kirabug's idea files

Day 431:

More fishing today and by tomorrow I should have enough dried fish to put me up for a while.

Pulled in another bowl and another of those weird glowing books today, but that wasn’t the exciting part. The exciting part was when I pulled in two huge leather sheets — like I’d pulled off an entire cowhide, essentially — from the same area where I pull up all the shoes.

In my amateur hour archaeological mind, this proves that the site I’m fishing into is the underwater remains of a shoe store, or if not a store, than a cobbler’s shop. Something where making and distributing shoes was a priority.

The leather is very fine quality, I have to say. I almost hate to use it for shoes for all I tend to do to my feet here. I’m wondering whether they’d be good to use for my notebook covers instead. It might protect them slightly better and it’s certainly better than making boots to step in zombie ichor with.

Day 430:

Fishing again all day today and I pulled up two more pair of boots. I’ve gotten pretty good at repairing leather boots, even though I don’t frequently wear them. (The diamond-covered ones are more reliable, but they’re more reliable because of the time I spent learning how the leather ones worked.)

I owe these weird fished items; if I hadn’t had these boots from out of the river and the sea to take apart and repair I would never have puzzled out how to make my own boots out of better materials.

And I’m still pretty sure I’m sitting on someone’s lost shoe store.

But there must have been a soup emporium next door because I also brought up a couple more wooden bowls. They’re all similar styles and size as if from a matched set, though obviously hand-made as they’re not exactly the same.

The two pair I pulled out today are both small for my feet, but if I put their leather together I should have enough to make a pair that fit me, and are relatively sturdy too, so that’s what I’m doing before I go to bed. I use beef fat to soften the hides since they’ve been stuck in the water so long they’re, well, as tough as shoe leather to work with.

The light’s fading, and if I hurry I can finish these repairs tonight, so I’m going to work on the boots until I’m down to torchlight and go to bed.

Day 429:

I realized it’d be good to have more than just one batch of fish ready, so I spent my day fishing again. Brought in quite a haul too!

One trick to fishing is to always face west. That way if you’re good at losing track of time (like I am), the sudden sun blasting you in the face will remind you it’s time to go home and clean your catch before the monsters come out.

Not a lot of weirdness in this particular catch. Still not sure what to do with all the blowfish I’ve dried. I’m too chicken to try eating them, in case they’re poisonous like Earth blowfish, but at the same time I’m not real hot on the idea of them taking up a ton of storage in my cave. Maybe darts?

Day 428:

I started my day mining, and then realized I’d left the smoked fish back at home base. So I decided that eating was more important than not-eating, and returned home.

That should’ve been my clue that I was too tired to think straight.

Instead, I spent the day in the garden pulling weeds and bringing in the veggies, only to realize that I had once again forgotten to bring the fish back with me.

So I’m going to bed early, and planning to call it a day.

Day 427:

Smoking fish takes most of the day, so while that was doing its own thing, I cleared out a cache of sand that I spotted while fishing. As soon as the fish was done smoking I started smelting the glass (I have this superstition about not getting glass in the air near my food even though as far as I know the glass shouldn’t be able to evaporate into the air) and I’ll have some nice glass blocks in the morning.

In the meantime, the fish is done, which means it’s back to the mines to find more diamond to dig the tunnel to get to the sheep to make the socks to climb the mountain.

I don’t know why she swallowed the fly. Perhaps she’ll die.