Another Late Update
Feb. 22nd, 2023 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickThough this is because I'm finishing up a message to Moose, as promised. So let me just yeet my to-do list here so I can get back to that and still get to bed at a decent time --
Work – Another slightly annoying day, though I did manage an uninterrupted lunch hour this time! But it was another day of being interrupted during stuff by credit card calls (including one where I had to set up a bunch of individual pledges to different parishes, and one where I had to go on the credit card site directly instead of working through our database because for some reason the pledge wasn’t on our main database yet), so yeah. At least I got my cybersecurity training and a bit of roster maintenance done as well! It’s the small things.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, getting through the following –
A) Finishing off the Sponsored Arcane Deal Oxventure, “Big Deck Energy!” Egbert did indeed force the bomb into N'ghathrod’s gullet with a dirty twenty (versus the captain’s ten), but unfortunately it was a literal damp squib (as in, the captain’s head was very damp and muted the blast) and it only exploded for nine points of damage. Even more unfortunately, it was N'ghathrod’s turn immediately afterward, and he chose to send out a Mind Blast at the adventurers (and remaining centaur). Everyone except Prudence failed the Intelligence saving throw and ended up stunned, taking a whopping twenty-one points of psychic damage. It was generally agreed there was a lot of head bleeding and general “glarghing” going on.
Luckily, Prudence WAS unaffected, and thus was able to Agonizing Blast this asshole! Sadly, one blast went wide (hitting the centaur), but the other managed to hit N'ghathrod – unfortunately, it only did seven points of damage. Meh. The rest of the party spent their turns trying to shake off the Mind Blast – the centaur managed it (possibly by virtue of having been shocked out of it via Eldritch Blast), as did Merilwen, while Dob remained stunned. Combat came around again – Corazon managed to clear his head and use his bonus action to hide, while Egbert unfortunately remained VERY stunned. N'ghathrod, seeing an opportunity, grappled Egbert’s head looking for tasty brains –
And, well, cue Egbert’s -1 Wisdom coming in handy as he did not find any! XD (I mean, what TECHNICALLY happened was the roll couldn’t beat Egbert’s armor class, so it was a miss, but this was MUCH funnier.) This brought things around to Prudence again, who decided the best action was to grab the centaur’s energy spear and pin N'ghathrod to the wall, giving him a nasty electric shock in the process. The hit was true, the damage was decent, and N'ghathrod decided to yield. Though not before the centaur decided to try and kick Merilwen in the face for her previous pun. XD Fortunately for her, he missed, and proceeded to go back to being sad about his brother being blasted out of the ship. N'ghathrod admitted that he might have bitten off more than he could chew with G’eth (after all, it is a place with twenty-seven different types of clam), and said he would take his ship and leave once they’d all gotten off it. The gang proceeded to depart, though not before Merilwen cast Confusion on N'ghathrod to make sure that he didn’t end up in the realm that he was aiming for (Johnny ruled he ended up in a carbon copy of his favorite realm to visit, only this one didn’t have any clams at all), and Corazon attempted to steal the spelljammer drive for the Joyful Damnation and broke it in the process. XD
And so the adventure ended with N'ghathrod blasting off; all the other realm stuff being sent back to where it belonged (including the centaur and, uh, what was LEFT of his brother); and the Oxventurers ending up in a field next to a pub, where they attempted to go in and order drinks – only for the bartender to turn their cask of ale around and declare it “tapped.” (A pun that only works if you know that you can “tap” cards in M:tG by turning them sideways.) Also the dreadwolf from earlier showed up and spat out a chewed Binbag, who promptly teleported away. XD Just, you know, another day of adventure on G’eth!
B) And then, once the boss battle had wrapped up, I once again went over to Petey Plays It for a couple of Sims 4 videos –
I. “8 Helpful Traits You Can Unlock Through Careers | The Sims 4 Guide” – a look at the traits you can unlock by completing certain careers! Some being more useful than others, and all of them dependent on having the expansion packs the careers come in. That being said, they are fairly nice perks – become a level 8 Doctor from Get to Work, for example, and you’ll gain resistance to sickness and will recover faster if you do get sick. Or if you’re a Salaryperson from Snowy Escape, you’ll eventually gain the Charismatic Crooner trait, which gives you +1 effective Charisma skill (that is, you can use social interactions that normally take an extra level of Charisma skill to unlock) and – if you have City Living – makes it so you level up your singing skill faster. Makes it a good idea to go around and try out some careers you might otherwise never touch!
II. “Complete Knitting Skill Guide | The Sims 4 Nifty Knitting” – a look at the knitting skill from Nifty Knitting, as you might expect! Goes through all the various things you can knit at each level (ranging from beginner beanies to usable toys when you’ve maxed the skill), the “sweater curse” that can afflict Sims in a relationship (pro tip: don’t gift your loved one a sweater until you’ve completed the associated aspiration and know how to remove said curse!), the bonuses from completing the “Lord/Lady Of The Knits” aspiration, how to make money from your knitting (generally it’s better to try and sell your stuff on Plopsy or in a retail store than direct from inventory), and how it interacts with some of the other packs (namely, you can use llama wool in your knitting and knit farm animal clothes if you have Cottage Living). Good stuff, even if it makes me now want to try out knitting properly in my game. XD Vic – Vic, your Chill Valicer Save Sims are QUITE BUSY ENOUGH, thank you.
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – the gang has made it out to the yard, and are involved in their various activities – Rita jogging around the yard; Thirteen babying the oak tree in it; Smiler, Oblivion, and Air throwing a Frisbee around; and Wickerman playing with a fire pit and being a jerk to the others. :p Victor’s still on the sidelines for now, watching all this and asking about their “SW” designations – which is a lead-in for the others to talk about how they feel like they’re being studied so Dr. Kelman and his ilk can take over the world. *shrug* I mean, that IS sort of the aim of the Ministry of Joy in The Smiler’s themeing. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Just the one tonight, but it was a doozy – GrayStillPlays and “Which car can climb to the highest level in GTA 5?” Yes, we were back with Alex’s horrible GTA V challenge boards tonight, this time with a climbing challenge that took Gray all the way to the skybox! Alex basically designed the staircase from hell, with platforms that increased in height 0.5 feet each time (until he hit like the last ten steps, where they suddenly increased five feet each time), and some “fun stuff” in the middle for Gray to deal with about every three levels (like unusual shapes glued to the front of the steps; glass boxes that he had to shatter to reach the actual step (or find a way to ramp off of); slippery snowy steps with a box he had to move to help future cars make it further up; and steps combined with various moving signs to either make jumping them harder or force Gray to make it through thumbnail holes. Oh, and of course a smattering of wind turbines). In deference to this one being super hard, though, he allowed Gray to try multiple times with all the cars (instead of making it so they didn’t respawn) and gave them all hydraulics, urging him to test them all out.
And so Gray did, getting the stupidest stuff (like the forklift and the go-kart) out of the way first before moving onto the serious stuff. The Liberator monster truck didn’t do as well as he’d hoped despite its giant tires, while the rusty wreck of the Wastelander truck actually did way better than he thought, getting all the way up to the snowy area. He got pretty far on both the BMX bike and the motorbike too – in fact, the only reason he had to stop with the motorbike was because he smashed it into too many things and it finally blew up. XD But eventually Gray found the car that could make it all the way to the end – and I mean that literally, as he got in a truck and realized there was a Ruiner – the vaguely-DeLorean-looking car that can jump up into the air and parachute around – hidden in the back. With a license plate that read “FINALLY.” XD Gray put his mind to it and managed to climb all the way to the top with its bounce-and-float. . .
Only to find a teleporter. Which put him on a series of discs WITH MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CARS. Yes, Alex, in a fiendish move no one saw coming, made sure Gray HAD tested all the cars by making him answer questions about how far certain ones could get. Questions –
That Gray got WRONG. Or, well, he got the first two right, but then the dump truck one stumped him. Which led to him picking the wrong option, getting sent back down to a lower step and then smacked off the board entirely by a wind turbine. He did eventually figure out the right answer (turns out the dump truck can climb higher if you go BACKWARDS in it) and work his way back up to actually get the win, but MAN. Gray’s masochism was in FULL VIEW today, let me TELL you. Sheesh! I mean, I loved it, but sheesh!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – reset the speed on the Victor Luvs Alice queue to one, then threw in one of my Valicer Not-Incorrect Quote compilations (the one with the “meet the parents” theme) for Friday and found a pretty old Song Saturday to reblog (“Collide” by Howie Day – I hadn’t listened to it in a while, so I put it on, and it gave me the feels. Mostly about Victor and Smiler in their shared captivity in “The Joker And The Queen,” yes, but those are legit feels for me!). So that’s all sorted for the rest of the week!
*nods* Not bad! Made progress on lots of important stuff. And now it's time to clean up that final message to Moose (JUST over the character limit) and head to bed. Night all!
Work – Another slightly annoying day, though I did manage an uninterrupted lunch hour this time! But it was another day of being interrupted during stuff by credit card calls (including one where I had to set up a bunch of individual pledges to different parishes, and one where I had to go on the credit card site directly instead of working through our database because for some reason the pledge wasn’t on our main database yet), so yeah. At least I got my cybersecurity training and a bit of roster maintenance done as well! It’s the small things.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, getting through the following –
A) Finishing off the Sponsored Arcane Deal Oxventure, “Big Deck Energy!” Egbert did indeed force the bomb into N'ghathrod’s gullet with a dirty twenty (versus the captain’s ten), but unfortunately it was a literal damp squib (as in, the captain’s head was very damp and muted the blast) and it only exploded for nine points of damage. Even more unfortunately, it was N'ghathrod’s turn immediately afterward, and he chose to send out a Mind Blast at the adventurers (and remaining centaur). Everyone except Prudence failed the Intelligence saving throw and ended up stunned, taking a whopping twenty-one points of psychic damage. It was generally agreed there was a lot of head bleeding and general “glarghing” going on.
Luckily, Prudence WAS unaffected, and thus was able to Agonizing Blast this asshole! Sadly, one blast went wide (hitting the centaur), but the other managed to hit N'ghathrod – unfortunately, it only did seven points of damage. Meh. The rest of the party spent their turns trying to shake off the Mind Blast – the centaur managed it (possibly by virtue of having been shocked out of it via Eldritch Blast), as did Merilwen, while Dob remained stunned. Combat came around again – Corazon managed to clear his head and use his bonus action to hide, while Egbert unfortunately remained VERY stunned. N'ghathrod, seeing an opportunity, grappled Egbert’s head looking for tasty brains –
And, well, cue Egbert’s -1 Wisdom coming in handy as he did not find any! XD (I mean, what TECHNICALLY happened was the roll couldn’t beat Egbert’s armor class, so it was a miss, but this was MUCH funnier.) This brought things around to Prudence again, who decided the best action was to grab the centaur’s energy spear and pin N'ghathrod to the wall, giving him a nasty electric shock in the process. The hit was true, the damage was decent, and N'ghathrod decided to yield. Though not before the centaur decided to try and kick Merilwen in the face for her previous pun. XD Fortunately for her, he missed, and proceeded to go back to being sad about his brother being blasted out of the ship. N'ghathrod admitted that he might have bitten off more than he could chew with G’eth (after all, it is a place with twenty-seven different types of clam), and said he would take his ship and leave once they’d all gotten off it. The gang proceeded to depart, though not before Merilwen cast Confusion on N'ghathrod to make sure that he didn’t end up in the realm that he was aiming for (Johnny ruled he ended up in a carbon copy of his favorite realm to visit, only this one didn’t have any clams at all), and Corazon attempted to steal the spelljammer drive for the Joyful Damnation and broke it in the process. XD
And so the adventure ended with N'ghathrod blasting off; all the other realm stuff being sent back to where it belonged (including the centaur and, uh, what was LEFT of his brother); and the Oxventurers ending up in a field next to a pub, where they attempted to go in and order drinks – only for the bartender to turn their cask of ale around and declare it “tapped.” (A pun that only works if you know that you can “tap” cards in M:tG by turning them sideways.) Also the dreadwolf from earlier showed up and spat out a chewed Binbag, who promptly teleported away. XD Just, you know, another day of adventure on G’eth!
B) And then, once the boss battle had wrapped up, I once again went over to Petey Plays It for a couple of Sims 4 videos –
I. “8 Helpful Traits You Can Unlock Through Careers | The Sims 4 Guide” – a look at the traits you can unlock by completing certain careers! Some being more useful than others, and all of them dependent on having the expansion packs the careers come in. That being said, they are fairly nice perks – become a level 8 Doctor from Get to Work, for example, and you’ll gain resistance to sickness and will recover faster if you do get sick. Or if you’re a Salaryperson from Snowy Escape, you’ll eventually gain the Charismatic Crooner trait, which gives you +1 effective Charisma skill (that is, you can use social interactions that normally take an extra level of Charisma skill to unlock) and – if you have City Living – makes it so you level up your singing skill faster. Makes it a good idea to go around and try out some careers you might otherwise never touch!
II. “Complete Knitting Skill Guide | The Sims 4 Nifty Knitting” – a look at the knitting skill from Nifty Knitting, as you might expect! Goes through all the various things you can knit at each level (ranging from beginner beanies to usable toys when you’ve maxed the skill), the “sweater curse” that can afflict Sims in a relationship (pro tip: don’t gift your loved one a sweater until you’ve completed the associated aspiration and know how to remove said curse!), the bonuses from completing the “Lord/Lady Of The Knits” aspiration, how to make money from your knitting (generally it’s better to try and sell your stuff on Plopsy or in a retail store than direct from inventory), and how it interacts with some of the other packs (namely, you can use llama wool in your knitting and knit farm animal clothes if you have Cottage Living). Good stuff, even if it makes me now want to try out knitting properly in my game. XD Vic – Vic, your Chill Valicer Save Sims are QUITE BUSY ENOUGH, thank you.
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – the gang has made it out to the yard, and are involved in their various activities – Rita jogging around the yard; Thirteen babying the oak tree in it; Smiler, Oblivion, and Air throwing a Frisbee around; and Wickerman playing with a fire pit and being a jerk to the others. :p Victor’s still on the sidelines for now, watching all this and asking about their “SW” designations – which is a lead-in for the others to talk about how they feel like they’re being studied so Dr. Kelman and his ilk can take over the world. *shrug* I mean, that IS sort of the aim of the Ministry of Joy in The Smiler’s themeing. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Just the one tonight, but it was a doozy – GrayStillPlays and “Which car can climb to the highest level in GTA 5?” Yes, we were back with Alex’s horrible GTA V challenge boards tonight, this time with a climbing challenge that took Gray all the way to the skybox! Alex basically designed the staircase from hell, with platforms that increased in height 0.5 feet each time (until he hit like the last ten steps, where they suddenly increased five feet each time), and some “fun stuff” in the middle for Gray to deal with about every three levels (like unusual shapes glued to the front of the steps; glass boxes that he had to shatter to reach the actual step (or find a way to ramp off of); slippery snowy steps with a box he had to move to help future cars make it further up; and steps combined with various moving signs to either make jumping them harder or force Gray to make it through thumbnail holes. Oh, and of course a smattering of wind turbines). In deference to this one being super hard, though, he allowed Gray to try multiple times with all the cars (instead of making it so they didn’t respawn) and gave them all hydraulics, urging him to test them all out.
And so Gray did, getting the stupidest stuff (like the forklift and the go-kart) out of the way first before moving onto the serious stuff. The Liberator monster truck didn’t do as well as he’d hoped despite its giant tires, while the rusty wreck of the Wastelander truck actually did way better than he thought, getting all the way up to the snowy area. He got pretty far on both the BMX bike and the motorbike too – in fact, the only reason he had to stop with the motorbike was because he smashed it into too many things and it finally blew up. XD But eventually Gray found the car that could make it all the way to the end – and I mean that literally, as he got in a truck and realized there was a Ruiner – the vaguely-DeLorean-looking car that can jump up into the air and parachute around – hidden in the back. With a license plate that read “FINALLY.” XD Gray put his mind to it and managed to climb all the way to the top with its bounce-and-float. . .
Only to find a teleporter. Which put him on a series of discs WITH MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CARS. Yes, Alex, in a fiendish move no one saw coming, made sure Gray HAD tested all the cars by making him answer questions about how far certain ones could get. Questions –
That Gray got WRONG. Or, well, he got the first two right, but then the dump truck one stumped him. Which led to him picking the wrong option, getting sent back down to a lower step and then smacked off the board entirely by a wind turbine. He did eventually figure out the right answer (turns out the dump truck can climb higher if you go BACKWARDS in it) and work his way back up to actually get the win, but MAN. Gray’s masochism was in FULL VIEW today, let me TELL you. Sheesh! I mean, I loved it, but sheesh!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – reset the speed on the Victor Luvs Alice queue to one, then threw in one of my Valicer Not-Incorrect Quote compilations (the one with the “meet the parents” theme) for Friday and found a pretty old Song Saturday to reblog (“Collide” by Howie Day – I hadn’t listened to it in a while, so I put it on, and it gave me the feels. Mostly about Victor and Smiler in their shared captivity in “The Joker And The Queen,” yes, but those are legit feels for me!). So that’s all sorted for the rest of the week!
*nods* Not bad! Made progress on lots of important stuff. And now it's time to clean up that final message to Moose (JUST over the character limit) and head to bed. Night all!
