Busy But Nice Saturday
Aug. 19th, 2023 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWeather was beautifully fall-like today -- mid-70s and really low humidity. I had my windows open pretty much all day to let in the air. :) Though it does highlight that this is actually a tough time of year to have this weather, as we're not out of aircon season yet, and until I can open the window on the OTHER side of my room, I won't get the cross-breezes that REALLY cool it down. Meh. I'll enjoy what I can get!
As for my to-do list, I had a pretty good day, even if I didn't get everything I want to get done, done --
Tumblr: Not AS productive as I would have liked over here, but I got stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Did get some time before lunch to do the starter draft posts of this week’s Chill Valicer Save update – six posts with about 85 pictures between them (though I may in fact be cutting a few of those pictures when I start doing text, tags, and alt text). And I just answered an ask from Satirical Demon (author of “Beneath A Broken Sky,” that Valice Eldritch Hellworld AU I like) regarding his thoughts of Valice AND Valicer ideas for a The Haunted Mansion (2023) AU after seeing the movie (my favorite of the lot being the one where Alice inherits the mansion and has to enlist Victor’s help with the spirits, with Smiler being one of the ghosts). So that was fun. :D
Valice Multiverse – BUSY night over here, as my partner Brynlee Marie had answered every thread we have together! Took me a while to get through all of them while also doing the social thing elsewhere and finishing up these write-ups – and I had to shunt two other threads off into separate posts because, apparently, the “trim reblogs” feature screws up a bit if the reblog you’re trying to trim is an ask. *grumbles* But they’re all done now, hooray!
Sims 4: Had a very productive day at the store with the Chill Valicer trio today, I’m happy to say –
A) Started with the gang at home, with Victor having just fed the cowplant and Smiler having just finished their fashion video (and Alice asleep) – I had Smiler start editing their video and adding effects and whatnot, while I sent Victor out to the back porch to get to know the kittens, a process hampered by the fact the kittens kept running inside because it was a very chilly morning, meaning Victor had to wait for them to come back outside so he could actually complete the interactions. *shakehead* This DID, however, allow me to spot that Temperance was still around, and chatting to one of the local specters – I quickly whipped Victor’s bizarre idol back out of his inventory and plopped it down near her, and she FINALLY fucked off. Though apparently not without knocking the trash bin over, as I found it on the ground by the recycler later. *shakehead* Life in a haunted house! At least Guidry no longer comes around to start fires. . .
B) Once Temperance was gone and Victor had actually gotten to know the kittens, it was time for breakfast – he went and got a buttered crumpet, while Alice got up and grabbed herself some chicken chimichurri skewers (Shadow and the kittens VERY interested in all this human food XD). Smiler finished editing and improving their video and uploaded it to SimsTube, then flew down to the greenhouse to let Elmer and Bugs help with taking care of the plants. I then proceeded to ALMOST fuck myself over by going into build mode to move the gnomes and the seed packets they’d spread all over the place around BEFORE any harvesting was done – however, for whatever reason, the game was kind today and did NOT immediately chuck all the produce in the household inventory. I quickly got out of there when I realized my mistake and left the gnomes in place while Smiler harvested all their herbalism supplies and the plasma fruit from the plasma tree (getting attacked by bees in the process as they were feeling shirty today – on the plus side, they also got to Gardening skill 6, which lets them use the weed vacuum!). A lucky escape for the produce and my sanity!
C) Anyway – I’d discovered the knocked-over garbage can and resultant pile of trash by the front door by this point, so I had Victor scavenge the trash for parts, pick up the can, then take everyone’s garbage (some spare plates of cake that Smiler found in the greenhouse, and some leftover food from Alice) and throw it in the recycler, before sending him to go harvest everything in the greenhouse. Smiler got sent to take care of the chickens while Alice got sent to take care of Moory – Smiler cleaned the coop, spread some feed, collected the eggs (5 normal ones, hooray), and spent a little time chatting to various chickens, while Alice scrubbed off a dirty Moory, chatted with her briefly, then milked her. :) We’re getting taking care of the livestock down! Smiler also did some herbalism, brewing their first sadness alleviation lotion now that they have the fireflies for it, and also went upstairs to grab their dirt frog to try and breed a spotted dirt frog for Victor – and for themselves, technically, as they didn’t have that one as part of their collection! First attempt was unsuccessful, though, just getting Smiler a second dirt frog – turned that into a plasma pack for later.
D) And then – well, EVERYBODY got sent to help out in the greenhouse, because the faster the greenhouse got tended, the faster we got to the store! Victor, Smiler, and the bots worked on weeding and watering, while Alice sprayed some bugs over the oversized mushrooms and planted one of the bell peppers they got from all the gnome seed packets around – I THINK that was the only new veg that they didn’t have before. Victor also took a moment to give the bees some mite treatment to calm them down, gather their honey and beeswax, and bond with them a little, and I took a moment, now that everything had been harvested, to rearrange those gnomes – all the variants on the “normal” gnomes and the alien gnome went in the four corners of the greenhouse, while the Grim Reaper gnome went by the cowplant (to serve as a warning) and the pool floating gnome went in the wheelbarrow as my damn bunny gnome has disappeared and I have no idea what happened to it. *grumbles* Maybe it glitched out and just got deleted when the gnomes started moving around. . .or maybe I’ll stumble across it in the place where I least expect it later. We’ll see.
E) And then, with that done – it was off to the store! The earliest I’ve ever managed to send them! :D Smiler promptly got put on fishing duty again, while Alice got sent to make some more oversized mushroom conserve and Victor tested what Repairo does to flower arrangements for me – it WILL increase their quality, but it WON’T do anything about how much they’ve started to wilt. Basically, I gotta open the store and start selling these arrangements before they get full-on wilted! (Either that or get a mod that stops them wilting. We’ll see. :p) Victor then caught some stinkbugs before opening up a box of dried sage and going downstairs to make some more to help fill up a shelf – I’ve decided to rearrange things a bit so that the cans of green beans, green peas, and dried sage are all on a shelf together, then the BOXES for those products (as you can do boxes of six cans at a time) are on the shelf next to them. *nods* I think this fills the space better, and stops me having to worry about what else I’m gonna put on the shelf with the dried sage, as there are no other dried herbs you can make in the bulk processor right now. So far, conserves of all types are on the shelves next to them, and then the shelves on the other side of that aisle are the chocolate syrup and the various jams that you can make, along with magical potions, herbalism potions, and Smiler’s apothecary tablets and gummies, and then on the other side of THAT wall are breads, flour and sugar, Victor’s bee-related products (honey, wax, and candles – though I learned they come out of the inventory lit! Have to extinguish them before setting them for sale), animal treats, and currently some boxes of vegetarian MREs. *shrug* We’re getting there!
F) Anyway – store activities! Everybody had their jobs –
Smiler: Spent most of the day fishing at the fishing spot behind the store – they caught a cichlid, an angelfish, a couple of tunas, a tilapia, and a perch! And I learned how you mass-store fish in Brazen Lotus’s fish freezer – it’s “fresh ingredients” or something like that, I can’t actually recall the label. Also lets you mass-transfer meat and eggs, which is nice. :) They got knocked out of fishing when Victor Scruberooed them to help with their decreasing hygiene, which led them to go clean up some puddles behind the store (it snowed very briefly while they were there, so I think that’s what they were from) and have a plasma fruit break. They also successfully bred a spotted dirt frog while on their break – I promptly took it out of the inventory, had Victor Copypasto it a few times, then gave Smiler back one for their collection while Victor took the others for potion-making purposes. :D Smiler then got sent downstairs to make more synthetic food tablets at their apothecary bench – and to upgrade the bench to prevent breakage, because why not? They ended up getting to level 2 of the Apothecary skill while making the tablets, meaning they could finally make some gummies as well – specifically, deodorant gummies and spirit lifter gummies! Though I had to have Victor hit their fireflies with Copypasto a few times as well so they could make the latter. . .still, nice to be able to have them make some more products for the “pharmacy” shelves! :D They then helped make a few extra green beans and green pea boxes to fill out that shelf before they all went home.
Alice: Was on canning duty most of the day! Her job was to make lots and lots of conserves using the oversized produce in her inventory – mushroom, aubergine, lettuce, pumpkin, and watermelon – with a few breaks for stuff like getting outside to satisfy the werewolf instincts, letting out a somber howl to keep the Fury low, and of course using the bathroom. She also made some more blueberry jam (including the first box of same – while the conserves don’t have boxed versions, pretty much all the jams, chocolate syrup, and meat substitute do, so I’m gonna make good use of that to fill shelves) and a few boxes of green peas, green beans, and dried sage to help fill out those shelves. After that, she got hungry and started eyeing the raw meat in the display case, so I had her go out, transform, and hunt her own instead (naturally putting the leftover in said display case to be copied/sold later). A few more boxes of stuff, and she was done for the day as well.
Victor: The busiest beaver of them all, he was all over the place – making bottles of dried sage to help fill out those shelves; making banana bread to fill out the “bakery” section; making sugar and flour sacks both to fill out that section and to get some more sugar on-hand for jams and baking and whatnot (seriously, the bulk processor is a must if you want to make your own sugar – it uses six of any fruit and it gives you six servings once you open up the sack!); making inspiring, happy, and energized perfumes for the perfumery section. But of course his most important job was to use his overpowered Copypasto spell to make copies of stuff they already had so that they could fill up the shelves faster – mostly the various conserves and jams Alice makes so she doesn’t have to spend all day at the stove. XD Once he got his spotted dirt frog from Smiler and copied it a few times, he was also finally able to brew his own Nimble Mind potion to put on the shelves, which was nice. He also Deliciosoed up his own dinner – lovely garlic noodles. Slinging all that magic around DID mean he actually ended the day at a rather dangerous level of charge (to the point where, upon seeing him, Alice and Smiler were a little freaked out) – BUT he also earned another talent point! I promptly put it toward the “Mix Master” ability so he’ll get more potions every time he brews up a fresh batch. :)
G) And, once the final boxes were slotted into place and the final perfumes created, it was time to send everyone home! Victor, being decently tired and VERY overcharged, got sent upstairs to bed – Alice, for her part, changed back from her werewolf self to her normal self and went to play with Surprise the kitten for a bit before following him. Smiler flew upstairs to drop their regular dirt frog and spotted dirt frog in their frog collection (with Victor also contributing the spotted heart frog he’d bought from the potion ingredients place, as Smiler didn’t have that one either), then flew back downstairs into the greenhouse to power off Bugs and Elmer and put them back in their inventory. I ended the playsession right before beanbags with them making some more chatterbots for the robotics section of the store, and Victor waking up early and Scruberooing a slime monster before discharging all his excess magical energy. Whew!
So yeah – very productive day there! :) Honestly, I think the store’s pretty much just about ready to open – maybe one more day or so to make a few more items to fill in some gaps, and we’ll be golden! :D I’m very pleased. Next time, though, we may be staying home again, because I’m thinking of having Smiler host a little party to try and unlock some picture frames. . .
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” – LaCroix has set Alice the task of retrieving the Ankaran Sarcophagus (and, in this universe, specified that Mercurio will have a truck waiting to transport it in a nearby parking garage, because it’s never really explained in the game how the fuck you were supposed to get it back to him), and Alice has got him to delay it to the next evening (because it is coming up rapidly on the dawn), gotten paid 300 dollars for her trouble, and managed to leave the office without being struck down for being in a bitchy mood. She’s currently in the elevator on her way down and out of the building, stating her intention to just go home and stare at the wall. . .which is NOT going to happen, because she’s forgotten about her very anxious ghoul back at her place who is going to want to actually HELP her with her problems. But she’s about to be reminded. . .
YouTube: Well, I didn’t get to ALL of the videos I wanted to get to today, but I did two out of three, so that ain’t bad –
A) First, a quick video out of my Watch Later – the old OXBox list video “8 Immortality Gadgets That Keep Us Alive No Matter How Hard We Die!” This is seven years old, and it’s bizarre seeing everyone looking so young and going through some of the entries so quickly. O.o Still a fun list of ways games justified you respawning after dying, though – from having a cute robot buddy called a Ghost to resurrect you during your fights with the forces of evil (Destiny), to rebuilding you from scratch every time you fuck up because YOU are the robot (Portal 2 co-op mode, where you’re playing GLaDOS’s testing robots Atlas and P-Body), to just straight up saying that you dying is a time paradox and thus can never really happen (both Metal Gear Solid 3, which is a secret prequel to the other games in the series, and the Assassin’s Creed series, where all the historical action is being viewed by someone in the modern day and thus if things go off the rails you just get “desynced” from the memory). Always good to be technically immortal! :p If only we could pull that off in real life. . .
B) And second, from the Subs, the latest Alex Torture Board from GrayStillPlays – “Testing Thin vs Thic Cars in GTA 5!” This was another one of those “torture course with modded cars” boards, with Gray piloting cars ranging from a dump trunk smashed to the width of a piece of paper to a cheddar-colored clothtop that had been widened to practically the length of Florida. XD Gray had to figure out which extra-thin or extra-thick car could actually make it across the “You have to be this wide to jump” Thingy (a set of various ramps over a gap – basically with this, Gray had to figure out which pair of matched ramps on either side would allow a thick car to jump over, or pick the best singular ramp for a thin car), “American Cheese Gaps” (a bunch of yellow-orange platforms standing on end, spaced just wide enough to be difficult to drive over), the “Spinning” Thingy (a long blue platform arm attached to a rotating cylinder – the trick was to drive onto the arm and then follow it around at JUST the right speed to get to the next bit of the course so you didn’t fall off or outpace it), the “Popping Gaps” Thingy (a set of three gaps with popping cone balloons in them – the first featuring pink ones spinning like a windmill, the second green ones rotating in a bit circle, and the third blue ones positioned like teeth in a big mouth – that had to be jumped), the “Double Wide Stalking Windmill” Thingy (a short straight stretch where Gray had to outrun a pair of stalking windmills on either side of the track – probably easy in a thin car, but VERY hard in a wide one!), and the “Thin Vs Thick Tightrope” Thingy (a pair of really wide tightropes that you either had to chassis-slide down or find just the right wide car that could get its tires on both tightropes. . .followed by a single thin tightrope down the middle that you HAD to chassis-slide on and hope to HELL you were balanced). Gray tried pretty much everything, from the dump truck to the sedan, to a smaller-than-usual monster truck to a wider-than-usual motorcycle, with the winner being a horribly stretched version of his beloved pink supercar – just fast enough to make any challenge that required speed, just wide enough to get over the first two tightropes, just light enough to be balanced on that final slide. Beautiful bit of Gray torture. XD
Other: A lovely (if cloudy) day meant that we got to play beanbags, and it was another good day for all of us, with Dad and I winning twice and Mom winning once (after she put the jinx on us in the final game by jokingly asking us to play badly so she’d win XD). Though Mom and I actually did better than average overall – Dad did worse, but he still won twice, so I don’t think he can complain. :p Final scores were me 3-W-2-W-3; Dad W-3-W-3-2; Mom 2-2-3-2-W. Not bad at all!
Not too shabby! I was very pleased by the Sims session especially -- yes, it ran a little longer than I was hoping, but the store is looking great. :D And at least I have all the drafts ready for the update on VLA! Hopefully I can make some good progress on those tomorrow. . .also have to play some Fallout 4 (gonna go hit County Crossing to properly finish off the Jamaica Plain quest, then double back to start both Silver Shroud and the Railroad stuff); update the FO4 Playthrough Progression; watch GrayStillPlays and Jon as per usual; and get in a workout with Spiffing Brit's latest FO4 silliness (apparently he's turned his game into a zombie apocalypse with mods, so that should be interesting). Fallout Sunday in full swing, as you can see. XD Hopefully it'll all be good -- night all!
As for my to-do list, I had a pretty good day, even if I didn't get everything I want to get done, done --
Tumblr: Not AS productive as I would have liked over here, but I got stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Did get some time before lunch to do the starter draft posts of this week’s Chill Valicer Save update – six posts with about 85 pictures between them (though I may in fact be cutting a few of those pictures when I start doing text, tags, and alt text). And I just answered an ask from Satirical Demon (author of “Beneath A Broken Sky,” that Valice Eldritch Hellworld AU I like) regarding his thoughts of Valice AND Valicer ideas for a The Haunted Mansion (2023) AU after seeing the movie (my favorite of the lot being the one where Alice inherits the mansion and has to enlist Victor’s help with the spirits, with Smiler being one of the ghosts). So that was fun. :D
Valice Multiverse – BUSY night over here, as my partner Brynlee Marie had answered every thread we have together! Took me a while to get through all of them while also doing the social thing elsewhere and finishing up these write-ups – and I had to shunt two other threads off into separate posts because, apparently, the “trim reblogs” feature screws up a bit if the reblog you’re trying to trim is an ask. *grumbles* But they’re all done now, hooray!
Sims 4: Had a very productive day at the store with the Chill Valicer trio today, I’m happy to say –
A) Started with the gang at home, with Victor having just fed the cowplant and Smiler having just finished their fashion video (and Alice asleep) – I had Smiler start editing their video and adding effects and whatnot, while I sent Victor out to the back porch to get to know the kittens, a process hampered by the fact the kittens kept running inside because it was a very chilly morning, meaning Victor had to wait for them to come back outside so he could actually complete the interactions. *shakehead* This DID, however, allow me to spot that Temperance was still around, and chatting to one of the local specters – I quickly whipped Victor’s bizarre idol back out of his inventory and plopped it down near her, and she FINALLY fucked off. Though apparently not without knocking the trash bin over, as I found it on the ground by the recycler later. *shakehead* Life in a haunted house! At least Guidry no longer comes around to start fires. . .
B) Once Temperance was gone and Victor had actually gotten to know the kittens, it was time for breakfast – he went and got a buttered crumpet, while Alice got up and grabbed herself some chicken chimichurri skewers (Shadow and the kittens VERY interested in all this human food XD). Smiler finished editing and improving their video and uploaded it to SimsTube, then flew down to the greenhouse to let Elmer and Bugs help with taking care of the plants. I then proceeded to ALMOST fuck myself over by going into build mode to move the gnomes and the seed packets they’d spread all over the place around BEFORE any harvesting was done – however, for whatever reason, the game was kind today and did NOT immediately chuck all the produce in the household inventory. I quickly got out of there when I realized my mistake and left the gnomes in place while Smiler harvested all their herbalism supplies and the plasma fruit from the plasma tree (getting attacked by bees in the process as they were feeling shirty today – on the plus side, they also got to Gardening skill 6, which lets them use the weed vacuum!). A lucky escape for the produce and my sanity!
C) Anyway – I’d discovered the knocked-over garbage can and resultant pile of trash by the front door by this point, so I had Victor scavenge the trash for parts, pick up the can, then take everyone’s garbage (some spare plates of cake that Smiler found in the greenhouse, and some leftover food from Alice) and throw it in the recycler, before sending him to go harvest everything in the greenhouse. Smiler got sent to take care of the chickens while Alice got sent to take care of Moory – Smiler cleaned the coop, spread some feed, collected the eggs (5 normal ones, hooray), and spent a little time chatting to various chickens, while Alice scrubbed off a dirty Moory, chatted with her briefly, then milked her. :) We’re getting taking care of the livestock down! Smiler also did some herbalism, brewing their first sadness alleviation lotion now that they have the fireflies for it, and also went upstairs to grab their dirt frog to try and breed a spotted dirt frog for Victor – and for themselves, technically, as they didn’t have that one as part of their collection! First attempt was unsuccessful, though, just getting Smiler a second dirt frog – turned that into a plasma pack for later.
D) And then – well, EVERYBODY got sent to help out in the greenhouse, because the faster the greenhouse got tended, the faster we got to the store! Victor, Smiler, and the bots worked on weeding and watering, while Alice sprayed some bugs over the oversized mushrooms and planted one of the bell peppers they got from all the gnome seed packets around – I THINK that was the only new veg that they didn’t have before. Victor also took a moment to give the bees some mite treatment to calm them down, gather their honey and beeswax, and bond with them a little, and I took a moment, now that everything had been harvested, to rearrange those gnomes – all the variants on the “normal” gnomes and the alien gnome went in the four corners of the greenhouse, while the Grim Reaper gnome went by the cowplant (to serve as a warning) and the pool floating gnome went in the wheelbarrow as my damn bunny gnome has disappeared and I have no idea what happened to it. *grumbles* Maybe it glitched out and just got deleted when the gnomes started moving around. . .or maybe I’ll stumble across it in the place where I least expect it later. We’ll see.
E) And then, with that done – it was off to the store! The earliest I’ve ever managed to send them! :D Smiler promptly got put on fishing duty again, while Alice got sent to make some more oversized mushroom conserve and Victor tested what Repairo does to flower arrangements for me – it WILL increase their quality, but it WON’T do anything about how much they’ve started to wilt. Basically, I gotta open the store and start selling these arrangements before they get full-on wilted! (Either that or get a mod that stops them wilting. We’ll see. :p) Victor then caught some stinkbugs before opening up a box of dried sage and going downstairs to make some more to help fill up a shelf – I’ve decided to rearrange things a bit so that the cans of green beans, green peas, and dried sage are all on a shelf together, then the BOXES for those products (as you can do boxes of six cans at a time) are on the shelf next to them. *nods* I think this fills the space better, and stops me having to worry about what else I’m gonna put on the shelf with the dried sage, as there are no other dried herbs you can make in the bulk processor right now. So far, conserves of all types are on the shelves next to them, and then the shelves on the other side of that aisle are the chocolate syrup and the various jams that you can make, along with magical potions, herbalism potions, and Smiler’s apothecary tablets and gummies, and then on the other side of THAT wall are breads, flour and sugar, Victor’s bee-related products (honey, wax, and candles – though I learned they come out of the inventory lit! Have to extinguish them before setting them for sale), animal treats, and currently some boxes of vegetarian MREs. *shrug* We’re getting there!
F) Anyway – store activities! Everybody had their jobs –
Smiler: Spent most of the day fishing at the fishing spot behind the store – they caught a cichlid, an angelfish, a couple of tunas, a tilapia, and a perch! And I learned how you mass-store fish in Brazen Lotus’s fish freezer – it’s “fresh ingredients” or something like that, I can’t actually recall the label. Also lets you mass-transfer meat and eggs, which is nice. :) They got knocked out of fishing when Victor Scruberooed them to help with their decreasing hygiene, which led them to go clean up some puddles behind the store (it snowed very briefly while they were there, so I think that’s what they were from) and have a plasma fruit break. They also successfully bred a spotted dirt frog while on their break – I promptly took it out of the inventory, had Victor Copypasto it a few times, then gave Smiler back one for their collection while Victor took the others for potion-making purposes. :D Smiler then got sent downstairs to make more synthetic food tablets at their apothecary bench – and to upgrade the bench to prevent breakage, because why not? They ended up getting to level 2 of the Apothecary skill while making the tablets, meaning they could finally make some gummies as well – specifically, deodorant gummies and spirit lifter gummies! Though I had to have Victor hit their fireflies with Copypasto a few times as well so they could make the latter. . .still, nice to be able to have them make some more products for the “pharmacy” shelves! :D They then helped make a few extra green beans and green pea boxes to fill out that shelf before they all went home.
Alice: Was on canning duty most of the day! Her job was to make lots and lots of conserves using the oversized produce in her inventory – mushroom, aubergine, lettuce, pumpkin, and watermelon – with a few breaks for stuff like getting outside to satisfy the werewolf instincts, letting out a somber howl to keep the Fury low, and of course using the bathroom. She also made some more blueberry jam (including the first box of same – while the conserves don’t have boxed versions, pretty much all the jams, chocolate syrup, and meat substitute do, so I’m gonna make good use of that to fill shelves) and a few boxes of green peas, green beans, and dried sage to help fill out those shelves. After that, she got hungry and started eyeing the raw meat in the display case, so I had her go out, transform, and hunt her own instead (naturally putting the leftover in said display case to be copied/sold later). A few more boxes of stuff, and she was done for the day as well.
Victor: The busiest beaver of them all, he was all over the place – making bottles of dried sage to help fill out those shelves; making banana bread to fill out the “bakery” section; making sugar and flour sacks both to fill out that section and to get some more sugar on-hand for jams and baking and whatnot (seriously, the bulk processor is a must if you want to make your own sugar – it uses six of any fruit and it gives you six servings once you open up the sack!); making inspiring, happy, and energized perfumes for the perfumery section. But of course his most important job was to use his overpowered Copypasto spell to make copies of stuff they already had so that they could fill up the shelves faster – mostly the various conserves and jams Alice makes so she doesn’t have to spend all day at the stove. XD Once he got his spotted dirt frog from Smiler and copied it a few times, he was also finally able to brew his own Nimble Mind potion to put on the shelves, which was nice. He also Deliciosoed up his own dinner – lovely garlic noodles. Slinging all that magic around DID mean he actually ended the day at a rather dangerous level of charge (to the point where, upon seeing him, Alice and Smiler were a little freaked out) – BUT he also earned another talent point! I promptly put it toward the “Mix Master” ability so he’ll get more potions every time he brews up a fresh batch. :)
G) And, once the final boxes were slotted into place and the final perfumes created, it was time to send everyone home! Victor, being decently tired and VERY overcharged, got sent upstairs to bed – Alice, for her part, changed back from her werewolf self to her normal self and went to play with Surprise the kitten for a bit before following him. Smiler flew upstairs to drop their regular dirt frog and spotted dirt frog in their frog collection (with Victor also contributing the spotted heart frog he’d bought from the potion ingredients place, as Smiler didn’t have that one either), then flew back downstairs into the greenhouse to power off Bugs and Elmer and put them back in their inventory. I ended the playsession right before beanbags with them making some more chatterbots for the robotics section of the store, and Victor waking up early and Scruberooing a slime monster before discharging all his excess magical energy. Whew!
So yeah – very productive day there! :) Honestly, I think the store’s pretty much just about ready to open – maybe one more day or so to make a few more items to fill in some gaps, and we’ll be golden! :D I’m very pleased. Next time, though, we may be staying home again, because I’m thinking of having Smiler host a little party to try and unlock some picture frames. . .
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” – LaCroix has set Alice the task of retrieving the Ankaran Sarcophagus (and, in this universe, specified that Mercurio will have a truck waiting to transport it in a nearby parking garage, because it’s never really explained in the game how the fuck you were supposed to get it back to him), and Alice has got him to delay it to the next evening (because it is coming up rapidly on the dawn), gotten paid 300 dollars for her trouble, and managed to leave the office without being struck down for being in a bitchy mood. She’s currently in the elevator on her way down and out of the building, stating her intention to just go home and stare at the wall. . .which is NOT going to happen, because she’s forgotten about her very anxious ghoul back at her place who is going to want to actually HELP her with her problems. But she’s about to be reminded. . .
YouTube: Well, I didn’t get to ALL of the videos I wanted to get to today, but I did two out of three, so that ain’t bad –
A) First, a quick video out of my Watch Later – the old OXBox list video “8 Immortality Gadgets That Keep Us Alive No Matter How Hard We Die!” This is seven years old, and it’s bizarre seeing everyone looking so young and going through some of the entries so quickly. O.o Still a fun list of ways games justified you respawning after dying, though – from having a cute robot buddy called a Ghost to resurrect you during your fights with the forces of evil (Destiny), to rebuilding you from scratch every time you fuck up because YOU are the robot (Portal 2 co-op mode, where you’re playing GLaDOS’s testing robots Atlas and P-Body), to just straight up saying that you dying is a time paradox and thus can never really happen (both Metal Gear Solid 3, which is a secret prequel to the other games in the series, and the Assassin’s Creed series, where all the historical action is being viewed by someone in the modern day and thus if things go off the rails you just get “desynced” from the memory). Always good to be technically immortal! :p If only we could pull that off in real life. . .
B) And second, from the Subs, the latest Alex Torture Board from GrayStillPlays – “Testing Thin vs Thic Cars in GTA 5!” This was another one of those “torture course with modded cars” boards, with Gray piloting cars ranging from a dump trunk smashed to the width of a piece of paper to a cheddar-colored clothtop that had been widened to practically the length of Florida. XD Gray had to figure out which extra-thin or extra-thick car could actually make it across the “You have to be this wide to jump” Thingy (a set of various ramps over a gap – basically with this, Gray had to figure out which pair of matched ramps on either side would allow a thick car to jump over, or pick the best singular ramp for a thin car), “American Cheese Gaps” (a bunch of yellow-orange platforms standing on end, spaced just wide enough to be difficult to drive over), the “Spinning” Thingy (a long blue platform arm attached to a rotating cylinder – the trick was to drive onto the arm and then follow it around at JUST the right speed to get to the next bit of the course so you didn’t fall off or outpace it), the “Popping Gaps” Thingy (a set of three gaps with popping cone balloons in them – the first featuring pink ones spinning like a windmill, the second green ones rotating in a bit circle, and the third blue ones positioned like teeth in a big mouth – that had to be jumped), the “Double Wide Stalking Windmill” Thingy (a short straight stretch where Gray had to outrun a pair of stalking windmills on either side of the track – probably easy in a thin car, but VERY hard in a wide one!), and the “Thin Vs Thick Tightrope” Thingy (a pair of really wide tightropes that you either had to chassis-slide down or find just the right wide car that could get its tires on both tightropes. . .followed by a single thin tightrope down the middle that you HAD to chassis-slide on and hope to HELL you were balanced). Gray tried pretty much everything, from the dump truck to the sedan, to a smaller-than-usual monster truck to a wider-than-usual motorcycle, with the winner being a horribly stretched version of his beloved pink supercar – just fast enough to make any challenge that required speed, just wide enough to get over the first two tightropes, just light enough to be balanced on that final slide. Beautiful bit of Gray torture. XD
Other: A lovely (if cloudy) day meant that we got to play beanbags, and it was another good day for all of us, with Dad and I winning twice and Mom winning once (after she put the jinx on us in the final game by jokingly asking us to play badly so she’d win XD). Though Mom and I actually did better than average overall – Dad did worse, but he still won twice, so I don’t think he can complain. :p Final scores were me 3-W-2-W-3; Dad W-3-W-3-2; Mom 2-2-3-2-W. Not bad at all!
Not too shabby! I was very pleased by the Sims session especially -- yes, it ran a little longer than I was hoping, but the store is looking great. :D And at least I have all the drafts ready for the update on VLA! Hopefully I can make some good progress on those tomorrow. . .also have to play some Fallout 4 (gonna go hit County Crossing to properly finish off the Jamaica Plain quest, then double back to start both Silver Shroud and the Railroad stuff); update the FO4 Playthrough Progression; watch GrayStillPlays and Jon as per usual; and get in a workout with Spiffing Brit's latest FO4 silliness (apparently he's turned his game into a zombie apocalypse with mods, so that should be interesting). Fallout Sunday in full swing, as you can see. XD Hopefully it'll all be good -- night all!
