OCT 11

2024

FRIDAY (2024 SB Meetup)
1714 After my update last night, I got around for bed, but that revitalized me enough to resume watching the movie. They switched to "The Legend of Hallowaiian: Let The Adventure Begin". I played Hearthstone way too late, and eventually went to bed.

Today, I woke up in the afternoon around 12:45. I got through the bathroom and showered (off the TV den, where people were playing something rambunctious). I came up to the sanctuary afterwards for an apple, but soon a lunch of vegetable soup over rice was served. Meauxdal indicated an interest in cracking open my defective laptop, so I brought it back down from the TV tower. I hooked it up in the sanctuary, but Minty was interested in getting people to play M.U.L.E., so I joined a few people in the den to go through that. Miffy was distributing an alcoholic tea cocktail, so I had one of those with some Cheez-It brand snack crackers as I returned to the sanctuary and played more HS while posting this update.

2152 Felt like I wasn't making good use of my time, so I decided to follow in HelloJed's footsteps and make a zine this year. I downloaded the software onto my laptop (which seems to have a completely defunct battery, now. It's stuck at 0%), and I used some random photos to tell a story of being unable to talk about water parks because I lacked the needed photographs. I printed about twelve copies and spent maybe an hour trimming them and folding them into booklets. I did a brief survey of the area (including watching Cubes playing Obsidian by the bar). Booji was playing Super Aleste on the projector in the sanctuary, and I caught up in Fallen London for a bit while watching. Once my phone hit 80%, I plugged in while playing HS and writing this update. I'm sipping a cherry Bubly while hoping dinner will be ready soon.

0254 After my last update, I snacked on a sugar cookie, and then dinner really was served just a little bit later: spaghetti with meatballs (meat for me, but there was also a vegan alternative available, as well). I sat a table with Cuba and Annette and Miguel and Sid and possibly some other folks, but I have no recollection of anything we talked about. Once we'd finished eating, I rinsed out my bowl and put it in the dishwasher before lingering by the table where Miguel was preparing the cube draft. Once we started, I had Haley to my right and Kali to my left; I got passed a lot of overpowered mana acceleration, and despite passing a Ruby Mox at one point, I was not very punished, since I got to draft three others. I grabbed almost every Planeswalker I saw, and thanks to my robust mana base, I could safely play four-color green and greedily run almost all of them.

My first game was against Ben, and he was in Izzet colors with some smallish creatures, permission, and burn. First game, I dropped Jace the Mind Sculptor on turn 3 to bounce his only creature turn after turn, while Nissa's vigilant 3/3 lands beat him down in a hurry. Game two was similar, but a little slower; I was able to get the emblem that exiles an opponent's permanent each time I draw a card, after which I played Time Spiral to eliminate everything he had except a land and an incubating token. That deck's ridiculous.

I spent a while hanging out in the sanctuary as people discussed Magic, but I wanted to see what was going on in the main room before everybody went to bed. Rez turned out to be the answer, while Jason played UFO 50 (Magic Garden at a minimum). I'd done an expedition in Fallen London before coming over here, but I had to catch up in ACPC, after which I wrote this update. I figure I'll watch Jason's UFO 50 game until I go to bed in the next 20 minutes.

2023

Wednesday: since Julie's spending today and tomorrow visiting out-of-town daycare centers for her training and auditing work, I'm on my own for the next 36ish hours. Work was uneventful. After my shift ended, I felt a little bit like a character from The Sims in how I prioritized my tasks by urgency: first I took a nap in the living room, then I took a shower, then I ate the last of the pizza from Stogie Joe's while playing Hearthstone, then I played with the cats, and only after that did I gather up the trash and recycling and take it all out to the curb, by which time it was almost 1:00 AM. I also finished copying data from my Steam profile into these pages (for now), listened to a pair of podcasts, and caught up on the annotated source code sent to members of Ryan's patreon, which is always instructive and amusing. But now I should go to bed to make the most of my free time tomorrow.