word mining central
Day 469:
Utterly boring day except when I was being attacked by rock rats – then it was a bit like having my hair set on fire. Long stretches of quiet punctuated by small creatures trying to murder me. That bit of the brain in charge of survival? The hindbrain? Utterly exhausted and even though I’m back safe in my own bed (for some definition of “safe”) convinced we’re going to be eaten by rock rats any minute.
Day 468:
Did you ever hear the old joke about the road painter? He was hired to paint lines onto the terrestrial roads on old Earth. The first day he did five miles… the second day he did two miles… the third day he did less than a mile. His boss said to him, “what’s up, you did so well the first day?” and he said “well you know I’m getting further and further away from that paint can…”
That’s most of what you need to know about my current mining operation except that I’m heading out to the furthest point every day and digging in. So in theory I should be bringing more and more ore in every day.
In practice, I’m carrying so many tools out into the field with me just so I don’t have to come back for them that I spend a lot of time with only enough left in my pack for a little ore… which means I have to run back and forth more often until my tools wear out and need to be thrown away.
I think that’s another argument for possibly switching to diamond tools.
Or for building another base, but that seems like work.
Day 467: things seem more coherent today than they did a few days ago. I’m going to chalk it up to something in the caves. Maybe bad fumes, maybe rock rats. Maybe exploding giraffe corgis knocked me out and I don’t remember.
Idiot (my current “pet” ducken) refuses to leave my bedroom except to swim in my makeshift bathtub. If he was a good canary I’d have him down in the mines with me.
On the other hand, there’s no guarantee that what affects my breathing would affect any of the natives here anyway. I don’t even know that they’re breathing oxygen – they may be breathing carbon dioxide or nitrogen or helium.
Well probably not helium or they’d be squeakier zombies.
Day 466:
I’m starting to wonder if my mind’s playing games with me. Or if maybe I’m blacking out and don’t remember it.
Like, I went down into the mines the other day, and according to my books it was day 462 and, although I didn’t note it in the logs, I had just planted some plants. But when I woke up the next morning all the plants were fully grown. And I don’t mean in the “this place grows everything stupid quickly” way — although that’s certainly still true. More like “even for here that was too fast.”
In other words, day 464 seemed to show up way faster than it should have.
So I don’t know. I could be blacking out. I could be just keeping bad notes or forgetting when I did things. Or maybe the rock rats are doing something to my brain.
Or maybe this is all just a bad dream and I’m finally starting to wake up?
Day 465:
Diamonds are so hard to get that I hate to use them for anything other than defense… they make great armor for reasons that defy any kind of common sense, and I’d hate to lose the opportunity to protect my fragile skull because I decided I wanted a fancier axe.
On the other hand, I tried sharpening one and wow, serious strength and serious sharpness. (Also serious work! I could only use diamond to work diamond, obviously, so there was a long “smacking two rocks together” stage until I got something workable.)
So this could seriously speed up my progress toward the sheep. Or it could turn out that it’s really fragile and it breaks on the first try and I waste diamond that would’ve made a nice hat.
I’m probably not leaving in the next 24 hours though, so the risk may be worth it.