Day 523: OMG SHEEP

Day 523:

I got up this morning and went outside with the intention of bringing in my wheat crops. Instead I discovered a sheep, just hanging out as if it was the most natural thing in the world, right in my backyard.

A SHEEP.

THE THING I’VE BEEN HEADING WEST TO GET.

IN MY YARD.

So now I have sheep and I am breeding sheep and this is well and good and excellent!

And also I have too many cows.

So I spent the day (after capturing my new sheep!) culling some of my cow herd. I mean, the sheep need room  to graze too, and when you can’t swing a sword without hitting a cow (even without meaning to) that’s too many cows.

It means I have a lot of hide tanning in my future, and I think one of my lower caverns is about to become a refrigerator while I try to get some of the meat dried or processed into something i can use.

BUT SHEEP.

Now I have to figure out how to shear them.

522: A rest and some thinking

Day 522:

Yesterday I got lost. It happens occasionally. I get so caught up in what I was digging that I stopped paying attention to where I was… and then I couldn’t figure out how to get out.

The nice part about mining is that if you dig up for long enough, you’ll eventually find out.

In my case, I first found a very large crevasse (I’m sure you’re shocked) and then I turned left and dug until I found grass.

It put me at the foot of one of the mountains I plan to climb.

It was also damned cold.

And there was a sheep, but it wasn’t willing to follow me.

I made it home okay — it was only about an hour’s walk from where I live. So the mountain’s a reasonable distance away and the carts help me get back and forth faster, which is really nice.

And also, well, my chest plate totally disintegrated when I took it off. Not even shards of the diamond I’d used were left.

But on the other hand, I have over 100 diamonds now, which was my goal for working my way back across to the place that has the sheep.

So it’s time for me to switch strategies again no matter how good the mining was in the other direction and try to get some wool out of these hills.

But first, I think I’ll take a few days to feed the cows and the pigs and bring in my food supplies and make sure everything here is running well.

Because once I head the other way, I’m not sure how long it will take me to get back.

521: whew

Day 521:

The last thing anyone wants to see when walking under a lake of lava that is conveniently walled in with glass is an exploding giraffe corgi.

I would love to tell you that I was cool under pressure and fully able to handle the situation, but the truth is my hands were shaking like crazy and after I shot it (preventing the explosion) I threw up a couple of times.

In this case, I’m kind of glad I didn’t have my mining suit. They’re difficult to get vomit out of and The Company gets mad when you throw them out because you can’t get chunks of last night’s dinner out of the vents.

But I’m here to tell the tale, so we’re going to count it as a win.

Day 520: cleaning up

Day 520:

I’ve got such a haul from mining the past few days that I had trouble getting it all back to my western base. I spent the whole day moving things and thinking about running rails down here.

The rails are probably a dream, at least for now, because they’d require me to lay a lot of floor and if I’m laying floor I’m not looking for diamonds.

Anyway, I still have a few loads to go tomorrow before I can keep digging again. There’s a lot of gravel and dirt that I’ve shoveled up and want to haul up to the surface.

(Why am I saving dirt, you ask? Because my ancestors were farmers, and there were way too many decades in my family tree where quality dirt was turned into useless dirt and we had to move from the place we were happy to somewhere else and start over.

Take care of your dirt.)

I built a forge in the western base so that I can melt ore down and carry iron back as ingots. Smaller, easier to carry, heavier by volume but who wants to carry all the stuff that’s going to be burned off any further than they have to?

Day 519: everyone at once

Day 519:

One skeleton, ten rock rats, four slimes.

I am in need of a hot shower and a cup of tea, and neither of them exist here.