Tag: roseville

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written: …20…40…60…VACATION

Pretty sure Thanksgiving food is not the route to longevity.

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

Read: VACATION

Written: VACATION

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

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

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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

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

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Turtles deserve loving homes too!

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

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

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

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

We had bacon! And also waffles! And later in the day, the traditional Chinese takeout. In between, there was Everdell and swimming, and afterwards, those of us who were keen on astronomy went up to a remote airfield for a star party. Alas, my eyes are just not good enough, even with a 10″ telescope.

I was also not good enough at Everdell. I blame the large number of places to put a worker that I had to keep track of and could not easily read, some of which were hidden in other players’ tableaus. Obviously it’s something of a skill issue on my part, but I think it’s also a problem with the design.

Stayed up too late reading a copy What If? (by the xkcd guy) that was in the room where I was sleeping.

Written: VACATION

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

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

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

Written: VACATION

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

It was a nice vacation. There was a baby, who is very cute and likes stealing glasses and saying “babababaabbbbaabababa”. There was air conditioning, so we did not die when it was 42C outside. There was the traditional Chinese food and grilled stuff and splashing in the pool. There was conversation. (Our hosts recently went to Japan and returned with tales.) There was a long stretch of sitting in cars, with a brief interruption to sit on folding chairs and watch fireworks at close range. (Nonny had a comment for each one, because he hasn’t seen a lot of fireworks.) There were board games. There were so many snacks. Eventually we got our act together and returned to San Jose.

Played: Everdell. We played this twice, so I have enough data to conclude that I am terrible at this game. I’d say the dual use of cards as discardable currency pushes it into Race for the Galaxy territory, but I’m sure that’s quite right. Mostly I’m just dumb. I’m sorry, cute forest creatures!

Played: Roll for the Galaxy. I came in second, which was also last.

Played: Pandemic. We also had the On The Brink expansion, but the extra roles didn’t save us. I came in last, along with all of humanity.

Played: Sagrada. I managed to get my tableau complete, but failed on all the victory conditions, so I came in last.

Watched: I totally thought I was going to do something useful when I got home, but instead I got chicken with too many bones and watched the start of a ridiculous anime called Estab Life. It’s the cyberpunk fantasy future, everybody has to live in their cultural burbclave, cute girl shadowrunners help them defect in pursuit of their unapproved dreams.

Written: FAIL. I had my laptop, and my current draft is in Dropbox, so I could have written, yet I did not. Pretty sure I can still make my overall goal, although this may not be my strongest week.

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.

I had to be back to work oncall this afternoon (either that or stay until at least this evening if not tomorrow, which would be terrible traffic and no one wanted to do that), so Dave and I departed at 8 to allow plenty of time for other vacationers to interfere with our travels. They declined to get up early enough to do so, and we made it back by 10:30, so that was nice.

Nothing happened for my entire on-call shift, but of course I didn’t know things were going to be that easy ahead of time.

Played: Nothing, Jus was too busy traveling and/or recovering from her sleepover for Zoomwarts.

NaNoWriMo Words: 24051 + 1691 = 25742. I made it to the halfway mark before the end of the month, as foretold in prophecy.

Today was much less cooking-oriented, so more time for board games! We played two games of 7 Wonders, one of the MHA card game, and one of Lords of Waterdeep. Many leftovers were eaten. Josh and Oli escaped out the back door without actually encountering any visitors, but we waved and yelled. There was another park visit, this time without Dave but with some parents. It was very pleasant, aside from social anxiety.

NaNoWriMo Words: VACATION.

Today was mostly food-orientated, but I was not involved in food preparation, so I helped Dave take the kids to a park, played Dominion with Empires, watched My Hero Academia 4-7 because Jus is now old enough to watch it, listened to Jus and Kate geek out about MHA fanfic, listened to Ayse and Kate geek out about Elfquest fanfic, and ate some more.

NaNoWriMo Words: VACATION.

Started the day with brunch at The Table with Ayse and Ken and Jus (who skipped school and is now an anime girl). It was good, I should go there more often! Then I traveled with Ken to Roseville (which hasn’t been in Roseville for several years now) and because we left before noon, the traffic was not terrible and we arrived in good time. Everyone else, who had to pack children and wait for Nonny to finish school and such, had to fight through holiday traffic and didn’t arrive until dinner time. (Marith was defeated by capitalism and could not go at all.)

We searched for the lost art of conversation and played Dominion with Nocturne (vampires and raiders and bats, oh my!) and also the My Hero Academia card game (a combination of Guillotine and Lords of Waterdeep but at least Mineta still sucks) and ate Chinese food until everyone was unconscious.

Josh and Oli didn’t arrive from Land of Plague until super-late, but their tests were negative so Ayse and Ken did not have to pack up the children and flee. Josh and Oli remained isolated in their room for the whole time they were in residence, though, which seems like a terrible way to spend Thanksgiving.

NaNoWriMo Words: VACATION.

Back from Roseville vacation (no Roseville actually vacationed in). There were friends and food and Jus got to see Elyssa again and swimming and Josh is TWENTY how is that even possible?! and board games and swimming and pirate fireworks over the back fence and Kate’s hair is so short and I only blew up the toilet once and too much heat.

Played on vacation: Roll for the Galaxy (I still suck at it), Terraforming Mars (I… surprisingly came in second?), Codenames (Jus had the insights!).

Read on vacation: Lockdown Tales (Neal Asher): Short stories, Polity or post-Polity, mostly full of violence and depravity and robots and sometimes aliens.

Read on vacation: Drifter’s Folly (Glynn Stewart): Fourth in the series about humans trying to put galactic civilization back together after destroying the alien empire, following up on the great betrayal of book three.

Read today: Artifact Space (Miles Cameron): Space opera with a plucky teenager escaping rape-culture horror to fake her way onto a giant spaceship and save the day repeatedly despite alien economic intrigue and imposter syndrome.

Words on vacation: NONE.

Words today: FAIL. I did read through what I wrote on one project, and it’s pretty terrible, so maybe not writing is for the best.