Tag: zoomwarts

One out of two isn’t bad? (I’m no Meatloaf.)

Went into the office again, but this time all of us who are normally there were there to see our boss, except the one who’s out and the one who had to WFH so really it was just me and Coworker T. Found out that Coworker R is no longer with us, which is sad but honestly not surprising. Ate a rice bowl, sat on a customer call for hours.

Read: She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat vol 4 (Sakaomi Yuzaki): More cooking, more eating, more love!

Played: Zoomwarts! Every magic castle is better with a troll in the basement, right?

Written: 177. I’m really not convinced this second draft is any better than the first draft.

Yes, even student journalists who oppose genocide.

Got handed a case right at the end of the day so I had to work right up to the end, bah.

Played: Zoomwarts. Rosamund tried to do science, Bella got detention, Rosamund found a secret door that was there in her dream, Bella crawled into a hole by herself and went silent.

Read: The Dragon’s Soulmate is a Mushroom Princess! vol 2 (Hanami Nishine, poporucha): Romance therapy is going slowly, but the romance is progressing despite the female lead’s terrifyingly sheltered upbringing.

Read: I’d Rather Have a Cat Than a Harem! vol 2 (Kosuzu Kobato, Hinano Chano): Having befriended almost everyone who appeared in the game, including the probable heroine, the MC goes on to live a happy life with her loving prince and a zillion animals, the end!

Read: Tacticians of Ahm Early Access 0.8.3 (Christian Sorrell): I guess it’s Final Fantasy Tactics the RPG, but (unbeknownst to the characters) set in a digital world that is slowly degrading, introducing corrupt10n. All square grid all the time, most powers have an area of effect in grid squares (often one specific grid square), plentiful multiclassing, etc.

Written: 167.

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.

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.

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 got up and went shopping even earlier, since I didn’t even have the excuse of needing to wait for the bookstore to open. I guess that was like being awake at a reasonable time? Anyway, I’ll claim I slept okay even though I felt lethargic later in the day.

Played: Zoomwarts, at long last. You’d think a game with only two players plus a GM who has no life would be easy to schedule, and yet… Bella and Rosamund and the lizards have found most of the students and conned a hapless psychopomp into helping them escape, but now two of the four are unconscious and a partially-overlapping two are trapped in a cave full of slugs and bubbles with an evil octopus who hates them.

Played: Among Us. I am still terrible at this game, and also after playing like ten rounds I have never been an imposter, but I will keep playing because it makes people happy.

Played: Uno Flip. What name should we give to the most greenish of the colors on the dark side of the cards? Ayse maintains it’s teal, but it doesn’t seem blue enough to be teal to me.

Read: The Maid I Hired Recently is Mysterious vol 3 (Wakame Konbu): Still has no socially redeeming value, but the bystander who ships the two leads has finally suggested a name to give to their feelings.

Written: 505 kitten words, resolving the Existential Dreads and bringing me to 3414/3000 for the week so far.

Why is there so much temperature? I didn’t order this! At least the customers were mostly quiet.

Played: Zoomwarts. The lizards and their mammalian sidekicks made it back into the land of the dead, to rescue everyone!

Eaten: Coq au vin and kale salad.

Watched: The Slayers 4-5: Attack of the fish-creature! Also joke which caused Jus to die of mortification, which fortunately will never be brought up again.

Written: 286 kitten words, for a total of 4119/3000 so far this week.

I don’t actually need to shop for groceries until Monday, but I ended up buying some less-perishable stuff because I had to go to the bank to get quarters anyway, and then the bookstore is right down the street, and I didn’t have to be on call until the afternoon…

A few weeks ago, Nonny wanted a “My books are calling and I must go read” shirt like mine, which was I was finally able to deliver. Now we’re Book Buddies.

Played: Zoomwarts, although not very energetically. Jus had a sleepover last night so of course very little actual sleep occurred, and Marith is always oppressed by work.

Eaten: Japanese food, but it wasn’t great. Or maybe I was just wrong about that being what I wanted. I’m not sure about this whole “eating” thing, TBH.

Read: The Gulp (Alan Baxter): Five linked stories about an extremely creepy town on the Australian coast and the horrible things that happen there: fungus, mutation, ancient dreams, inbreeding, eyeball eating, murder, the usual fun stuff.

Read: Babalon’s Hangover 2 (various): 100+ pages of horrible things, places, people, and happenings for the doomed, decaying world of Mörk Borg.

Written: FAIL.

Ken and Ayse and their household are full of plague and woe, so we didn’t go visit them.

Played: Zoomwarts, over zoom, but very badly. I had so many hopes for the Land of the Dead arc, but I am very dumb in addition to my numerous other failings.

Watched: The Owl House 15-16: Amity has feelings! Also what is going on with Luz’s mom? And is Luz nonbinary? I thought they were a girl, but I didn’t notice any pronouns this time, and that Grom outfit was not particularly binary.

Written: 635 kitten words.

Skipped looking for new manga to rush through grocery shopping, so I could get to Ayse and Ken’s in time for Eurovision! It’s finally streaming legitimately in the US, so it has a real start time and everything, and we had a very nice afternoon. Even Marith showed up, although Eurovision is not her thing, and we ate frittata and something involving garlic anchovy olive oil to dip veggies in,

It is no surprise that Ukraine won, but their entry was actually good, so that’s fine. Much more surprising, the UK came in second, getting possibly more points than in every previous Eurovision combined! No one knows what to make of that. There were too many ballads, but also bangers like Moldova. Norway was the Maximum Eurovision this year with the masked banana wolves, but Australia and Serbia were also up there, albeit in completely different genres. France was totally robbed, their entry was a banger. Spain was okay, but did better than they would otherwise due to the butt floss visuals. The American presenter was very fabulous and had angel wings.

Nonny showed me a bunch of Splatoon stuff, and eventually I played a little Zoomwarts with Jus and Marith, and then Dave kindly fetched us burgers from down the street and we ate and played three-square until it was time to disperse.

Played: Zoomwarts! Bella and Rosamund and the lizards seem determined to find out what happens when you blow off Bellatrix Lestrange-Riddle’s explicit instructions. I’m sure that will go well for them, especially if I manage to prepare for their expedition into the land of the dead.

Read: “Min Zemerin’s Plan” (Katherine Addison): Short story set around Witness for the Dead.

Written: FAIL. I did not accomplish anything after I got home.

Cleaners came at 7:00 this morning, so I had to get up, but then I took a nap thing, or maybe was just a huge useless lump for a while. I managed to shop for a grocery and then visit friends to get hugs, though.

Played: Zoomwarts. Bella isn’t dead, nobody is a vampire (although Emily is also not alive), the ministry is taking credit for saving the day, the surviving eight and a half students are going on winter break early, everyone else has been sucked into a pit to the underworld. Maybe we’ll stop here and let Ken run D&D so Nonny can fight monsters, or maybe Bella and Rosamund and the lizards will have to go get everyone’s soul back.

Eaten: Tasty kebabs, tasty feta-cucumber salad, tasty chocolate splenda cream pie. But we do also love Ken for himself! Really!

Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.9: No parasol will protect Rikka from Nibutani talking about feelings!

Watched: Azumanga Daioh 1: Still ridiculous! Also, the fluffy temptation of wheat.

Watched: RWBY 1.4: Sproing!

Played: Zombie ball tag. If a zombie catches a human, they turn into a zombie, but if a zombie gets hit by the ball three times, they turn into a human. Seemed to be reasonably well-balanced in that sometimes the humans won and sometimes the zombies. Also not nearly as contentious as Sneaky Statues.

Words: 554 kitten words about nothing in particular.

I didn’t really get up earlier than usual for grocery shopping, but I did it with less whining, so that’s good, right?

On-call in the afternoon, but the customers were blessedly quiet.

Read: Rackham Vale (Brian Saliba, Craig Schaffer): An OSR sandbox based on (and including many examples of) the art of Arthur Rackham, featuring many faeries of various scales, mutant alligators, curses, ambitious witches, and party trees, among other fey goings-on.

Played: Zoomwarts. Surprisingly, trying the same plan again worked better. Everybody got killed, but some of them got over it, so that’s good, right? Possibly we’re going to start alternating Zoomwarts with D&D run by Ken, so that Nonny can fight monsters.

Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.7-8: Beach episode! But more importantly, we find out what Rikka’s deal is. Also, both positive and negative examples of romantic behavior which may be of use to Jus now that she is a middle-schooler and practically a teenager.

Eaten: Ribs! (Also brisket, burnt ends, collard greens, etc.) Apparently Jus took a break from wanting sushi 24/7 to demand ribs, and nobody was going to object.

Played: Laser tag.

Watched: RWBY 1.1 for Jus. She liked it, and we aren’t even to the trauma part yet!

Words: FAIL. I did a little revising because I figured out what one of the slang terms should be, but not very much.

I should have gotten up much earlier, but was too useless. I guess it worked out in the end, though.

Sought: The lost art of conversation.

Eaten: Fried chicken, shaved fennel, salad with home-made ranch.

Played: Underhand dodgeball and sneaky statues.

Played: Zoomwarts, at long last! We played late into the night because Marith doesn’t have to work tomorrow. In fact, she is on vacation! But that did not help Rosamund, Bella, or the lizards, because their plan to destroy the magic circle was foiled by a simple forgetfulness potion! Muahahahaha!

Words: 406 kitten words.

On call, but nothing happened, so that’s good.

Played: Zoomwarts. Bella is probably not a vampire yet! Less clear about Baby Lizard.

Eaten: Assorted tacos from the taqueria that the burger place turned into for lunch, and then carne asada burritos for dinner.

Played: About 5000 steps of assorted roughhousing.

Read: The OP Lich Is A Returnee vol 2-4 (Stuart Grosse): Mostly infodumps about the magic system, interrupted by the OP Lich steamrollering anyone who puts themselves in her way.

Words: FAIL. I’d say I used up all my creativity on Zoomwarts, but that’s making an assumption that’s probably not borne out by evidence.

Surprisingly, I’m not on call for any part of today! Not that it had any impact on my complete uselessness.

Played: Zoomwarts. Bella, Rosamund (now conscious), and the lizards are making progress, but nothing is ever easy. Now they’re all in the vampire room (aka morning solarium), although only Baby Lizard and Bella are actually chained to the wall.

Eaten: Instant coq au vin, romanesco (not tesco fresco), goat brie, etc.

Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.3: Rikka has a minion!

Played: Murder Mystery until Nonny got frustrated, then Sneaky Statues.

Words: FAIL.

Both the cleaners and I were off a week, so I told them to go ahead and show up this morning. I had to get up for all-day on-call anyway, so it worked out okay. Marith was dead from having to come in on her “day off”, though, so I could not travel to Monkeycat Towers. It turned out that some customers were breaking things working this weekend, too, so it wasn’t just a theoretical tether to my work computer.

Played: Zoomwarts! There was another big fight against the evil vampiric teacher and her minions, but at the point where we left off, Bella and Baby Lizard seemed to have the upper talon. Surely there is no factor they have not considered.

Eaten: Not Ken food, and also not a final burger from the burger place which is turning into a taco truck. There are many other restaurants on my street (which is not actually mine) but none of them are quite as portable as burgers. And they were even Impossible burgers!

Words: 453 assorted words.

I have finally taken a rapid test. It came up negative, so there’s a distinct possibility that I don’t currently have COVID!

Played: Zoomwarts, in person. I oppressed Bella and the lizards a lot, but they did make progress toward their goal of everybody not being dead. Except the vampires, who were definitely dead.

Eaten: Leeks! Romanesco! Lemony chicken potatoes!

Played: Steal the ball, by any means necessary!

Read: Between Kings (WR Gingell): Everything was very confusing in the first book, but now, in book 10, everything is actually wrapped up, even the things that we only discovered in the middle books. Victory: Pet!

Words: 331 words about kittens.

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.

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.

No side effects, except a minor headache. I hope this means my immune system is quietly competent, and not slacking off. “New antigen? Throw it on the pile, we’ll get around to it. Probably.”

Omicron is not so prevalent (yet) that Marith and I cannot visit Monkeycat Towers, so we did.

Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.1-2: Rewatching because now Jus is old enough to appreciate it.

Watched: Fruits Basket 2.1-2: Ayse and Ken have only seen season 1, so we are rewatching it with them, and then eventually we will all watch season 3 together.

Eaten: Delicious Thai food! Also like one seasonal ginger cookie. It was good!

Played: Zoomwarts. Since we changed the schedule to game when Marith is both tired and allergic, maybe it was best that all her characters were petrified? (No, it was not best.) But Bella continued to be heroic despite the IMMENSE DOOM closing in from every side and now she has an excuse to look for Harry.

Words: 208. I think I used all my brain socializing.

Visited: Ayse and Ken and Jus and Nonny and Dave, because everyone is vaccinated now, and some people are even boosted. Yay, human contact! Grown-up conversation!

Played: Zoomwarts. The PCs went into the plumbing to show the teachers where the basilisk lair was, and I let the dice do their thing. Now Bella is frozen, somewhere under the castle, with a bunch of petrified or half-dead people and limited firewood. I wonder how she’s going to get out of this?

Eaten: The turkey chili of happiness.

Watched: Nothing, but maybe we have a plan for next time.

Words: 364 words about kittens.

Ugh, customer, was waiting until I was trying to do something useful with my afternoon and then sending a bunch of messages that required nothing but acknowledgement really the best use of your Saturday? None of that couldn’t have waited until Monday.

Played: Zoomwarts, finally! I forgot how everything works, but at least there was a flood of rats. That’s something, right? Right?

Words: 554 words about kittens. I got distracted by trying to manage my thousands of browser tabs.

The cleaners were at 10 instead of at 8, which threw my whole morning off, but I managed to go shopping and eat a lunch and stuff. Not prepare for gaming tomorrow, though. Also I was on call all afternoon, but nothing happened. Good work, customers!

Played: Zoomwarts. That was a pretty good session. Bella and co saved the missing rats and only Bella got double-grounded (for cheating in a duel against her romantic rival at lunch).

Read: “The Tomato Thief” (Ursula Vernon): A scary old lady and the monster that’s stealing her perfect tomatoes.

Read: Amissio ch 1-5 (Paroro): Lost humans in a mysterious realm of lost things and tentacle monsters and other weirdness. Creepy cute.

Words: Surprisingly, check.

I think it’s LIRALEN-DAY!!

For some reason, Jus continues to be twelve. Weird.

I have now been sleeping on my new bed for a whole week. It is definitely fulfilling its role, inasmuch as I wish I were in it whenever I’m not, rather than vice versa, but it has not revolutionized my life. I think this is more likely to be a deficiency in my life, rather than in the bed.

Played: Zoomwarts. As someone who had a boyfriend for five whole days, Bella was eagerly sought after for romantic advice by the Hufflepuff first-years during her stakeout. Next session: party!

Read: The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion and The Barrow Will Send What It May (Margaret Killjoy): Anarchists and serious punks vs really quite creepy magic and those who get mixed up in it. There are always consequences. Sadly there don’t seem to be any more in this series.

Words: Check.

I bought a new mattress! It will be delivered tomorrow. Hopefully I will not regret spending $800 instead of $4000 (or instead of $0).

Played: Zoomwarts. Apparently I have forgotten how to GM.

Read: Not Even Bones (Rebecca Shaeffer): Another recommendation from Iron Widow, but this one is even darker. The main character has spent most of her life dissecting dead supernatural creatures her mom brings home into parts for sale on the black market, but then her mom brings home a live one and everything goes to hell. Cannibalism, torture, murder, slavery, difficult moral decisions, monsters both human and otherwise. Not recommended for anyone prone to nightmares.

Read: Mage-Commander (Glynn Stewart): 11(?)th of the missiles-in-space-but-with-magic series. Not a lot of interesting new material, and the major threat is still completely offscreen and unknown to most of the characters while they deal with threats on their own level.

Words: Check.

Cleaner showed up early, so I was able to go grocery shopping in the morning instead of halfway through the day, but it was still just grocery shopping. I did, however, while getting Thai lunch, snag the last three packs of Diet Snapple at Bevmo!

We didn’t even try to go over to Ayse and Ken’s place. I don’t even know, man. Between Marith being exploited and abused by her job and Delta everywhere and everything, does life even happen any more?

Played: Zoomwarts. More canon contents, with dementors, but the PCs turned their prisoner over to Dumbledore and got grounded. Also Bella got dumped?! That can’t be right! Why is Heron acting so weird? Is everybody doomed?

Words: Check.

So apparently this is supposed to be called “Patriot Day”, because DHS and TSA and Gauntanamo Bay Torture Facility are all things to celebrate. Do Not Want. Republicans Fuck Right Off.

Despite a general hatred for Americans, I managed to go grocery shopping and stuff, so it’s like a successful Saturday. Still no visiting at Ayse & Ken’s because Nonny didn’t sleep and so everyone is frazzled.

Played: Zoomwarts. I tried to implement some of the doom I made notes on from the movies, but I think people were too unfocused to do anything with it. Maybe next time. Also Bella has apparently dumped her new love interest already.

Words: I found a continuity error dating from a year ago in the kitten words, which destroyed my motivation. I later found out that it didn’t come up until just a couple of months ago, but by then it was too late.

I guess I did a work. Wheee.

Watched: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Manne, I completely forgot to put any of this stuff in Zoomwarts even though it’s supposed to be happening at the same time. I think Bella and Rosamund need a werewolf attack, and also Harry needs to get sucked into a temporal vortex.

Read: Fleet of Knives and Light of Impossible Stars (Gareth L Powell): Rest of the trilogy that started with Embers of War. The solution to everyone’s problems of course turned out to be more of the same problems only bigger, with additional problems. Then in the middle of the third book, a completely new character appears to fix everything. Also the author does not understand basic physics. So overall, a weak ending to an okay beginning.

Words: Check, kinda.