Day 287: Violent Birth

Day 287:

Not much going on today. Digging.

Looking back through my notes it doesn’t look like I’ve talked about the duckens’ hatching problems.

Or rather the weirdness of them.

See, all the animals here — except me, obviously — mate as soon as you feed them. What they eat seems to vary by species. The cows prefer hay, the duckens prefer wheat seed, and the pigs seem fond of potatoes or carrots.

And as I’ve mentioned there’s some kind of weird time compression. Or weird biology. Because within seconds of eating and then mating, they give birth to one and exactly one baby, alive, small, but fully formed. None of this eyes-closed-for-the-first-two-weeks nonsense for them!

So, that’s a thing, and it applies even to the duckens.

Except, well, the duckens lay a lot of eggs. So many that I trip on them regularly. (I mean, there are some places in my compound now that probably have a few hundred duckens in a room. Being frustrated at them, I threw one the other day… and out popped a baby ducken. Fully formed, and just as healthy as if they had been “born” the “natural” way.

So I’ve made it a habit to throw extra eggs. If they hatch, more duckens. If they don’t hatch, they don’t even leave a mess on the walls, which puzzles the heck out of me. Because if I crack one on the side of a bowl, I definitely get egg.

Honestly, I need an engineer, a biologist, and a physicist on this compulsory trip so badly.

Day 286: Progress, sort of

Day 286:

I dug up and out of my current mining area. (Yes, I was chasing a vein of ore at the time. Yes I do remember what I said yesterday. No I don’t regret it.)

Anyway, it was nice to be out in the sun. And I knew exactly where I was when I came up.

I was about 100 yards from my front door.

I’ve been digging for days and I’ve made it less of a distance than my pigs wander when they’re hungry.

Perhaps I really do need to focus a bit.

Day 285: forgetting the goal, as usual

Day 285:

I’m making great progress getting this ore out of this hole I’m working in.

Of course, the goal was to move east, not down, so I could find some sheep and make some wool clothes and then climb on top of that giant mountain to the west.

So I’m working on addressing my actual needs, which are to stop digging and move east.

I sometimes think I might be addicted to ore.

And I wonder how that happens exactly. I mean, yes, in a sense, mining is a bit like gambling. You’re reading the walls and the things around you, and making decisions on what to do next… and there’s no guarantee that anything will pan out, literally.

But on the other hand, it’s long hard work.

Well, I mean, I guess gambling isn’t all that different.

I remember my Uncle Sy telling me about how he’d go out gambling every Sunday, while Aunt Sylvia was in church. He’d spend hours trying to judge every other player, the dealer, the security staff, the cards… it sounded like a lot of the kind of work I don’t like doing: working with people.

I suppose if I was the type of person who needed to be around other people I would have gone mad here by now.

Not to say that I haven’t, but, I’m not really a people person.

Anyway, tomorrow I’ll start digging east again, if for no other reason than because I haven’t had warm socks in I don’t know how long.

Day 284: Sleepy

Day 284:

I think the odd sleep schedule is affecting my ability to keep tabs on everything that’s important.

I fell asleep in a mine tonight, in other words.

Woke up to the sound of zombies approaching and had to fight my way out. Made it, barely, but I think I need a good long night’s sleep.

And maybe some railroad tracks because once again, hauling all this crap from one location to another is getting *old* and i still haven’t gotten enough new horses to save me.

Maybe pigs can pull a cart?

Day 283: Paused on account of lack of rocks

Day 283:

This sounds absolutely ridiculous to say but I’ve run out of rock.

Or rather, I’ve run out of hot polished rock, which sounds a little better.

I discovered a while ago that not everything I mine has to come out the size of ugly cobblestones… more importantly I discovered accidentally that putting a load of cobblestones in a furnace will result in a possibly good slab of stone.

This should not work. There’s nothing in physics from anywhere else in this universe that even suggests this should work. Which means either the cobblestones here are so iron-rich that I can “smelt” them back together or perhaps I’m not even in my universe any more.

The thought had crossed my mind.

So the hot rocks (don’t know what else to call them, even though they’re not radioactive — well, heck, for all I know they are radioactive, but with no geiger counter it’s hard to tell without them being so “hot” that they melt my face off.) make really nice floors and I like to keep them around for that purpose, but somehow I lost track of how many I had.

So instead of digging to the east and laying down good solid flooring as I go, I’m fishing again while my cave fills with smoke and hot rock fumes, none of which are particularly healthy for the lungs.

At least it’s a nice day. Standard temperature, no rain, no zombies or exploding giraffe-corgis, no horror squids, just me and a line and some fish. And some boots. And a bowl. And a glowing book.

But other than that, normal-like. Relaxing.

Until I have to carry around tons of hot rock later anyway.