Tag: zoomwarts

Monday, observed, but not too bad for all that. Customers attacked, but we fended them off, and I cleaned up after some previous attacks.

Watched: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: This movie is too long (2:40, an entire evening!) but I took many notes about horrible things to do to Bella and Rosamund.

Read: Asylum (Lindsay Buroker): A new “Star Kingdom” novel, following new protagonists, which is still charming, but I am annoyed that Buroker seems to only write straight people. [character] wants to have sex at least once in her life, [other character] wants to have sex basically all the time, and yet! I sulk.

Words: Check.

It’s Labor Day, so I should be helping build guillotines for Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, or something, but instead I’m being a useless lump. I managed to do a grocery shop, but that’s about it.

Read: The Ruin of Angels (Max Gladstone): Sixth novel in the Craft Sequence, about colonialism and hubristic tech startups and surveillance and brain squids and criminal gods and broken reality. Gladstone apparently understands that there’s just no point to male characters.

Watched: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Not very good as a movie, but I was just watching it for inspiration for Zoomwarts. The movie had a lot more random magical nonsense (like the flying keys and chessboard), more monsters (troll in the castle!), magic without specific incantations or even wand use, and a distressing lack of suits of armor to hide behind. It didn’t even have much in the way of secret passages, just the one area the Golden Trio found “accidentally”. Also a distinct lack of romantic drama, of course, but not all 11-year-olds can be as boy-crazy as Bella.

Words: Check.

I slept very incompetently, and then by the time I got up it was about 4000000 degrees out and not even really sunny, hazy and humid and terrible air. I guess I did the two things I really had to get done today (grocery shopping and Zoomwarts), but the day feels like it was completely wasted. I didn’t even manage to create a test user in WordPress, since it wants a unique email address for every user.

Played: Zoomwarts. Finally Bella and Baby Lizard paid off their debt to the mermaid by rescuing her from pirates and possibly murdering the pirates. Also Rosamund’s plan to get a national treasure to push back against the Ministry’s reframing of history went off swimmingly. Umbrellas for all!

Read (browsed?): Barbarous up to the beginning of chapter 6 (Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota): A surly magic school dropout gets a job offer she can’t refuse from a very mysterious landlady and ends up cleaning out haunted apartments, exterminating infestations of ghostly mushrooms, and bonding with her troubled coworker. Then things get weird.

Words: Check, although it seems like so little for an otherwise entirely wasted day.

The cleaner was efficient this time, so I managed to go grocery shopping and only then implode into a useless lump. There is still plague of all flavors all over everywhere and especially at Ayse and Ken’s, so no visiting. I was on call for the afternoon, but nothing happened.

Played: Zoomwarts. We were not very focused; I blame Jus’s new phone or maybe my old brain. We got some drama, but Dumbledore retconned it. Surely this will not come back to haunt anyone at all.

Watched: Fena, Pirate Princess 1-2: You’d think a show called “Pirate Princess” would be more kid-friendly, but the first episode has a brothel and rape threats and numerous murders. After that, it seems to mellow out.

Read: Broken Blade (JC Daniels): After being kidnapped and tortured in the previous book, the main character puts herself back together, partially with the help of friends but mostly because there’s a really big problem that needs her special murderizing.

Words: Check.

I didn’t have anything to do today except a couple of grocery shopping expeditions, and that’s about all I accomplished. I texted with Marith and Jus about Zoomwarts and my ideas to rein in the characters’ rampant sleep deprivation and homework neglect. I’m not sure I want to subject my players to homebrew rules changes, though. Oh, the other thing I did was look for pictures for a Lancer character, but meh.

Words: check.

On call all day, but the customers did not attack. Since I could not go grocery shopping, I was completely useless all day.

Stayed up too late reading: Shards of Earth (Adrian Tchaikovsky): The elements are not new: immense alien forces that destroy planets, FTL travel that has bad effects on human minds, humans modified to deal with hyperspace, untranslatable aliens, ruins of lost civilizations, etc. But they are well done, and hang together, and the humans are stupid in exactly the ways humans are stupid, and the aliens aren’t random, they obviously have something that works for them, and the various plot elements are connected, and probably will turn out to be even more unified in later books. I stayed up until 3:00 reading it, anyway.

Played: Zoomwarts, still with zoom. Bella and Rosamund both have dates to the holiday party, although Bella might get murdered by Slytherins first.

Words: check.

I was on call all day, so I couldn’t do things like ride the bus to go shopping or visit Ayse and Ken (I mean, technically I could, I have a phone, but it would be superannoying to get called while on the bus). I guess it builds character? That would explain why I managed to make a Lancer character. I couldn’t find a good picture on Pinterest, though. My ability to find things on the Internets is not very great.

Played: Zoomwarts, with actual Zoom. There was lots of drama, but Bella still doesn’t have a date for the party, because she missed her chance! Well, maybe she can convince a boy who already has a date to dump her in favor of Bella.

Words: Check.

I was too sleepy to get up early enough to walk to shopping, but I did shop. Also oncall 13:30-19:30, but the customers were quiescent.

Played: Zoomwarts! Bella has a date! Also there was some stuff with mermaids and pirates and visibility cloaks and deadly magic fungus and humiliating Partha, but that’s not really important, is it?

Eaten: Italian pork stew, salad, green beans, all seasoned with friendship.

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 23-24: The End! Of the season, they have barely gathered the four dragons and there is apparently much much more manga. But as far as I know, there isn’t a second season of the anime yet. Maybe we all need to read the manga so Jus can squee with us. Definitely we need to figure out what to watch next.

Watched (but not by me): Kaleido Star 7. I had to play monkey in the middle with Ken and a shrieking Nonny.

Words: FAIL. I used up all my word brain on this and Zoomwarts notes.

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.

I successfully went shopping, although I did not walk there, so that was like an accomplishment but not really? Also I ate a lunch that was not horrifying.

Played: Zoomwarts. A new love interest for Bella! A new reason to skulk about the secret passages of Hogwarts! Catalog shopping! Lizard drama!

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 17-18: You know, he has a point. And his boss is awesome.

Watched (by somebody, not me): Kaleido Star 5. I had to play Bloons TD 6 with Nonny and his parents.

Read: Dear Noman vol 2 (Neji): The end! It was fundamentally a ghost story, so the ending was always going to be sad, but it was hopeful too.

Words: Check, ish.

The cleaners came and cleaned Marith’s old room. Now I could use it for something, if I were competent and energetic. But I’m not, so I went grocery shopping and ate some lunch and gave Marith her swamp cooler, and eventually went to Ken and Ayse’s. I had not realized it before, but Truffle has sporadic white hairs in her black coat to go with the white spot on her tummy, so she is a Night Sky Kitten!

Played: Zoomwarts. I should probably have sent in a Death Eater with a wand to focus things, but Bella was sufficiently oppressed, I think. The lizards got some leads on how to get arms for the mermaid, at least.

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 15-16: Uh oh, the new king is surprisingly competent!

Played: Squirt gun battle! Nonny finished me off by emptying the magazine of one of the large squirt guns over me, so I was pretty much the soggiest. I had to borrow a towel to sit on before Marith would let me ride in her car again.

Not watched by me: Kaleido Star 4. Jus and Marith and maybe Dave watched it, though, so that’s fine.

Words: check, somehow.