for a reason. Everything is just getting worse and worse for Bella, and probably for the lizards as well. They’re unpetrified, but makes the tastier to werewolves. Muahahahaha.
Words: 421, but I should stop writing kitten words now because I’m already almost two weeks ahead, and the revision needs work.
Back to getting up early, this time for cleaners. At least I don’t have to get up early tomorrow? Actually, I don’t have to get up at all this weekend, since Monkeycat Towers is a house of plague, which cancels all my weekend plans.
Read: Kiki Kallira Breaks A Kingdom (Sangu Mandanna): The main character doesn’t get the magic power to bring her drawings to life, exactly, but nevertheless they blame her for their interesting lives, which pairs well with the anxiety disorder that she arts to escape.
Read: Just Jaime (Terri Libenson): This time, two of the vaguely adversarial girls from the previous books, with Friendship Drama, and no twist ending. It certainly is difficult when friends mature at different rates and have different standards for maturity.
Read: The Savior’s Book Café Story in Another World vol 1 (Kyouka Izumi, Oumiya, Reiko Sakurada): A higher power drafts random Japanese people to be saviors for another world, but one of them is a grownup and instead of asking for combat powers to have adventures, asks for what she needs to set up a nice book café in the quietest kingdom and uses her vast magic powers to run it. She’s probably going to have deal with the other saviors, though.
Watched: Cowboy Bebop 4-5. Manne, Faye and Spike are really bad at this. Jet is more serious, with his special detecting hat, but maybe still not that great either. They need to get Ein out there tracking down bounties.
Words: 575.
Hey, I got to wake up at the normal time for a change! Also people said I’m good in the training meeting because I don’t freak out when the scary senior guy asks questions.
Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Back to the Jovian marines, who are already finding out terrible things and losing SAN, and it’s only their first day deep in the asshole of Jupiter.
Read: Failed Princesses vol 4 (Ajiichi): Awww, that went about as well as it could.
Read: Positively Izzie (Terri Libenson): Another graphic novel about the drama of two middle-school girls (who appeared as side characters in Invisible Emmy)which has a surprise ending.
Read: Becoming Brianna (Terri Libenson): This time, only about one girl. Mostly. Also bat mitzvah anxiety and a cool rabbi.
Words: FAIL.
Oops, earlier again. So much for the positive trend.
Read: Escape From Lucien, Firelight, and Supernova (Kazu Kibuishi): #6-8 of the “Amulet” series. The two main characters go on ever-more-exciting adventures, delving into the secrets behind the world’s problems, which may not be the genre previously expected. There’s not much except exciting adventures, though. I feel like Nonny (9) is probably about the right audience for this?
Read: Guardian of Shadows (Michelle Manus): Sequel to Guardian of Chaos, in which our main character gets a few more of her lost memories, along with another set of magic powers and another smoking-hot ex. I’m pretty sure male reviewers would dismiss this as “Mary Sue” but so what? The main character succeeds by talking to people instead of playing the games everyone assumes, which is great.
Words: 499.
At least today wasn’t as early as yesterday, but it was still early. And dumb.
Read: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m Queen Of The Dead (Richard Roberts): A teenaged necromancer from Kentucky comes to the LA seen in the other “Please Don’t Tell My Parents” books and immediately has to deal with media weasels, unprecedented popularity, new friends, ancestral legacies, necromantic leftovers, an entire school full of mean girls, and other difficulties. I liked it better than the previous book (…I’m Working For A Supervillain), maybe as much as the later Penny Akk books. Necromancy is a good open-ended power for getting into trouble.
Read: The 3 most recent episodes of Cursed Princess Club that aren’t freely available yet, so that Jus and I can scream at each other about them. But now we have to wait a week before we can spend more Webtoons coins on a new episode.
Words: 330. Mlrgh.
Ugh, first Monday after vacation! Clock, why you gotta do me dirty like this?!
I have a new coworker, about whom I know nothing, because we only interact over Slack. I hope she doesn’t fail us like the last two hires did.
Read: Invisible Emmie (Terri Libenson): Graphic novel about a middle-school girl who feels ignored, and her coping mechanism, and some drama involving crushes and bullies and middle-schoolers who haven’t yet learned the unwisdom of leaving a paper trail.
Read: Making Friends (Kristen Gudsnuk): Another graphic novel about a middle-school girl, but this one gets philosophically troubling magical powers and uses them unwisely, resulting in both drama and flashy fight scenes. But friendship is actually useful!
Read: Prince of the Elves (Kazu Kibuishi): Fifth in the “Amulet” series of graphic novels, with more revelations of dark secrets from history, and battles against the dark forces of the present. And DOOOOOM.
Read: Guardian of Chaos (Michelle Manus): A young woman with a mostly-missing past gets sucked into the magic-powered interplanetary dystopia as a magically-bound customs enforcer. There is a new employee manual, but no time to read it before adventure ensues. It’s pretty over-the-top, but the main character gets to try to not suck and does succeed in helping people, often in spite of themselves.
Read: Cursed Princess Club #1-127 (LambCat): An amazing webcomic that appears to be about comedy fairytale princesses but is actually about love and self-acceptance and wisdom. And also giant spiders. Everyone should read it, immediately.
Words: 210. I spent too much time reading CPC and also being very dumb.
Huh, looks like I actually did volunteer to start work two hours early tomorrow to cover for the UK and their day off in lieu of the 1st. That makes my decision to keep sleeping in this morning… well, really about as stupid as it was before. At some point, the level of doom becomes indistinguishable.
Yesterday I stayed in because I was lazy and everything was closed anyway. Today I stayed in because I’m lazy, but did go out to get a bit of dinner. I guess that’s slightly better? Also I made myself furious by trying to use a WYSIWYG editor to make a web page (all WYSIWYG editors are shit, try to change my mind if you dare) and had to read another 20 episodes of Cursed Princess Club to calm down.
Read: Semelparous vol 1 (Jun Ogino): Young women with superpowers vs interdimensional giants. It’s yuri but pretty clearly drawn by a guy. There is a moral dilemma, but it doesn’t seem to be getting much attention.
Words: 682. Apparently I’m not spamming my word counts on Slack any more, because I don’t want to take attention away from Pocket Friend A who is talking about how she’s publishing an ACTUAL BOOK.
After getting to bed at 2, I had to get up at 7 to start on-call for work, but then I was able to go back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that turning my phone alerts all the way up would definitely wake me up if anything happened. But nothing did. Eventually I got up and read more Cursed Princess Club.
Read: Love & Other Natural Disasters (Misa Sugiura): More high-school lesbian romance, this time a Japanese-American girl with a messed-up life that she is not dealing well with even on her summer in San Francisco. This manifests by coming up with rom-com plans to make everyone’s love life better, and also being extremely dumb. I guess that’s on-brand for teenagers?
Read: Failed Princesses vol 3 (Ajiichi): Looks like “I don’t have feelings like that for [her]” is just as true as every reader suspected.
Words: 612.
Didn’t do much during the day, although at least my shopping expedition yesterday gave me the knowledge to warn other people that Trader Joe’s closes early on NYE so they should go shopping sooner rather than later.
In the evening I got dressed in normal-person clothes and transited over to Monkeycat Towers for a party. Earl and Cat are hiding from Omicron, and Marith has to start work at 03:00, so it was a pretty small party, but cozy and full of friends and feasting and kitties and geeking about Cursed Princess Club.
Eaten: Cheese fondue, roast duck (by Ken, who doesn’t even like duck, but does love Ayse), and chocolate fondue with cocoa cream cheese balls. None of it was healthy, but a bit of indulgence to see off 2021 is okay. Right?
Played: Laser tag, lightsaber thwacking, noncompetitive Dizios, and Roll for the Galaxy. Jus won RftG, crushing me like a space insect.
Words: FAIL. I could have been writing all day before the party, but instead I was lounging in bed and then reading CPC.
Also accomplished almost nothing today, but I did eventually get off my butt and went grocery shopping, because tomorrow seems likely to be insane. I walked all the way there and then realized I forgot to set boost mode on Walkr. Sheesh.
Played: Nothing, Dave is still on vacation.
Words: 679 revision.
I resolved to not sleep way in every day like I did last week’s vacation, and indeed I didn’t. I slept in much more. Because I suck.
Words: FAIL. I failed at everything.
Had to deal with an actual customer case today. Shouldn’t they all be on vacation? But at least it’s virtual Friday.
Read: Drama (Raina Telgemeier): Graphic novel about drama, the middle-school club, and drama, middle-school feelings. Crushes, dumb boys, their dumb girlfriends, special effects, and bonus emergency singing.
Read: The Stonekeeper’s Curse, The Cloud Searchers, and The Last Council (Kazu Kibuishi): Volumes 2-4 of the “Amulet” graphic novel series. Our heroes find out more, including that grownups are kind of useless and also there’s a lot of doom, but Emily trains her powers and Navin gets to pilot more vehicles.
Words: 977 words of revision, somehow.
Ugh, not just back to work, but two hours earlier than usual. Fortunately the customers were dormant all day. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.
Read: The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor (Shaenon K Garrity, Christopher Baldwin): Graphic novel about a girl who reads too many gothic romances and stumbles into a universe where her genre knowledge is useful. Pretty amusing even though I knew nothing about gothic romances.
Read: Everyone Knows You Shouldn’t Rescue Maidens In Alleyways (AUGUST): Sequel to Even a Hero Needs a Vacation Every Now and Then, in which the hidden hero continues to attract trouble and also accumulate beautiful young women as employees in his tavern. Evil plots are definitely afoot.
Read: Chesire Crossing (Andy Weir, Sarah Andersen): Dorothy, Wendy, and Alice meet as teenagers and find out that they have actual dimension-travel powers. Swashbuckling interdimensional adventure ensues! Alice is the delinquent, Wendy is the tomboy, Dorothy is the sensible one, the adult supervision is somewhat terrifying. The villain teamup is not as terrifying as they want to think, but not bad.
Read: The Stonekeeper (Kazu Kibuishi): Two kids get sucked into a strange fantasy universe with creepy mysterious art and have to save their mom. First of like eight volumes, so there will probably be a lot more plot than that.
Read: “Time Capsule”, “The Captain’s Log”, and “New Girl” (Svetlana Chmakova): Three shorts about other characters from Awkward, Brave, and Crush. Very cute.
Read: Let’s Play #1-150 (Leeanne M. Krecic aka Mongie): Nominally a romance webcomic, and not not romance, but really more about the characters learning and growing as people (despite a lot of mistakes) than pairing up. The heart meter that sometimes gets shown for the female lead is definitely not correlated with any romance. Sadly all the romances so far are het, but I like all the characters anyway. Even the brash, excessively busty, excessively made-up fashion blogger who initially appears to be an antagonist is very awesome.
Words: 283, which I guess is okay for having gotten up at 7:00 and also being very dumb.
Another day of complete mega-uselessness! The most I accomplished all day was to walk next door and yoink back the lamp I gave Marith so I could have light in my computer corner.
Watched: My Cousin Vinny: Someone mentioned this on the slack and I remembered I had never seen it, so I made a streaming service show it to me. I hated everyone except Mona Lisa, although I was feeling a little more charitable toward Vinny by the end. I liked the movie despite that, though, although some of the things we thought were funny in the 90s…
Words: 577.
I was not much more useful today than yesterday, but it was an actual holiday, so that’s okay, I guess? Marith and I went over to Monkeycat Towers to help them eat Christmas food and play with presents. It was extremely nice despite Nonny being full of mucus.
Eaten: A very nice ham, many leeks, assorted other vegetables, coffee panettone.
Played: Othello, Gnomes at Night, Nerf target shooting, and something that involved running around yelling “there’s a ghost! get it!”.
Words: 388.
Almost a double on-call shift today, so I couldn’t really go places or do things, but apparently going two places and doing two things yesterday was about all I get this week anyway. I mean, I guess I resolved some browser tabs, but that’s not much of an accomplishment.
Read: The Okay Witch (Emma Steinkellner): Graphic novel about a middle-schooler who finds out that she’s a witch and then has oodles of trouble with her family, her family’s enemies, her own insecurities, possessed cats, etc. It’s hard being thirteen.
Read: Even a Hero Needs a Vacation Every Now and Then (AUGUST): Light novel about the Great Hero of Prophecy going into retirement as a nonmagical tavernkeeper after defeating the demon lord, and how trouble does not stop finding him, because people suck.
Words: 329.
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.
Yay, it’s virtual Friday! Boo, I have extra on-call on calendar Friday!
Read: Dead Jack and the Pandemonium Device (James Aquilone): Humorous fantasy about a zombie PI in an NYC-flavored world of demons, monsters, and undead. Alas, the main character is very unsympathetic: zombies might be people too, but that doesn’t preclude them from being narcissistic assholes.
Read: Say Yes To The Cheerleader (Abby Crofton): High-school lesbian thinks the head cheerleader who she has crushed on since forever might be flirting with her. Spoiler: totally. After going “but she’s so pretty! and I thought she was straight!” for a suitable number of pages, she listens to literally everyone in her life who all ship them. There is one argument, which is soon resolved, and no actual conflict. I guess this is what they mean by “fluff”?
Words: 281 revision.
Monday is better when you know the week is only two days long.
Read: The Henna Wars (Adiba Jaigirdar): Bengali high-school lesbian in an Irish all-girl Catholic school falls for her archenemy’s Brazilian cousin and has to face racism, homophobia, cultural appropriation, and capitalism. She has a pretty good sister to help her get through it, though.
Read: Evasion (Glynn Stewart): Unusually for milSF, the hero is gay. He and his increasingly-serious boyfriend and their crew get targeted by organized crime, which of course is a massive mistake on the crime lords’ part. Also they become space dads to a rescued kid. This is a spinoff of one of the author’s series I didn’t read, set in a universe where the tech level declines precipitously toward the fringes of settled space where tramp freighters are viable.
Words: FAIL. I am very dumb.
My fridge calendar for scheduling the next two weeks now extends into 2022 aka “2020 part III”. At least several of the dates are circled to indicate no work, but some have notes reminding me to show up for work two hours early, and there’s also three shifts of on-call.
Read: Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit (Jaye Robin Brown): A very out high-school lesbian from Atlanta has to more to a small town and spend her senior year in the closet to avoid conflict with her new stepmother’s close-minded family. Of course it takes her about fifteen minutes to fall in love and then the drama and deception and misery start.
Words: net 360 words of revision.