Kind Of Productive Saturday
May. 13th, 2023 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI mean, I lost about an hour before lunch playing Merge Dragons because as it turns out they did two events this week (the sea-themed one and now a Mother's Day-themed one), and my focus wasn't the best for the entire day, but I checked off a few big goals --
Tumblr: The one that suffered the most from me doing that Merge Dragons session – though I didn’t actually WANT to catch up on my dash too early, as my friend Newt was posting Taskmaster stuff that I didn’t want to see until we watched the latest episode. But I’m currently working on getting all the pictures sorted for the latest Chill Valicer Save update (you know, the one I just finished below). Looking like it’s gonna be decently long, but so long as I can get the pictures done and maybe a few preliminary drafts sorted, I’ll be happy.
Sims 4: Finally finished off Spring Thursday in the Chill Valicer Save, as I was hoping to do! Let me take you through how the last half of the day went for my Valicer trio –
A) Picked up with the gang at the Van Liddelton Groceries lot, ready to start working on the layout and suchlike a bit more. I ended up just ditching the flower fridge that I was using for the flowers – I couldn’t think of a way to make it work in the store, and I like them on the shelves at the front anyway – and got rid of all the “spare” refrigerated displays (keeping just two on either side of the new produce stalls, two for the meat (and mushrooms) “department), and two for the “bakery”), since I couldn’t see myself using them. (Though I managed not to see one right behind the flower-arranging bench for the longest time. . .) Good to have the layout finally figured out!
As for the exterior, it took a bit of fiddling and trying to figure out what I wanted from the space, but I eventually came up with something I’m happy with! Out front are some signs (including a nice illuminated wall sign I found) and some barrels with flowers (amusingly, my All Bugged Out mod spawned some bees right on top of them when I went to Live Mode); to the left (coming in from the street) are some planters, a DIY wall mural, and a couple of chess tables; to the right is more planters, a street mural, and a big old fountain (that doubles as a seating area); and the back has a dumpster, a recycle bin, and some graffiti along with an old flaking-off mural. It just gives the place some more CHARACTER, you know? And visitors something to do other than shop, should they so choose.
B) And then, with the Build/Buy stuff largely done, it was time to get the gang working on filling the shelves and the produce stands and suchlike! To my surprise, I discovered the BrazenLotus produce stands actually share an inventory with the retail fridges – well, at least that means stocking them should be easier! I put some spare tomatoes in there and set to work, having Alice make a nice strawberry cake, Victor arrange some flowers, and Smiler make both bulk and singular green peas, before opening up the boxes to get the individual cans to arrange on the shelves (since I thought that looked better than just having a bunch of boxes). To my mild annoyance, I discovered that the models for the canned veggies uses what I presume are real-life brands with English labels. I can live with it, especially since it isn’t obvious from a distance, but – meh. I’ve gotten very Maxis-matchy in my Sims old age, and I would have preferred at least the writing be in Simlish!
C) Anyway – after the initial round of food creation and processing, I noticed Alice was getting hungry, and decided that the best thing to do would be to have her hunt for meat, both to get some werewolf XP and get more raw steaks for the meat department. XD So I had her transform and head out. Victor too was feeling peckish as he wrapped up his flower arrangement, so I had him use the Delicioso spell to summon up a hot dog to snack on. He and Smiler chatted as he ate, with Smiler joining in the lunch break with a froggy plasma pack – then, once they were both closer to full, it was back to work, with Smiler taking over flower arranging duty while Victor did bulk processing – making things like chocolate syrup and raspberry jam. Alice also came back with her meat – unfortunately, the FIRST spare plate of meat she came back with, I think I accidentally disposed of in a bathroom sink while trying to place it, so I had to send her back out to get some more. *sigh* Dang misclicks. . .fortunately, I was able to put the steaks she picked up from trip two into the display without issue. She got a break to “mark her territory” and do a bit of scavenging (found a new fossil, a pre-historic hoofprint), then turned back to a Sim to go make things like hamburger cake, raspberry pie, and zombie cake while Victor fizzed some strawberry juice, made some butterscotch cupcakes, and bagged up some fancy breads (after using Scruberoo to clean the filthy bulk processor – that and Repairio are the most useful spells once your Sim is past the “fail everything” stage of spellcaster-dom, I swear). Basically, between the three of them, they spent a LOT of time making food (both fresh and bulk-packaged) and flowers!
D) . .and they’ve barely filled ANY of the shelves. Yeaaaah – while the bakery section and the flower arrangement shelves are looking good, the actual consignment shelves in the middle are still looking quite bare. Basically confirming what I suspected before – this store is just a little big for three people! I think I’m gonna have to fill the rest of the shelves with food-related décor items that they can just restock normally in order to get this business off the ground before the end of this real-life year. Though my friend Squid did suggest that Smiler could sell robots in the store too. . .which kind of requires them to have power at home more often, but hopefully all the wind turbines will start picking up the pace! Maybe Victor could make more woodworking sculptures too. . . I’ll figure it out! (And I think I mentioned before that Victor learning Copypasto would probably help too. . .)
E) Well, they did the best they could today, and so I let them head home. Victor and Alice slumped off to bed, exhausted, while Smiler grabbed a PlasmaFizz juice (from the greenhouse fridge, for some reason), chatted with Kelly for a bit as she played with her scratching post, fixed their radio, put the tiger frog they’d recently bred into their collection in the attic, then finally flew over to their party barn space to practice making drinks some more as the pets hung out with them. I saved it shortly after it turned midnight, with Victor and Alice ALREADY fully refreshed from their short sleep. XD Next playsession, it’ll be time to take this trio out and about for some Love Day fun! Wish I could do a proper threesome date for them, but I’ll make do. :)
Writing: More of my latest bit of “comfort fic” (aka “Vic indulges her hypnokinky bullshit with Victor, Alice, and Smiler”) was indeed written today, getting Victor completely through his “marmalisation” with lots of tickling, “Giggler gas” (aka lavender-scented air), “joy serum” (aka a toy needle from a kid’s doctor kit), and extra hypnosis (courtesy of a VR headset). Victor’s, uh, pretty happy with the results. As are Alice and Smiler, who intend to take full advantage of his marmalised state. . .
YouTube: Well, didn’t get as much done here today as I would have liked, but I DID get one of the list videos I had sitting around watched, so I will count that as a win –
A) From the Watch Later, we had this OXBox list – “7 Most Awkward Kisses in Gaming History!” Yes, Jane, Mike, and Andy were there to take us through some truly torturous video game kisses, including the infamous kiss human princess Elise gives Sonic the Hedgehog to bring him back from the dead in Sonic The Hedgehog (2006); the “open world does not care if you’re making out” kisses of Jimmy Hopkins and his various love interests (observed by various quest-givers, passing students, and potential combatants) in Bully; and the utterly horrific kisses between currently-walking-ice-cold-corpse Lucas and his love interest Carla in Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy (depending on your localization – not only do the lips not connect properly, Lucas keeps his eyes open. Oh, and Carla mentions he’s as cold as ice, which does NOT help the mood). Basically, you might want to keep the kissing to a minimum in your video games unless you’re ABSOLUTELY SURE you know what you’re doing.
B) And from the Subs, we had GrayStillPlays – “Testing Small Cars vs Tall Cars in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, where Gray had a selection of all the tallest cars in the game from each category (so the “small cars” were the tallest of regular cars, while the tallest were things like the disco bus, the giant forklift, and the dump truck), and he had to figure out which one could make it all the way through Alex’s challenge course. Said challenge course consisted of the “Multiple Choice Tightrope” (a set of green tightropes spaced at varying intervals – Gray had to pick the right pair that matched how far apart his tires were for any particular vehicle), the “Slanted Silent Hills” (a trio of curvy hills on increasingly steep slants – the third one was damn near vertical), the “From Rags To Riches Speed Bumps” (a series of speed bumps that started with cardboard boxes and hobos with shopping cars and ended with piles of diamonds and gold-plated cars), the “Multiple Surface Wallrides” (a quartet of wallrides with a little transition half-tube in between, going from asphalt, to rubber, to wood, to ice), and finally “Future Buldges” (misspelling Alex’s; a series of bulges made of various bits of futuristic architecture in the game – and the UFO – ending with a MASSIVE, STEEP HILL). And Gray not only had to contend with the challenges, but also the chaos going on around him – birds landing on the course (causing Gray to try and befriend one – only to be attacked by a passing mountain lion), airplanes crashing INTO the course (Gray said that there was an airplane graveyard underneath the slanted hills in particular), and snipers from what was either the prison or the army base shooting at him as he made it over the final massive future bulge (one wasting him JUST as he was sliding down toward the finish). It was – it was something else. XD Gray tried a lot of cars, including the discount Batmobile, the Disco Van, the dump truck, the forklift, the gold-plated monster truck, and the beloved Wastelander, but the one that finally made it all the way to the end was a pastel SUV monstrosity with a cage back and truly amazing traction. Gray – doing the impossible and the impossibly ridiculous since – well, I don’t actually know when he started his channel. A while!
Other:
-->Went up to the bank mid-morning to grab some cash, as I needed some for a work thing (present for my supervisor) – quick walk, not too busy, didn’t take long. Though damn, it was WARM out this morning – you can definitely feel that we’re moving into summer!
-->Got Mom’s Mother’s Day e-card sorted right after lunch – found a funny video e-card about a baby wrecking all of their mother’s hard work that I thought she’d enjoy. XD
-->We played beanbags right after I wrapped up with Sims 4 – I had a good day overall, Dad was great for the first three games, then crashed in the last two, and Mom struggled throughout but managed to improve some in the last games. Final scores were me 2-2-2-W-W; Dad W-W-W-3-3; Mom 3-3-3-2-2. Maybe tomorrow she’ll do better!
Not too shabby, I suppose! And now it's time to go wrap up being social and finish off sorting out all these pictures. Tomorrow is Mother's Day, but Mom's deferred going out anywhere to the Thursday I have off this upcoming week (she thinks it'll be easier to go mini-golfing then if the weather cooperates, since it won't be as busy because midweek), so I don't know if anything special will be happening. At least I'm set with the card (she already got the flowers she wanted). Other plans include catching up on tumblr nonsense and at least STARTING the Chill Valicer Save drafts; playing Fallout 4 and making Nordhagen Beach nicer, and updating the Playthrough Progression appropriately; keeping up with Gray and Jon, and MAYBE some more OXBox; and starting the "Dread" Oxventure One-Shot Wonder with my workout. We'll see how it all goes! Night all!
Tumblr: The one that suffered the most from me doing that Merge Dragons session – though I didn’t actually WANT to catch up on my dash too early, as my friend Newt was posting Taskmaster stuff that I didn’t want to see until we watched the latest episode. But I’m currently working on getting all the pictures sorted for the latest Chill Valicer Save update (you know, the one I just finished below). Looking like it’s gonna be decently long, but so long as I can get the pictures done and maybe a few preliminary drafts sorted, I’ll be happy.
Sims 4: Finally finished off Spring Thursday in the Chill Valicer Save, as I was hoping to do! Let me take you through how the last half of the day went for my Valicer trio –
A) Picked up with the gang at the Van Liddelton Groceries lot, ready to start working on the layout and suchlike a bit more. I ended up just ditching the flower fridge that I was using for the flowers – I couldn’t think of a way to make it work in the store, and I like them on the shelves at the front anyway – and got rid of all the “spare” refrigerated displays (keeping just two on either side of the new produce stalls, two for the meat (and mushrooms) “department), and two for the “bakery”), since I couldn’t see myself using them. (Though I managed not to see one right behind the flower-arranging bench for the longest time. . .) Good to have the layout finally figured out!
As for the exterior, it took a bit of fiddling and trying to figure out what I wanted from the space, but I eventually came up with something I’m happy with! Out front are some signs (including a nice illuminated wall sign I found) and some barrels with flowers (amusingly, my All Bugged Out mod spawned some bees right on top of them when I went to Live Mode); to the left (coming in from the street) are some planters, a DIY wall mural, and a couple of chess tables; to the right is more planters, a street mural, and a big old fountain (that doubles as a seating area); and the back has a dumpster, a recycle bin, and some graffiti along with an old flaking-off mural. It just gives the place some more CHARACTER, you know? And visitors something to do other than shop, should they so choose.
B) And then, with the Build/Buy stuff largely done, it was time to get the gang working on filling the shelves and the produce stands and suchlike! To my surprise, I discovered the BrazenLotus produce stands actually share an inventory with the retail fridges – well, at least that means stocking them should be easier! I put some spare tomatoes in there and set to work, having Alice make a nice strawberry cake, Victor arrange some flowers, and Smiler make both bulk and singular green peas, before opening up the boxes to get the individual cans to arrange on the shelves (since I thought that looked better than just having a bunch of boxes). To my mild annoyance, I discovered that the models for the canned veggies uses what I presume are real-life brands with English labels. I can live with it, especially since it isn’t obvious from a distance, but – meh. I’ve gotten very Maxis-matchy in my Sims old age, and I would have preferred at least the writing be in Simlish!
C) Anyway – after the initial round of food creation and processing, I noticed Alice was getting hungry, and decided that the best thing to do would be to have her hunt for meat, both to get some werewolf XP and get more raw steaks for the meat department. XD So I had her transform and head out. Victor too was feeling peckish as he wrapped up his flower arrangement, so I had him use the Delicioso spell to summon up a hot dog to snack on. He and Smiler chatted as he ate, with Smiler joining in the lunch break with a froggy plasma pack – then, once they were both closer to full, it was back to work, with Smiler taking over flower arranging duty while Victor did bulk processing – making things like chocolate syrup and raspberry jam. Alice also came back with her meat – unfortunately, the FIRST spare plate of meat she came back with, I think I accidentally disposed of in a bathroom sink while trying to place it, so I had to send her back out to get some more. *sigh* Dang misclicks. . .fortunately, I was able to put the steaks she picked up from trip two into the display without issue. She got a break to “mark her territory” and do a bit of scavenging (found a new fossil, a pre-historic hoofprint), then turned back to a Sim to go make things like hamburger cake, raspberry pie, and zombie cake while Victor fizzed some strawberry juice, made some butterscotch cupcakes, and bagged up some fancy breads (after using Scruberoo to clean the filthy bulk processor – that and Repairio are the most useful spells once your Sim is past the “fail everything” stage of spellcaster-dom, I swear). Basically, between the three of them, they spent a LOT of time making food (both fresh and bulk-packaged) and flowers!
D) . .and they’ve barely filled ANY of the shelves. Yeaaaah – while the bakery section and the flower arrangement shelves are looking good, the actual consignment shelves in the middle are still looking quite bare. Basically confirming what I suspected before – this store is just a little big for three people! I think I’m gonna have to fill the rest of the shelves with food-related décor items that they can just restock normally in order to get this business off the ground before the end of this real-life year. Though my friend Squid did suggest that Smiler could sell robots in the store too. . .which kind of requires them to have power at home more often, but hopefully all the wind turbines will start picking up the pace! Maybe Victor could make more woodworking sculptures too. . . I’ll figure it out! (And I think I mentioned before that Victor learning Copypasto would probably help too. . .)
E) Well, they did the best they could today, and so I let them head home. Victor and Alice slumped off to bed, exhausted, while Smiler grabbed a PlasmaFizz juice (from the greenhouse fridge, for some reason), chatted with Kelly for a bit as she played with her scratching post, fixed their radio, put the tiger frog they’d recently bred into their collection in the attic, then finally flew over to their party barn space to practice making drinks some more as the pets hung out with them. I saved it shortly after it turned midnight, with Victor and Alice ALREADY fully refreshed from their short sleep. XD Next playsession, it’ll be time to take this trio out and about for some Love Day fun! Wish I could do a proper threesome date for them, but I’ll make do. :)
Writing: More of my latest bit of “comfort fic” (aka “Vic indulges her hypnokinky bullshit with Victor, Alice, and Smiler”) was indeed written today, getting Victor completely through his “marmalisation” with lots of tickling, “Giggler gas” (aka lavender-scented air), “joy serum” (aka a toy needle from a kid’s doctor kit), and extra hypnosis (courtesy of a VR headset). Victor’s, uh, pretty happy with the results. As are Alice and Smiler, who intend to take full advantage of his marmalised state. . .
YouTube: Well, didn’t get as much done here today as I would have liked, but I DID get one of the list videos I had sitting around watched, so I will count that as a win –
A) From the Watch Later, we had this OXBox list – “7 Most Awkward Kisses in Gaming History!” Yes, Jane, Mike, and Andy were there to take us through some truly torturous video game kisses, including the infamous kiss human princess Elise gives Sonic the Hedgehog to bring him back from the dead in Sonic The Hedgehog (2006); the “open world does not care if you’re making out” kisses of Jimmy Hopkins and his various love interests (observed by various quest-givers, passing students, and potential combatants) in Bully; and the utterly horrific kisses between currently-walking-ice-cold-corpse Lucas and his love interest Carla in Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy (depending on your localization – not only do the lips not connect properly, Lucas keeps his eyes open. Oh, and Carla mentions he’s as cold as ice, which does NOT help the mood). Basically, you might want to keep the kissing to a minimum in your video games unless you’re ABSOLUTELY SURE you know what you’re doing.
B) And from the Subs, we had GrayStillPlays – “Testing Small Cars vs Tall Cars in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, where Gray had a selection of all the tallest cars in the game from each category (so the “small cars” were the tallest of regular cars, while the tallest were things like the disco bus, the giant forklift, and the dump truck), and he had to figure out which one could make it all the way through Alex’s challenge course. Said challenge course consisted of the “Multiple Choice Tightrope” (a set of green tightropes spaced at varying intervals – Gray had to pick the right pair that matched how far apart his tires were for any particular vehicle), the “Slanted Silent Hills” (a trio of curvy hills on increasingly steep slants – the third one was damn near vertical), the “From Rags To Riches Speed Bumps” (a series of speed bumps that started with cardboard boxes and hobos with shopping cars and ended with piles of diamonds and gold-plated cars), the “Multiple Surface Wallrides” (a quartet of wallrides with a little transition half-tube in between, going from asphalt, to rubber, to wood, to ice), and finally “Future Buldges” (misspelling Alex’s; a series of bulges made of various bits of futuristic architecture in the game – and the UFO – ending with a MASSIVE, STEEP HILL). And Gray not only had to contend with the challenges, but also the chaos going on around him – birds landing on the course (causing Gray to try and befriend one – only to be attacked by a passing mountain lion), airplanes crashing INTO the course (Gray said that there was an airplane graveyard underneath the slanted hills in particular), and snipers from what was either the prison or the army base shooting at him as he made it over the final massive future bulge (one wasting him JUST as he was sliding down toward the finish). It was – it was something else. XD Gray tried a lot of cars, including the discount Batmobile, the Disco Van, the dump truck, the forklift, the gold-plated monster truck, and the beloved Wastelander, but the one that finally made it all the way to the end was a pastel SUV monstrosity with a cage back and truly amazing traction. Gray – doing the impossible and the impossibly ridiculous since – well, I don’t actually know when he started his channel. A while!
Other:
-->Went up to the bank mid-morning to grab some cash, as I needed some for a work thing (present for my supervisor) – quick walk, not too busy, didn’t take long. Though damn, it was WARM out this morning – you can definitely feel that we’re moving into summer!
-->Got Mom’s Mother’s Day e-card sorted right after lunch – found a funny video e-card about a baby wrecking all of their mother’s hard work that I thought she’d enjoy. XD
-->We played beanbags right after I wrapped up with Sims 4 – I had a good day overall, Dad was great for the first three games, then crashed in the last two, and Mom struggled throughout but managed to improve some in the last games. Final scores were me 2-2-2-W-W; Dad W-W-W-3-3; Mom 3-3-3-2-2. Maybe tomorrow she’ll do better!
Not too shabby, I suppose! And now it's time to go wrap up being social and finish off sorting out all these pictures. Tomorrow is Mother's Day, but Mom's deferred going out anywhere to the Thursday I have off this upcoming week (she thinks it'll be easier to go mini-golfing then if the weather cooperates, since it won't be as busy because midweek), so I don't know if anything special will be happening. At least I'm set with the card (she already got the flowers she wanted). Other plans include catching up on tumblr nonsense and at least STARTING the Chill Valicer Save drafts; playing Fallout 4 and making Nordhagen Beach nicer, and updating the Playthrough Progression appropriately; keeping up with Gray and Jon, and MAYBE some more OXBox; and starting the "Dread" Oxventure One-Shot Wonder with my workout. We'll see how it all goes! Night all!
