Work Week Continues To Be Bleh
May. 9th, 2022 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAs you shall see in the "work" section -- though it being another fairly chilly and damn windy day didn't help either --
Work – Perhaps marginally less busy than usual, but it didn’t really feel like it. GL took pretty much all morning thanks to lots of fiddly bits and getting interrupted with calls; my lunch was interrupted midway through with a call from the fiscal office about credit card nonsense; and my coworker sprung a last-minute “hey, this donor called about a thing” on me at the very end of the day. *sigh* I just – I’m getting a little sick of it, and I’d like some more quiet time, please! At least this week’s short for me. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, returning to the Oxventure Streams with “Bone To Pick!” Having freed Merilwen’s elf village from the horrors of being hunted down by banshees if they didn’t pick a new name, the gang started this latest adventure in a field cloudgazing (though they had to find a “lost” Merilwen first – aka, Ellen started the stream with the wrong background XD). This was interrupted by a very unusual knocking sound, coming from Dob’s bag. Turns out it was the Hammer of Ethelfrit, aka The Skeleton Army Hammer. After trying to talk into it like a telephone, Dob held it aloft and summoned the Skeleton Army (60 skeletons and one flaming skull who was picked up from Necropolis-On-Sea in that initial adventure, in case you need reminding). The skeletons were a little awkward in greeting them, to the point where Prudence thought they were breaking up with them – but no, what was actually happening was the skeletons had formed a union! And they had some grievances with their bosses. Dob encouraged them to speak (while Corazon started talking about getting “scab skeletons,” causing the Army to form a phalanx), and they explained that they didn’t feel like they were getting to do enough evil things when the Oxventurers summoned them for tasks. You see, the thing about the skeletons is that they are supposed to be kind of “jackass genies” – you order them to do something, and they will do it, but they will interpret your words to make sure the thing is done in a terrible manner (see: the initial adventure in the town of Bumble, where they rebuilt the town hall with the stone from the orphanage, and then rebuilt the orphanage. . .using orphans as mortar). You CAN get around this with very precise instructions, but that basically just makes them work really slowly as they struggle against their own natures. However, the latest time they were summoned (to save the group from Merilwen Moonbeaming the acid room in “Exhibition Impossible”), they literally saved the group’s lives in exchange for getting to be a bit mean to them (I mean, they made some cutting comments, but still). They didn’t feel like this was very fair – they’re supposed to do much greater evil than that. So, they proposed a temporary switcheroo so the Oxventurers would get a better idea of what being a cursed skeleton is like – the Oxventurers would do a task or two for the skeletons that is evil, and they would have to do it in a way that makes it a good thing! The Oxventurers were agreeable to this plan (even Prudence, who was like “it doesn’t HAVE to turn out well in the end”), and Dob sealed the deal by rubbing his saliva-covered hand all over the flaming-skull foreman. XD
So yes – time for the group to learn how to be a non-evil adventurer army, twisting evil deeds into good ones! Step one – get in the hammer. Everyone but Dob was a little concerned about this step (Prudence in particular making the skeletons promise they wouldn’t be trapped for a thousand years), but it turned out the inner dimension of the hammer was quite cozy – hammocks, a kitchen (unused because skeletons), a rec room (with billiards – Dob played against Corazon and won; Corazon tried to convince everyone HE’D won, but they all saw through his lies), a “wreck” room (complete with reset button so you could wreck it again and again), the lot. The group spent a very pleasant 45 minutes in there before being summoned by the skeletons. After not exactly impressing them with their entrance (the skeletons were expecting them to be grander about it; fortunately Merilwen was able to pick up the slack and give an appropriately epic greeting), the skeletons told them to burn down the cornfield they were in. The gang conferred, and after a short discussion and checking the corn to see how good it was (perfect, textbook corn), they decided the way to turn this bad thing into a good thing was to turn the corn into a field of popcorn! Dob went around flavoring all the corn to be either sweet or salty with Prestidigitation, Merilwen used Speak With Animals to get a badger to spread the news about the upcoming burning (this proved to be quite a task, as the badger was rather argumentative and in the end refused to tell one particular pine marten it didn’t like, forcing Merilwen to turn into a bear to scare it out), and Corazon sprayed the area with Grease (with Dob getting in the spray to run around covering more corn) before Egbert lit it up with a cone of firebreath. The field burned, the corn popped – but how to contain the fire?
Merilwen’s great idea was “Wind Wall.” Everyone else is like “THIS IS GOING TO BE A FIRE CYCLONE,” but it doesn’t seem to be deterring her in the slightest. XD We’ll find out how well that works tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Nines has taken care of the Sabbat shovelheads menacing Alice, told her to meet him in the Last Round to hear the “real story,” and promptly taken off because no escorting the newbie, I guess. :p Alice is appropriately annoyed, but at least she always has Rabbit to follow if she needs to get to a place. Good thing Downtown isn’t THAT far away from the junkyard where she ended up!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another night with only one in the Subs, but I did find myself a couple more vids to keep myself amused –
A) Started with a mods recommendation video in my Recommendeds – “MUST HAVE MODS FOR BETTER GAMEPLAY IN 2022 | The Sims 4” by ligayatrait! This one just went over some of her favorite gameplay mods, big and small. Some good stuff in there, though I’m wary about stuff like “Slice of Life” and “Passionate Romance” – KawaiiStacie and Sacrificial, the creators of each respectively, have not been doing a good job keeping those mods up-to-date with patches. “First Impressions” by Lumpinou looks fun though, and Mercuryfoam’s ballroom dances! I wish they’d officially clear their stuff for the latest patch – I miss the “lie on lap” interaction that they made. :( Hopefully I’ll be able to put it back in eventually. . .
B) From there it was onto the latest Atop The Fourth Wall – “The Star Wars #7!” This is that series that is based on one of the original rough drafts for what would become A New Hope, and features “Annikin Starkiller” as one of the main cast, a much older Luke Skywalker, and a Swamp Thing-style Han Solo. As the penultimate issue, this thing was all about getting the gang to the climax – Leia suffering electrotorture at the hands of a laughing Darth Vader; Annikin having become a god to the local Wookiee population after stabbing one of their warriors and gaining an ally in a bug-eyed Chewbacca (seriously, this version of him looks like one of those big-eyed monkeys); Luke and Han meeting back up with Annikin and using his new Wookie allies/worshipers to stage an assault on the local Imperial base, then training up the Wookies to fly fighter ships while Annikin infiltrates the Imperial moonbase to rescue Leia. There’s even a subplot about the kid princes getting kidnapped along with C3-PO that gets resolved in just a couple of pages. It’s all adequate, but it also all feels rather weird and rushed, especially when compared to the actual movies. Basically, it’s interesting Star Wars history, but you can see why they decided to keep working on the script. XD
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and Spa Master, where Gray now runs the world’s most deadly spa. XD Seriously – this mobile game unfortunately gave Gray the ability to snap arms, legs, and NECKS if he wanted by failing the “crack” minigame, as well as the opportunity to cook people alive in a tanning bed; throw acupuncture needles into their back like mini javelins; bend their fingers full-on BACKWARD as part of a massage; and fill their heads with murderous thoughts while meditating. I think the least-evil thing he did was dremel the crud off a woman’s nail and then paint it with a dollar sign pattern. XD Or possibly hose an incredibly-dirty person off like an elephant at the zoo. Either-or!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – I already have all the stuff to post this week in my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice, and I didn’t see anything in particular to add from my tag trawl, so. . . I’ll take a quiet night!
At least I had a pretty good night, all things considered. And now it's time to head to bed and do it all again tomorrow, just with a different story project. Hopefully the weather will be better, work will be a little quieter, and our new bathroom ceiling fan (the old one quit a while back, and we've been using a window model) will be closer to properly installed tomorrow. Fingers crossed! Night all!
Work – Perhaps marginally less busy than usual, but it didn’t really feel like it. GL took pretty much all morning thanks to lots of fiddly bits and getting interrupted with calls; my lunch was interrupted midway through with a call from the fiscal office about credit card nonsense; and my coworker sprung a last-minute “hey, this donor called about a thing” on me at the very end of the day. *sigh* I just – I’m getting a little sick of it, and I’d like some more quiet time, please! At least this week’s short for me. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, returning to the Oxventure Streams with “Bone To Pick!” Having freed Merilwen’s elf village from the horrors of being hunted down by banshees if they didn’t pick a new name, the gang started this latest adventure in a field cloudgazing (though they had to find a “lost” Merilwen first – aka, Ellen started the stream with the wrong background XD). This was interrupted by a very unusual knocking sound, coming from Dob’s bag. Turns out it was the Hammer of Ethelfrit, aka The Skeleton Army Hammer. After trying to talk into it like a telephone, Dob held it aloft and summoned the Skeleton Army (60 skeletons and one flaming skull who was picked up from Necropolis-On-Sea in that initial adventure, in case you need reminding). The skeletons were a little awkward in greeting them, to the point where Prudence thought they were breaking up with them – but no, what was actually happening was the skeletons had formed a union! And they had some grievances with their bosses. Dob encouraged them to speak (while Corazon started talking about getting “scab skeletons,” causing the Army to form a phalanx), and they explained that they didn’t feel like they were getting to do enough evil things when the Oxventurers summoned them for tasks. You see, the thing about the skeletons is that they are supposed to be kind of “jackass genies” – you order them to do something, and they will do it, but they will interpret your words to make sure the thing is done in a terrible manner (see: the initial adventure in the town of Bumble, where they rebuilt the town hall with the stone from the orphanage, and then rebuilt the orphanage. . .using orphans as mortar). You CAN get around this with very precise instructions, but that basically just makes them work really slowly as they struggle against their own natures. However, the latest time they were summoned (to save the group from Merilwen Moonbeaming the acid room in “Exhibition Impossible”), they literally saved the group’s lives in exchange for getting to be a bit mean to them (I mean, they made some cutting comments, but still). They didn’t feel like this was very fair – they’re supposed to do much greater evil than that. So, they proposed a temporary switcheroo so the Oxventurers would get a better idea of what being a cursed skeleton is like – the Oxventurers would do a task or two for the skeletons that is evil, and they would have to do it in a way that makes it a good thing! The Oxventurers were agreeable to this plan (even Prudence, who was like “it doesn’t HAVE to turn out well in the end”), and Dob sealed the deal by rubbing his saliva-covered hand all over the flaming-skull foreman. XD
So yes – time for the group to learn how to be a non-evil adventurer army, twisting evil deeds into good ones! Step one – get in the hammer. Everyone but Dob was a little concerned about this step (Prudence in particular making the skeletons promise they wouldn’t be trapped for a thousand years), but it turned out the inner dimension of the hammer was quite cozy – hammocks, a kitchen (unused because skeletons), a rec room (with billiards – Dob played against Corazon and won; Corazon tried to convince everyone HE’D won, but they all saw through his lies), a “wreck” room (complete with reset button so you could wreck it again and again), the lot. The group spent a very pleasant 45 minutes in there before being summoned by the skeletons. After not exactly impressing them with their entrance (the skeletons were expecting them to be grander about it; fortunately Merilwen was able to pick up the slack and give an appropriately epic greeting), the skeletons told them to burn down the cornfield they were in. The gang conferred, and after a short discussion and checking the corn to see how good it was (perfect, textbook corn), they decided the way to turn this bad thing into a good thing was to turn the corn into a field of popcorn! Dob went around flavoring all the corn to be either sweet or salty with Prestidigitation, Merilwen used Speak With Animals to get a badger to spread the news about the upcoming burning (this proved to be quite a task, as the badger was rather argumentative and in the end refused to tell one particular pine marten it didn’t like, forcing Merilwen to turn into a bear to scare it out), and Corazon sprayed the area with Grease (with Dob getting in the spray to run around covering more corn) before Egbert lit it up with a cone of firebreath. The field burned, the corn popped – but how to contain the fire?
Merilwen’s great idea was “Wind Wall.” Everyone else is like “THIS IS GOING TO BE A FIRE CYCLONE,” but it doesn’t seem to be deterring her in the slightest. XD We’ll find out how well that works tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Nines has taken care of the Sabbat shovelheads menacing Alice, told her to meet him in the Last Round to hear the “real story,” and promptly taken off because no escorting the newbie, I guess. :p Alice is appropriately annoyed, but at least she always has Rabbit to follow if she needs to get to a place. Good thing Downtown isn’t THAT far away from the junkyard where she ended up!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another night with only one in the Subs, but I did find myself a couple more vids to keep myself amused –
A) Started with a mods recommendation video in my Recommendeds – “MUST HAVE MODS FOR BETTER GAMEPLAY IN 2022 | The Sims 4” by ligayatrait! This one just went over some of her favorite gameplay mods, big and small. Some good stuff in there, though I’m wary about stuff like “Slice of Life” and “Passionate Romance” – KawaiiStacie and Sacrificial, the creators of each respectively, have not been doing a good job keeping those mods up-to-date with patches. “First Impressions” by Lumpinou looks fun though, and Mercuryfoam’s ballroom dances! I wish they’d officially clear their stuff for the latest patch – I miss the “lie on lap” interaction that they made. :( Hopefully I’ll be able to put it back in eventually. . .
B) From there it was onto the latest Atop The Fourth Wall – “The Star Wars #7!” This is that series that is based on one of the original rough drafts for what would become A New Hope, and features “Annikin Starkiller” as one of the main cast, a much older Luke Skywalker, and a Swamp Thing-style Han Solo. As the penultimate issue, this thing was all about getting the gang to the climax – Leia suffering electrotorture at the hands of a laughing Darth Vader; Annikin having become a god to the local Wookiee population after stabbing one of their warriors and gaining an ally in a bug-eyed Chewbacca (seriously, this version of him looks like one of those big-eyed monkeys); Luke and Han meeting back up with Annikin and using his new Wookie allies/worshipers to stage an assault on the local Imperial base, then training up the Wookies to fly fighter ships while Annikin infiltrates the Imperial moonbase to rescue Leia. There’s even a subplot about the kid princes getting kidnapped along with C3-PO that gets resolved in just a couple of pages. It’s all adequate, but it also all feels rather weird and rushed, especially when compared to the actual movies. Basically, it’s interesting Star Wars history, but you can see why they decided to keep working on the script. XD
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and Spa Master, where Gray now runs the world’s most deadly spa. XD Seriously – this mobile game unfortunately gave Gray the ability to snap arms, legs, and NECKS if he wanted by failing the “crack” minigame, as well as the opportunity to cook people alive in a tanning bed; throw acupuncture needles into their back like mini javelins; bend their fingers full-on BACKWARD as part of a massage; and fill their heads with murderous thoughts while meditating. I think the least-evil thing he did was dremel the crud off a woman’s nail and then paint it with a dollar sign pattern. XD Or possibly hose an incredibly-dirty person off like an elephant at the zoo. Either-or!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – I already have all the stuff to post this week in my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice, and I didn’t see anything in particular to add from my tag trawl, so. . . I’ll take a quiet night!
At least I had a pretty good night, all things considered. And now it's time to head to bed and do it all again tomorrow, just with a different story project. Hopefully the weather will be better, work will be a little quieter, and our new bathroom ceiling fan (the old one quit a while back, and we've been using a window model) will be closer to properly installed tomorrow. Fingers crossed! Night all!
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Date: 2022-05-10 10:13 pm (UTC)Edit: Wound up using noclip to sneak under the environment to the sarcophagus because I kept getting shot.
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Date: 2022-05-11 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-11 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
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