Thrown-Off Tuesday
Dec. 29th, 2020 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickMostly because, this morning, we had to replace a busted light switch for one of the kitchen lights (the light wouldn't turn on anymore, and my dad determined it was the switch rather than the light itself). A process which involved, of course, having to turn off the electricity to certain parts of the house via the circuit breaker. The circuit breaker that was, apparently, never properly labeled.
Cue my Dad flipping switches on the circuit breaker while Mom looked to see what lights went out and I had to yell what she told me over to him because he couldn't hear her if she yelled. A process that involved a lot more cursing and pissy behavior than it had to because god forbid it take Mom a second to tell me what lights were out so I could relay it to him. And with me in the middle of them getting angry at each other. . .it really doesn't help that I'm pretty sure I'm PMSing, and thus more prone to getting upset myself. I ended up spending pretty much the entire morning just calming myself down from that bullshit, to the point where I didn't make my bed or get dressed until noon. (Admittedly, I got up around 10 AM, so it wasn't THAT long.) Productive time lost, but what can you do?
Anyway -- I still managed to do decently on the old to-do list:
1. Continue catching up on Kevin and Gray in my Subscriptions: Check! I am now totally caught up on the regular episodes of both Kevin and Gray! :D
Call Me Kevin:
1. GTA V, but destroyed by the Chaos Mod! Kevin, as if you need the help. ;) Though in this case, it was actually Kevin giving the game a chance to fight back. You see, the mod works by setting a timer, represented by a blue bar filling up at the top of the screen. Every time the bar fills all the way – bang! Something completely random happens. And I mean completely random – you could get all cars turning green; you could get whales falling from the sky; you could get teleported to a random location on the map; you could have a blue Sultan sedan spawn in with the occupants trying to kill you; you could get Griefer Jesus spawning in trying to kill you; you could get a chimp companion; you could get stormy weather; you could get no gravity on all vehicles; you could simply DIE. XD Poor Kevin actually tried to play a couple of missions like this (Michael doing stuff with his kids and then a jewelry store heist), and DAMN was it hard to complete each one! Poor guy kept begging for nothing too horrible to happen every time he got near a checkpoint. XD And yet he claimed to have fun, which should tell you all you need to know about Kevin. XD
2. Sims 2, but it’s Christmas 2020! This one was the highlights of a stream he did, where he recreated Default in Sims 2 and set up Christmas for her! She got a race car bed, a party light in the bedroom (someone’s on the same wavelength as Plumbella), fifty million Christmas music speakers, and THE WORLD’S MOST FLAMMABLE TREE. Oh, and a puppy, which she named “Dog.” XD At any rate, Christmas was fairly chaotic, mostly because of said flammable tree – Default died TWICE because Kevin refused to buy a smoke alarm and couldn’t get her to stop panicking long enough to put out the fire or contact the fire department. So he decided to go over to the neighbor (Brandi Broke), make her and Default friends, then move her in to lock her in a room with the phone in case another fire occurred. After first getting rid of Brandi’s kids – the younger one, Beau, was taken away by social services; the older one, Dustin, he drowned in a pool (just like his old man!).
And then Brandi died because she was pregnant and starving. XD Kevin gave up and got a smoke alarm. . .and then sold it after getting advice from the chat to adopt Brandi’s newly-orphaned child and lock HIM in a room. XD Unfortunately, he was taken away by social services again after Default left him to go to her Gamer job. . .but on the plus side, the tree broke and had no more interactions, so she was safe from fiery death anyway. Merry four days after Christmas, everyone! XD
GrayStillPlays:
1. Back to Turbo Dismount for more horrifyingly hard challenges! A vertical traffic dodge that he eventually completed with the office chair (our favorite pink tricycle ALMOST made it, but a replay proved he’d been brushed on the way down); a hell-ride through twitching fans and traffic that Gray managed to Tony Hawk his way through; a bowling challenge where being a cop was the key (even if one pin threatened to STAND BACK UP after he knocked it down); and then a series of difficult manual-steering jumps where he had to resort to using the masochism and an off-brand X-wing. As usual, gotta give him and Nic Rage the props for tenacity! Especially since poor Nic kept getting stuck in his vehicles upon landing this time. XD Ever had your torso become one with an office chair? Doesn’t look like fun.
2. Back to GTA V for more 99.9% uninstall stunt races! This time, it was BMX races in the snow! Because Gray hates himself. And likes making Florida Man ride a cute pink bicycle. Yes, BICYCLE – no internal combustion engine for Florida Man on these two maps! He had to complete them with leg power and masochism! Which, considering both included horrific jumps and terrible wall rides, and one an actual LOOP-DE-LOOP. . .well, I don’t think it’s surprising Gray said he was going to melt down his real-life bicycle once he was done. XD
3. Back to Happy Wheels for more of Gray getting his various character mutilated in fun ways! We had a Segway run with butcher cleaver butterflies (plus a secret area that really tested Gray’s resolve to flutter-kick his way past all obstacles); a super-fast bottle run; a super-LONG bottle run (with the bottles laid sideways to facilitate the longness); a deadly pogo jump; and of course the obligatory bottle flip where Gray can show off his chops. Such as landing a bottle on a platform with a point on it. And two bottles on the space reserved for him. XD Ahhh, such good stuff.
2. Get back to writing on "Londerland Bloodlines:" Check! A little later than I wanted, due to helping with the 3-D Hogwarts puzzle after supper (I managed to piece a few things for the various roofs together, but DAMN does everything look the same), but I did get another page on it. Alice managed to successfully distract all the thugs from hearing her drop onto the catwalk, and picked the lock on the office door without being noticed, yay. Now all she has to do is plant the Astrolite and get out of there. Which is a BIT trickier when you can only be invisible while crouched, but it’s all good practice for later Obfuscate improvements. . .plus, I’m not gonna kill her when we’ve only just finished the opening part of the game. XD Ah yes, 170 pages in and we’re only just starting to wrap up Santa Monica – are we surprised I decided this had to be at least four separate stories?
3. Buy the Snowy Escape and Nifty Knitting packs and play Sims 4: Check! Got my two packs for a little over $25 bucks, half of what I would have paid normally. :D Haven’t done too much with the content of either yet, though of course Lifestyles are just gonna happen. . .and Victor and Alice are apparently SUPER GOOD at being emotionally mindful. Well, the “Test Save” Victor and Alice are, anyway – I went back to that save for some low-stakes Simming fun, and discovered that some of their favorite activities – listening to music, reading books, playing piano, painting – are very conducive to mindfulness.
. . .This actually annoys me, as this sticks them in the “Fine” emotion and I actually kind of like my Sims feeling things. *grumbles* At least I was able to surge “Ingenuity” for both of them in the end to get some nice inspired moodlets for cooking and playing piano! *sigh* Anyway, they didn’t get up to a heck of a lot (I played over two days, both of which featured a lot of snow – in fact, day one was a blizzard!), but I did have them improve their painting and piano skills; apply for university scholarships (because I’ve decided they’re going to go to university in some capacity – I can’t really do that with any of the Newcrestians!); work on Alice’s cooking skills (she and Victor actually seem to have a system – she cooks, he cleans up); and go on a date once the snow had calmed down some. A very successful date at the Willow Creek nightclub, Blue Velvet. :) It’s so nice to have a version of my OTP where I don’t have to worry about them randomly insulting each other for no reason. . . I’ll probably play them again on Thursday too. Reason? Well, again, their calendar is syncing up with real life, and they’ll be celebrating New Year’s Eve! And considering Alice has a whim to get engaged to Victor, I might send them on a very special date on that night. . .
4. Get in a workout: Check! Another bike ride, and another chunk of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! He finished off the Saugus stuff watching Jake reunite with his family, all while accusing Jake of murdering an innocent settler (and then editing in that, oh yeah, it was him with his plasma grenades), then hit the Slog briefly to – not pick up a quest from Arlen Glass, because he’d already done that. Whoops. Well, this is a long playlist – we’re only about halfway through, I think? Anyway, after that it was back to Parson’s Insane Asylum to check in with Jack Cabot and get the “Lorenzo’s Artifact” Gun, which has a random chance of telekinetically yeeting people. Basically it’s a unique legendary – but instead of being intrinsically tied to the Gamma Gun Jack gives you, like most legendaries, it’s instead a mod ON said gun that can be removed. (Might be only one of two in the game, in fact – I know that the “Sacrificial” mod that comes on the special machete you get in Dunwich Borers, Kremvh's Tooth, can be removed and put on a different machete as well.) So once he got home, Jon took it off the original gun and fitted it on his Lucky Gamma Gun and added an additional mod to boost the damage. This thing should just SLAUGHTER anything that isn’t immune to radiation now!
That plus turning in the Finch Farm quest to Preston ended episode 33, and we started episode 34 with Jon declaring that he and Grills were going to go bobblehead hunting after doing a few quest turn-ins! He started by visiting Diamond City to have his Insomnia cured and to pick up a High-Energy Magnet from Myrna’s shop, then called in a Vertibird to go visit the now-cured Virgil in the Glowing Sea. Now free to help himself to Virgil's stuff (and noting that Virgil’s living quarters actually do change when he goes from Super Mutant to human again), Grills did so, then he teleported out and hiked over to the Old North Church to turn in a few quests for the Railroad – reporting the successfully-removed Courser and the tragedy of Ticonderoga. He also advanced another stage in “Underground Undercover,” with the job of finding Patriot a password for an important security system, though we’ll see how far he actually gets through that. . . And then, after that, it was time to head on over to Boston Airport, build a few actuators, and get the quest to grab Liberty Prime his nukes so he can take on the Institute! Also get paid by Proctor Teagan for bullying more farms into providing the BOS food. Before heading out to meet up with Haylen and then find the site where they believe the nukes were being stored, though, Jon swam out to meet with Zao and finish repairing the Yangtze. Mainly, by slaughtering the ghoulified crew so he could get the one unfired missile from the missile bays as a source of nuclear power. Less radioactive than Jon feared, at least – and Grills may be getting a nice hat out of the deal via looting the First Mate’s corpse. :p
5. Set up tumblr queues (I've been bad about this on Victor Luvs Alice lately): This is where I fell down the most -- I got all the pictures for the latest Newcrest Adventures update sorted last night, but due to the delays caused by replacing the light and working on the puzzle, I never actually queued anything up. Though I do want it known I at least got my Valice Multiverse ask sorted early, and that's in the queue over there! So -- quarter of a check? *shrug* I do intend to try and get a couple of things done before I go to bed -- can always ask which neighborhoods people think might be best for my planned Bloodlines and Fallout 4-themed challenges! And I have a few New Year's Resolutions to make for my fic-writing for 2021 too. . .
Other:
-->I did make that Spotify account, and I listened to the first few songs of my friend’s Valice playlist this morning while making my bed and getting dressed. I don’t know if I was in the right mood for all of them thanks to this morning’s shenanigans, but “Wasteland, Baby!” by Hozier a) should not have that exclamation point, it’s a very slow and vaguely sad song, and b) really feels like it suits my “Fallout of Darkness” Victor and Alice pairing, from what I could get from the lyrics (not just the title, I swear). So that’s nice. I’ll probably continue listening to it over the next few days, seeing what I like and don’t like.
-->The t-shirt for my birthday present came today -- however, it needs to be washed (again) after my mom moved a plant and then made the mistake of touching it with dirty hands. Ah well, at least all the parts are here now!
Okay, time to finish answering DW comments and doing that queue stuff I meant to do earlier. . .but before that, time for tomorrow's to-dos:
1. Watch the two OXBox/OXtra list videos in my Watch Later
2. Write some more on "In A World Of His Own"
3. Play Fallout 4 and try to get up to at least meeting Dogmeat, preferably to the Museum of Freedom
4. Get in a workout (maybe try for a treadmill walk)
Yeah, let's keep it at that -- I'll decide when I want to watch the OXtra "Presh Mems" video and Call Me Kevin's "Rewind" tomorrow (they're both end-of-year wrap-ups, so Thursday and New Year's Eve feels the most appropriate. . .but I have to balance that with the usual movie marathon we do on New Year's (LEGO Movie marathon this year -- definitely the main two, hopefully LEGO Batman as well if it's in tomorrow), meaning I'll have a slight time crunch on that day, and they're two and a half hours combined. . .). We'll see how I feel, I guess!
Anyway -- stuff to do, still trying to keep to about a one o'clock bedtime for now, so best to get going. Hopefully tomorrow starts better, and I feel slightly less twitchy and emotional about everything. Night all!
Cue my Dad flipping switches on the circuit breaker while Mom looked to see what lights went out and I had to yell what she told me over to him because he couldn't hear her if she yelled. A process that involved a lot more cursing and pissy behavior than it had to because god forbid it take Mom a second to tell me what lights were out so I could relay it to him. And with me in the middle of them getting angry at each other. . .it really doesn't help that I'm pretty sure I'm PMSing, and thus more prone to getting upset myself. I ended up spending pretty much the entire morning just calming myself down from that bullshit, to the point where I didn't make my bed or get dressed until noon. (Admittedly, I got up around 10 AM, so it wasn't THAT long.) Productive time lost, but what can you do?
Anyway -- I still managed to do decently on the old to-do list:
1. Continue catching up on Kevin and Gray in my Subscriptions: Check! I am now totally caught up on the regular episodes of both Kevin and Gray! :D
Call Me Kevin:
1. GTA V, but destroyed by the Chaos Mod! Kevin, as if you need the help. ;) Though in this case, it was actually Kevin giving the game a chance to fight back. You see, the mod works by setting a timer, represented by a blue bar filling up at the top of the screen. Every time the bar fills all the way – bang! Something completely random happens. And I mean completely random – you could get all cars turning green; you could get whales falling from the sky; you could get teleported to a random location on the map; you could have a blue Sultan sedan spawn in with the occupants trying to kill you; you could get Griefer Jesus spawning in trying to kill you; you could get a chimp companion; you could get stormy weather; you could get no gravity on all vehicles; you could simply DIE. XD Poor Kevin actually tried to play a couple of missions like this (Michael doing stuff with his kids and then a jewelry store heist), and DAMN was it hard to complete each one! Poor guy kept begging for nothing too horrible to happen every time he got near a checkpoint. XD And yet he claimed to have fun, which should tell you all you need to know about Kevin. XD
2. Sims 2, but it’s Christmas 2020! This one was the highlights of a stream he did, where he recreated Default in Sims 2 and set up Christmas for her! She got a race car bed, a party light in the bedroom (someone’s on the same wavelength as Plumbella), fifty million Christmas music speakers, and THE WORLD’S MOST FLAMMABLE TREE. Oh, and a puppy, which she named “Dog.” XD At any rate, Christmas was fairly chaotic, mostly because of said flammable tree – Default died TWICE because Kevin refused to buy a smoke alarm and couldn’t get her to stop panicking long enough to put out the fire or contact the fire department. So he decided to go over to the neighbor (Brandi Broke), make her and Default friends, then move her in to lock her in a room with the phone in case another fire occurred. After first getting rid of Brandi’s kids – the younger one, Beau, was taken away by social services; the older one, Dustin, he drowned in a pool (just like his old man!).
And then Brandi died because she was pregnant and starving. XD Kevin gave up and got a smoke alarm. . .and then sold it after getting advice from the chat to adopt Brandi’s newly-orphaned child and lock HIM in a room. XD Unfortunately, he was taken away by social services again after Default left him to go to her Gamer job. . .but on the plus side, the tree broke and had no more interactions, so she was safe from fiery death anyway. Merry four days after Christmas, everyone! XD
GrayStillPlays:
1. Back to Turbo Dismount for more horrifyingly hard challenges! A vertical traffic dodge that he eventually completed with the office chair (our favorite pink tricycle ALMOST made it, but a replay proved he’d been brushed on the way down); a hell-ride through twitching fans and traffic that Gray managed to Tony Hawk his way through; a bowling challenge where being a cop was the key (even if one pin threatened to STAND BACK UP after he knocked it down); and then a series of difficult manual-steering jumps where he had to resort to using the masochism and an off-brand X-wing. As usual, gotta give him and Nic Rage the props for tenacity! Especially since poor Nic kept getting stuck in his vehicles upon landing this time. XD Ever had your torso become one with an office chair? Doesn’t look like fun.
2. Back to GTA V for more 99.9% uninstall stunt races! This time, it was BMX races in the snow! Because Gray hates himself. And likes making Florida Man ride a cute pink bicycle. Yes, BICYCLE – no internal combustion engine for Florida Man on these two maps! He had to complete them with leg power and masochism! Which, considering both included horrific jumps and terrible wall rides, and one an actual LOOP-DE-LOOP. . .well, I don’t think it’s surprising Gray said he was going to melt down his real-life bicycle once he was done. XD
3. Back to Happy Wheels for more of Gray getting his various character mutilated in fun ways! We had a Segway run with butcher cleaver butterflies (plus a secret area that really tested Gray’s resolve to flutter-kick his way past all obstacles); a super-fast bottle run; a super-LONG bottle run (with the bottles laid sideways to facilitate the longness); a deadly pogo jump; and of course the obligatory bottle flip where Gray can show off his chops. Such as landing a bottle on a platform with a point on it. And two bottles on the space reserved for him. XD Ahhh, such good stuff.
2. Get back to writing on "Londerland Bloodlines:" Check! A little later than I wanted, due to helping with the 3-D Hogwarts puzzle after supper (I managed to piece a few things for the various roofs together, but DAMN does everything look the same), but I did get another page on it. Alice managed to successfully distract all the thugs from hearing her drop onto the catwalk, and picked the lock on the office door without being noticed, yay. Now all she has to do is plant the Astrolite and get out of there. Which is a BIT trickier when you can only be invisible while crouched, but it’s all good practice for later Obfuscate improvements. . .plus, I’m not gonna kill her when we’ve only just finished the opening part of the game. XD Ah yes, 170 pages in and we’re only just starting to wrap up Santa Monica – are we surprised I decided this had to be at least four separate stories?
3. Buy the Snowy Escape and Nifty Knitting packs and play Sims 4: Check! Got my two packs for a little over $25 bucks, half of what I would have paid normally. :D Haven’t done too much with the content of either yet, though of course Lifestyles are just gonna happen. . .and Victor and Alice are apparently SUPER GOOD at being emotionally mindful. Well, the “Test Save” Victor and Alice are, anyway – I went back to that save for some low-stakes Simming fun, and discovered that some of their favorite activities – listening to music, reading books, playing piano, painting – are very conducive to mindfulness.
. . .This actually annoys me, as this sticks them in the “Fine” emotion and I actually kind of like my Sims feeling things. *grumbles* At least I was able to surge “Ingenuity” for both of them in the end to get some nice inspired moodlets for cooking and playing piano! *sigh* Anyway, they didn’t get up to a heck of a lot (I played over two days, both of which featured a lot of snow – in fact, day one was a blizzard!), but I did have them improve their painting and piano skills; apply for university scholarships (because I’ve decided they’re going to go to university in some capacity – I can’t really do that with any of the Newcrestians!); work on Alice’s cooking skills (she and Victor actually seem to have a system – she cooks, he cleans up); and go on a date once the snow had calmed down some. A very successful date at the Willow Creek nightclub, Blue Velvet. :) It’s so nice to have a version of my OTP where I don’t have to worry about them randomly insulting each other for no reason. . . I’ll probably play them again on Thursday too. Reason? Well, again, their calendar is syncing up with real life, and they’ll be celebrating New Year’s Eve! And considering Alice has a whim to get engaged to Victor, I might send them on a very special date on that night. . .
4. Get in a workout: Check! Another bike ride, and another chunk of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! He finished off the Saugus stuff watching Jake reunite with his family, all while accusing Jake of murdering an innocent settler (and then editing in that, oh yeah, it was him with his plasma grenades), then hit the Slog briefly to – not pick up a quest from Arlen Glass, because he’d already done that. Whoops. Well, this is a long playlist – we’re only about halfway through, I think? Anyway, after that it was back to Parson’s Insane Asylum to check in with Jack Cabot and get the “Lorenzo’s Artifact” Gun, which has a random chance of telekinetically yeeting people. Basically it’s a unique legendary – but instead of being intrinsically tied to the Gamma Gun Jack gives you, like most legendaries, it’s instead a mod ON said gun that can be removed. (Might be only one of two in the game, in fact – I know that the “Sacrificial” mod that comes on the special machete you get in Dunwich Borers, Kremvh's Tooth, can be removed and put on a different machete as well.) So once he got home, Jon took it off the original gun and fitted it on his Lucky Gamma Gun and added an additional mod to boost the damage. This thing should just SLAUGHTER anything that isn’t immune to radiation now!
That plus turning in the Finch Farm quest to Preston ended episode 33, and we started episode 34 with Jon declaring that he and Grills were going to go bobblehead hunting after doing a few quest turn-ins! He started by visiting Diamond City to have his Insomnia cured and to pick up a High-Energy Magnet from Myrna’s shop, then called in a Vertibird to go visit the now-cured Virgil in the Glowing Sea. Now free to help himself to Virgil's stuff (and noting that Virgil’s living quarters actually do change when he goes from Super Mutant to human again), Grills did so, then he teleported out and hiked over to the Old North Church to turn in a few quests for the Railroad – reporting the successfully-removed Courser and the tragedy of Ticonderoga. He also advanced another stage in “Underground Undercover,” with the job of finding Patriot a password for an important security system, though we’ll see how far he actually gets through that. . . And then, after that, it was time to head on over to Boston Airport, build a few actuators, and get the quest to grab Liberty Prime his nukes so he can take on the Institute! Also get paid by Proctor Teagan for bullying more farms into providing the BOS food. Before heading out to meet up with Haylen and then find the site where they believe the nukes were being stored, though, Jon swam out to meet with Zao and finish repairing the Yangtze. Mainly, by slaughtering the ghoulified crew so he could get the one unfired missile from the missile bays as a source of nuclear power. Less radioactive than Jon feared, at least – and Grills may be getting a nice hat out of the deal via looting the First Mate’s corpse. :p
5. Set up tumblr queues (I've been bad about this on Victor Luvs Alice lately): This is where I fell down the most -- I got all the pictures for the latest Newcrest Adventures update sorted last night, but due to the delays caused by replacing the light and working on the puzzle, I never actually queued anything up. Though I do want it known I at least got my Valice Multiverse ask sorted early, and that's in the queue over there! So -- quarter of a check? *shrug* I do intend to try and get a couple of things done before I go to bed -- can always ask which neighborhoods people think might be best for my planned Bloodlines and Fallout 4-themed challenges! And I have a few New Year's Resolutions to make for my fic-writing for 2021 too. . .
Other:
-->I did make that Spotify account, and I listened to the first few songs of my friend’s Valice playlist this morning while making my bed and getting dressed. I don’t know if I was in the right mood for all of them thanks to this morning’s shenanigans, but “Wasteland, Baby!” by Hozier a) should not have that exclamation point, it’s a very slow and vaguely sad song, and b) really feels like it suits my “Fallout of Darkness” Victor and Alice pairing, from what I could get from the lyrics (not just the title, I swear). So that’s nice. I’ll probably continue listening to it over the next few days, seeing what I like and don’t like.
-->The t-shirt for my birthday present came today -- however, it needs to be washed (again) after my mom moved a plant and then made the mistake of touching it with dirty hands. Ah well, at least all the parts are here now!
Okay, time to finish answering DW comments and doing that queue stuff I meant to do earlier. . .but before that, time for tomorrow's to-dos:
1. Watch the two OXBox/OXtra list videos in my Watch Later
2. Write some more on "In A World Of His Own"
3. Play Fallout 4 and try to get up to at least meeting Dogmeat, preferably to the Museum of Freedom
4. Get in a workout (maybe try for a treadmill walk)
Yeah, let's keep it at that -- I'll decide when I want to watch the OXtra "Presh Mems" video and Call Me Kevin's "Rewind" tomorrow (they're both end-of-year wrap-ups, so Thursday and New Year's Eve feels the most appropriate. . .but I have to balance that with the usual movie marathon we do on New Year's (LEGO Movie marathon this year -- definitely the main two, hopefully LEGO Batman as well if it's in tomorrow), meaning I'll have a slight time crunch on that day, and they're two and a half hours combined. . .). We'll see how I feel, I guess!
Anyway -- stuff to do, still trying to keep to about a one o'clock bedtime for now, so best to get going. Hopefully tomorrow starts better, and I feel slightly less twitchy and emotional about everything. Night all!
