Not A Good Time Management Day
May. 18th, 2022 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickOr, at least, not a good time management afternoon -- we started with heavy traffic on both commutes, but especially heading home, and things just kinda built from there. Beanbags took longer, supper took longer, my various write-ups look longer, writing itself took longer (the problem with "Londerland Bloodlines" is all the parts that deal with dialogue require me to watch subtitled LPs so I can transcribe it correctly, at least for the rough draft) -- it's just been a day where everything felt like it was slipping away from me. :( Ugh. . .well, let's see what I accomplished, to-do wise:
Work – Busier than yesterday, though again, mostly quiet, fortunately. Tasks completed today included the GL, resolving a phone call from earlier in the month (the guy sent an e-mail showing what he was talking about, and I had to explain what had happened to my boss so he could explain it to the guy – more credit card bullshit, basically), dealing with a TON of reversals, and discovering more credit card bullshit that really needs to be taken care of already. *sigh* We’ll see if we can make that a priority tomorrow!
Beanbags – Not quite as wimdy as yesterday, and still very nice, so out we went. Though damn, we all had some tough games, with Mom and I especially struggling to even put two on the board! I managed to claw it back in the last game when Dad got some bad throws, though. Final scores were me 2-2-W; Dad W-W-3; Mom 3-3-2. *shrug* I’ll take that!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – as per usual, another night on the bike, another half-hour of the Oxventure Stream “Bone 2 Pick!” Dob explained to Ethelfrit about the whole business with the hammer, and Ethelfrit confirmed what was going on (admitting that he’d fully expected the skeletons to one day pull this “bind the owners to the hammer so if we die they die” business, which led to the gang asking how they ranked as bosses to the skeletons – despite the skeletons trying to kill them near the beginning, they WERE willing to put the Oxventurers in the top five. Never mind that, according to the very first adventure featuring them, the Oxventurers should be their second bosses EVER after Ethelfrit himself. . .but then again, being told you’re in “the top five” when you’re only boss number two is a pretty good burn. XD) and said he’d be happy to renew the blessing and recharge the hammer.
He immediately got concerned when the Oxventurers reacted to this news with clear worry. They admitted that their lives were a bit, er, chaotic let’s say (in fact, I think they’re all Chaotic officially except for Merilwen, who is True Neutral) and that they have trouble taking good news without worrying about something going wrong. Indeed, as Ethelfrit started warming up, Corazon grabbed everyone and pointed out that Ethelfrit is the boss of the skeletons and their source of power, and the skeletons have that whole “good things with a bad twist” deal, so maybe Ethelfrit does too? It was generally agreed though, that exploding in the hammer would be a worse fate (and Prudence’s quick Detect Magic scan detected no active malevolence), so they let Ethelfrit get on with things. He explained that to recharge the hammer, he’d have to open a portal to another dimension and act as a conduit for the magical energies therein. He did that as the Oxventurers waited, with Prudence’s attempt to point out to Egbert “Oh, hey, look, it’s one of those ghosts that you don’t believe in” derailed when Ethelfrit called himself an “apparition” and Egbert decided those were okay to believe in –
And then stopped, because he was detecting magical interference. Puzzled, the group checked themselves over, and it was slowly determined not to be Corazon’s magical “Paul McCartbee” disguise, nor Prudence’s evil orb, nor Corazon’s lucky underwear. Prudence Detected Magic again and did notice that the energies from the portal were quivering weirdly, and the gang started wondering if the disturbance was coming from the other side. A theory that was more or less proven when the portal began manifesting a lot more visibly than before, with gabbling voices coming through it – voices that Corazon, through Comprehend Languages, was able to determine were talking about tearing and rending flesh. Ethelfrit was all for severing the connection, but the gang urged him to keep going, so he told them that they’d have to keep him safe so he could finish the time-sensitive charging and that he apologized if it was boring. XD Corazon tried to use his bedroll to block the more physical parts of the portal, only for a blue clawed hand to rip right through it. He put a crossbow bolt into the middle of said hand, but it didn’t stop the charge, and six Maw Demons (blue blobby demons with three arms, four stubby legs, and a giant hinged mouth for a torso) came tumbling through.
Roll for initiative to protect the NPC doing the plot-important thing! Corazon got the highest result and promptly went after the demon he’d previously injured, getting it pretty damn good in the roof of the mouth with his rapier before – in true Corazon fashion – hiding. Prudence stepped up next with twin Agonizing Beams to deal the pain – she got ONE demon with a good thirteen points of damage, but a critical one on the other attack roll meant she toasted poor Egbert with the other for twelve points. Ouch. Merilwen, making sure that there were no acid ceilings, then called down Moonbeam on the lot – one managed to escape the radius, and two won their saving throws and took half damage, but she managed to basically melt the one Corazon had already injured, and damage another so severely it was unable to move. And then Egbert stepped up –
And used Turn the Faithless. AKA ONE OF HIS PALADIN SPELLS. Everyone was astonished and had drinks, and Johnny gave out inspiration to all in celebration. XD He used ancient words of power to tell the demons to get out of here, and managed to terrify MOST of those still living (one, who nat oned, actually trampling and killing its injured companion in an attempt to get back in the portal) – but one managed to shrug him off and instead tried to bite him, though it couldn’t get past Egbert’s armor. That just left Dob, who decided the best option was to grab a couple of bombs (now that he can attack twice per turn) out of Egbert’s bag and hurl them into the demon’s maw, hopefully throwing it back through the portal with the force to explode there. So far, he’s at least hit his target – we’ll see what actually happens to said target tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice has deflected Strauss telling her to figure out what is going on Downtown for herself by reminding him that a) she’s still extremely new to the city, and b) asking him what’s going on SHOULD COUNT. XD And now she has learned that a plague has sprung up Downtown in the week she’s been gone! Yes, I know that feels like a compressed time frame, but considering the first you hear about it is when you report to Strauss Downtown. . .plus I can always say that the vampire death cult spreading the stupid thing was working in the background before, and has only started serious efforts to spread their horrifying disease recently. Murdering the Brotherhood of the Ninth Circle is gonna feel – cathartic, given what’s been going on for the past three fucking years.
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Two-thirds check – I ran out of time to watch GrayStillPlays today. :( Fortunately I already know neither he nor Kevin will upload tomorrow, so I’ll have time to catch up then. In the meantime –
A) Started with a surprise upload from James Turner – the next part of the Cottage Living LP! Yeah, remember that? James figured it was about time to finish it up, especially with a new game pack on the horizon. The big things he wanted to accomplish this episode were winning a Finchwick Fair with Trenton, and doing a proper renovation of the fancy vault basement. And did he?
Well, he got one out of the two – by having Trenton just go to TOWN socializing with golden chickens, he was able to make fantastic friends with one of them, take it to the fair, carefully wait around without doing anything major (beyond chatting with Column and being reminded he hadn’t married Hazel yet), then submit his hen friend and a hatchable golden egg before having some dinner and napping on a nearby bench. And that finally, FINALLY led to Trenton winning the fair with the golden chicken! :D His egg didn’t even get mentioned, though I think it DID end up back in his household inventory in the end, but w000! Country Caretaker aspiration finally completed! Yaaaay! :D
However – after that, things got pretty damn weird. Mostly because, well, Sims 4 be glitchy, yo. First off, upon getting home, that self-same winning chicken – who was wrongly classified as a “chick” as the fair – aged all the way up to “one last pet” and DIED, complete with Grim visiting the lot! James was baffled, given he’d specifically turned animal aging OFF last time! And then an alert came up saying that Hagrid was very hungry, but James was busy having Trenton fix a bunch of the water collections in their water tower and missed the message, so instead tried to bathe him to fix his perma-stinkiness –
Yup, Animal Control showed up to take Hagrid away. Except, well, they couldn’t – the Sim in question was stuck in a constant loop of trying to pick up Hagrid and failing. James was able to get Hagrid to eat and give him a bath before the pet carrier showed up – and then he made the mistake of RESETTING it, and suddenly got stuck with the animal control lady hanging around his house, occasionally crying in his wardrobe, and no ability to save. Resetting her, the pet carrier, and Hagrid finally completed him being whisked away, and James was able to send Chaz off to sell his massive crop of eggplants to Kim to fund the basement renovation –
But when he came back, NINA HAD RANDOMLY REMOVED HERSELF FROM THE FAMILY. He could still CONTROL her, but she wasn’t officially in the line-up? James decided that maybe it was better if he DIDN’T save and instead promised to play through whatever he needed to catch up on off-camera (saving Hagrid if he could) and then do a basement renovation episode later. *shakehead* I think that save file is slowly but surely going kaput, James. Hopefully it hangs on just long enough for Trenton and Hazel to finally get married! A nice country wedding (or an elopement to Tartosa’s city hall, like I suggested) would be a nice note to end the series on, I think. :)
B) Then it was onto Call Me Kevin and more Minecraft shenanigans – namely, he’s done a gameplay mod that makes surviving more realistic, now he’s done a graphics mod that makes the world look more realistic! It’s – WEIRD. Like, there’s actual grass, the stone looks like actual stone, the trees are weird thin-limbed nightmares, the water is shiny with proper ripples and sea life. . .oh, and the dirt does not come in actual square blocks, but these weird rhomboid things. That REALLY freaked Kevin out. XD Anyway, it was pretty much your typical Kevincraft experience – Kevin suffering as he tries to find good materials, Kevin committing copious amounts of sheep murder, Kevin exploring caves and nearly dying from setting himself on fire from lava (though the chest in the end was worth it for the golden enchanted tools), Kevin building a really crappy little house, Kevin raging as the roof falls in on him for the fiftieth time. . .oh, yeah, blocks are fully affected by gravity in this mod too, and anything without proper support will just collapse if you dig out one bit of it. Like trying to make the structure look nice. Or put in a window to your lovely sea view. XD Kevin also died a lot this episode – exploded by a creeper while fending off a zombie child; chased and gored by angry boars; falling from a high place after digging a ravine near his house to find resources; then letting himself get murdered by a skeleton after going back down and being constantly knocked off his “pillar of climbing” by the arrows. XD He was even suffering in real life – the mod is so intensive that chunks of his video could be compared to a PowerPoint presentation, and his computers (one playing the game, one recording the game) were running at such high levels they were overheating his entire room. To the point where his POWER TRIPPED near the end of the video and shut off everything. Yikes! Kevin, please don’t cook yourself while producing content, we love you. And your content. But mostly you. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Minimal “reset the queue speed to one” check for Victor Luvs Alice’s already-queued content. This is why I like having that queue all set up in one go if I possibly can – makes life just a little bit easier.
Ugh, I don't like this feeling -- too much to do and too little time to do it in. Though I think the fact that I'm starting to PMS isn't helping. . .I am due my period by next week at the latest, and I wouldn't be surprised if it showed up early. Ugh. Time to go to bed and try to reset -- night all!
Work – Busier than yesterday, though again, mostly quiet, fortunately. Tasks completed today included the GL, resolving a phone call from earlier in the month (the guy sent an e-mail showing what he was talking about, and I had to explain what had happened to my boss so he could explain it to the guy – more credit card bullshit, basically), dealing with a TON of reversals, and discovering more credit card bullshit that really needs to be taken care of already. *sigh* We’ll see if we can make that a priority tomorrow!
Beanbags – Not quite as wimdy as yesterday, and still very nice, so out we went. Though damn, we all had some tough games, with Mom and I especially struggling to even put two on the board! I managed to claw it back in the last game when Dad got some bad throws, though. Final scores were me 2-2-W; Dad W-W-3; Mom 3-3-2. *shrug* I’ll take that!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – as per usual, another night on the bike, another half-hour of the Oxventure Stream “Bone 2 Pick!” Dob explained to Ethelfrit about the whole business with the hammer, and Ethelfrit confirmed what was going on (admitting that he’d fully expected the skeletons to one day pull this “bind the owners to the hammer so if we die they die” business, which led to the gang asking how they ranked as bosses to the skeletons – despite the skeletons trying to kill them near the beginning, they WERE willing to put the Oxventurers in the top five. Never mind that, according to the very first adventure featuring them, the Oxventurers should be their second bosses EVER after Ethelfrit himself. . .but then again, being told you’re in “the top five” when you’re only boss number two is a pretty good burn. XD) and said he’d be happy to renew the blessing and recharge the hammer.
He immediately got concerned when the Oxventurers reacted to this news with clear worry. They admitted that their lives were a bit, er, chaotic let’s say (in fact, I think they’re all Chaotic officially except for Merilwen, who is True Neutral) and that they have trouble taking good news without worrying about something going wrong. Indeed, as Ethelfrit started warming up, Corazon grabbed everyone and pointed out that Ethelfrit is the boss of the skeletons and their source of power, and the skeletons have that whole “good things with a bad twist” deal, so maybe Ethelfrit does too? It was generally agreed though, that exploding in the hammer would be a worse fate (and Prudence’s quick Detect Magic scan detected no active malevolence), so they let Ethelfrit get on with things. He explained that to recharge the hammer, he’d have to open a portal to another dimension and act as a conduit for the magical energies therein. He did that as the Oxventurers waited, with Prudence’s attempt to point out to Egbert “Oh, hey, look, it’s one of those ghosts that you don’t believe in” derailed when Ethelfrit called himself an “apparition” and Egbert decided those were okay to believe in –
And then stopped, because he was detecting magical interference. Puzzled, the group checked themselves over, and it was slowly determined not to be Corazon’s magical “Paul McCartbee” disguise, nor Prudence’s evil orb, nor Corazon’s lucky underwear. Prudence Detected Magic again and did notice that the energies from the portal were quivering weirdly, and the gang started wondering if the disturbance was coming from the other side. A theory that was more or less proven when the portal began manifesting a lot more visibly than before, with gabbling voices coming through it – voices that Corazon, through Comprehend Languages, was able to determine were talking about tearing and rending flesh. Ethelfrit was all for severing the connection, but the gang urged him to keep going, so he told them that they’d have to keep him safe so he could finish the time-sensitive charging and that he apologized if it was boring. XD Corazon tried to use his bedroll to block the more physical parts of the portal, only for a blue clawed hand to rip right through it. He put a crossbow bolt into the middle of said hand, but it didn’t stop the charge, and six Maw Demons (blue blobby demons with three arms, four stubby legs, and a giant hinged mouth for a torso) came tumbling through.
Roll for initiative to protect the NPC doing the plot-important thing! Corazon got the highest result and promptly went after the demon he’d previously injured, getting it pretty damn good in the roof of the mouth with his rapier before – in true Corazon fashion – hiding. Prudence stepped up next with twin Agonizing Beams to deal the pain – she got ONE demon with a good thirteen points of damage, but a critical one on the other attack roll meant she toasted poor Egbert with the other for twelve points. Ouch. Merilwen, making sure that there were no acid ceilings, then called down Moonbeam on the lot – one managed to escape the radius, and two won their saving throws and took half damage, but she managed to basically melt the one Corazon had already injured, and damage another so severely it was unable to move. And then Egbert stepped up –
And used Turn the Faithless. AKA ONE OF HIS PALADIN SPELLS. Everyone was astonished and had drinks, and Johnny gave out inspiration to all in celebration. XD He used ancient words of power to tell the demons to get out of here, and managed to terrify MOST of those still living (one, who nat oned, actually trampling and killing its injured companion in an attempt to get back in the portal) – but one managed to shrug him off and instead tried to bite him, though it couldn’t get past Egbert’s armor. That just left Dob, who decided the best option was to grab a couple of bombs (now that he can attack twice per turn) out of Egbert’s bag and hurl them into the demon’s maw, hopefully throwing it back through the portal with the force to explode there. So far, he’s at least hit his target – we’ll see what actually happens to said target tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice has deflected Strauss telling her to figure out what is going on Downtown for herself by reminding him that a) she’s still extremely new to the city, and b) asking him what’s going on SHOULD COUNT. XD And now she has learned that a plague has sprung up Downtown in the week she’s been gone! Yes, I know that feels like a compressed time frame, but considering the first you hear about it is when you report to Strauss Downtown. . .plus I can always say that the vampire death cult spreading the stupid thing was working in the background before, and has only started serious efforts to spread their horrifying disease recently. Murdering the Brotherhood of the Ninth Circle is gonna feel – cathartic, given what’s been going on for the past three fucking years.
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Two-thirds check – I ran out of time to watch GrayStillPlays today. :( Fortunately I already know neither he nor Kevin will upload tomorrow, so I’ll have time to catch up then. In the meantime –
A) Started with a surprise upload from James Turner – the next part of the Cottage Living LP! Yeah, remember that? James figured it was about time to finish it up, especially with a new game pack on the horizon. The big things he wanted to accomplish this episode were winning a Finchwick Fair with Trenton, and doing a proper renovation of the fancy vault basement. And did he?
Well, he got one out of the two – by having Trenton just go to TOWN socializing with golden chickens, he was able to make fantastic friends with one of them, take it to the fair, carefully wait around without doing anything major (beyond chatting with Column and being reminded he hadn’t married Hazel yet), then submit his hen friend and a hatchable golden egg before having some dinner and napping on a nearby bench. And that finally, FINALLY led to Trenton winning the fair with the golden chicken! :D His egg didn’t even get mentioned, though I think it DID end up back in his household inventory in the end, but w000! Country Caretaker aspiration finally completed! Yaaaay! :D
However – after that, things got pretty damn weird. Mostly because, well, Sims 4 be glitchy, yo. First off, upon getting home, that self-same winning chicken – who was wrongly classified as a “chick” as the fair – aged all the way up to “one last pet” and DIED, complete with Grim visiting the lot! James was baffled, given he’d specifically turned animal aging OFF last time! And then an alert came up saying that Hagrid was very hungry, but James was busy having Trenton fix a bunch of the water collections in their water tower and missed the message, so instead tried to bathe him to fix his perma-stinkiness –
Yup, Animal Control showed up to take Hagrid away. Except, well, they couldn’t – the Sim in question was stuck in a constant loop of trying to pick up Hagrid and failing. James was able to get Hagrid to eat and give him a bath before the pet carrier showed up – and then he made the mistake of RESETTING it, and suddenly got stuck with the animal control lady hanging around his house, occasionally crying in his wardrobe, and no ability to save. Resetting her, the pet carrier, and Hagrid finally completed him being whisked away, and James was able to send Chaz off to sell his massive crop of eggplants to Kim to fund the basement renovation –
But when he came back, NINA HAD RANDOMLY REMOVED HERSELF FROM THE FAMILY. He could still CONTROL her, but she wasn’t officially in the line-up? James decided that maybe it was better if he DIDN’T save and instead promised to play through whatever he needed to catch up on off-camera (saving Hagrid if he could) and then do a basement renovation episode later. *shakehead* I think that save file is slowly but surely going kaput, James. Hopefully it hangs on just long enough for Trenton and Hazel to finally get married! A nice country wedding (or an elopement to Tartosa’s city hall, like I suggested) would be a nice note to end the series on, I think. :)
B) Then it was onto Call Me Kevin and more Minecraft shenanigans – namely, he’s done a gameplay mod that makes surviving more realistic, now he’s done a graphics mod that makes the world look more realistic! It’s – WEIRD. Like, there’s actual grass, the stone looks like actual stone, the trees are weird thin-limbed nightmares, the water is shiny with proper ripples and sea life. . .oh, and the dirt does not come in actual square blocks, but these weird rhomboid things. That REALLY freaked Kevin out. XD Anyway, it was pretty much your typical Kevincraft experience – Kevin suffering as he tries to find good materials, Kevin committing copious amounts of sheep murder, Kevin exploring caves and nearly dying from setting himself on fire from lava (though the chest in the end was worth it for the golden enchanted tools), Kevin building a really crappy little house, Kevin raging as the roof falls in on him for the fiftieth time. . .oh, yeah, blocks are fully affected by gravity in this mod too, and anything without proper support will just collapse if you dig out one bit of it. Like trying to make the structure look nice. Or put in a window to your lovely sea view. XD Kevin also died a lot this episode – exploded by a creeper while fending off a zombie child; chased and gored by angry boars; falling from a high place after digging a ravine near his house to find resources; then letting himself get murdered by a skeleton after going back down and being constantly knocked off his “pillar of climbing” by the arrows. XD He was even suffering in real life – the mod is so intensive that chunks of his video could be compared to a PowerPoint presentation, and his computers (one playing the game, one recording the game) were running at such high levels they were overheating his entire room. To the point where his POWER TRIPPED near the end of the video and shut off everything. Yikes! Kevin, please don’t cook yourself while producing content, we love you. And your content. But mostly you. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Minimal “reset the queue speed to one” check for Victor Luvs Alice’s already-queued content. This is why I like having that queue all set up in one go if I possibly can – makes life just a little bit easier.
Ugh, I don't like this feeling -- too much to do and too little time to do it in. Though I think the fact that I'm starting to PMS isn't helping. . .I am due my period by next week at the latest, and I wouldn't be surprised if it showed up early. Ugh. Time to go to bed and try to reset -- night all!
