word mining central
Day 152:
How I got to where I was: I followed a chasm down from the area where I’d been digging. It emptied into a bigger chasm.
I wish I could tell you that I was surprised to find, at the edge of that, an even deeper chasm. But I’m starting to believe the old saw about digging through the center of the earth.
Day 151:
There’s a chasm that empties into the chasm I’m working in, so now I’m trying to dig up and down, east and west, all at one time.
I’m mostly deciding where to dig based on which direction is safest, because there’s certainly plenty of rock in every direction.
But since these chasms are big and stretch a long distance, I’m also fighting off a lot of monsters.
I’m building walls just to protect myself. Which is what walls do, admittedly, but it’s a lot to deal with.
I’m spending enough time at the east end that I’m sleeping there most nights. I’m starting another ducken skin mattress and hanging the skins in my living quarters.
Day 150:
One hundred and fifty days on this rock and I’ve actually got quite a bit to show for it. I’ve got crates and crates of valuable stone and ore waiting to be carted off-planet. I’ve got literally hundreds of white duckens that follow me wherever they see me. I’ve got a herd of cows that love me.
I’ve got scars all over my body, bruises in places I didn’t know bruise, and a severe dislike of anything that comes in the color “camouflage”.
And with no way to get off this rock, it doesn’t matter how much stone I have because I can’t spend it if I can’t get out of here.
I’ve had better vacations, is what I’m saying.
Day 149:
Spent the day fishing and digging up sand. I got caught in an undercurrent a couple of times during the latter, so I lost a little time and a lot of energy to swimming harder than I wanted to swim. But I did catch enough that the space around my fire looks like a fishmonger’s as I dry the meat.
(It’s also stifling hot in there, stinks of fish, and smoky as hell, so it’s a good reason to go elsewhere.)
This batch of glass seems to be melting more consistently, though, so the sand mining seems to be effective even if the fishing is stinky.
Day 148:
I’ve been having a lot of quality problems with my glass lately. I’m not sure if it’s the temperature or the cooling time or the trace minerals or what, but probably half the glass I make breaks almost immediately.
Considering how much work goes into fetching sand and melting it down, it’s got me kind of bummed.
But I’m low on food and don’t feel like killing a ton of duckens for a while, so I’m going to be in the water fishing anyway… we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll try a new source of sand.
