Tag: video games

Went over well before dinner to play Minecraft with Ayse and Nonny. I explored a swamp and a large mountain and only died a few times, so that was fun. Then Earl appeared (Cat was not feeling up to humans) so we talked about books and ate ham and various delicious sides and there was great happiness. Not sure Ken’s heretical explanation of Easter and Ayse’s Catholic explanation left Jus any the wiser, either alone or combined.

When I got home, we played even more Minecraft, because we can do that from different places, and used a copy of my world. I’ve barely started exploring the caves of the next island over, and Ayse and Nonny built a boat right away to sail hundreds of blocks away and rampage Acacia Island!

Read: Spy x Family vol 9 (Tatsuya Endo): End of the cruise ship arc where Yor murders everyone, but the focus is more on Anya and then there’s some small stories with various characters, including Bond. It’s hard being a doggo when humans are so weird.

Written: FAIL.

Did not go to the office, only had a few meetings. Yay.

Found cocoa beans in Minecraft, so I guess that island is a jungle biome. Also found a hidden bay, and dug a tunnel into a lagoon(?) adjacent to a valley that extends well below sea level and is also full of monsters. Sadly the caves contain no chests and don’t go very deep, but there’s another cave over the hill that’s bigger and possibly more interesting.

Read: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m Queen Of The Dead (Richard Roberts): Reread, because everybody likes teenage necromancers and romance and ghosts and reality TV and smooches.

Written: FAIL.

Six meetings between 7:15 and 12. Ugh.

I was right about the unexpected meetings being more of the same (IE, meaningless reassurances backed up by nothing, because capitalism).

No gaming, only unwellness.

Rocking the boat (while not in it) is the way to get it to despawn, which would be fine if it hadn’t involved punching the sheep into mutton. I guess my first sheep will have to wait a little longer for a friend. Also rowed over to the mainland(?) and mined some coal.

Read: Legionnaire (Jason Anspach, Nick Cole): Infantry in space. The setting is pretty much Star Wars: landspeeders, protocol droids, blasters, spaceships that fall out of the sky when destroyed, aliens that don’t have their own blasters but are entirely willing to work with rebels to slaughter government troops.

Written: FAIL.

Surprise meeting first thing in the morning, and not for a good reason, either. Multiple last-minute meetings before work tomorrow, too, probably to tell us the same thing on a larger scale.

In the afternoon, dentistry. The hygienist seemed very happy with the state of my teeth, though, so I guess I’ll keep up the flossing and brushing.

Did some messing about in boats in Minecraft, but could not figure out how to get the island sheep back out of my boat so I could lure it to my paddock.

Writing: FAIL.

 

So lethargic. Will I ever have the energy to get my blood tests done or my neck pinged? I barely managed to go grocery shopping and that’s something I do every week.

Got some maps going, and found out the zombie mine I found while tunneling downward in search of ore is actually way the heck out in the ocean. I guess that’s what happens when you generate dungeons randomly.

Watched: First episode of Shadow & Bone. Fortunately I haven’t read the books so I have no preconceptions, but I bet the criminals were also cooler in the books. They’re very Blades in the Dark.

Read: Beware of Chicken vol 2 (Casualfarmer): Everybody levels up doing farm and family things except the heroic xianxia rooster, who goes on a quest to learn magical secrets. Well, and the antagonists, but maybe being horrible is a family thing for them.

Written: FAIL.

 

Back to the office. Customers, why?

Today’s Minecraft accomplishments: added an emergency bath next to the lava-powered garbage disposal, mined some obsidian and crying obsidian (neither of which is super-useful, but they’re shiny).

Read: Lilith’s Shadow Omnibus vol 1 (Benjamin Medrano): Bioroid creation of a supervillain becomes a superhero, gets hot girlfriends, fights aliens and evil wizards and suspicious superheroes, etc. The romance seems pretty flat, though.

Written: FAIL.

Yep, more customer meeting. Why will they not just fix the thing?

Only played a little Minecraft today. My farm is full of soggy zombies and I can’t figure out how to get water in a bucket.

Played: Lancer. We got through one round of combat because people were feeling under the weather. Without that, we might have made it to the middle of the second round.

Read: Assorted Entanglements vol 1 (Mikanuji): A 28-year-old office lady who thought she was straight and an 18-year old semi-delinquent somehow fall in love after a one-night stand and begin a life together despite their weird families and different personalities.

Read: “The Imperfection” (Mae Murray): Also queer, but mostly yikes.

Written: FAIL. I probably could have written some, but I have to get up and go to the office tomorrow.

Back to the customer meetings, wheee.

I dug down to where I found many exciting minerals and a huge terrifying cavern and then a disused mine (IE, a dungeon) full of zombies and lapis and redstone. And they told me you couldn’t dig below 0 altitude!

Read: Dandadan vol 2 (Yukinobu Tatsu): Well, that’s one way to deal with a giant crab monster. But probably not a good way to deal with fellow highschool students or misplaced genitalia. And I just know the aliens are going to come back sooner or later.

Read: Ayashimon vol 1 (Yuji Kaku): The protagonist of One Punch Man gets recruited by a monster yakuza girl to be muscle for her climb to the power that is rightfully hers. Meh, but at least has a good reason for why enemies explode into money when defeated.

Written: FAIL.

Today I went to visit Ayse and Ken and everybody to play Minecraft socially. That’s definitely better. Also we had delicious Thai food and Ken made me a sugar-free chocolate cream pie, because it was nominally my birthday celebration. I could not blow out the candles with a single clap, though. I guess I need to practice up for next year!

Written: FAIL.

I went grocery shopping and then did pretty much nothing for the entire day.

Read: Mimicking of Known Successes (Malka Older): It’s like Holmes/Watson except they’re WLW, so that part is fine, but they’re on Jupiter where humanity has taken refuge after destroying the ecosystems of both Earth and Mars, and just no. Domed cities on a devastated Earth are much more habitable.

Read: “A Dream of Electric Mothers” (Wole Talabi): The question of whether to trust the AI amalgamated from the minds of past generations or not, in a future (alternate?) Africa.

Written: FAIL.

Yay, I get to work from home again! But there’s still a multi-hour customer meeting every day and it looks like we’re going to continue next week.

Fortunately the meeting is in the morning, so I was able to skip out early to go see Jus perform in Once Upon A Mattress (clean middle-school version). There was singing! There was dancing! There was heteronormativity, but otherwise it was great all around! We will be able to say we knew famous actress Jus when she was just starting out!

Writing: FAIL.

Back to the office. I need better shirts and/or collar points. And an iron and ironing board, probably. Ugh. Clothes, why?

Instead of doing anything useful when I got home, I played more Minecraft. Not sure what this fire and lava and weird purple dirt is doing in the middle of my island, but I guess I’ll mine some of it.

Read: Beyond the Burn Line (Paul McAuley): The sophonts after the sophonts after the sophonts that succeed an extinct humanity might be better at society, but they have UFO weirdos too.

Written: FAIL.

I thought I had nothing scheduled for today, so I lay abed for a million hours, but then I found out it’s Minecraft day! I made my shopping trip extra-short so I could make it to Monkeycat Towers by 14:00, and we crafted some mines. Literally, I think we all spent most of the afternoon underground. I found a cave with a spider spawner and a treasure chest, but that was all there was to it, so I started delving into the depths of the cartesian coordinate system, and found some coal and iron but also a vast underground realm with way too many surprise pits over lava. I put a door on it to keep the endermen from getting out and started a new minestair, but maybe I should go back and work on building walkways over the pits. I have iron pickaxes, so in theory I should be able to mine better stuff than coal and iron that far down.

I wonder if it would be any fun to play Minecraft on my own.

Written: FAIL.

Grocery shopping worked so well yesterday that I was able to sleep in until it was time to get ready to play Minecraft. Then I went over and played Minecraft and did not die hardly at all. Also we had a barbecue and stayed up partying and fighting off zombies all night. I still don’t dare go underground yet, but I chopped down a bunch of trees and dug up a bunch of sand and stuff. Then we logged out and ate Thai food.

Read: The Ascension Game vol 1 (Ace Arriande): LitRPG apparently based on some game that’s like Minecraft with more boss fights, but I’m pretty sure the ridiculous smut parts were added later. They do not help.

Written: FAIL.

No gaming, Rachel is sick enough to go to urgent care (although apparently not with anything exotic). Since my day was suddenly free, I went over to play Minecraft with Nonny and everybody. I accidentally cut down Ken’s prized birch trees, but also cut down trees from the forest and built a wooden house to keep monsters out and got killed by zombies and spiders and drowning. You win some, you respawn at home some, I guess. Also we ate food and played “IRL Among Us” which works surprisingly well.

Written: FAIL. Maybe a couple of hours of Minecraft is all my brain is capable of in a day.

Oh yeah, I don’t like going grocery shopping on Sunday because it’s way more crowded and things might be sold out. But the salads are fresher…

Ayse has germs, so Marith stayed home but I went to play Minecraft in person with Nonny and Jus and everyone. I’m still really bad at it, but at least I can go to sleep when it’s night. I put my smoker down somewhere with part of an earthen-walled compound and forgot where I put it! Then I ate some of Ken’s delicious cooking and petted three cats and heard about Jus’s love life and went home. There was rain.

Written: FAIL, but I have an idea, it just needs a bunch more ideas and an actual plot.

I didn’t accomplish anything today, but I did visit friends and search for the lost art of conversation and eat cheese fondue, salad, chocolate fondue, and German chocolate cake and get hugs and play Goose Goose Duck. I’m pretty sure the conversations other people had while I was playing video games with kids were better than the ones I had, but I got some good book recommendations. It was a nice evening, and now that we’ve had fondue, it can officially be 2023.

Written: FAIL.

It’s Friday the 13th and yet I have no black cats! But I have teeth and electricity and Internets, so I guess it’s okay.

Today I finally started playing Slay the Spire, after Ken recommended it ages ago and I  bought it for iPad one age ago. It’s a deck-building rogue-like, which combines two things I like but am bad at, so it should be no surprise that it’s addictive and I’m completely terrible at it.

I checked that the grocery store is open on Monday, so I don’t need to go shopping tomorrow, which makes it completely okay to stay up until midnight 1:00 2:00, right?

Written: 193 words.

And a Nifty Newtonmas to all!

Marith and I went over to Monkeycat Towers for dinner and presents and children and happiness, and it was very nice. Earl and Cat were also there, so we had morbid dinner conversation because we’re a bunch of weirdos. I did not get any presents in wrapping paper, but I did get delicious food, delightful company, and the Hug Assortment Pack. Also we played some Goose Goose Duck, which is like Among Us with more complicated maps and more character roles. I did not manage to be so sus that I got spaced even when that was my victory condition, which was a little disappointing.

Read: Icebreaker (Glynn Stewart): Standalone fantasy of a kind that used to be more common. Not sure about some of the worldbuilding (that seems like an awful lot of information loss), but I enjoyed it anyway.

Written: FAIL.

I was backup on call in case the customer who said they wouldn’t call over the weekend called, but they never did. Good on them for sticking to the plan.

Marith’s car is not actually on fire yet, so we went to wave to Ayse as she lay in bed practicing viruses and eat beef mushroom sweet potato dandelion green beets. Then Marith had to go home because of capitalism, but I stayed to play Minecraft and Sneaky Statues and then went home. It was pretty nice.

Written: FAIL.

I was too dumb to get up and do things in a timely fashion, but they did eventually get done. Marith was dead from capitalism, so I went over by myself to eat desi pizza and play yard soccer and Among Us with various combinations of Ayse, Ken, Dave, Nonny, and Soccer Star Jus who is undefeated in actual games.

Read: The “Imperial Hammer” omnibus, containing Hammer and Crucible, “An Average Night on Androkles”, Star Forge, Long Live The Emperor, Severed, and Destroyer of Worlds (Cameron Cooper): A band of misfits against multiple interstellar power structures to save the day. The moral of the story is, it does matter how you treat people. The technobabble of the story is sub-par, however.

Written: FAIL.

Bah, getting up. Bah, being on call. But bouillabaisse and shishito peppers are good!

Played: Among Us. I think we might be getting better at this, although I still pay way too much attention to performing my tasks and not enough to establishing an alibi. Also apparently bodies don’t get autoreported?!

Read: “Porgee’s Boar” (Jonathan Carroll): Only arguably spec-fic. Also an example of why psychological attacks don’t necessarily work on truly terrible people.

Written: 518 kitten words, which brings me to 3446 for the week so far.

Still sleepy and no brain, didn’t get up in time to go grocery shopping, barely got lunch at a reasonable hour because I had to play Squaredle. Pharmacy didn’t have my distilled gila monster spit, and although they found another pharmacy that had it, they couldn’t guarantee they could make them send it by Monday. Marith, hero of the revolution, agreed to detour to pick it up on the way to Monkeycat Towers.

Jus was busy having teenager fun all day, so we didn’t have Zoomwarts. Marith and I went over for dinner, though (delicious home-made ratatouille and salad and berry cobbler for most of us, In-n-Out for weird non-eggplant-eaters), and searched for the lost art of conversation for a while.

Played: Among Us. I was the imposter twice, and actually won once. The other time I got caught because somebody saw me sneak through the vents from the security center. I blame the unfamiliar map!

Written: 554 kitten words for 3176 so far this week.

I was backup on call for the new person (who isn’t the newest any more, but she’s the newest who can be on call) all day, but fortunately nothing happened. Also I did a lot of nothing, although I did manage to go grocery shopping and also play too much Squaredle (and also Squardle and Waffle and OG Wordle, but those are much quicker) instead of getting a real lunch. Then we went over to Monkeycat Towers and ate delicious Thai food.

Played: Zoomwarts, end of session 2! The expedition into the land of the dead was successful, because I didn’t make Voldemort terrible enough, but I supposes it’s okay for the PCs to win sometimes. I have no idea how to top that, though!

Played: Among Us. I was definitely the worst imposter ever and deserved to be spaced.

Read: FAIL.

Written: +363 = 3576/3000 for the week.

I really do mean to walk to grocery shopping, but maybe not until fall.

Played: Zoomwarts! This time it was NPCs dueling over Harry and Bella got to be mature. But she still owes the mermaid two arms or a huge pile of jewels, and the new potions professor is still up to something, and the Holiday Party is still impending!

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 19-20: Yona’s primary stat is definitely Bravery, or maybe Loyalty.

Eaten: Thai food! Ken is not here to cook, he is off hiking somewhere, so we ordered in.

Played: Super Mario Party, or at least like six of the zillion minigames. I was terrible at them, which is only to be expected from an old person who rarely plays video games, but it was fun.

Read: Over the Woodward Wall (A Deborah Baker): It’s a little like Oz, only more Seanan McGuire and philosophical and faerie bargains, and also it pretty much ends halfway through the story and the next book won’t be out until this fall!

Words: FAIL.