Pretty Decent Friday
Jul. 21st, 2023 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAt the very least, I only had a few minor moments of annoyance (mainly related to getting out of the work parking lot), and I got a pretty good chunk of things done --
Work – Guess what – another quiet day! Though I at least found out the REASON we can’t process – some reports for Fiscal had to be re-run. So HOPEFULLY we can start chewing through the backlog on Monday, but we’ll see, I suppose. I just did more merges, cleaned up some deceased people, and did one credit card update (since I’m allowed to update payment methods, just not to make payments). *shrug* Not too bad for a Friday, I suppose!
Sims 4 – Post-patch weekend, so naturally we are focusing on non-gameplay stuff! And today’s project was finally finishing off the “Tranquil Circle Spa” build that I’ve been poking at for – well, at least a few months now. *nods* Here’s how that all went down –
A) First, of course, had to get the patch out of the way – made a backup copy of my Sims 4 folder on my computer, removed my Mods folder, deleted all the cache stuff like they tell you to, and then let the patch download! A process that took rather a while because my download speed kept tanking. *grumbles* Well, it got there in the end, and I got to catch up a bit on tumblr and all those other places while I was waiting.
B) Once the game had finally consented to patch itself, it was into the building save, and over to the Tranquil Circle Spa! Where, after an initial scan (and going “huh, this place IS pretty much complete” to myself), I made the following tweaks –
I. I walled off the little toilet-and-sink area in each mud bath room for a bit more privacy, creating a separate mini-bathroom. Wallpapered them up, added lights, found a nice mirror that matched the contrasting black-and-white themes of both rooms, and added a few last-minute accents – soap dispenser on the sink, toilet paper roll by the toilet, little hanging towel between the toilet and the sink, and a couple of nice plush rugs by the bathtubs and the showers so Sims have something soft to step on before getting in and out.
II. I put a couple of fancy statues by the entrance to the interior meditation garden, just to make it look a bit nicer.
III. I made sure all the rooms were adequately lit and fixed up the lighting situation in the interior hallway (as the lights in there were all over the damn place).
IV. I made sure that the makeover room, the kitchen/bar area, both massage rooms, and both mud bath rooms had New Age speakers in the appropriate swatches to go with that room’s color scheme. (The yoga studio already had one, and the gym has a different kind of radio – and I just decided against it for the bathrooms, showers, and saunas, as I figured guests might appreciate it being quieter in there!)
V. I added a clock to the kitchen to fill in a gap on the far wall, and adjusted the shelves in the makeover room down slightly so the weren’t so high up above the magazines for waiting Sims – they’re supposed to be displays for products you might be able to buy, so they gotta be at least eye level! I also added a second exterior sign to the build to keep things symmetrical.
VI. I painted the roof with some nice concrete floor tiles – I also TRIED to build a lip around the edge of said roof with the tiny “half”-walls, as I thought that would look better, but that built a ceiling under my skylight over the meditation garden, and I wasn’t having that. And just putting it on the front looked weird. *shrug* I was so close to done, I didn’t feel like fucking with it further!
VII. And I added lot traits – Bracing Breezes to help Sims get energized for the gym; Peace & Quiet because that feels appropriate for a spa (there may not be much reading material, but having tense moods go away faster is good), and Natural Well because I thought that could be a “selling point” for their mud baths or something. XD
C) And with that, I decided the build was done, saved it to my Library, and uploaded it to the Gallery with a description that listed everything inside before devolving into “IT’S A SQUARE IT’S A SQUARE WITH THE CORNERS CUT OUT WE’RE ALL FRAUDS” XD Because I think I’m funny. I of course plan to show it off on my tumblr in the future, but here’s a quick couple of pics for anyone curious to see what it looks like:
And yeah, that’s that! Tomorrow...well, it’s either gonna be more building, or a trip to CAS to finally whip up some designs for the OTHER Alton Towers coaster OCs I have...we’ll see what I’m in the mood for!
Beanbags – We did indeed get to play today, despite some worryingly-stormy looking skies near the end (I think it helped that we ended up playing early, around 4 PM instead of 5 PM). We all had a slow start in the first game, but Mom was able to take it and win – and then fell right back into her usual habits as Dad proceeded to just blast her and me. I did decently well, though – solid second every time! I mean, I would have PREFERRED to win once, but I’ll take never LOSING either. :p Final scores were me 2-2-2; Dad 3-W-W; Mom W-3-3. We’ll see what happens tomorrow – it’s supposed to be a truly gorgeous weekend, so we should have plenty of chances to play for a change.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike for this week, and as I couldn’t find the James Turner video on how he built the Bigwallet Restaurant (and couldn’t spend too long looking for it as I had a stricter time limit than usual due to getting downstairs a bit late), I instead watched the following Petey Plays It videos –
A) “22 Cottage Living Gameplay Ideas To Try | The Sims 4 Guide” – a bunch of ideas of what to do with the Cottage Living expansion pack! Ranging from the obvious big stuff (become a farmer, compete in the Finchwick Fair, work on cross-stitch) to a few smaller “hey, this might be fun” things (woohoo in an animal shed! Use “Paint From Reference” to capture the beautiful landscapes of the pack! Set up a barnhouse-style wedding lot!), to some cross-pack stuff (make a store that sells country-themed goods! Become an author specializing in tales about your country lifestyle! Make a special club for your country-minded Sims!). Fun stuff, and a good way to remind yourself about things in the pack you may have forgotten about.
B) “23 Side Hustles To Help You Ditch Careers [Early Expansions] | The Sims 4 Guide” – a bunch of gameplay activities from earlier packs (stopping around the Island Living/StrangerVille era) that can be used as money-making schemes by Sims! From keeping bees and selling honey, to hunting for treasure on the beach and in the ocean, to doing various odd jobs, to becoming a masseur, to just straight up blackmailing Sims, the game has loads of ways for Sims to learn plenty of Simoleons without the hassle of a 9-to-5 career! We do love our side hustles in this game...
2. Continue writing the Valicer In The Dark escape sequence: Check – completed this right before my workout! Having gotten through Alice and Smiler’s special abilities, all that remained was to showcase Victor’s “Ghost Mind,” which lets him sense all ghosts in his immediate area – which he did in spectacular fashion by shoving Alice and Smiler out of an alley that he’d seen a truly monstrous specter in. . .and accidentally luring Tannen straight toward it, as the sergeant assumed he was trying to fake him out and walked straight into the woman. Proooobably to his death, the way I’ve written her. . .anyway, they’re on their way out of Brightstone now, and that felt like a good place to end the scene. :) I do enjoy working on their universe/stories from time to time – and I’m probably gonna have a lot of inspiration as I work through the remaining Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark episodes this summer. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Full check today, yay! I am officially caught up on the Subs again as of these two videos –
A) First up, yesterday’s Josh Way – “SKETCHY: Disney's Treasure Planet!” Josh drawing Captain Amelia (an alien that looks like a cat woman) and Dr. Doppler (an alien that looks like a dog man) from that film, talking about how he loved it when it first came out, especially these two characters’ designs, but now he barely remembers anything about the film, so – he’s not sure where to have it. I personally have never seen Treasure Planet, but I have seen stills of the characters, and from what I can see he nailed the looks, so yeah, good for him. :p (He also talked about how there were two lines on Amelia’s drawing that he’d change if he could because they were bugging him and made her body look a bit awkward – I think he’s talking about her collar, which looks a touch crooked compared to the rest of her, but not anything major.)
B) And second up, today’s GrayStillPlays – “When you stack food to lower orbit,” aka Gray plays Fork N Sausage! This is a game where you play as a little sausage, and your goal is to navigate different boards with different helps and hazards – like off-brand Jell-o puddings to bounce off of, toasters to get shot out of, sawblades to avoid, and water to struggle to sink yourself in – to collect coins and impale yourself on the fork. And yes, you literally do impale yourself, you see the tines go through the sausage and everything. I’m not sure if it’s made better or worse by the fact that both sausage and fork have googly eyes and the sausage can wear various hats and sunglasses. XD Gray had a lot of fun with the concept of a game where the whole point is to stab yourself, as you might expect, making sure to grab as many coins as possible and laughing over how so many of the “surprise boxes” you earned along the way were just more ways to harm yourself instead of actual helps. XD A short and silly game, but very amusing. :P
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Kind of N/A today, as I have decided to let Kevin’s gift fic tomorrow stand on its own on Victor Luvs Alice (gives me another week to figure out the next Song Saturday), and there’s nothing happening on Valice Multiverse (also that blog got the new dashboard update and it’s very annoying so I don’t want to go on there anyway). Though, in terms of FUTURE tumblr updates, I DID get the first twelve pictures of the next Chill Valicer Save update, with the trio going on their honeymoon to Sulani, sorted – though, admittedly, those twelve are of all the wedding pictures I took and where they ended up in the house. XD I’ll work on the actual GAMEPLAY pictures later tonight!
So yeah -- add in a nice game night where I managed to win three games out of seven in Sequence (Dad also won three, and Mom managed one) and eat lots of tiny hot dogs, pepperoni bites, potato chips, and watermelon, and you get a pretty good day! Just gotta wait for my period to be fully over, and we'll be golden. :p And tomorrow is a lovely non-cleaning Saturday that's supposed to be good weather -- gonna work some more on "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland," play Sims 4 (and thinking about the fact that I won't have that "more columns" CAS mod, it probably WILL be a building day), watch Gray and some of the stuff in the old Watch Later, and leave some of those reviews I owe on fics! Hopefully I can accomplish at least most of that without issue... Night all!
Work – Guess what – another quiet day! Though I at least found out the REASON we can’t process – some reports for Fiscal had to be re-run. So HOPEFULLY we can start chewing through the backlog on Monday, but we’ll see, I suppose. I just did more merges, cleaned up some deceased people, and did one credit card update (since I’m allowed to update payment methods, just not to make payments). *shrug* Not too bad for a Friday, I suppose!
Sims 4 – Post-patch weekend, so naturally we are focusing on non-gameplay stuff! And today’s project was finally finishing off the “Tranquil Circle Spa” build that I’ve been poking at for – well, at least a few months now. *nods* Here’s how that all went down –
A) First, of course, had to get the patch out of the way – made a backup copy of my Sims 4 folder on my computer, removed my Mods folder, deleted all the cache stuff like they tell you to, and then let the patch download! A process that took rather a while because my download speed kept tanking. *grumbles* Well, it got there in the end, and I got to catch up a bit on tumblr and all those other places while I was waiting.
B) Once the game had finally consented to patch itself, it was into the building save, and over to the Tranquil Circle Spa! Where, after an initial scan (and going “huh, this place IS pretty much complete” to myself), I made the following tweaks –
I. I walled off the little toilet-and-sink area in each mud bath room for a bit more privacy, creating a separate mini-bathroom. Wallpapered them up, added lights, found a nice mirror that matched the contrasting black-and-white themes of both rooms, and added a few last-minute accents – soap dispenser on the sink, toilet paper roll by the toilet, little hanging towel between the toilet and the sink, and a couple of nice plush rugs by the bathtubs and the showers so Sims have something soft to step on before getting in and out.
II. I put a couple of fancy statues by the entrance to the interior meditation garden, just to make it look a bit nicer.
III. I made sure all the rooms were adequately lit and fixed up the lighting situation in the interior hallway (as the lights in there were all over the damn place).
IV. I made sure that the makeover room, the kitchen/bar area, both massage rooms, and both mud bath rooms had New Age speakers in the appropriate swatches to go with that room’s color scheme. (The yoga studio already had one, and the gym has a different kind of radio – and I just decided against it for the bathrooms, showers, and saunas, as I figured guests might appreciate it being quieter in there!)
V. I added a clock to the kitchen to fill in a gap on the far wall, and adjusted the shelves in the makeover room down slightly so the weren’t so high up above the magazines for waiting Sims – they’re supposed to be displays for products you might be able to buy, so they gotta be at least eye level! I also added a second exterior sign to the build to keep things symmetrical.
VI. I painted the roof with some nice concrete floor tiles – I also TRIED to build a lip around the edge of said roof with the tiny “half”-walls, as I thought that would look better, but that built a ceiling under my skylight over the meditation garden, and I wasn’t having that. And just putting it on the front looked weird. *shrug* I was so close to done, I didn’t feel like fucking with it further!
VII. And I added lot traits – Bracing Breezes to help Sims get energized for the gym; Peace & Quiet because that feels appropriate for a spa (there may not be much reading material, but having tense moods go away faster is good), and Natural Well because I thought that could be a “selling point” for their mud baths or something. XD
C) And with that, I decided the build was done, saved it to my Library, and uploaded it to the Gallery with a description that listed everything inside before devolving into “IT’S A SQUARE IT’S A SQUARE WITH THE CORNERS CUT OUT WE’RE ALL FRAUDS” XD Because I think I’m funny. I of course plan to show it off on my tumblr in the future, but here’s a quick couple of pics for anyone curious to see what it looks like:
And yeah, that’s that! Tomorrow...well, it’s either gonna be more building, or a trip to CAS to finally whip up some designs for the OTHER Alton Towers coaster OCs I have...we’ll see what I’m in the mood for!
Beanbags – We did indeed get to play today, despite some worryingly-stormy looking skies near the end (I think it helped that we ended up playing early, around 4 PM instead of 5 PM). We all had a slow start in the first game, but Mom was able to take it and win – and then fell right back into her usual habits as Dad proceeded to just blast her and me. I did decently well, though – solid second every time! I mean, I would have PREFERRED to win once, but I’ll take never LOSING either. :p Final scores were me 2-2-2; Dad 3-W-W; Mom W-3-3. We’ll see what happens tomorrow – it’s supposed to be a truly gorgeous weekend, so we should have plenty of chances to play for a change.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike for this week, and as I couldn’t find the James Turner video on how he built the Bigwallet Restaurant (and couldn’t spend too long looking for it as I had a stricter time limit than usual due to getting downstairs a bit late), I instead watched the following Petey Plays It videos –
A) “22 Cottage Living Gameplay Ideas To Try | The Sims 4 Guide” – a bunch of ideas of what to do with the Cottage Living expansion pack! Ranging from the obvious big stuff (become a farmer, compete in the Finchwick Fair, work on cross-stitch) to a few smaller “hey, this might be fun” things (woohoo in an animal shed! Use “Paint From Reference” to capture the beautiful landscapes of the pack! Set up a barnhouse-style wedding lot!), to some cross-pack stuff (make a store that sells country-themed goods! Become an author specializing in tales about your country lifestyle! Make a special club for your country-minded Sims!). Fun stuff, and a good way to remind yourself about things in the pack you may have forgotten about.
B) “23 Side Hustles To Help You Ditch Careers [Early Expansions] | The Sims 4 Guide” – a bunch of gameplay activities from earlier packs (stopping around the Island Living/StrangerVille era) that can be used as money-making schemes by Sims! From keeping bees and selling honey, to hunting for treasure on the beach and in the ocean, to doing various odd jobs, to becoming a masseur, to just straight up blackmailing Sims, the game has loads of ways for Sims to learn plenty of Simoleons without the hassle of a 9-to-5 career! We do love our side hustles in this game...
2. Continue writing the Valicer In The Dark escape sequence: Check – completed this right before my workout! Having gotten through Alice and Smiler’s special abilities, all that remained was to showcase Victor’s “Ghost Mind,” which lets him sense all ghosts in his immediate area – which he did in spectacular fashion by shoving Alice and Smiler out of an alley that he’d seen a truly monstrous specter in. . .and accidentally luring Tannen straight toward it, as the sergeant assumed he was trying to fake him out and walked straight into the woman. Proooobably to his death, the way I’ve written her. . .anyway, they’re on their way out of Brightstone now, and that felt like a good place to end the scene. :) I do enjoy working on their universe/stories from time to time – and I’m probably gonna have a lot of inspiration as I work through the remaining Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark episodes this summer. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Full check today, yay! I am officially caught up on the Subs again as of these two videos –
A) First up, yesterday’s Josh Way – “SKETCHY: Disney's Treasure Planet!” Josh drawing Captain Amelia (an alien that looks like a cat woman) and Dr. Doppler (an alien that looks like a dog man) from that film, talking about how he loved it when it first came out, especially these two characters’ designs, but now he barely remembers anything about the film, so – he’s not sure where to have it. I personally have never seen Treasure Planet, but I have seen stills of the characters, and from what I can see he nailed the looks, so yeah, good for him. :p (He also talked about how there were two lines on Amelia’s drawing that he’d change if he could because they were bugging him and made her body look a bit awkward – I think he’s talking about her collar, which looks a touch crooked compared to the rest of her, but not anything major.)
B) And second up, today’s GrayStillPlays – “When you stack food to lower orbit,” aka Gray plays Fork N Sausage! This is a game where you play as a little sausage, and your goal is to navigate different boards with different helps and hazards – like off-brand Jell-o puddings to bounce off of, toasters to get shot out of, sawblades to avoid, and water to struggle to sink yourself in – to collect coins and impale yourself on the fork. And yes, you literally do impale yourself, you see the tines go through the sausage and everything. I’m not sure if it’s made better or worse by the fact that both sausage and fork have googly eyes and the sausage can wear various hats and sunglasses. XD Gray had a lot of fun with the concept of a game where the whole point is to stab yourself, as you might expect, making sure to grab as many coins as possible and laughing over how so many of the “surprise boxes” you earned along the way were just more ways to harm yourself instead of actual helps. XD A short and silly game, but very amusing. :P
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Kind of N/A today, as I have decided to let Kevin’s gift fic tomorrow stand on its own on Victor Luvs Alice (gives me another week to figure out the next Song Saturday), and there’s nothing happening on Valice Multiverse (also that blog got the new dashboard update and it’s very annoying so I don’t want to go on there anyway). Though, in terms of FUTURE tumblr updates, I DID get the first twelve pictures of the next Chill Valicer Save update, with the trio going on their honeymoon to Sulani, sorted – though, admittedly, those twelve are of all the wedding pictures I took and where they ended up in the house. XD I’ll work on the actual GAMEPLAY pictures later tonight!
So yeah -- add in a nice game night where I managed to win three games out of seven in Sequence (Dad also won three, and Mom managed one) and eat lots of tiny hot dogs, pepperoni bites, potato chips, and watermelon, and you get a pretty good day! Just gotta wait for my period to be fully over, and we'll be golden. :p And tomorrow is a lovely non-cleaning Saturday that's supposed to be good weather -- gonna work some more on "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland," play Sims 4 (and thinking about the fact that I won't have that "more columns" CAS mod, it probably WILL be a building day), watch Gray and some of the stuff in the old Watch Later, and leave some of those reviews I owe on fics! Hopefully I can accomplish at least most of that without issue... Night all!
