Tag: marith

Can the aliens come save us from the idea of IP?

Played: Zoomwarts. Food fight!

Read: Sandy Pug After Dark (Various): Varied spec-fic smut: aliens, AIs, monsters, gods, queer people. Needed more editing.

Read: The Exodus Gambit (Glynn Stewart): The start of a new missiles-in-space series, a sort-of princess on the run from the traitorous uncle who murdered the rest of their family, and her bodyguard, trying to outwit their pursuers who have a ship that’s much better in every way and get to help.

Written: 113.

I keep thinking I could try edibles, just for the experience, but have never managed to actually do such a thing. It would probably make my face fall off or something.

What I did do today was go to the very last Spring Fling for Nonny and draw lines on many elementary-school children. Some of the people who were supposed to show up to help Ayse check off kids as they completed laps didn’t show, so I had to help. It was fine, the kids were hardly even traumatized by my appearance, but standing in the same facing for a couple of hours during the middle of the day got me a sunburn on the tops of my calves.

Played: Minecraft. We had another session during which I was super-lame but got to listen to people being super-cool on voice chat, so that was fine. I found a bunch of beehives and managed to both smoke them and not irritate them, so I ended up with a bunch of honeycomb and honey bottles, which I will later use for something clever. Candles, probably. I also found the big pool of surface lava I had seen earlier, which was further inland than I thought. I think it’s actually close to Jus’s homestead.

Written: 164. This isn’t going in the way it should if I want it to sync up with everything else, but I think I know how to fix it.

Plants are good! They make oxygen and food and paper!

Played: Minecraft. After not playing since last Saturday, I am way behind everybody else, but whatever. I still like trundling around mining things and crafting things and seeing things. I found ice, but have no Silk Touch equipment to collect it, and found powder snow to experience the fun of hypothermia. Still not sure where that surface lava is.

Watched: Nothing. Marith wasn’t up for going places, so we all stayed home and played Minecraft more.

Written: 195.

 

Played: Zoomwarts?! How did that happen? I blame Jus and her spring break. Anyway, I wrote off the entire game so far as a dream, which gave the players the opportunity to fix everything wrong with the setting, but they did nothing except move it forward to second year so they could feel superior to the new first-years. Marith had a great idea that I will have to implement if we manage to play again, and also I guess I should find a summary of book four (since that’s the year they’re in) since they want things to be the same-ish.

Written: 141.

Played: Minecraft on our shiny new server! We all logged in at the same time to start off the tree-punching, but by the end of the session, I had barely made a tiny house of plain planks, and other people had enslaved entire villages and mined diamonds. I am really very bad at video games, even ones I enjoy. (So like everything else, really.) We have a lot of cherry blossoms at spawn, though.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 9-11: Anubis and a lot of other beasts still don’t like Sariphi, but so far the king is keeping her safe. Maybe Anubis will eventually come around.

Written: 296.

Played: Librarians Errant. The team, which is now 5th level but still has no cool team name, goes through the Elemental Plane of Books to get to their next stop on the hunt for The Magical Education, instead of walking on muddy roads in the rain and cold like normal people, which saves like 3 days but does get them jumped when they cut through the bad (Dewey decimal) part of the stacks. Fortunately the rabid bat-books and book-lizards (yes, absolutely, you are correct about what they are, no question) are not that much of a problem, and soon the team arrives at the Kryptgarden Branch Campus. Somehow Thaïs is beaten at cute girls by Lily, of all people. Also they meet an absolutely terrifying dragon, find a suspect who is actually a victim, and stop a foolish professor from sacrificing his grad students to bring horrible monsters through a portal from the Feywild. Thaïs finally gets to use both of her new 3rd-level spells, but neither of them helps at all, because this is D&D and there’s no “play to find out what happens”. Bah!

After that I went with Dave back to his lair, to have Easter dinner with everybody. It was very nice because friends and ham and glazed shallots and friends!

Played: Uno Flex. It’s like regular Uno, but you can make the cards do extra stuff if your checkmark is right-side-up.

Written: Only 188, but I had lot of socializing today.

Did a supervillain write this?

I managed to do most of the things I needed to do before being on call in the afternoon, and then I managed to fix the customers enough that I could go over to dye eggs and eat sushi with Ayse and Ken and fam. Marith insisted on driving me over, but could not stay because she was feeling poorly, which was very sad.

Written: 237 words. I was having too many infodumps, so I guessed that it was because I started the story too early and have jumped ahead to where I started it the first time. Will my greater knowledge of what’s going on make it better, or was it better when everything was mysterious?

Nightvale is one (1) years old today! That makes him a grown-up cat, not a kitten! He might still be kind of bb, though.

As usual after going into the office two days in a row, I am pretty blah, but I did a work and snuggled one or more cats.

Played: Ayse wants to play Minecraft together, so we spent some time tootling around the proposed seed in creative mode until everybody decided they like it. Someday, when we are not all busy with Easter, we will reboot it in survival mode and punch trees together.

Read: Edges (Linda Nagata): Start of a follow-on series to Deception Well and Vast and all those. One of the explorers returns home in a stolen ship, recruiting for an expedition back to the origins of humanity, where the people Deception Well left behind made Dyson spheres and then unmade them and now nobody knows what’s there. “The Inverted Frontier” is the title of the series.

Read: “The Speed of Time” (Jay Lake): Well, what do you expect, when members of your species listen to the voices from space?

Written: 226 words.

I did successfully observe this, so intensively that I could not get out of bed until after 10! Although next year Nightvale and Sage will both be officially grownup cats.

Once i was able to escape, I did the shopping and the other shopping and the pastrami and the additional shopping and a lot of crafting in Shop Titans so I could complete my bounty before the deadline and some writing (not last thing at night!) and reading, instead of being a useless lump all day.

At dinner time, Marith and. went to Monkeycat Towers to eat many barbecues and bask in the affection of friends. People said many nice things about me, just because we were celebrating my birthday or something. I am not as good at eating barbecue as I used to be, but I’m better at accepting compliments. About even on accepting parasite-rated chocolate cream pies.

Read: Spy x Family vol 11 (Tatsuya Endo): Of course Anya used her powers to get through it

Read: The Tiger Won’t Eat The Dragon Yet vol 1 (Hachi Inaba): Once upon a time(?) in a land where beasts can talk and sometimes take human shape, a tiger brings down a young dragon. She decides he’s too small to eat now, so she should raise him to be a more suitable meal, and that’s where things start to go wrong. The beasts have clothes in their human forms (suspiciously modern ones in the dragon’s case) but there’s otherwise no sign of civilization or humans, so I guess it’s like a fable.

Written: 227. Could have been more, but I caught up on this instead.

I feel like my youth has a slightly higher number than it did on Tuesday, oddly enough.

Did some capitalism, although as usual after two days in a row of going to the office I was not that swift.

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.5-6: More personal drama, of students Chise already knows and ones that are new to her, but so far it has not bubbled over into violence in the halls. Snakes are friends!

Read: “The Chatbot and the Drone” (Geoffrey A Landis): What it says on the tin!

Written: Finally decided that even though my outline isn’t done, the last line is “need better plan” and I can revisit that once I’ve gotten the characters up to that point for real. 275 words of actual text.

A very good day, should come around more often.

I feel like I should say more about work, but… it’s just work. Whatever.

Read: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou omnibus 3 (Hitoshi Ashinano): Alpha goes for a walk around Japan, because what’s a year when civilization is fading away and you’re an immortal(?) robot? The leftovers of the past seem a little inconsistent, but then that’s what you might expect from a handful of random leftovers.

Read: Sheep Princess in Wolf’s Clothing vol 1 (Mito): Wolf-lady butler discovers that the beautiful sheep-girl princess she serves is smitten with her. Gay hijinks ensue.

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.1-4: Chise goes to magic school, and Elias signs on as a teacher so she won’t be unguarded. So far pretty much the same as the College arc in the manga, but I’m having a slightly easier time keeping track of the new characters. Bug-nurse is even more disturbing in color.

Written: 140 of planning. This seems like a final confrontation, but I don’t see how it can be resolved in a satisfying way. Maybe it’s only the confrontation where it becomes clear that things cannot be resolved peaceably.

It seems weird for nations where pandas are not native to have a national panda day, but on the other hand, pandas!

I tried to get up at a sensible hour to do the thing, but the cats trapped me in bed until I fell back asleep. Alas.

After doing the thing, and then not doing any things for the whole afternoon, I went with Marith to see Jus in her school production of Annie Jr (ie, abridged). Singing! Dancing! Villainous plots! Propaganda for the morbidly wealthy! A happy ending! It was the last show, so Jus was full of feelings, but that’s okay. I hear it often happens to actors.

Read: Daisy Chainsaw (Charlotte Laskowski): Brutal tactical magical-girl combat. Choose your weapons from among such things as baseball bats, rollerblades, guns, microphones, and of course chainsaws, and try to survive high school until the villains attack and you have a transformation sequence and it’s time to fight. Still in a fairly primitive state, but it has a pixel-art aesthetic and magic rollerblades and dismemberment rules.

Written: 220, although some of it was adventure design that I did earlier but hadn’t logged.

Yes, it’s the day after Daylight Savings Day, and I wanted to nap, but did not manage to do so. Or maybe I napped very lightly for the whole day.

Watched: Hilda and the Mountain King: Movie between the second and third seasons, following directly from the cliffhanger at the end of the second season which I had completely forgotten until now. Like so much Hilda, appears scary but is wholesome. Kind of.

Written: 114. What am I even doing with this?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! There, how was that?

Had to be on call in the afternoon, and there were annoying customers, but I escaped to Monkeycat Towers for anime night anyway.

Watched: Princess Tutu 5-6: Uh oh, Fakir is getting suspicious! Although he was pretty sus to begin with.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 8: Hah, called it!

Written: 177. Got to a point in planning where I diverge from the first graph, so that’s probably something.

Yay, I finally get a day!

Did a grocery shop, was useless and dumb. Fed the cats, though.

Watched: Princess Tutu 4: More feelings for Mytho, but Fakir is becoming suspicious. (He was always pretty sus, to be honest.)

Watched: The Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts 7: Well, okay, I guess.

Written: 122.

The weather was so nice today, I did actually buy tortilla chips and guac and salsa. Also ate my pastrami sandwich outside.

The traffic was not so nice when an accident forced us to double back and wander lost in the maze of brightly-lit car dealerships, but if I were not so dumb, we would have been fine.

Watched: Princess Tutu 2-3: Anteaterina! Also some plot stuff about why Ahiru’s necklace glows or something. Jus concurs that Drosselmeyer is not a good substitute for a cute animal companion, though.

Read: Wear Wolf (Murphy Lawless, Zoe Chant): The most recent Virtue Shifters book. When the blurb said the FL also had a secret, that is not what I was expecting!

Read: “It Answered” (Anastasia Kirchoff): Maybe we shouldn’t have asked… But hey, how can you complain about utopia?

Written: 121. Could possibly have been more if I hadn’t had to finish reading somebody‘s book about a fashion designer and a schoolteacher with a secret.

I actually did eat banana bread today, since I still had some left over from the gaming feast on Sunday.

Fortunately the presentation that got cancelled yesterday was repeated today for the other side of the globe and I only had to skip the team meeting to attend. It was even a little useful, although more sales-oriented than I wished.

Watched: Hilda 3.4-6: A new friend! An old acquaintance! An extremely scary monster, possibly from another genre!

Written: 243.

Hurray for pangolins! I don’t know why I like them, but I do.

Apparently I also like being a useless lump, because that’s what I did today. I was on call in the afternoon and had to do some work, but only for a little while. Then in the evening we accomplished anime night again. Huzzah!

Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 5-6: You can tell that new character is no good, he was mean to Amit!

Watched: Princess Tutu 1: Apparently we aren’t showing Jus Utena just yet, but Tutu seems weird enough for now.

Read: Crawljammer vol 4-6 (Tim Callahan, et al): More space adventure nonsense for DCC, random tables and adventures and random tables and classes and random tables.

Read: Dog of the Dead (Delia Marshall Turner): A no-nonsense middle-aged English teacher is bequeathed a mysterious giant egg by a student she sort of recognizes, and then everything goes downhill. Way downhill. Everything is eventually explained, but it is dream-like and elliptical getting there. I liked it, but it was pretty weird.

Written: 190. No, still not right.

It’s a day for Marith!

Did not go to the office today, did some work, I guess?

Watched: Hilda 3.1-3: Looks like we know what this season’s mystery is! Also, the return of Wood Man. This is such a good weird show.

Read: The Stick Princess (Delia Marshall Turner): Finally, after like thirty years, I get to read the last book of the trilogy! Unsurprisingly, it is also about a young woman with an unusual relationship to magic, although she is even more at the center of what’s going on, and it crosses over with the big even at the end of the other two books. It also has an epilogue, establishing that it really is the end. I am surprised by how low in the text, if not actually subtextual, the F/F relationship is, compared to the open M/M relationships in the first book.

Read: Crawljammer vol 1-3 (Tim Callahan, et al): A regular zine for DCC, expanding it into a habitable solar system without being any less gonzo. Want to be a Red Martian Psychic Knight and steal from the Pirate Kings of Pluto? Now you can do that! But you can also be a dwarf or a thief or whatever. In spaaaaaace!

Written: 137. This is still all wrong again.

Year of the Dragon, which is definitely auspicious and not a sign of doom.

I was too lazy to go grocery shopping before getting back to be on call all afternoon, and even if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been able to go to the ice cream store. Instead I flopped around and then had to do some work and complain bitterly and throw out five bags of food from the fridge that was no longer trustworthy after the power outage. Eventually that ran out and Marith and I went over to Monkeycat Towers. We meant to go for anime, but instead we had really good Chinese food from Ken and Among Us with Nonny, which was all pretty great. I managed to win as the imposter! Then we switched to hide-and-seek mode, which I didn’t really understand because I’m old. Seeing people makes me happy.

Read: “Stubborn Stains” (Delia Marshall Turner): Turner wrote two books of an interesting fantasy/SF trilogy and then apparently disappeared, but now I learn that she has written the third book and this short story about a schoolteacher who gets involved with magic and a whole book about the schoolteacher! (The books are only available on Amazon, boo, but I’ll probably buy them anyway.)

Written: 125.

If only we could get all the disasters to happen on Feb 5th, planning would be a lot easier.

The power was still out when I woke up, and didn’t show any signs of being restored, so I ended up going to the office at the suggestion of the boss³ who was worried that we aren’t putting on enough of a show of being office team players. Well played. There was no lunch because only Tue-Thu are the official office days, but Pocky is like a healthy meal, right? Right?

Still no power when I got home, but at least I had realized that I could use my full-charged work laptop as a power bank for my phone, to read books I had already downloaded.

Marith was also grouchy about the lack of power so we went to Cheesecake Factory outside the Land of No Power and ate things that weren’t cheesecake. We could not bring leftovers home, because no refrigeration!

Read: The Savior’s Book Cafe Story in Another World vol 2 (Kyouka Izumi, Oumiya, Reiko Sakurada): The super-mage tries to keep living her quiet life uninvolved with anything except books and customers and one customer in particular, but of course that never works.

Read: The Yakuza’s Bias vol 2 (Teki Yatsuda): More yakuza stan hijinx. It doesn’t feel to me like there are any new jokes, so I probably won’t keep reading, but maybe that’s just because I’m old and not cool.

Read: The Drab Princess, The Black Cat, and the Satisfying Breakup vol 1 (Rino Mayumi, Machi): Light novel about a princess who tries to become an archmage so she can get out of her arranged engagement and make room for her younger sister who her fiancé obviously likes better, and the hapless archmage she dragoons into helping her. A lot of people get involved, and no one has any idea what anyone else is feeling, because that’s the genre.

Written: Still THWARTED.

I had the ice cream for lunch dessert, but it was Humphrey Slocombe “Secret Breakfast”, so I’m saying it counts.

Apparently my new Saturday routine is to go to Togo’s and eat a pastrami sandwich and drink multiple flavors of Diet Dr Pepper from the drink robot, on the way to the book store and grocery store. The ice cream store doesn’t open until noon, and I usually try to get my act together before then, so it will have to be intermittent.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 10-12: The end! Jus was appropriately emotional at finding out Homura and Madoka’s deal. Not sure what to show her next, maybe Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Written: 122 of outlining. I don’t know what these aliens should look like. I wrote some stuff down, but it’s probably not right.

Still not feeling great. Tried to do some work, with mixed results.

The cats were still not eating any of the food I had, so I went and bought some different food, and apparently that is somewhat acceptable. I hope it’s not just that it’s new, because there are a limited number of brands I can buy.

Watched: Hazbin Hotel 1.7-8: Season finale! The power of friendship prevails! But there is lots left for the next season, because even if Charlie saved Hell, it’s still Hell.

Read: Blade of the Moon Princess vol 2 (Tatsuya Endo): More running around in enemy bases and learning to use the sword and also some backstory on the rival princess.

Written: 174.

But does “chocolate cake” mean chocolate crumb and any kind of frosting, any kind of crumb and chocolate frosting, or chocolate crumb and chocolate frosting?

Today I ate a pastrami cheesesteak, which was okay, did some grocery shopping, and was a massive lump because I felt lethargic and headachey and bleah. My guess it was side effects from the vaccination yesterday. Still better than anything I’ve ever heard about shingles.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 7-9: Oh good, Jus was appropriately disturbed to find out how the magical ecosystem works and what Kyubey’s role is.

Written: 147.

Penguins! They exist! Had you heard?

Today I accomplished all the things I planned to do, surprisingly. I did get up too early to get phlebotomized, then made it to the bookstore, a sandwich shop, and the grocery before arriving back home in plenty of time to be on call all afternoon. I was even able to almost entirely ignore customers and travel to Monkeycat Towers to watch more Madoka Magica. So yay me, I guess.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 4-6: We finally got to the episode where Kyubey explains what’s really involved in becoming a magical girl. “Why does everybody react the same way when they find out? I don’t understand humans.”

Read: D&D5e Tome of Beasts 3 (Scott Gable, Richard Green, Kelly Pawlik, Sebastian Rombach, Mike Welham, et al): A pretty good monster book, although like all modern D&Ds it takes a Linnaean approach to monsters.

Written: 175.

Where would we be without them?

Spent most of the workday on a customer call where I contributed little, but not quite nothing.

Watched: Hazbin Hotel 3-4: Okay, it’s better, especially since we got both Angel Dust and Husk doing things.

Read: Call the Name of the Night vol 2 (Tama Mitsuboshi): This volume reminded me a lot of Witch Hat Atelier, with the magic medicine lessons.

Written: 189.

Today was a day of uselessness I mean relaxation.

In the evening, we had anime again, so I at least had to leave the apartment, even if it wasn’t exactly useful.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 1-3: Jus is now old enough to see this! We got to the all-important third episode, so she wants to keep watching.

Written: 254.

I’m RIGHT HERE! But bald enough I probably don’t count any more.

I had to quote the lines of output to a customer that said exactly what he wanted to know and clearly labeled it, and then I had to repeat that those lines meant what they said. Yes, okay, ESL, but he was completely fluent otherwise, just not willing to read. Customers, ugh.

Watched: Hazbin Hotel 1-2. I feel like they put it into too many focus groups and everything interesting got scraped off. None of the characters are nearly as interesting as the ones in Helluva Boss, possibly because all their problems are external (except maybe Angel Dust). I hope it does well anyway, but I was definitely hoping for more.

Written: 199.