Day 205: that’s a lot of glass

Day 205: I may have miscalculated how much glass is required to wall in a river of lava. Spent the day armpits-deep out in the bay harvesting all the sand I could.

Sand is heavy when wet and I am dog tired.

Also, the cave house stinks of coal fumes. What I’d give for a pocket-sized fusion reactor right now.

Day 204: Lava river

Day 204:

I’ve found a long snaking river of lava in a cave I was digging to get to the big mountain.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the lava here seems to be thicker than molasses (whatever that is) and — this is the weird part — yes weirder than usual — it doesn’t melt glass.

I have absolutely zero explanation of that and I’m hoping sometime in my lifetime whoever bails me off this rock will bring a physicist or maybe one of those material scientist types who could explain why the laws of thermodynamics aren’t applying here. I mean, the lava’s a hell of a lot hotter than the coal I’m burning to make the glass in the first place.

Anyway, this means I can, with enough glass, wall in the lava so it’s safe to travel around.

Day 203: Emeralds

Day 203:

Found a very small cache of emeralds, from which I was able to extract two fairly large green stones. They’re so easy to manufacture back on the rocky planets that they’re pretty much worthless — heck somebody figured out how to scoop up space junk and make them a few decades ago — but they’re better than rock rats, so I’m counting it as a win.

If this was the kind of job where jewelry wasn’t more health risk than anything else, I’d make jewelry out of them. Maybe some day, when I get off this rock, I’ll do something nice with them.

Day 202: Rock rats

Day 202:

Hit a rock with a sledgehammer and a bunch of silvery grey things the size of rats poured out and started biting my ankles.

I would tell you more about how they look — spiky? angry — but I was so busy killing them I didn’t get a good look, and like most of the hostile critters on this planet as soon as they were dead they turned into dust.

That gets kind of old when trying to write up descriptions of things.

Anyway, I did learn that they squeak and squeal much like rats because there was another rock making similar noises that I chose *not* to crack open.

So that was today’s adventure. Let’s hope tomorrow is rat-free.

Day 201: Hunger, explored

Day 201:

I’m fishing a lot, like I said yesterday, which also means I’m roasting fish for dinner a lot. It’s a nice break from the ducken I was eating pretty much all the time.

But I’m noticing that fish just isn’t very filling.

I mean, when I got here, it saved my life, so I’m not knocking fish. When it comes to “easy to catch, easy to cook” fish is the way to go.

But if I eat ducken, I seem to stay full for a lot longer, and get a lot more done before I get the shakes from not eating. (Hey, it’s easy to lose track of time in the caverns.)

And if I eat steak, which I don’t do very often because I don’t like killing my cows, I stay full for even longer than that. The meat holds pretty well down in the caverns, too. But then that could be the whole “lack of microorganisms” thing I mentioned yesterday, too.

Hard to tell without a microscope. Not sure I have the skill to make one, or the knowledge to know what I was looking at if I did.

Anyway, I’ve been eating a lot of roasted fish lately and it’s good, but not very filling. Goes well with mushrooms, makes a nice chowder with the potatoes, carrots really aren’t a good pairing for fish.  Got tired of fish sandwiches pretty quickly. If I’d found a source of oil for cooking (other than ducken fat, which makes the fish taste like ducken) I might’ve figured out fried fish sandwiches, which might be good. But plain fish sandwiches are really dry and stick in one’s craw.

That’s the dining report. Now to get some sleep.