The Best Laid Plans. . .
Jun. 17th, 2023 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, uh, I didn't really get as much done as I would have liked today, mostly because -- well, I think the to-do list covers it nicely --
Cleaning: Felt like an extra-busy day with the cleaning, mostly because my parents were outside doing some very muddy gardening in the rain this morning, so I took it upon myself to make sure all the laundry, not just my own, was retrieved in good time and folded up neat and all that stuff. I won’t give you an exact play-by-play because I’ve realized why would you CARE when exactly I started and stopped each individual step, but I started with the dusting at around 10:50 AM, completed the main cleaning (aka dusting, Swiffering, and vacuuming) right before lunch at roughly 1:40 PM, and got the final bits out of the dryer around 3:30 PM. Yeaaaah, even if I didn’t really have that much dusting or anything to do, the sheer amount of stuff I have to dust (namely, all the shelves behind my bed) plus getting through all that laundry really sucked up the day! (Though Mom was very appreciative.) At least next weekend is free. . .and the weekend after that is the long 4th of July weekend, so it doesn’t matter so much that I have to clean. . .
Tumblr: Really did not have much time for this after everything else that happened today (see below), but I want it known that I answered the ask that was waiting on Valice Multiverse; answered another ask on Victor Luvs Alice (from Smiler’s biggest fan stretch-time – apparently they want to make them a little friend! I am intrigued); and got ONE of the initial drafts for the Chill Valicer Save update into my drafts. I will endeavor to get to the rest tonight!
Sims 4: Got a very late start on this today – a combination of wanting to get all the cleaning and laundry (and my snack) over and done with before starting, and hearing a few rumbles of thunder in the 2 PM hour that stopped me turning on my computer right away (did some Merge Dragons on my phone, made some excellent progress in the Father’s Day event they’re doing). But I did get on in the end, around 4 PM, and did some more stuff with their store, as promised –
A) Though, first, before starting up, I added two new mods from Simsonian Library – a perfumery mod (allowing your Sims to make perfumes from flowers on the stove) and an apothecary mod (allowing your Sims to make gummy versions of herbalism potions and tablet versions of Scientist serums)! I knew about the first from their website, but stumbled across the second while downloading perfumery from their Patreon – and it looks like they’re working on a nectar-making mod AND wild bug breeding farms! :D Okay, someone’s rapidly becoming my favorite new mod creator. . .
B) Anyway, after getting those installed and clearing my caches and whatnot, it was time to get into the game! Smiler was the only one up to start – I had them tune up our robot buddy Elmer, which ended up maxing out their Robotics skill, nice. :D I then had them start building a second gardening bot, this time in lime green, which I decided to name Bugs. XD As they did this and we passed 4 AM in-game, I decided Victor and Alice could get up as they were both hungry – Alice I had transform and go out hunting for food, while Victor used Delicioso to rumble up a nice place of spaghetti for breakfast. XD As Victor finished up his meal, though, I noticed Shadow wanting some attention, so I decided to have him take the dog out on a short early morning walk. Gotta exercise your foxhounds, after all!
C) As Victor and Shadow headed out for their morning constitutional, Smiler released the completed Bugs into the greenhouse to test their gardening skills, then cleaned the chicken coop and sorted the trash to clear out any recyclables, while Alice came back from her hunt with some fresh meat and a LOT of Fury. She was so close to bubbling over I figured it would be better to let her rampage and get it all out of her system, so once she was done eating, I banished her to the back yard to do some howling, scavenging, and “marking her territory” until the Fury took her (which, it REALLY had to fight against her memories of how good her relationship with Victor has been XD). I had her do a little more scavenging, then had her regain control and go back to normal. :) She’s got this werewolf thing down pretty much these days!
D) With her Fury purged, Alice headed upstairs to work on her latest book (using Smiler’s computer – I mean, it IS the nicest one in the house I suppose!) while Smiler made some toy chatterbots on the robot bench, repaired a wind turbine, and caught some monarch butterflies flying around. Victor returned from his walk with Shadow to find one of those creepy “Nerd Incel” specters flying around the obstacle course. Victor went out and presented it with a bunny statue, which it awkwardly said it would cherish always – I thought that maybe it hadn’t really liked the present because it didn’t seem to give Victor anything, but I later found out that, for whatever reason, it had dumped the wraith wax it had handed over into the HOUSEHOLD inventory. *shrug* All righty then. . . Victor went to help Bugs in the greenhouse for a bit (though there wasn’t actually that much to do), then went to clean out Moory’s shed, refill her feed, give her some pets, and milk her, while Smiler scattered a bit of feed for the chickens and entertained a few of them with jokes. And got the eggs, though there was only one regular egg, as opposed to three hatchable ones. I think I need to get rid of most of these roosters so the hens start laying regular eggs on the regular again! >(
E) Anyway, with that done, it was time to do the greenhouse – as Smiler is the one focusing more on Herbalism these days, I had them take all the supplies out of the box in the greenhouse, then harvest all those plants plus the plasma fruit tree. Victor came in to kick away some creepy hands and bond with his bees, then shared a nice flirt and kiss with Smiler before going to harvest all the rest of their produce. Smiler powered down Bugs (who was looking rather low on power) and put them in their inventory to fix up later, before moving to shape the bonsai tree in the living room into a heart, aww. :) Alice, for her part, finished her mystery book and came downstairs to clean out the fridge and share a few tender moments with Victor herself (after he’d stopped a fox from trying to raid the chicken coop) –
F) And with that, a bunch of the milk taken out of the fridge, and everyone in good shape, it was off to the store! Where I put into practice a plan I came up with while writing last week’s Chill Valicer Save update, about how I wanted more room in the “processing area” to work on things (like having two bulk food processors going at once, maybe), but I didn’t want to make the store bigger – namely, move all the processing into a new basement area! So, after getting an idea of where the room should be downstairs, I built it, put in some cool glowy stairs for fun, and moved all the processing stuff down there, along with the appropriate decorations! There’s now a “kitchen” area with two fridges and two stoves so two Sims can cook/work on other stove-related activities at once; two bulk processors in case I want to have two Sims using them at the same time; the juice fizzer; the cupcake machine; another cauldron for Victor for alchemy; and an apothecary bench for Smiler! :D The upstairs room is now the “employee break room,” with another fridge, a few counters, and microwave for snacks; a couple of chairs with a wall-mounted bookcase between them; a couch up against the stairs with a coffee table and a TV on the wall; and some nice bits of art here and there to cheer the place up. :) Both are still a bit “work in progress,” but they’re coming along nicely, I feel!
G) Anyway – with that sorted, it was time to get everyone inside, because BIG thunderstorm raging outside in old San Myshuno! I had Smiler do another flower arrangement to help fill in a final gap on the shelves (“Mirthful Matrimony,” because their wedding IS coming up. :D Oh, and I’ve done a little planning on that – I know that Clement Frost, Felipe Sisson, Rory Oaklow, Angela and Lilith Pleasant, and Nalani Can’t Remember Her Last Name will be the guests, and I’ve got a cute little tiny wedding chapel in my Library that I can use as a venue – just don’t know where to put it yet!), while Alice went downstairs to make boxes of tomato sauce and Victor cleaned out some spoiled food in the fridges before loading up the fizzy juicer with lemons. Alice then moved onto milk products, with Victor providing chocoberries for her to make chocolate milk, while he got a start on perfumery by making the snowdrop “deodorizing” scent! He produced a very pretty bottle and even brought it upstairs to put on the coffee table, where I tried to move it to a shelf –
And for some baffling reason, this thing does NOT fit on SrslySims’s consignment shelves. UNLESS I stack it on top of something else, as it WILL go on top of bags of flour or boxes of MREs. O.o I am MOST confused, as this is NOT a big object! Ze heck? I put it on the front counter for now, but I guess I’ll have to get a special display for those?
H) Well, let’s not worry about that now – let’s get some of the crap out of everybody’s inventories and see what Victor can use Copypasto on! Animal treats of all types – yes! Herbal concoctions – yes! Smiler’s little chatterbots – NO, actually, the only option was “Inferniate.” Same with the bottle of perfume. Hmmm – well, it seems Smiler will have to make the chatterbots on their own, but at least we can get more herbalism potions and animal treats without a problem! Victor did a bunch of Copypasto on those items while Smiler went downstairs to try out the apothecary bench – they don’t have the ingredients to make the herbalism gummies yet (I need fireflies!), but the synthetic food tablets were in reach! So they made a few of those. For some reason, they turn around when they finish synthesizing their stuff, so the animation of them reacting to the sparking flask has them facing the wrong way, but it DOES work. And unlike the cans of peas and green beans in the Simsco Canning mod, these have proper Simlish labels, which I like. :D You can’t make them in bulk, though, unfortunately – unless that’s something you can do as you work on your skill. Hmmm. We’ll find out, I guess!
I) Anyway – Smiler made a few bottles of synthetic food tablets (once naked, because I had to stop them from going out and showering in the rain – next time, I REALLY have to remember to get that retraiting potion for them), while Alice made some crates of flavored milk (chocolate and strawberry) for me to put in the retail fridges (also, discovered today some stuff just won’t go in those, and SPINACH is one of those things O.o), and Victor continued Copypastoing things until he was a Virtuoso spellcaster! :D He rewarded himself with a Delicioso plate of mac and cheese, and I rewarded him with the Insightful Eye (increasing experimenting and practicing speeds), Knowledge Is Magic (he reads and does things on the computer faster, and gets magical XP from them), and Frugal Combination (when he makes potions, all ingredients may not be consumed) perks. :D As he was looking pretty charged, though, I decided to change tactics, having him make custard (which he did upstairs – I thought he was going to have to walk down to the stoves, but nope, it’s literally pouring stuff from the bowl into the jars, so okay then), while Alice made more vegetarian MREs and cleaned up more plates while Smiler finished up their tablet-making and fetched the latest batch of LemonFizz to put in the drinks cooler. I then proceeded to play around with shelves a bit (trying to find stuff the perfume would sit on nicely, and wondering if I wanted to trade the double-sided consignment shelves for single-sided ones set back-to-back – the stuff I put on the double-sized ones has an annoying tendency to place backwards no matter what I do) –
J) And then I looked at the clock and realized “oh shit, we’re gonna have supper soon, I’d better wrap this up!” And so the gang was sent home a bit earlier than I’d expected. I had Victor offer up his wrist to Smiler while Alice went to get some food (she TRIED to eat some raw meat, but I was like “you are in HUMAN form, have HUMAN food – here, chicken skewers, you’ll like those), then both he and she went up to bed while Smiler caught some more locusts outside and used their laptop to order more robot salvage parts to tune up Bugs. (I also caught Kelly upstairs batting at the knitting box I put in the séance room for flavor, aww. :D) Victor and Alice slept for a while while Smiler tuned up the bot and entertained Kelly with some laser pointer fun – then Kelly woke up Alice with her meowing, and I was like “not gonna lecture the cat for that, your energy was almost full anyway.” XD I had Alice use the toilet, then FIX the toilet as Guidry appeared on the scene, and also got Victor up to do some more experimenting on his cauldron – every little bit counts! Smiler moved on from robotics to herbalism, making some deodorant cream, some skin-soothing balm, and – after hitting Herbalism 5 and getting some sage from Victor’s inventory – some tummy therapy drink! Nice! They then headed upstairs to improve their video creation station with better lighting controls. Alice, feeling playful thanks to some warm clothes and fun times spent with Kelly, started another book (“Vorpal Rhymes”) while Victor finished up his experimenting and did a little bonding with Kelly in the kitchen before proceeding to fertilize a few plants (what, he had a want for it).
And that is where I left it, because at that point I’d ALREADY had to pause the game shortly after they’d gotten home to have dinner, and I needed to shower. Yeah, uh, remind me not to start Sims 4 that late ever again! Especially if I’m gonna be doing any building! O.o Yeeps. . .I mean, I had fun, pleased with my progress, but still!
Writing: I REALLY didn’t have the time for anything major after writing up the above on Sims 4 and the below on my YouTube vids, but I was determined to do SOMETHING, so I popped open the master document I have for my “Valicer In The Dark” AU and made sure all the updates I’d outlined in my various tumblr posts on the AU were also in there (Alice getting two special abilities for the price of a trauma, Smiler getting a point of Attune for the price of a couple of stress boxes, ideas for new special abilities for them as individuals and as a crew, etc.). It counts as SOMETHING, dang it.
YouTube: Well, I didn’t get to the OXBox list video I was expecting to watch, but I DID get to a different video in the Watch Later, plus Gray, so I’ll call this one complete anyway –
A) Started with some OXtra instead, with “Lego Racer Speed-Build Challenge | Show of the Weekend!” A nice cute short video about the two building little LEGO cars from kits sent to them by the LEGO people to help promote their new racing game, LEGO 2K Drive – Ellen did a car that can transform into another kind of car or a boat, while Luke did a licensed actual McClaren race car. This proved to be his downfall, as it turns out that car was much more complicated to build, including Luke having to layer in stickers unexpectedly. XD Not to mention there was a bit where Ellen told him that she’d been to LEGO Land on the same trip where she’d visited the LEGO factory almost six years ago – which turned out to be the culmination of a hell of a brick joke as – as shown a bit later – that trip was supposed to be a “secret,” with Ellen informing the viewers repeatedly during that video “don’t tell Luke.” XD Luke pretended to storm off, and had some absolutely killer “betrayed” facial expressions for the rest of the video. XD Final times were Ellen 12 minutes, 14 seconds and Luke 21 minutes, 46 seconds. And then they smashed the cars into each other for fun and a couple of bits fell off Luke’s immediately. XD Poor dude, this just wasn’t his show. . .
B) And then it was over to the Subs for GrayStillPlays and “Cars vs Pipes in GTA 5!” You guessed it, it was time for another Alex Torture Board, and this one was – well, it was pretty fucking evil. Just the way we like it. XD As you might have guessed from the title, the theme for this one was pipes and other round hollow objects, and the course consisted of “Descending Pipes” (a downward ramp made of large destructible concrete pipes that got spaced wider and wider apart as you continued down); “Rolling Pipes” (a section of road covered in pyramids of dynamic metal pipes that spread out as you knocked them down and liked to drag your car off the road and into the water on either side of the course); “Double Rusty Pipes” (two sets of a bunch of rusty metal pipes suspended over the main course on frames with a gap and a bit of a drop in between – Gray referred to getting between the sets as a “pipe transfer”); “Ascending Pile of Pipes” (probably the easiest one, just a staircase made out of piles of pipes, with the major problem being it was a little thin); “Alcoholic Wavy Pipes” (aka the GTA equivalent of a bottle run – a bunch of giant beer bottles going down and just into the water before going back up to the board’s only checkpoint); and finally “The Blood Red Pipe Descent” (not the official name but I don’t think it has one – a giant ramp made of eye-bleeding red pipes that you basically had to bounce your way down and hope you landed on the platform at the end – and then didn’t slide off it). Gray had lots of cars to try this challenge with, and most of them couldn’t get past the Descending Pipes, bouncing wildly as the gaps got bigger. (Though the joke RC car at least proved able to kill a mountain lion with a love tap!) And those who COULD get past them often fell to the rolling pipes. A couple of pick-ups and other trucks made it, including newbie the bright pink Sand King, but none of them could get past the bottle run. Meaning it was up to the only car that can handle this kind of nonsense – THE WASTELANDER! Here painted a lovely kicky blue. It made it through the main course pretty much no problem thanks to its brilliant suspension and high nose – but even it struggled against the Blood Red Pipe Descent. Gray had to learn very quickly how best to control its fall, and just BARELY missed the win one time thanks to having a little too much momentum when he hit the ending platform. But eventually he made it, and the Wastelander proved itself the king once again! :D I am SO tempted to put this incredible rustbucket into any Fallout 4 fic I may write now. . . XD
Other: Got Dad’s Father’s Day card sorted – took me a while to find something that I liked (a couple of cards were good but just not QUITE good enough), but hopefully he enjoys the one I picked!
Soooo, yeah. Pretty much half my day was cleaning, then two-thirds of the other half was Sims 4 and the last third YouTube. I mean, like I said, I enjoyed the Sims 4 stuff (I like upgrading their store, I'm looking forward to planning the wedding) and the YouTube (how can you not love GrayStillPlays torturing himself), but I do wish I'd had more time for the other things I had planned! Ah well, I'm gonna have a lot more free time soon. . .just gotta get through two more work weeks!
In the meantime, I gotta finish up social stuff and getting those remaining initial drafts done on Victor Luvs Alice, then hit the sheets. I dunno if we're doing anything special for Father's Day or not (the weather is supposed to be better than it was today -- warmer and not as rainy -- but I don't know if there's anything in particular Dad WANTS to do, so. . .), but I'll try to keep things simple: get some more tumblr drafting done (at least finish the drafts of a few of the Chill Valicer Save posts); play some Fallout 4 and get closer to the General Atomics Factory; update the Playthrough Progression accordingly; and keep up with Gray and Jon. This feels doable -- I hope anyway! Night all!
Cleaning: Felt like an extra-busy day with the cleaning, mostly because my parents were outside doing some very muddy gardening in the rain this morning, so I took it upon myself to make sure all the laundry, not just my own, was retrieved in good time and folded up neat and all that stuff. I won’t give you an exact play-by-play because I’ve realized why would you CARE when exactly I started and stopped each individual step, but I started with the dusting at around 10:50 AM, completed the main cleaning (aka dusting, Swiffering, and vacuuming) right before lunch at roughly 1:40 PM, and got the final bits out of the dryer around 3:30 PM. Yeaaaah, even if I didn’t really have that much dusting or anything to do, the sheer amount of stuff I have to dust (namely, all the shelves behind my bed) plus getting through all that laundry really sucked up the day! (Though Mom was very appreciative.) At least next weekend is free. . .and the weekend after that is the long 4th of July weekend, so it doesn’t matter so much that I have to clean. . .
Tumblr: Really did not have much time for this after everything else that happened today (see below), but I want it known that I answered the ask that was waiting on Valice Multiverse; answered another ask on Victor Luvs Alice (from Smiler’s biggest fan stretch-time – apparently they want to make them a little friend! I am intrigued); and got ONE of the initial drafts for the Chill Valicer Save update into my drafts. I will endeavor to get to the rest tonight!
Sims 4: Got a very late start on this today – a combination of wanting to get all the cleaning and laundry (and my snack) over and done with before starting, and hearing a few rumbles of thunder in the 2 PM hour that stopped me turning on my computer right away (did some Merge Dragons on my phone, made some excellent progress in the Father’s Day event they’re doing). But I did get on in the end, around 4 PM, and did some more stuff with their store, as promised –
A) Though, first, before starting up, I added two new mods from Simsonian Library – a perfumery mod (allowing your Sims to make perfumes from flowers on the stove) and an apothecary mod (allowing your Sims to make gummy versions of herbalism potions and tablet versions of Scientist serums)! I knew about the first from their website, but stumbled across the second while downloading perfumery from their Patreon – and it looks like they’re working on a nectar-making mod AND wild bug breeding farms! :D Okay, someone’s rapidly becoming my favorite new mod creator. . .
B) Anyway, after getting those installed and clearing my caches and whatnot, it was time to get into the game! Smiler was the only one up to start – I had them tune up our robot buddy Elmer, which ended up maxing out their Robotics skill, nice. :D I then had them start building a second gardening bot, this time in lime green, which I decided to name Bugs. XD As they did this and we passed 4 AM in-game, I decided Victor and Alice could get up as they were both hungry – Alice I had transform and go out hunting for food, while Victor used Delicioso to rumble up a nice place of spaghetti for breakfast. XD As Victor finished up his meal, though, I noticed Shadow wanting some attention, so I decided to have him take the dog out on a short early morning walk. Gotta exercise your foxhounds, after all!
C) As Victor and Shadow headed out for their morning constitutional, Smiler released the completed Bugs into the greenhouse to test their gardening skills, then cleaned the chicken coop and sorted the trash to clear out any recyclables, while Alice came back from her hunt with some fresh meat and a LOT of Fury. She was so close to bubbling over I figured it would be better to let her rampage and get it all out of her system, so once she was done eating, I banished her to the back yard to do some howling, scavenging, and “marking her territory” until the Fury took her (which, it REALLY had to fight against her memories of how good her relationship with Victor has been XD). I had her do a little more scavenging, then had her regain control and go back to normal. :) She’s got this werewolf thing down pretty much these days!
D) With her Fury purged, Alice headed upstairs to work on her latest book (using Smiler’s computer – I mean, it IS the nicest one in the house I suppose!) while Smiler made some toy chatterbots on the robot bench, repaired a wind turbine, and caught some monarch butterflies flying around. Victor returned from his walk with Shadow to find one of those creepy “Nerd Incel” specters flying around the obstacle course. Victor went out and presented it with a bunny statue, which it awkwardly said it would cherish always – I thought that maybe it hadn’t really liked the present because it didn’t seem to give Victor anything, but I later found out that, for whatever reason, it had dumped the wraith wax it had handed over into the HOUSEHOLD inventory. *shrug* All righty then. . . Victor went to help Bugs in the greenhouse for a bit (though there wasn’t actually that much to do), then went to clean out Moory’s shed, refill her feed, give her some pets, and milk her, while Smiler scattered a bit of feed for the chickens and entertained a few of them with jokes. And got the eggs, though there was only one regular egg, as opposed to three hatchable ones. I think I need to get rid of most of these roosters so the hens start laying regular eggs on the regular again! >(
E) Anyway, with that done, it was time to do the greenhouse – as Smiler is the one focusing more on Herbalism these days, I had them take all the supplies out of the box in the greenhouse, then harvest all those plants plus the plasma fruit tree. Victor came in to kick away some creepy hands and bond with his bees, then shared a nice flirt and kiss with Smiler before going to harvest all the rest of their produce. Smiler powered down Bugs (who was looking rather low on power) and put them in their inventory to fix up later, before moving to shape the bonsai tree in the living room into a heart, aww. :) Alice, for her part, finished her mystery book and came downstairs to clean out the fridge and share a few tender moments with Victor herself (after he’d stopped a fox from trying to raid the chicken coop) –
F) And with that, a bunch of the milk taken out of the fridge, and everyone in good shape, it was off to the store! Where I put into practice a plan I came up with while writing last week’s Chill Valicer Save update, about how I wanted more room in the “processing area” to work on things (like having two bulk food processors going at once, maybe), but I didn’t want to make the store bigger – namely, move all the processing into a new basement area! So, after getting an idea of where the room should be downstairs, I built it, put in some cool glowy stairs for fun, and moved all the processing stuff down there, along with the appropriate decorations! There’s now a “kitchen” area with two fridges and two stoves so two Sims can cook/work on other stove-related activities at once; two bulk processors in case I want to have two Sims using them at the same time; the juice fizzer; the cupcake machine; another cauldron for Victor for alchemy; and an apothecary bench for Smiler! :D The upstairs room is now the “employee break room,” with another fridge, a few counters, and microwave for snacks; a couple of chairs with a wall-mounted bookcase between them; a couch up against the stairs with a coffee table and a TV on the wall; and some nice bits of art here and there to cheer the place up. :) Both are still a bit “work in progress,” but they’re coming along nicely, I feel!
G) Anyway – with that sorted, it was time to get everyone inside, because BIG thunderstorm raging outside in old San Myshuno! I had Smiler do another flower arrangement to help fill in a final gap on the shelves (“Mirthful Matrimony,” because their wedding IS coming up. :D Oh, and I’ve done a little planning on that – I know that Clement Frost, Felipe Sisson, Rory Oaklow, Angela and Lilith Pleasant, and Nalani Can’t Remember Her Last Name will be the guests, and I’ve got a cute little tiny wedding chapel in my Library that I can use as a venue – just don’t know where to put it yet!), while Alice went downstairs to make boxes of tomato sauce and Victor cleaned out some spoiled food in the fridges before loading up the fizzy juicer with lemons. Alice then moved onto milk products, with Victor providing chocoberries for her to make chocolate milk, while he got a start on perfumery by making the snowdrop “deodorizing” scent! He produced a very pretty bottle and even brought it upstairs to put on the coffee table, where I tried to move it to a shelf –
And for some baffling reason, this thing does NOT fit on SrslySims’s consignment shelves. UNLESS I stack it on top of something else, as it WILL go on top of bags of flour or boxes of MREs. O.o I am MOST confused, as this is NOT a big object! Ze heck? I put it on the front counter for now, but I guess I’ll have to get a special display for those?
H) Well, let’s not worry about that now – let’s get some of the crap out of everybody’s inventories and see what Victor can use Copypasto on! Animal treats of all types – yes! Herbal concoctions – yes! Smiler’s little chatterbots – NO, actually, the only option was “Inferniate.” Same with the bottle of perfume. Hmmm – well, it seems Smiler will have to make the chatterbots on their own, but at least we can get more herbalism potions and animal treats without a problem! Victor did a bunch of Copypasto on those items while Smiler went downstairs to try out the apothecary bench – they don’t have the ingredients to make the herbalism gummies yet (I need fireflies!), but the synthetic food tablets were in reach! So they made a few of those. For some reason, they turn around when they finish synthesizing their stuff, so the animation of them reacting to the sparking flask has them facing the wrong way, but it DOES work. And unlike the cans of peas and green beans in the Simsco Canning mod, these have proper Simlish labels, which I like. :D You can’t make them in bulk, though, unfortunately – unless that’s something you can do as you work on your skill. Hmmm. We’ll find out, I guess!
I) Anyway – Smiler made a few bottles of synthetic food tablets (once naked, because I had to stop them from going out and showering in the rain – next time, I REALLY have to remember to get that retraiting potion for them), while Alice made some crates of flavored milk (chocolate and strawberry) for me to put in the retail fridges (also, discovered today some stuff just won’t go in those, and SPINACH is one of those things O.o), and Victor continued Copypastoing things until he was a Virtuoso spellcaster! :D He rewarded himself with a Delicioso plate of mac and cheese, and I rewarded him with the Insightful Eye (increasing experimenting and practicing speeds), Knowledge Is Magic (he reads and does things on the computer faster, and gets magical XP from them), and Frugal Combination (when he makes potions, all ingredients may not be consumed) perks. :D As he was looking pretty charged, though, I decided to change tactics, having him make custard (which he did upstairs – I thought he was going to have to walk down to the stoves, but nope, it’s literally pouring stuff from the bowl into the jars, so okay then), while Alice made more vegetarian MREs and cleaned up more plates while Smiler finished up their tablet-making and fetched the latest batch of LemonFizz to put in the drinks cooler. I then proceeded to play around with shelves a bit (trying to find stuff the perfume would sit on nicely, and wondering if I wanted to trade the double-sided consignment shelves for single-sided ones set back-to-back – the stuff I put on the double-sized ones has an annoying tendency to place backwards no matter what I do) –
J) And then I looked at the clock and realized “oh shit, we’re gonna have supper soon, I’d better wrap this up!” And so the gang was sent home a bit earlier than I’d expected. I had Victor offer up his wrist to Smiler while Alice went to get some food (she TRIED to eat some raw meat, but I was like “you are in HUMAN form, have HUMAN food – here, chicken skewers, you’ll like those), then both he and she went up to bed while Smiler caught some more locusts outside and used their laptop to order more robot salvage parts to tune up Bugs. (I also caught Kelly upstairs batting at the knitting box I put in the séance room for flavor, aww. :D) Victor and Alice slept for a while while Smiler tuned up the bot and entertained Kelly with some laser pointer fun – then Kelly woke up Alice with her meowing, and I was like “not gonna lecture the cat for that, your energy was almost full anyway.” XD I had Alice use the toilet, then FIX the toilet as Guidry appeared on the scene, and also got Victor up to do some more experimenting on his cauldron – every little bit counts! Smiler moved on from robotics to herbalism, making some deodorant cream, some skin-soothing balm, and – after hitting Herbalism 5 and getting some sage from Victor’s inventory – some tummy therapy drink! Nice! They then headed upstairs to improve their video creation station with better lighting controls. Alice, feeling playful thanks to some warm clothes and fun times spent with Kelly, started another book (“Vorpal Rhymes”) while Victor finished up his experimenting and did a little bonding with Kelly in the kitchen before proceeding to fertilize a few plants (what, he had a want for it).
And that is where I left it, because at that point I’d ALREADY had to pause the game shortly after they’d gotten home to have dinner, and I needed to shower. Yeah, uh, remind me not to start Sims 4 that late ever again! Especially if I’m gonna be doing any building! O.o Yeeps. . .I mean, I had fun, pleased with my progress, but still!
Writing: I REALLY didn’t have the time for anything major after writing up the above on Sims 4 and the below on my YouTube vids, but I was determined to do SOMETHING, so I popped open the master document I have for my “Valicer In The Dark” AU and made sure all the updates I’d outlined in my various tumblr posts on the AU were also in there (Alice getting two special abilities for the price of a trauma, Smiler getting a point of Attune for the price of a couple of stress boxes, ideas for new special abilities for them as individuals and as a crew, etc.). It counts as SOMETHING, dang it.
YouTube: Well, I didn’t get to the OXBox list video I was expecting to watch, but I DID get to a different video in the Watch Later, plus Gray, so I’ll call this one complete anyway –
A) Started with some OXtra instead, with “Lego Racer Speed-Build Challenge | Show of the Weekend!” A nice cute short video about the two building little LEGO cars from kits sent to them by the LEGO people to help promote their new racing game, LEGO 2K Drive – Ellen did a car that can transform into another kind of car or a boat, while Luke did a licensed actual McClaren race car. This proved to be his downfall, as it turns out that car was much more complicated to build, including Luke having to layer in stickers unexpectedly. XD Not to mention there was a bit where Ellen told him that she’d been to LEGO Land on the same trip where she’d visited the LEGO factory almost six years ago – which turned out to be the culmination of a hell of a brick joke as – as shown a bit later – that trip was supposed to be a “secret,” with Ellen informing the viewers repeatedly during that video “don’t tell Luke.” XD Luke pretended to storm off, and had some absolutely killer “betrayed” facial expressions for the rest of the video. XD Final times were Ellen 12 minutes, 14 seconds and Luke 21 minutes, 46 seconds. And then they smashed the cars into each other for fun and a couple of bits fell off Luke’s immediately. XD Poor dude, this just wasn’t his show. . .
B) And then it was over to the Subs for GrayStillPlays and “Cars vs Pipes in GTA 5!” You guessed it, it was time for another Alex Torture Board, and this one was – well, it was pretty fucking evil. Just the way we like it. XD As you might have guessed from the title, the theme for this one was pipes and other round hollow objects, and the course consisted of “Descending Pipes” (a downward ramp made of large destructible concrete pipes that got spaced wider and wider apart as you continued down); “Rolling Pipes” (a section of road covered in pyramids of dynamic metal pipes that spread out as you knocked them down and liked to drag your car off the road and into the water on either side of the course); “Double Rusty Pipes” (two sets of a bunch of rusty metal pipes suspended over the main course on frames with a gap and a bit of a drop in between – Gray referred to getting between the sets as a “pipe transfer”); “Ascending Pile of Pipes” (probably the easiest one, just a staircase made out of piles of pipes, with the major problem being it was a little thin); “Alcoholic Wavy Pipes” (aka the GTA equivalent of a bottle run – a bunch of giant beer bottles going down and just into the water before going back up to the board’s only checkpoint); and finally “The Blood Red Pipe Descent” (not the official name but I don’t think it has one – a giant ramp made of eye-bleeding red pipes that you basically had to bounce your way down and hope you landed on the platform at the end – and then didn’t slide off it). Gray had lots of cars to try this challenge with, and most of them couldn’t get past the Descending Pipes, bouncing wildly as the gaps got bigger. (Though the joke RC car at least proved able to kill a mountain lion with a love tap!) And those who COULD get past them often fell to the rolling pipes. A couple of pick-ups and other trucks made it, including newbie the bright pink Sand King, but none of them could get past the bottle run. Meaning it was up to the only car that can handle this kind of nonsense – THE WASTELANDER! Here painted a lovely kicky blue. It made it through the main course pretty much no problem thanks to its brilliant suspension and high nose – but even it struggled against the Blood Red Pipe Descent. Gray had to learn very quickly how best to control its fall, and just BARELY missed the win one time thanks to having a little too much momentum when he hit the ending platform. But eventually he made it, and the Wastelander proved itself the king once again! :D I am SO tempted to put this incredible rustbucket into any Fallout 4 fic I may write now. . . XD
Other: Got Dad’s Father’s Day card sorted – took me a while to find something that I liked (a couple of cards were good but just not QUITE good enough), but hopefully he enjoys the one I picked!
Soooo, yeah. Pretty much half my day was cleaning, then two-thirds of the other half was Sims 4 and the last third YouTube. I mean, like I said, I enjoyed the Sims 4 stuff (I like upgrading their store, I'm looking forward to planning the wedding) and the YouTube (how can you not love GrayStillPlays torturing himself), but I do wish I'd had more time for the other things I had planned! Ah well, I'm gonna have a lot more free time soon. . .just gotta get through two more work weeks!
In the meantime, I gotta finish up social stuff and getting those remaining initial drafts done on Victor Luvs Alice, then hit the sheets. I dunno if we're doing anything special for Father's Day or not (the weather is supposed to be better than it was today -- warmer and not as rainy -- but I don't know if there's anything in particular Dad WANTS to do, so. . .), but I'll try to keep things simple: get some more tumblr drafting done (at least finish the drafts of a few of the Chill Valicer Save posts); play some Fallout 4 and get closer to the General Atomics Factory; update the Playthrough Progression accordingly; and keep up with Gray and Jon. This feels doable -- I hope anyway! Night all!
