Day 574: vegetable bin

Day 574:

I’ve got a big bin where I keep my vegetables — carrots, potatoes, wheat seeds for storage, stuff like that. It’s full to capacity now, because I just brought in everything that was growing in my garden.

I was keeping it outside, but the animals kept trying to break into it, so now it takes up space in my bedroom. That’s okay, but it’s not great, because I tend to pile things on top of the bin during the day…. it makes a pretty decent table… and then at night when I’m hungry or I want to feed the animals, I have to clear the whole mess off so I can get into it.

Maybe that’s why refrigerators always opened forward instead of on top? So we wouldn’t drive ourselves crazy with our bad habits?

I wrote that in past tense, like refrigerators don’t exist anymore… I have to remind myself sometimes that all those things do still exist, just not here.

Day 573: hills and rivers

Day 573:

I did a lot of mining out fo the side of the hill I’m trying to sculpt. Cut down two trees of a reasonable size, so I don’t need to worry about wood supplies for a while. Did some fishing too, which was a nice change.

The sun sets over the river and turns the whole valley shades of red and orange and purple. When you’re not fishing because you’re starving, it’s very relaxing, and the color change reflecting up off the water is a great way to know it’s time to go home.

Making myself a fish sandwich for dinner and then heading to bed.

Day 572: snoozing

Day 572:

I’m sleeping a lot better topside, which isn’t really a big surprise. Humans were designed to have bright days and dark nights and when you spend all your time in a  cave you don’t really get either. But I’ve been up strip-mining and landscaping in the sun enough that I feel, well, good.

The sunset tonight made the sun look like a giant ball of fire in the sky. I wish I knew which star it was, so I could say goodnight to it properly. I’m sure their names aren’t “Sun” and “Moon” on the astronomical charts. But they’ll do, I guess, for now.

Day 571: more ore than before

Day 571:

I know this is going to sound odd, but I think I’m experiencing some kind of visual disorder.

So I was digging out the side of a hill, like you do, when I came across a deposit of granite. But instead of looking smooth and shiny like it usually does, this granite looks like spam. It’s kind of, I don’t know, flatter than it used to be?

I thought it was just an odd specimen, but when I got back to my caverns I discovered all the granite looked different. And the andesite and diorite also look a bit odd. Not totally different, just, not the same way they did yesterday.

Most other things look the same, but my wheat looks yellower somehow, and my iron ingots look smoother. I know it doesn’t make any sense.

I’m hoping it’s just a visual hallucination because the alternative is that I’ve somehow forgotten what granite looks like but not that it exists and that’s getting into neurological problems I don’t want to tackle on my own.

At least I got a good seam of ore out of it.

Day 570: Climbing hills

Day 570:

I’m most of the way up what I thought was a big hill only to discover that compared to its neighbor it’s a little hill. Also, the lake I found turned out to be much higher in elevation than I originally thought.

It’s easy to eyeball elevation when you’re comparing a big hill to a flat plain, or a mountain to a big hill. It’s a bit harder to say “is this lake 3 meters above that other lake?”

Also, these lakes don’t seem to have feeder streams or things that empty them out, which is… well… weird. So weird I feel compelled to fix it. But I haven’t figured out how yet. It seems odd to dig a trench for a lake that until now seems to have gotten along just fine without me. On the other hand, water that doesn’t move eventually turns into primordial sludge, which given enough time and evolutionary pressure, turns into predatory lending corporations, so it’s best to get the water moving now.