Meeeeh Wednesday
Feb. 15th, 2023 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickNot a lot of good vibes today, between me having some bad times at work and Dad having some bad times with the sites he uses to sell stuff. Plus it started out gloomy and ended up glarey (as in sun glare), which isn't a great look for the weather. We'll see if tomorrow is any better! In the meantime --
Work – Eh – it would have been an all right day (mostly doing more obituaries), if someone hadn’t called in with a credit card question in the middle of lunch. I wasn’t quite finished with my food at the time, so I asked my coworker (who’d picked up the call) if she could get his number so I could call him back, and while she did it, she promptly started getting passive-aggressive because apparently he’d wanted to do it now. I’m like, all I wanted to do was actually finish my lunch. The guy got his question resolved in the end, but it really put a damper on the rest of the damn day. *sigh* Ugh – at least we’re past the halfway point of the week!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the Oxventure “Battle for Bardcon!” After a bit more discussion about the pros-and-cons of the plans they’d currently come up with, Dob pointed out that there was four of them, and four battalions to take out – maybe they could split up and each take on a battalion on their own? Using their own preferred methods? This was generally agreed-to, with Prudence calling dibs on the guards in their rusty armor and weapons, Corazon taking on the spurned lovers, Egbert deciding he’d like to visit the barmen, and Dob figuring that, as the bard representative of the group, he should handle the ordinary people turned into heroes. He also called over Katie Pearlhead (yes, his fiancee was still there) and asked her to go visit Croaker, let him know what was happening, and – just in case it all went tits-up – help him get the stage’s amplification system (a speaking horn with a bunch of clerics attached to it via wires up their noses, who then used Thaumaturgy on the music coming through them to get it to really echo) onto the Joyful Damnation so they could wheel it around doing Thunderwaves. Katie agreed, though she seemed quite annoyed by the whole business, complaining about ruining an expensive dress. Prudence took the opportunity to ask Dob how wedding planning was going, and how they seemed to be annoying each other (Dob insisted all couples had their disagreements, and things with Katie were generally good), and Johnny took the opportunity to ask Dob for a Constitution check (Dob also insisted that this is his first long-term relationship, he’s probably SUPPOSED to look poisony!). XD
Oh, and there was also the matter of Marie, whom Prudece was still holding by the scruff of her neck like a kitten. Prudence was all for killing her, with Corazon admitting they’d ALREADY killed her grandfather – and then SOMEHOW managing to cover that up with more “mmm chainmail” with a good Charisma roll (JUST beating hers). XD Dob instead decided to try for understanding and gave Marie a fallen triangle before having Prudence put her with one of the drumming circles, saying that she should at least give it a go! Marie huffed, but did actually go along with the beat – and Prudence took advantage to try and clean out her pockets of spell components so she couldn’t do any more magic. Johnny was impressed, right up until Prudence rolled a crit 1 (Egbert/Mike was like “we can PUT WHEELS on the Joyful Damnation and have the boat TOWED HERE without problems, but we can’t rifle through someone’s pockets?!”). It was decided that Marie had too many pockets to search, but Prudence managed to grab what she could – including some trail mix, which she ate in front of Marie. Only, thanks to the 1, the yogurt chips were bad and gave her eight points of poisoning damage. XD Errors, comedy, you know the drill. :p
Anyway, with that out of the way (and Corazon already on the move), the group split up to each deal with their chosen battalion! Johnny rolled a die, and they ended up following Corazon first to the spurned lovers – half of whom were moaning on chaise lounges, half of whom were making weapons and swearing vengeance. Corazon infiltrated by imitating their moans and claiming that he was the victim of a bard as well (Valeria, who promised him special croissants from a bakery only she knew), and found a friendly ear in Peter (himself the victim of Olivia – or was it John? No, not Newton. . .or Travolta, which is what Johnny was ACTUALLY aiming for when they picked those names XD). Corazon thanked Peter for his sympathy, then said that he had a crazy idea – there were exactly 100 of them in this camp, right? Well, what if, instead of pursuing bloody vengeance and murdering thousands of people, they all got to know each other better? Tried to find love with non-bards? Perhaps in a setting where they all chat one-on-one for about three minutes across a table. . . Johnny called for a Charisma check, Corazon smashed it with a 22, and thus Corazon invented speed-dating. XD He rolled well enough to get everything set up efficiently too, with tables and egg timers and everything. Johnny ruled that, with that many people at about three minutes each, they’d be done with the “speed”-dating two days after the festival was over. XD So Corazon effectively took them out of the fight, with the one downside being that he’d effectively taken HIMSELF out of the fight as well, being trapped in the speed-date until he could slip away. He embraced it and asked someone to tell them all about their hobby of collecting nesting dolls. :p
Next up was Egbert, going to see the barmen (or bartenders, they should really be called, as their self-appointed “leader” for the conversation was in fact a woman), totally without a plan! He found them all doing their “clean the glass” idle animation behind a door they’d erected in their portion of the field. :p Egbert strolled in through the door and tried to order a pint, causing them all to move in creepy unison to try and pull him one before remembering they didn’t have any. The de-facto leader stepped forward then and – impressively leaning over a bar that wasn’t there – gave him the skinny on their grievances: namely, that they’d all had to sell their bars and booze to pay off debts to their suppliers incurred by bards coming in to play music, driving up massive tabs, and then skipping out on the bill. Egbert sympathized, but pointed out that if they went with their apparent plan of smashing bards with glasses, they’d be left without a weapon after the first bard they smashed. He proposed an alternate plan: take advantage of the fact that Bardcon is a festival and thus charge all the bards exorbitant prices for drinks! And when the leader pointed out they had no booze, he pointed out in turn that the bards were largely insensate right now, and no one was manning most of the booze tents – it was a free-for-all. Johnny was so impressed, they didn’t even make Egbert roll for it – upon hearing there was booze for the taking and excessive amounts of cash to be made, the bartenders just RACED down into the festival (taking their glasses and door) and promptly set up shop, putting up “no credit” signs and pandering to all the drunk and stoned bards (who were NOT seducing their way out of this one!). And so Egbert took them out of the fight as well, with the downside of having to pay jacked-up festival prices himself for a tankard of warm beer. He accepted this as the price of being at a con.
And then we moved to Prudence, who – after asking if the guards were within 250 feet, forcing Johnny to do loads of math about how far that is in meters and if the bartenders could actually have covered that as fast as they did – started walking toward her chosen targets. . .and warming up the Eldritch Spear. XD Yes, who is surprised she chose violence? Once she was in range, she managed to nail two guards with her spears, not QUITE killing them but certainly sending up some impressive gouts of blood. And then continued on with her slow awesome walk while summoning a freaking shadow demon. XD Prudence be hardcore, yo. I left it with her explaining how the shadow demon was perfect for the twilight hour – we will see how badly she murders everyone, and how Dob handles the heroes, next time!
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen:” Check – I have finished Chapter 4, with Alice having successfully fueled up the car, and Emily calling 911 to report the murder (just so someone knows). She and Victoria are still rather shaken, but they’re determined to help her find and rescue Victor, so – things are about as okay as they can be, given Alice was just on the job! Since I’ve hit a chapter break, I’ll go ahead and work on Marie’s gift fic on Friday instead – then next week, we start Chapter 5 with Victor and the Coasters getting to stretch their legs in the yard! Should be fun. :P
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one GrayStillPlays video today, “Testing Cars vs MASSIVE Pot Holes in GTA 5” – aka Gray drives in Rhode Island. XD Okay, no, Alex designed Gray another challenge course in GTA V – a 6.9 mile road with lots and lots of different potholes! Including “regular” potholes that just got wider and deeper the farther along you got; “alcoholic potholes” made from the tops of oversized beer bottles; “ball potholes” which were ditches filled with balls you had to run over to make it across; unnamed potholes made from those trampoline-like circles with holes in the middle (I dunno what they’re used for in-game); “BIG potholes” which were basically giant dips in the road itself; “moving potholes” where you had to drive across upside-down moving “!” signs and one “Flight” sign to make it across the gaps; and “geometry potholes” where you had to make it across varying shapes, like an octagon, a square, two triangles (pointing in different directions), and a BIIIG rectangle). Oh, and none of the cars respawn or heal, meaning Gray only had a limited number of chances to get across this nonsense. Gray tried quite a few different vehicles, some good (an early six-wheeler got him all the way to the geometry section before getting stuck in the square, and the rusty old truck with the wide bed got all the way to the final big rectangle before getting stuck), some bad (a dump truck with giant wheels got stuck way early on in one of the regular potholes, and Gray’s attempt at using the motorcycle just got him stuck in alcoholism). The winner proved to be a green buggy-like car with pink wheel rims and GREAT hydraulics, which actually DID get stuck in the octagon in “geometry” – only for Gray to manage to use its hydraulics to BACK HIMSELF OUT and escape! That got him all the way to the end –
And to the CHECKPOINT! Because that was NOT the end of the board – no, to reach the winning circle, Gray then had to defeat the BOSS POTHOLE, which was basically a large rectangular lake in the middle of a road in the middle of an actual lake. XD Gray tried a couple of cars to test how big it was and see what could make it over – a few cars sunk to the bottom later, he realized that the trick was to put cars IN the pothole so he could ramp his final choice over them. And, after NEARLY bouncing his chosen car off one he managed to get into the BOSS POTHOLE vertically, he won by resetting the board and dumping the biggest van available into the pothole for his chosen car to ramp off of and make the winner’s circle. :p Like I said, Gray – just like driving in Rhode Island. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – put my Song Saturday post into the Victor Luvs Alice queue, which was the reblog of Fergie’s “Clumsy” that I was thinking of doing before Valicertine’s Day before remembering “Love Is Easy” by McFly. Easy-peasy!
*nods* At least I'm doing well with writing and workouts and whatnot! Now, time to head to bed and see how Thursday is. It's supposed to be record warmth with evening showers, so. . . *shrug* We'll see how that turns out! Night all!
Work – Eh – it would have been an all right day (mostly doing more obituaries), if someone hadn’t called in with a credit card question in the middle of lunch. I wasn’t quite finished with my food at the time, so I asked my coworker (who’d picked up the call) if she could get his number so I could call him back, and while she did it, she promptly started getting passive-aggressive because apparently he’d wanted to do it now. I’m like, all I wanted to do was actually finish my lunch. The guy got his question resolved in the end, but it really put a damper on the rest of the damn day. *sigh* Ugh – at least we’re past the halfway point of the week!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the Oxventure “Battle for Bardcon!” After a bit more discussion about the pros-and-cons of the plans they’d currently come up with, Dob pointed out that there was four of them, and four battalions to take out – maybe they could split up and each take on a battalion on their own? Using their own preferred methods? This was generally agreed-to, with Prudence calling dibs on the guards in their rusty armor and weapons, Corazon taking on the spurned lovers, Egbert deciding he’d like to visit the barmen, and Dob figuring that, as the bard representative of the group, he should handle the ordinary people turned into heroes. He also called over Katie Pearlhead (yes, his fiancee was still there) and asked her to go visit Croaker, let him know what was happening, and – just in case it all went tits-up – help him get the stage’s amplification system (a speaking horn with a bunch of clerics attached to it via wires up their noses, who then used Thaumaturgy on the music coming through them to get it to really echo) onto the Joyful Damnation so they could wheel it around doing Thunderwaves. Katie agreed, though she seemed quite annoyed by the whole business, complaining about ruining an expensive dress. Prudence took the opportunity to ask Dob how wedding planning was going, and how they seemed to be annoying each other (Dob insisted all couples had their disagreements, and things with Katie were generally good), and Johnny took the opportunity to ask Dob for a Constitution check (Dob also insisted that this is his first long-term relationship, he’s probably SUPPOSED to look poisony!). XD
Oh, and there was also the matter of Marie, whom Prudece was still holding by the scruff of her neck like a kitten. Prudence was all for killing her, with Corazon admitting they’d ALREADY killed her grandfather – and then SOMEHOW managing to cover that up with more “mmm chainmail” with a good Charisma roll (JUST beating hers). XD Dob instead decided to try for understanding and gave Marie a fallen triangle before having Prudence put her with one of the drumming circles, saying that she should at least give it a go! Marie huffed, but did actually go along with the beat – and Prudence took advantage to try and clean out her pockets of spell components so she couldn’t do any more magic. Johnny was impressed, right up until Prudence rolled a crit 1 (Egbert/Mike was like “we can PUT WHEELS on the Joyful Damnation and have the boat TOWED HERE without problems, but we can’t rifle through someone’s pockets?!”). It was decided that Marie had too many pockets to search, but Prudence managed to grab what she could – including some trail mix, which she ate in front of Marie. Only, thanks to the 1, the yogurt chips were bad and gave her eight points of poisoning damage. XD Errors, comedy, you know the drill. :p
Anyway, with that out of the way (and Corazon already on the move), the group split up to each deal with their chosen battalion! Johnny rolled a die, and they ended up following Corazon first to the spurned lovers – half of whom were moaning on chaise lounges, half of whom were making weapons and swearing vengeance. Corazon infiltrated by imitating their moans and claiming that he was the victim of a bard as well (Valeria, who promised him special croissants from a bakery only she knew), and found a friendly ear in Peter (himself the victim of Olivia – or was it John? No, not Newton. . .or Travolta, which is what Johnny was ACTUALLY aiming for when they picked those names XD). Corazon thanked Peter for his sympathy, then said that he had a crazy idea – there were exactly 100 of them in this camp, right? Well, what if, instead of pursuing bloody vengeance and murdering thousands of people, they all got to know each other better? Tried to find love with non-bards? Perhaps in a setting where they all chat one-on-one for about three minutes across a table. . . Johnny called for a Charisma check, Corazon smashed it with a 22, and thus Corazon invented speed-dating. XD He rolled well enough to get everything set up efficiently too, with tables and egg timers and everything. Johnny ruled that, with that many people at about three minutes each, they’d be done with the “speed”-dating two days after the festival was over. XD So Corazon effectively took them out of the fight, with the one downside being that he’d effectively taken HIMSELF out of the fight as well, being trapped in the speed-date until he could slip away. He embraced it and asked someone to tell them all about their hobby of collecting nesting dolls. :p
Next up was Egbert, going to see the barmen (or bartenders, they should really be called, as their self-appointed “leader” for the conversation was in fact a woman), totally without a plan! He found them all doing their “clean the glass” idle animation behind a door they’d erected in their portion of the field. :p Egbert strolled in through the door and tried to order a pint, causing them all to move in creepy unison to try and pull him one before remembering they didn’t have any. The de-facto leader stepped forward then and – impressively leaning over a bar that wasn’t there – gave him the skinny on their grievances: namely, that they’d all had to sell their bars and booze to pay off debts to their suppliers incurred by bards coming in to play music, driving up massive tabs, and then skipping out on the bill. Egbert sympathized, but pointed out that if they went with their apparent plan of smashing bards with glasses, they’d be left without a weapon after the first bard they smashed. He proposed an alternate plan: take advantage of the fact that Bardcon is a festival and thus charge all the bards exorbitant prices for drinks! And when the leader pointed out they had no booze, he pointed out in turn that the bards were largely insensate right now, and no one was manning most of the booze tents – it was a free-for-all. Johnny was so impressed, they didn’t even make Egbert roll for it – upon hearing there was booze for the taking and excessive amounts of cash to be made, the bartenders just RACED down into the festival (taking their glasses and door) and promptly set up shop, putting up “no credit” signs and pandering to all the drunk and stoned bards (who were NOT seducing their way out of this one!). And so Egbert took them out of the fight as well, with the downside of having to pay jacked-up festival prices himself for a tankard of warm beer. He accepted this as the price of being at a con.
And then we moved to Prudence, who – after asking if the guards were within 250 feet, forcing Johnny to do loads of math about how far that is in meters and if the bartenders could actually have covered that as fast as they did – started walking toward her chosen targets. . .and warming up the Eldritch Spear. XD Yes, who is surprised she chose violence? Once she was in range, she managed to nail two guards with her spears, not QUITE killing them but certainly sending up some impressive gouts of blood. And then continued on with her slow awesome walk while summoning a freaking shadow demon. XD Prudence be hardcore, yo. I left it with her explaining how the shadow demon was perfect for the twilight hour – we will see how badly she murders everyone, and how Dob handles the heroes, next time!
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen:” Check – I have finished Chapter 4, with Alice having successfully fueled up the car, and Emily calling 911 to report the murder (just so someone knows). She and Victoria are still rather shaken, but they’re determined to help her find and rescue Victor, so – things are about as okay as they can be, given Alice was just on the job! Since I’ve hit a chapter break, I’ll go ahead and work on Marie’s gift fic on Friday instead – then next week, we start Chapter 5 with Victor and the Coasters getting to stretch their legs in the yard! Should be fun. :P
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one GrayStillPlays video today, “Testing Cars vs MASSIVE Pot Holes in GTA 5” – aka Gray drives in Rhode Island. XD Okay, no, Alex designed Gray another challenge course in GTA V – a 6.9 mile road with lots and lots of different potholes! Including “regular” potholes that just got wider and deeper the farther along you got; “alcoholic potholes” made from the tops of oversized beer bottles; “ball potholes” which were ditches filled with balls you had to run over to make it across; unnamed potholes made from those trampoline-like circles with holes in the middle (I dunno what they’re used for in-game); “BIG potholes” which were basically giant dips in the road itself; “moving potholes” where you had to drive across upside-down moving “!” signs and one “Flight” sign to make it across the gaps; and “geometry potholes” where you had to make it across varying shapes, like an octagon, a square, two triangles (pointing in different directions), and a BIIIG rectangle). Oh, and none of the cars respawn or heal, meaning Gray only had a limited number of chances to get across this nonsense. Gray tried quite a few different vehicles, some good (an early six-wheeler got him all the way to the geometry section before getting stuck in the square, and the rusty old truck with the wide bed got all the way to the final big rectangle before getting stuck), some bad (a dump truck with giant wheels got stuck way early on in one of the regular potholes, and Gray’s attempt at using the motorcycle just got him stuck in alcoholism). The winner proved to be a green buggy-like car with pink wheel rims and GREAT hydraulics, which actually DID get stuck in the octagon in “geometry” – only for Gray to manage to use its hydraulics to BACK HIMSELF OUT and escape! That got him all the way to the end –
And to the CHECKPOINT! Because that was NOT the end of the board – no, to reach the winning circle, Gray then had to defeat the BOSS POTHOLE, which was basically a large rectangular lake in the middle of a road in the middle of an actual lake. XD Gray tried a couple of cars to test how big it was and see what could make it over – a few cars sunk to the bottom later, he realized that the trick was to put cars IN the pothole so he could ramp his final choice over them. And, after NEARLY bouncing his chosen car off one he managed to get into the BOSS POTHOLE vertically, he won by resetting the board and dumping the biggest van available into the pothole for his chosen car to ramp off of and make the winner’s circle. :p Like I said, Gray – just like driving in Rhode Island. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – put my Song Saturday post into the Victor Luvs Alice queue, which was the reblog of Fergie’s “Clumsy” that I was thinking of doing before Valicertine’s Day before remembering “Love Is Easy” by McFly. Easy-peasy!
*nods* At least I'm doing well with writing and workouts and whatnot! Now, time to head to bed and see how Thursday is. It's supposed to be record warmth with evening showers, so. . . *shrug* We'll see how that turns out! Night all!
