kirabug's idea files

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:

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:

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.

Day 282:

It’s hard to dig to the east from where I’m currently located without hitting water. There’s a bay-like swamp-like thing to the northeast (the algae bloom is still in full swing) and a river just south of it. I wrote a long time ago about trying to keep them separate via the land bridge that cuts between them, and now I’m digging rooms into that land bridge.

I’m beginning to wonder if my feet will ever be dry again.

It’s amazing that I haven’t gotten athletes foot or gangrene.

For that matter, I’m still not convinced that there’s microbes here of any actual size, since there’s still nothing rotting or putrid except for the zombies.

On the other hand, the mushroom are insanely big, so who knows?

Day 281

One of the things I haven’t quite adjusted to here, even after 280 solar days (and change) is the length of the solar day. It’s much shorter than on earth, even shorter than the shop standard year that the company kept. So even though I’ve been here for a long time, I’ve had a lot of time adjusting because night here falls roughly slightly more frequently than a nice sunday when you take a nap at mid afternoon and then have a drink or two at the ballgame and then go back to sleep early. sunburnt and full of hot dogs.

But on the other hand, sky terror birds.

So the last few nights instead of staying awake to get things done — considering that the bulk of what I need to get done is putting in stores of food — I’ve been sleeping when the sun goes down.

So far it’s a lot like taking a nap, with the requisite “nap mouth” and everything.

But on the other hand, I can hear the birds screaming over my house when I doze off, so this is safer than night fishing by far.