Less Rushed Thursday
Mar. 24th, 2022 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickNo ultra-long videos to power through = less-stressed-from-keeping-up-with-shit Vicky. Not that I don't LIKE stuff like last night's finale to "Every Lot Challenge Challenge," it's just harder to deal with on a weeknight, is all. But lo, we didn't have that tonight, and so I bring you a somewhat-less-rushed to-do list:
Work – Slightly busy and annoying start (mainly involving a language barrier we had to work around to update someone’s credit card), but it got pretty quiet by the end of the day, with most of my day spent shutting down pledges where the payment method was no longer good. Might as well not continue to try and charge the card, right? *shrug* Considering what kind of annoying days I’ve had in the past, I’ll take this.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the Oxventure “Exhibition Impossible,” Part II! After Egbert’s canape tornado concluded, the group spotted the host of the party, Victor Dietrich, mingling among his guests – and very clearly trying not to stare at Egbert. XD Aware that, if he spoke to them, they might be rumbled and forced to leave the premises (or worse), the gang took the lay of the land (which was mainly “big grand hall with lots of hallways off to various labeled exhibits) and split up into teams – Team Coin (Corazon, Dob, and Merilwen – and Panniers, technically), who headed straight off to the coin exhibit to find the cursed coin; Team Occult (Prudence), who wandered into the occult exhibit because oooh shiny new evil; and Team Distraction (Egbert), who remained behind to actually chat with Victor and, well, serve as the distraction he clearly already was. XD Their progress on these various tasks was – mixed:
Team Coin found that the coin exhibit was downright freaking huge, with examples of currency from all over the damn continent. All nicely displayed, with audio diaries and such, but much too large to search in a single night. Dob and Corazon tried to question one of the staff in the area to see if she could find the coin for them (pretending to be a professional sketch artist and his pirate patron), but that quickly degenerated into overly-exaggerated winks and everyone faking that they knew what a “champyard bezel” is. XD Merilwen actually made an attempt to find the coin on her own, but rolling a seven meant all she found was a gold monkey butt she got unduly excited over. XD Eventually the decision was made to call Prudence over so she could Detect Magic her way to the coin. . .
Team Occult, meanwhile, just followed the eldritch energies to the occult exhibit, where she and her two grimoires took in such sights as ancient ritual daggers and whatnot. Johnny had Jane roll an Arcana check while she was in there –
And she got a one. XD This led to Prudence finding herself fascinated by a strange orb – which locked her gaze and started whispering into her mind for her to pick it up and claim it, before melting away the glass in order to facilitate this. Prudence was a TINY bit aware that she was being manipulated, but – well, she was caught up in the orb’s spell, and besides, taking weird evil shit is kind of her thing. So she claimed the orb, which Johnny informed her was in fact a kind of puzzle box as it shrank itself down for her for easier transport. Prudence was thrilled with this information. Around then, Dob’s frantic attempts to Message her finally got into her head, and – after secreting away her new puzzle palantir – she went and joined the others, doing her Detect Magic thing and finding the coin in a special room dedicated to trade on the sea, on its own stone plinth in a glass box. Interestingly, there are no traps magical or physical so far that anyone can find. . .
And Team Distraction – had a nice chat with Victor Dietrich! Who did NOT immediately call Egbert out for being an uninvited guest and instead just rolled with him. They talked about the soirees, and why they’re held only every five years – turns out Victor’s deal is that he was an adventurer, and once he decided to retire, he started feeling a bit guilty about all the loot he’d taken from people over the years. So he decided to make his house a vast museum – but his adventuring had left him with a distinct distaste for socializing, so he can only manage to invite people (the “worthiest,” in his opinion, which includes people from all social stratas) in to see it all once every five years. He stated that, on his death, he intends to have the defenses dismantled and make the place free for all. (Egbert warned him that maybe don’t make that conditional on your death, as there are nasty people in the world.) Talk then turned to Egbert’s paladin-ness, and he explained he was thrown out of his old order and is trying to start a new one. Victor indicated an interest, and once Egbert twigged that the guy was actually ASKING for his pamphlets, and is in fact interested in the whole spiel (with the others mocking him for trying to force his pamphlets on others, but the moment someone ASKS. . .), they hurried off to the guy’s study to chat further.
So yeah, so far EGBERT is having the best night. Who would have thunk? I left it off with Team Coin preparing to steal the coin, so – we’ll see how that goes tomorrow!
2. Continue the final posting edit of Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check – quick and simple tonight, with Alice letting Knox know that his spy problem is taken care of (and asking him about his employment with Arthur – Knox confessed to just walking away after he got ghouled, and she encouraged him to at least quit officially), and then going up and facing the music with Therese. And then completely confusing Therese by being genuinely contrite, caring about the fate of the ghosts in the hotel, and letting slip the bare details of some of her other adventures. XD Yeah, this fledgling has been up to a lot over the past few days! And this night is looking pretty busy as well, with Alice heading to the Surfside Diner to supposedly help calm down an upset Jeannette. . .but we all know how that goes, don’t we?
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Back up to full check – my instincts were right, and none of the people I follow uploaded today! So I had the time not only for both the videos I missed yesterday, but also a quick bonus –
A) Actually started with the latest Plumbella upload – “I fear The Sims is a little more unhinged than we anticipated,” aka Episode 2 of the Sims 2 PSP LP! Which was – interesting, to say the least. Yes, Espirtu Estate, Plumbella’s new home, is very haunted, with no less than three ghosts! The one in the music room in particular was the victim of a black widow, drowned in his own pool and with his body never found. . . Also, on her trip around the neighborhood, she’s discovered the Beakers have kidnapped the local garbageman; another fellow, an inventor, basically considers his wife just another robot and has asked Plumbella to befriend her (Plumbella instead “borrowed” their computer for a while); the black widow, Hazel, has already lined up another husband, and is looking to get Plumbella to do her housework for her; and her new employer, Dr. Newlow, not only buys secrets (the one she’s been collecting around the world), but is also secretly the supervillain DR. DOMINION and has her under mind control! And on top of everything, the entire town was built over a graveyard and the citizens can play zombie whack-a-mole to earn cash. No WONDER Plumbella’s character had two breakdowns and had to be institutionalized for a while! Fortunately Dr. Newlow DOES pay well for secrets, so she was able to clear that debt after talking to him, but still. . .keeping your sanity up in this world seems to be a bit of a tricky endeavor! XD As does getting anything done when you’re having trouble with the social games. . .we’ll see if anything improves for her next week!
B) Then it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin and a return to the buggy mess that is Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: The Definitive Edition! Apparently Rockstar has had some time to patch this thing now. . .and it’s made very little difference, with the best feature being the addition of mission checkpoints for those times when you’re Kevining it. :p Like trying to roadblock valets so you can sneak into a parking garage ahead of them to kill them and steal their clothes, only for your roadblock cars to just keep vanishing. And then you go ahead and just steal your target’s car instead of pretending to be a valet. And then you see a knife fight, accidentally anger the winner, and have him chase you ACROSS THE ENTIRE MAP while you take your car back to the garage to plant drugs in it – only to break down sobbing as the guy is run over by a tram. XD Or you could run around throwing explosives at temporary buildings at a construction site, only for one to pop out of existence, causing the freaked-out foreman to hide in a port-o-potty. And then you’re beat up by the other builders before escaping up a crane and tricking them into walking into a wall. And then you manage to lure them all into the pit where you’ve shoved the foreman in his potty – and then cover them all with cement! Or you could go get driving lessons, but because you don’t know the controls, you end up running over all the cones. Or you could team up with your friend Cesar to take pictures of new gang members on the block from a roof, only to anger the police, accidentally kill him by lightly bumping his car the first time you arrive, accidentally kill him by rolling his car because you refuse to drive safe, and then making him wait on the roof while you have some awful chicken and then vomit three feet away from your actual body. XD Bottom line, the game is still a buggy mess, but Kevin is still enjoying being Kevin in it. You do you, Kevin!
C) And finally it was time for Gray and more Happy Wheels! Started with the usual bottle flip, this time with four different endings (secret ending of family eating watermelon; the pineapple of pain crushing your body; finding all the alcoholism, and just getting yeeted to hell), then it was onto the Everything Fall (ball fall, glass break, triangle fall, ball pit, harpoons, wrecking balls, random furniture, all into a SPIKE FALL – Gray really had to practice to find the right combination of pain and Segway to win); a strange board where you had to ride a moving beam to victory (98% of people can do it! XD); an “impossible lebel” for Pogo Man to jump into (the trick is to get the harpoons to blow up the mines and then just take a whole ton of arrows to the face); “Gray’s Weird Tunnel” where you had to hitch a ride on these strange rotating creatures roaming toward the finish (or, if you’re Gray, fall behind them halfway through and spend three minutes crawling to the end to get your head smashed when you win); another “don’t move” heart transplant board (pretty simple one this time); a rope swing FIGHT (where you had to carefully swing into your various opponents, then survive a final spike fall – Gray ended up using his last opponent as a human shield to cushion his fall XD); and finally “Gray Vs Skynet,” where Gray had to face off against Skynet’s various defenses, including mines, battle axes either rotating or just bobbing up and down in midair, monster worms beneath the earth, a crusher corridor, and worst of all – STAIRS THAT WERE VERY HARD TO CLIMB WITHOUT LOSING HIS HELMET. XD But he got to the end and was rewarded with infinite watermelons. Nice. (And now I want to see Gray versus a Terminator – has to be at least half as entertaining as him versus the Baby in Yellow, right?)
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – two ask replies over at Valice Multiverse, nothing too major!
*nods* Not bad, not bad at all -- though I must remind myself tomorrow to add Newt's story to the queue on Victor Luvs Alice. As for now, though, I must head out and get some sleep. Friday tomorrow, yaaay (and ACTUAL Friday, not fake Friday like I thought for a couple of seconds this morning). Night all!
Work – Slightly busy and annoying start (mainly involving a language barrier we had to work around to update someone’s credit card), but it got pretty quiet by the end of the day, with most of my day spent shutting down pledges where the payment method was no longer good. Might as well not continue to try and charge the card, right? *shrug* Considering what kind of annoying days I’ve had in the past, I’ll take this.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the Oxventure “Exhibition Impossible,” Part II! After Egbert’s canape tornado concluded, the group spotted the host of the party, Victor Dietrich, mingling among his guests – and very clearly trying not to stare at Egbert. XD Aware that, if he spoke to them, they might be rumbled and forced to leave the premises (or worse), the gang took the lay of the land (which was mainly “big grand hall with lots of hallways off to various labeled exhibits) and split up into teams – Team Coin (Corazon, Dob, and Merilwen – and Panniers, technically), who headed straight off to the coin exhibit to find the cursed coin; Team Occult (Prudence), who wandered into the occult exhibit because oooh shiny new evil; and Team Distraction (Egbert), who remained behind to actually chat with Victor and, well, serve as the distraction he clearly already was. XD Their progress on these various tasks was – mixed:
Team Coin found that the coin exhibit was downright freaking huge, with examples of currency from all over the damn continent. All nicely displayed, with audio diaries and such, but much too large to search in a single night. Dob and Corazon tried to question one of the staff in the area to see if she could find the coin for them (pretending to be a professional sketch artist and his pirate patron), but that quickly degenerated into overly-exaggerated winks and everyone faking that they knew what a “champyard bezel” is. XD Merilwen actually made an attempt to find the coin on her own, but rolling a seven meant all she found was a gold monkey butt she got unduly excited over. XD Eventually the decision was made to call Prudence over so she could Detect Magic her way to the coin. . .
Team Occult, meanwhile, just followed the eldritch energies to the occult exhibit, where she and her two grimoires took in such sights as ancient ritual daggers and whatnot. Johnny had Jane roll an Arcana check while she was in there –
And she got a one. XD This led to Prudence finding herself fascinated by a strange orb – which locked her gaze and started whispering into her mind for her to pick it up and claim it, before melting away the glass in order to facilitate this. Prudence was a TINY bit aware that she was being manipulated, but – well, she was caught up in the orb’s spell, and besides, taking weird evil shit is kind of her thing. So she claimed the orb, which Johnny informed her was in fact a kind of puzzle box as it shrank itself down for her for easier transport. Prudence was thrilled with this information. Around then, Dob’s frantic attempts to Message her finally got into her head, and – after secreting away her new puzzle palantir – she went and joined the others, doing her Detect Magic thing and finding the coin in a special room dedicated to trade on the sea, on its own stone plinth in a glass box. Interestingly, there are no traps magical or physical so far that anyone can find. . .
And Team Distraction – had a nice chat with Victor Dietrich! Who did NOT immediately call Egbert out for being an uninvited guest and instead just rolled with him. They talked about the soirees, and why they’re held only every five years – turns out Victor’s deal is that he was an adventurer, and once he decided to retire, he started feeling a bit guilty about all the loot he’d taken from people over the years. So he decided to make his house a vast museum – but his adventuring had left him with a distinct distaste for socializing, so he can only manage to invite people (the “worthiest,” in his opinion, which includes people from all social stratas) in to see it all once every five years. He stated that, on his death, he intends to have the defenses dismantled and make the place free for all. (Egbert warned him that maybe don’t make that conditional on your death, as there are nasty people in the world.) Talk then turned to Egbert’s paladin-ness, and he explained he was thrown out of his old order and is trying to start a new one. Victor indicated an interest, and once Egbert twigged that the guy was actually ASKING for his pamphlets, and is in fact interested in the whole spiel (with the others mocking him for trying to force his pamphlets on others, but the moment someone ASKS. . .), they hurried off to the guy’s study to chat further.
So yeah, so far EGBERT is having the best night. Who would have thunk? I left it off with Team Coin preparing to steal the coin, so – we’ll see how that goes tomorrow!
2. Continue the final posting edit of Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check – quick and simple tonight, with Alice letting Knox know that his spy problem is taken care of (and asking him about his employment with Arthur – Knox confessed to just walking away after he got ghouled, and she encouraged him to at least quit officially), and then going up and facing the music with Therese. And then completely confusing Therese by being genuinely contrite, caring about the fate of the ghosts in the hotel, and letting slip the bare details of some of her other adventures. XD Yeah, this fledgling has been up to a lot over the past few days! And this night is looking pretty busy as well, with Alice heading to the Surfside Diner to supposedly help calm down an upset Jeannette. . .but we all know how that goes, don’t we?
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Back up to full check – my instincts were right, and none of the people I follow uploaded today! So I had the time not only for both the videos I missed yesterday, but also a quick bonus –
A) Actually started with the latest Plumbella upload – “I fear The Sims is a little more unhinged than we anticipated,” aka Episode 2 of the Sims 2 PSP LP! Which was – interesting, to say the least. Yes, Espirtu Estate, Plumbella’s new home, is very haunted, with no less than three ghosts! The one in the music room in particular was the victim of a black widow, drowned in his own pool and with his body never found. . . Also, on her trip around the neighborhood, she’s discovered the Beakers have kidnapped the local garbageman; another fellow, an inventor, basically considers his wife just another robot and has asked Plumbella to befriend her (Plumbella instead “borrowed” their computer for a while); the black widow, Hazel, has already lined up another husband, and is looking to get Plumbella to do her housework for her; and her new employer, Dr. Newlow, not only buys secrets (the one she’s been collecting around the world), but is also secretly the supervillain DR. DOMINION and has her under mind control! And on top of everything, the entire town was built over a graveyard and the citizens can play zombie whack-a-mole to earn cash. No WONDER Plumbella’s character had two breakdowns and had to be institutionalized for a while! Fortunately Dr. Newlow DOES pay well for secrets, so she was able to clear that debt after talking to him, but still. . .keeping your sanity up in this world seems to be a bit of a tricky endeavor! XD As does getting anything done when you’re having trouble with the social games. . .we’ll see if anything improves for her next week!
B) Then it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin and a return to the buggy mess that is Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: The Definitive Edition! Apparently Rockstar has had some time to patch this thing now. . .and it’s made very little difference, with the best feature being the addition of mission checkpoints for those times when you’re Kevining it. :p Like trying to roadblock valets so you can sneak into a parking garage ahead of them to kill them and steal their clothes, only for your roadblock cars to just keep vanishing. And then you go ahead and just steal your target’s car instead of pretending to be a valet. And then you see a knife fight, accidentally anger the winner, and have him chase you ACROSS THE ENTIRE MAP while you take your car back to the garage to plant drugs in it – only to break down sobbing as the guy is run over by a tram. XD Or you could run around throwing explosives at temporary buildings at a construction site, only for one to pop out of existence, causing the freaked-out foreman to hide in a port-o-potty. And then you’re beat up by the other builders before escaping up a crane and tricking them into walking into a wall. And then you manage to lure them all into the pit where you’ve shoved the foreman in his potty – and then cover them all with cement! Or you could go get driving lessons, but because you don’t know the controls, you end up running over all the cones. Or you could team up with your friend Cesar to take pictures of new gang members on the block from a roof, only to anger the police, accidentally kill him by lightly bumping his car the first time you arrive, accidentally kill him by rolling his car because you refuse to drive safe, and then making him wait on the roof while you have some awful chicken and then vomit three feet away from your actual body. XD Bottom line, the game is still a buggy mess, but Kevin is still enjoying being Kevin in it. You do you, Kevin!
C) And finally it was time for Gray and more Happy Wheels! Started with the usual bottle flip, this time with four different endings (secret ending of family eating watermelon; the pineapple of pain crushing your body; finding all the alcoholism, and just getting yeeted to hell), then it was onto the Everything Fall (ball fall, glass break, triangle fall, ball pit, harpoons, wrecking balls, random furniture, all into a SPIKE FALL – Gray really had to practice to find the right combination of pain and Segway to win); a strange board where you had to ride a moving beam to victory (98% of people can do it! XD); an “impossible lebel” for Pogo Man to jump into (the trick is to get the harpoons to blow up the mines and then just take a whole ton of arrows to the face); “Gray’s Weird Tunnel” where you had to hitch a ride on these strange rotating creatures roaming toward the finish (or, if you’re Gray, fall behind them halfway through and spend three minutes crawling to the end to get your head smashed when you win); another “don’t move” heart transplant board (pretty simple one this time); a rope swing FIGHT (where you had to carefully swing into your various opponents, then survive a final spike fall – Gray ended up using his last opponent as a human shield to cushion his fall XD); and finally “Gray Vs Skynet,” where Gray had to face off against Skynet’s various defenses, including mines, battle axes either rotating or just bobbing up and down in midair, monster worms beneath the earth, a crusher corridor, and worst of all – STAIRS THAT WERE VERY HARD TO CLIMB WITHOUT LOSING HIS HELMET. XD But he got to the end and was rewarded with infinite watermelons. Nice. (And now I want to see Gray versus a Terminator – has to be at least half as entertaining as him versus the Baby in Yellow, right?)
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – two ask replies over at Valice Multiverse, nothing too major!
*nods* Not bad, not bad at all -- though I must remind myself tomorrow to add Newt's story to the queue on Victor Luvs Alice. As for now, though, I must head out and get some sleep. Friday tomorrow, yaaay (and ACTUAL Friday, not fake Friday like I thought for a couple of seconds this morning). Night all!
