word mining central
Day 685:
I spent all day clearing weeds and making it so I could see someone coming from any direction with more warning than before, and it paid off.
Another band of murderers came down the hill threatening me. Shot at me a few times, fortunately they mostly missed. (And the one that hit kind of bounced off my metal boot.)
So I’m feeling both sore and tired and smug tonight, which beats being just sore and tired.
Day 684:
I’ve cleaned the river out of everything useful I could find… gravel, sand, mud… now it’s just grainy dirt, which is good because that’s what rivers need to be rivers, but I don’t need it to be bricks or arrowheads or sand so it can stay where it is.
I made a scythe, and it’s a bad one. My back is still sore (of course it is!) so cutting the weeds down this way is safer than constantly bending and chopping at them with my sword, but still, not comfy.
One might wonder why I would bother clearing the fields of weeds if I’m the only one here and there’s no homeowner’s association to complain. Well remember the exploding giraffe-corgis? The ones with the green and yellow spots? They blend into high grass and weeds perfectly. This is the only way I can think of to make the area safer.
So as much as I joined mining so that I would never have to mow another lawn… here I am.
Day 683:
Slept over (under?) at the river site again last night. Back still unhappy.
While mining out this part of the vein of ore under the river I managed to mine into the area I’d been in a few days ago… so everything is connected.
I know by now I should probably be used to knocking down a wall only to find one of my own torches hanging nearby…. but it still takes a minute or two to reorient every time it happens. Context is king, as someone said a long time ago, and the context of entering yet another dark damp cave, but this time from the left, is enough to make it look new all over again. This is why we mark x’s on the walls or tie string in specific locations or something to always indicate where we’ve gone before… because one can die in a cave if one never finds the way out again.
But I did find the way out, along with a few more things like a giant underground waterfall and a few dozen zombies and skeletons at the bottom of the waterfall, and a sudden desire to seal up the whole entrance to the cave.
Strangely enough, it was raining when I came out. I say strangely because the river height both in the cave and in the river’s banks seemed unchanged despite the fact that it was absolutely chucking down rain.
Yet another “I wish I had an official scientist of any type” here I guess.
Anyway, I still have some sand and gravel to clean out of the river bank, but I’m done ore mining, at least for now, at least in that cave. I’ve sealed it up with some extra gravel and I’m back to just being soaked and cold all the time tomorrow.
Day 682:
I did sleep overnight in the cave last night and this morning I had the most stiff back ever. It turns out that my body prefers a bed made of chicken skin and feathers over a bed made of gravel, especially a gravel bed under a river in some of the dampest space I’ve ever been in. I’d be shocked if I don’t have some kind of lung fungal infection after that mess.
On the other hand, I found a huge seam of ore and managed to spend the whole day cleaning it out and putting it into trunks to haul to the surface. The trunks are heavy, but storing stuff and then taking it up during daylight is still way safer that working at night.
And because I was essentially carving my own cave, no monsters! Which was nice! I might do it again tonight just to see how far I can get with this cave.
Day 681:
Spent all day in the water again today, extracting sand and gravel so that I can make glass and arrows.
(I don’t make the arrows out of the gravel, but I have found a lot of good chippable rock in the gravel, most of which makes pretty decent arrow heads. The gravel I keep on hand for things like “pouring on annoying zombies”.)
The last time I spent a lot of time in the water, I ended up accidentally staying overnight in a cave.
I didn’t stay overnight in a cave this time, but I did find one, so I’m going to pack enough supplies tomorrow that if I end up sleeping under the river again I at least have an extra cape to throw on to keep warm.
And some extra chicken so I’m not as hungry. Priorities.