Foggy Mystic Day!
Jun. 20th, 2019 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, the weather was -- well, it wasn't as bad as it COULD have been, given there were reports of possible thunderstorms for today earlier in the week. But it started out rainy over here, and just stayed more or less generally gray and foggy the entire day. Kinda chilly too, for most of it -- I made the mistake of not grabbing my jacket before we left, and had to steal my Mom's wrap for most of the day (we looked into buying a long-sleeve shirt for me there, but everything we looked at cost about $42. Bit rich for our tastes!). Not fantastic weather by any means --
But not bad enough to keep us away. And not bad enough to keep a lot of OTHER people away either -- Mystic Aquarium was surprisingly busy! O.O Lots of families with young kids, and at least one field trip I spotted (some adults with "chaperone" badges herding children). Fortunately it wasn't so crowded that we couldn't go around and look at everything, but yeah, more people than we were expecting for such a cool, bleh day.
Still, we had a lot of fun! Mystic is kind of smaller than I remember it being, but there was still a lot of cool exhibits to look at -- jellies, coral reef fish, marshland fish, big sharks, little sharks in a touch pool (I petted one, as did Mom), beluga whales, seals, sea lions, penguins. . . It was a good walk around the area. :) There was also a dinosaur exhibit, with fairly decent animatronics (though of the classic "scaley" type -- one feathered dino, though!) and a bird pavilion, "Boomerang Island," with lots of Australian parrots that you could feed with seed sticks -- our value tickets entitled us to one stick apiece for free. It was fun to go in and feed them -- I even got one to stand on my stick for a little bit. :) We also got to watch a short movie at either the 4-D Theater or the Blue Theater with our tickets -- the woman at the birds suggested we do the "Smallfoot 4-D" one, so that's what we watched. It was quite the amusing little film -- about a Yeti discovering the "Smallfoot," or us ordinary sized humans, actually exist, and the problems that result -- and had some surprisingly awesome 4-D effects, including real snow! (Yes, I'm serious -- they had a snow-maker hidden somewhere and occasionally unleashed it on us.) And, to our surprise, we discovered while looking up the voice actors (one of the characters is voiced by James Corbin, of "Carpool Karaoke" fame) that the 4-D cut is actually a shortened version of a full film from 2018! So we're going to try and rent the full version. :) And we rounded things out with the sea lion show, which was a lot of fun -- they did lots of goofy things like a sea lion "fashion show" and "barking competition." And one lucky kid sitting in front of us got to get up close and personal and demonstrate a few hand signals they taught him. :) Very nice way to end the visit.
We also took a quick stroll around Old Mistick Village -- most of the shops held no real interest for us (again, overpriced or didn't have anything we wanted), but there was one place that caught my eye as we headed out for lunch -- a little tea shop/kitsch store with an "Alice In Wonderland" theme. Basically, I noticed they had the Doorknob from the animated Disney film as part of their door, then realized the whole window display was all Wonderland too. So yeah, we definitely had to go inside! Very small place, consisting mostly of AiW-themed toys (a lot of Tim Burton's Alice stuff) and a little counter for drinks/nibbles. But I did find something I liked there -- necklaces! They had some fun stuff, including a Drink Me bottle pendant, a watch pendant, a Hatter's hat pendant. . .I settled on a faux-watch pendant (as in, it has watch numbers and hands painted on), with a color illustration of Alice with the Duchess's pig baby from the first book. Only $8.50, so it was easily the cheapest souvenir I could have bought. And it's a nice addition to my necklace collection. :)
Lunch was at the Steak Loft, a restaurant my parents have eaten at before and were impressed by. I -- didn't find it to be all that impressive, honestly. Service was surprisingly slow despite us arriving right after they opened; the salad bar plates were soaking wet; and my chicken caesar wrap was just okay -- I found the chicken kind of flavorless. Salad bar was decent though, and my parents were satisfied with their clam chowder, so. . . *shrug* Dinner at home was much better -- bacon cheeseburgers with some absolutely delectable watermelon and cantaloupe, pickle slices, and chips, and a tiny hot fudge sundae afterwards. :)
So yeah, a very nice day out, I gotta say! And I even accomplished a few things when I got home, namely:
-->Doing the second draft of Gigs's upcoming birthday gift fic (I was feeling a touch too tired to work on "Secundus 2" and figured, since I had to get Nebby's into the queue for this Saturday, I might as well get Gigs's sorted now)
-->Watching CallMeKevin take on Lifeline, a PS2 game where you literally have to tell the player character (well, sort of -- your character is you, playing mission control for a waitress named Rio, but she's the one actually doing things) what to do -- Kevin struggled a bit to make the AI actually understand him XD
-->Watching two more collabs between The Sim Supply and Deligracy -- on Deli's channel, they did the first part of an Island Living build where James was supposed to follow whatever Deli told him to do, as she was the boss and he was her "bish" (this semi-worked -- his own natural bossy tendencies started reasserting themselves near the end of the video XD They made a pretty nice house exterior, though!); on James's channel, they worked together to try and answer quizzes about James's own channel, Let's Plays (namely Super Sim and all the Bigwallet stuff), and Simming career (they got less than half right on the first, managed through a combination of hard thinking and sheer luck to ace the second, then returned to form and got less than half right on the third XD James definitely proving he retains VERY LITTLE memory of any of his Let's Plays).
-->Getting more of my VictorLuvsAlice queue sorted, including fixing up my "Victor's matching suits for Alice's Wonderland outfits" post (what, someone left a comment on "Fixing You" saying they wouldn't mind cosplaying Victor in one! I wanted to provide more detail on what they all looked like) and, as stated above, getting my tumblr friend Nebby's birthday fic in there -- still need to actually do the Song Saturday post, though.
And I need to sort out my Valice Multiverse queue too, honestly. . .plus answer a few things in my inbox. Luckily, I was smart and took tomorrow off work too! So I have a bit of time this evening to take care of all this. Gonna try not to stay up TOO late, but -- you guys know me. At least I can sleep in tomorrow. . .and the weather's supposed to be better too. Here's hoping! Night all!
But not bad enough to keep us away. And not bad enough to keep a lot of OTHER people away either -- Mystic Aquarium was surprisingly busy! O.O Lots of families with young kids, and at least one field trip I spotted (some adults with "chaperone" badges herding children). Fortunately it wasn't so crowded that we couldn't go around and look at everything, but yeah, more people than we were expecting for such a cool, bleh day.
Still, we had a lot of fun! Mystic is kind of smaller than I remember it being, but there was still a lot of cool exhibits to look at -- jellies, coral reef fish, marshland fish, big sharks, little sharks in a touch pool (I petted one, as did Mom), beluga whales, seals, sea lions, penguins. . . It was a good walk around the area. :) There was also a dinosaur exhibit, with fairly decent animatronics (though of the classic "scaley" type -- one feathered dino, though!) and a bird pavilion, "Boomerang Island," with lots of Australian parrots that you could feed with seed sticks -- our value tickets entitled us to one stick apiece for free. It was fun to go in and feed them -- I even got one to stand on my stick for a little bit. :) We also got to watch a short movie at either the 4-D Theater or the Blue Theater with our tickets -- the woman at the birds suggested we do the "Smallfoot 4-D" one, so that's what we watched. It was quite the amusing little film -- about a Yeti discovering the "Smallfoot," or us ordinary sized humans, actually exist, and the problems that result -- and had some surprisingly awesome 4-D effects, including real snow! (Yes, I'm serious -- they had a snow-maker hidden somewhere and occasionally unleashed it on us.) And, to our surprise, we discovered while looking up the voice actors (one of the characters is voiced by James Corbin, of "Carpool Karaoke" fame) that the 4-D cut is actually a shortened version of a full film from 2018! So we're going to try and rent the full version. :) And we rounded things out with the sea lion show, which was a lot of fun -- they did lots of goofy things like a sea lion "fashion show" and "barking competition." And one lucky kid sitting in front of us got to get up close and personal and demonstrate a few hand signals they taught him. :) Very nice way to end the visit.
We also took a quick stroll around Old Mistick Village -- most of the shops held no real interest for us (again, overpriced or didn't have anything we wanted), but there was one place that caught my eye as we headed out for lunch -- a little tea shop/kitsch store with an "Alice In Wonderland" theme. Basically, I noticed they had the Doorknob from the animated Disney film as part of their door, then realized the whole window display was all Wonderland too. So yeah, we definitely had to go inside! Very small place, consisting mostly of AiW-themed toys (a lot of Tim Burton's Alice stuff) and a little counter for drinks/nibbles. But I did find something I liked there -- necklaces! They had some fun stuff, including a Drink Me bottle pendant, a watch pendant, a Hatter's hat pendant. . .I settled on a faux-watch pendant (as in, it has watch numbers and hands painted on), with a color illustration of Alice with the Duchess's pig baby from the first book. Only $8.50, so it was easily the cheapest souvenir I could have bought. And it's a nice addition to my necklace collection. :)
Lunch was at the Steak Loft, a restaurant my parents have eaten at before and were impressed by. I -- didn't find it to be all that impressive, honestly. Service was surprisingly slow despite us arriving right after they opened; the salad bar plates were soaking wet; and my chicken caesar wrap was just okay -- I found the chicken kind of flavorless. Salad bar was decent though, and my parents were satisfied with their clam chowder, so. . . *shrug* Dinner at home was much better -- bacon cheeseburgers with some absolutely delectable watermelon and cantaloupe, pickle slices, and chips, and a tiny hot fudge sundae afterwards. :)
So yeah, a very nice day out, I gotta say! And I even accomplished a few things when I got home, namely:
-->Doing the second draft of Gigs's upcoming birthday gift fic (I was feeling a touch too tired to work on "Secundus 2" and figured, since I had to get Nebby's into the queue for this Saturday, I might as well get Gigs's sorted now)
-->Watching CallMeKevin take on Lifeline, a PS2 game where you literally have to tell the player character (well, sort of -- your character is you, playing mission control for a waitress named Rio, but she's the one actually doing things) what to do -- Kevin struggled a bit to make the AI actually understand him XD
-->Watching two more collabs between The Sim Supply and Deligracy -- on Deli's channel, they did the first part of an Island Living build where James was supposed to follow whatever Deli told him to do, as she was the boss and he was her "bish" (this semi-worked -- his own natural bossy tendencies started reasserting themselves near the end of the video XD They made a pretty nice house exterior, though!); on James's channel, they worked together to try and answer quizzes about James's own channel, Let's Plays (namely Super Sim and all the Bigwallet stuff), and Simming career (they got less than half right on the first, managed through a combination of hard thinking and sheer luck to ace the second, then returned to form and got less than half right on the third XD James definitely proving he retains VERY LITTLE memory of any of his Let's Plays).
-->Getting more of my VictorLuvsAlice queue sorted, including fixing up my "Victor's matching suits for Alice's Wonderland outfits" post (what, someone left a comment on "Fixing You" saying they wouldn't mind cosplaying Victor in one! I wanted to provide more detail on what they all looked like) and, as stated above, getting my tumblr friend Nebby's birthday fic in there -- still need to actually do the Song Saturday post, though.
And I need to sort out my Valice Multiverse queue too, honestly. . .plus answer a few things in my inbox. Luckily, I was smart and took tomorrow off work too! So I have a bit of time this evening to take care of all this. Gonna try not to stay up TOO late, but -- you guys know me. At least I can sleep in tomorrow. . .and the weather's supposed to be better too. Here's hoping! Night all!
