Busy Busy Saturday
Sep. 2nd, 2023 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWoke up a little later than I wanted and took a bit to get going, with some stuff taking more time than I originally expected. . .but I have managed to ALMOST hit everything on my to-do list --
Tumblr: Wasn’t QUITE as productive over here as I would like, but I got stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Spent the hour or so before lunch and the half-hour between lunch and Sims catching up on my dash and my tracked tags as much as I could – so now I don’t feel nearly as behind as I did before! Even managed to throw some nice new A:MR and CB fanart into my drafts for later. Then, this evening, I spent some time FINALLY finishing off getting all the pictures sorted for this week’s Chill Valicer Save. . .all NINETY of them. O.O I mean, I know this was a big update with Harvestfest, the trips to Brindleton Bay’s Pawspital and the Bramblewood, and the arrival of the kittens, but – yeah, damn. Even with an extra day to work with, I’m starting to think I’ll have to delay this one until NEXT week. I mean, we’ll see what happens. . .
Valice Multiverse – Nothing happening over here tonight (which, given everything ELSE I was trying to accomplish this evening, I’m kinda grateful for), so I just slapped “First(ish) Meeting” in the queue and called it a night. We’ll see what happens with that tomorrow!
Sims 4: Another day where my Sims-playing got away from me a bit – look, I always think I can wrap these sessions up sooner than I actually can, especially when it comes to store days. I keep forgetting that I pause a LOT to look at where stuff is in that store. . . Anyway, let’s see how quickly I can sum up this nonsense for you –
A) First things first, discovered a bit of a bizarre bug when loading up – namely, the sound didn’t kick in until AFTER I’d clicked the checkmark on the pop-up saying “hey you have loads of mods and CC installed, is that cool.” O.o Uh, game, please don’t freak me out like that – I thought my stupid computer had switched the sound output to something other than my actual speakers again!
B) Anyway – once into the save, it was time to start giving the trio their tasks for the day –
Victor: Started by hitting the mildly-stinky Smiler with a Scruberoo, then made a noir-dyed (aka black) cylindrical candle (setting out some sacred candles to work by because the fear of the dark and the haunted house was upon him). I then checked the recipe for the potion of Emotional Stability on his cauldron – he was just missing some Obtainium, so I quickly took a look at the metal collection upstairs. Happily, there was indeed a piece available, so I had him Copypasto it a couple of times and head up to collect the duplicates. I then noticed Shadow looked a little upset and like she needed to go potty, so I had Victor head back downstairs to ask what was wrong (taking a moment to stop and feed the cowplant along the way). Turned out Shadow was angry about something – Victor calmed her down, then took her off on a nice long jog. Where she proceeded to constantly run off in random directions while Victor just stood there, stretching the leash to kingdom come. *rolls eyes* This game and its glitches sometimes. . . Poor Victor ended up stuck on the bridge over the river by their lot by the end, waiting for the dog to actually come back so they could go home and feeling EXTREMELY stinky. Good thing he has Scruberoo! He and the dog eventually got back, and he treated himself to some leftover grand breakfast after cleaning out the fridge of all the empty plates and spoiled food. I think he did indeed deserve that after the weird shit he endured on his jog!
Smiler: They got sent straight to the robot workbench to tune up Elmer and Bugs, then – because they were getting distracted by the specters hanging around the back yard – I had them go upstairs to their party barn area and make some drinks, a fancy glass of nectar and a Ridgeport, to give to the specter by the tree and in the greenhouse. Both were received well, and both resulted in a soul scrap, nice! :) They then activated Elmer and Bugs for another day of work in said greenhouse, before getting to all the chores Victor and Alice couldn’t – namely, cleaning up all the spoiled food left around from the “family reunion,” doing the laundry, harvesting all their herbalism stuff and the plasma fruit tree in the greenhouse, and giving Moory a good clean when she came out of her shed. Though she still wasn’t impressed by their jokes. Smiler left the cow to Alice and went over to the chickens to spread feed and collect eggs (two regular eggs, one hatchable egg – I just sold that one), then cleaned the coop, emptied the rest of the trash around the lot, and started sorting out recyclables. Gotta get those bits and pieces, after all!
Alice: Got put on wind turbine repair duty when she woke up, because the moon phase indicated she’d get increased Handiness out of it. Might as well take advantage of that, right? She did that nice and quick and – after sorting through the trash piles for parts – transformed into her beast form and went off for a nice hunt. She came back, chowed down, then had some Zoomies to lower her Fury while Victor took Shadow out for a jog. She came back nice and refreshed and with her Fury nice and low – and a quick somber howl after that took it straight down to zero. :) After that, though, the old werewolf instincts demanded a nap, so after “marking her territory,” she laid down for a wolfy snooze. Once she’d refreshed herself, she had a little dance with one of the kittens, then I had her change back and try chatting with Moory. The cow wasn’t having any of HER jokes either, so I decided to just have Alice milk her and be done with it. Though, right before that, I noticed that Alice had a “clean out spoiled food” interaction on herself – opening her inventory revealed she had a bunch of spoiled milk in her inventory. “Okay, I’ll hand that over to Smiler,” I decided, “they can add it in with the other recycling” –
Except. The moment I took it out of her inventory – it wasn’t spoiled anymore. Perfectly good milk with a day to go. O.o I had Smiler put it all in THEIR inventory to see if its status would change again, but – nope. Okay, uh – just bring that over to the store then!
C) Okay, cool, everyone’s back on the lot, a light snow is falling (it IS winter), the pets are keeping themselves entertained, let’s keep this chore train going –
Alice: Having milked Moory, she proceeded to clean out the cow’s shed (getting a fertilizer out of it) and then herself (useful werewolf licking is useful!). She then went to fill the pet feeders before they ran out, then headed into the greenhouse to pick the strawberries, blueberries, green beans, and green peas for later processing purposes. She and Smiler proceeded to have a nice chat together (Alice discussing her werewolf experiences with them for some XP), before she went outside to do a little light scavenging in the snow and play with the clay blob that had been left on the front porch. Gotta keep that creative mind sharp! Oh, and she got a song from – Surprise? Shock? Crap, I can’t tell the kittens apart, and I think they’re both Talkative. . .one of them! XD
Smiler: Noticing the clothes were done washing, they moved them to the dryer, then went outside to try chatting with the chickens and give them some attention. Unfortunately, the hens were also not having any of their jokes today – come on, farm animals, we all know Smiler is the most likable person in this save! *shakehead* I instead directed them into the greenhouse to fertilize a couple of their herbalism plants with the pet poops in their inventory (I’m pretty sure it was both the morel and false morel mushrooms), then had them dump some mite treatment on the bees so they wouldn’t be enraged when they woke up from their dormant state. As stated above, they then had a chat with Alice, then deactivated Bugs and Elmer (whose batteries were once again looking super low) before heading upstairs to their room to answer comments on their SimsTube videos and play some SimScuffle. Techie Sims gotta use their tech!
Victor: BANISHED TO THE GREENHOUSE. Fortunately he enjoys that. XD But yes, he spent a good few hours tending the plants, then harvesting all the ones that Smiler and Alice hadn’t got to yet. This left him pretty well exhausted – fortunately, he had more than enough aspiration points to buy a cup of sleep replacement and drink that down after he was done!
D) And with that, it was FINALLY time to head to the store! I was a little annoyed that it had taken me until 3 PM to get there in-game, but comforted myself with the idea that the gang could stay there for a while as they were all in good moods with pretty high energy –
And then I arrived there to find a whole bunch of people standing outside the lot. O.o I was briefly puzzled – but then I remembered, “Oh yeah, today’s Sunday – the Flea Market! Clement called Alice about it earlier! Forgot it was in this neighborhood.” Alice and Victor ignored the people heading to the market and headed inside to start processing, but I spotted a friend of Smiler’s in the crowed, Sai Basu, and had them chat for a while – mostly because Smiler was thirsty and we all know fresh Sim plasma fills them up best. XD It was a good conversation, though – Smiler asked Sai about their orientation and identity, and they replied they were still figuring it out, which was cool. And, because they were technically at the flea market, they were able to trade collectibles – Smiler trading their spotted leaf frog for a spotted eggplant frog. :) Dunno if they already have that one in their collection or not, but still, nice to have! And yes, they DID end up getting their drink, which was great. :) Hooray for willing plasma donors!
E) Anyway – store tasks! Because I wanted to do as much shelf-filling as I possibly could –
Alice: Straight down to the bulk food processor to make a box of dried sage to fill in THAT gap on the shelves, then – after realizing I didn’t have enough green peas to make a box of them – had her check out the canning situation and make some mayo to go with the tomato sauce. That was followed by a few jars of custard, then (after making some fresh sugar) a box of apple jam. Lunch was a jar of mushroom conserve, which she seemed to quite enjoy, and then – after Victor had put the necessary peas into the machine – back to the bulk food processor to make a box of green peas. AFTER I clicked on “green beans” by accident. *grumble* I guess that’ll be good as a spare to help with restocking later! Alice then moved on to making some more boxes of vegetarian MREs, before running upstairs for a bathroom break and a dinner break – which consisted of her stealing a piece of meat out of the meat display. *grumbles* Stop eating raw steak in your human form! Fortunately Victor’s Copypasto was able to make up the difference. . . Anyway, she then fixed the busted sink in the bathroom, mopped up the puddles, and went back downstairs to make boxes of tomato sauce and meat substitute, as we only had three of each and I needed four. Plus a box of chocolate sauce jars because I needed those too. Bulk processing queen, our Alice.
Victor: As you might expect, he started off the day with a little Copypasto, copying Smiler’s herbalism potions to help fill out that shelf. Then it was downstairs to the processing room to make some potions of Emotional Stability now that he had the ingredients for it, filling up THAT portion of the potions shelf. He then moved onto the Nimble Mind potion, putting a few on the shelf and saving a few for later use himself – I mean, always nice to have extras, right? I then took a look at the animal treats shelf and the recipes everyone knew, and determined that, now that Alice had made custard, Victor could make a chocolatey animal treat! So that’s what he did, making one and later Copypastoing it to make more magically. :p I then had him make some Inspiring perfume before moving onto Copypastoing stuff in earnest to fill in the gaps on the shelves (going hard on the mayo) –
And then noticed “shit, the flower arrangements are wilting!” So I unmarked all of them for sale and had Victor start selling all of the wilted ones straight – didn’t get much for them, but I got SOMETHING, which is better than nothing. As he was looking rather charged now, I sent him downstairs to take a break making deodorant perfume, then let him use the toilet before remembering, “wait, he has that ability that lets him get rid of his magical charge every so often!” So I had him do that and continued doing Copypasto on all the likely candidates. :p I mean, it’s the most useful spell he knows right at this moment! And, so, SO overpowered. XD
Smiler: After finishing up with Sai, it was downstairs to make synthetic food tablets and deodorant and spirit lifting gummies! Gotta fill out that pharmacy section, after all. . .they got to Apothecary level 3 with all that tableting and gummying, which allows them to make Rose Perfume tablets now – though I didn’t see the option on the table yet. Maybe next time! After that, they made a box of cheese, mostly so I could see if that needed to be refrigerated – it does not, so I rearranged the set of shelves facing the bakery section and the counter so I could have a shelf of cheese boxes by the freezers – and then had them start making a new flower arrangement to replace one of the ones that had wilted. They made a lovely Speckled Pink arrangement – AND, because they’re high enough in the skill now and the arrangement was excellent quality, they were able to scent it with a bluebell and have it become “timeless.” This either slows the wilting process way down or stops it entirely – so yeah, important thing to have if they’re selling the arrangements in the store!
F) And then I looked at the time in-game and in real life and was like, “Okay, I suppose I should send them home – let me just check on what they need here. . .” I made some notes about what I wanted them to make later (mainly boxes of the various jams, more boxes of cheese, meat MREs (need fish for those), another couple of cylinder candles, and more flower arrangements), then sent them home.
Where they were immediately put back to work. XD Smiler was put on the robot bench to make a couple more chatterbots; Victor sent to the candle-making station to make another cylinder candle in canary yellow (after getting a little more beeswax out of the box – got him to level 4 Fabrication skill though); and Alice to make lots of bulk sugar using lemons before taking a nap on the barn floor. XD Look, guys, I’m sorry for working you so hard, but I am DETERMINED to actually open this store the next time I play, and that means having as much product ready to go on the floor beforehand as possible! I will send you someplace fun to relax AFTER the grand opening (and probably the next game patch).
Writing: Got to this late because, well, got to everything kind of late today thanks to sleeping in later than I expected and the Sims session running long, but I DID get another chunk written on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland!” Though I think it very much helped that the scene I wrote today – Alice attempting to feed on Victor for the first time, only for him to, ah, pop a stiffie when she went in to bite his neck, and him having to explain, “Okay, fine, I have a bit of a THING for vampires but I didn’t think that was going to happen!” – is one I’d actually already drafted out AGES ago in my Londerland Bloodlines Notes doc. So all I had to do was clean up the rough draft! :) That made things a little easier! And I even got to add in my headcanon that all modern Victors (or at least those born after the 1800s) had Dracula and the scene with Jonathan and the vampire brides as their sexual awakening. XD Good stuff! And I still have plenty of rough draft to keep guiding me forward during the next part too. . .
YouTube: Watched both videos I wanted to watch today, yay –
A) “How Eco Lifestyle Adds To Gardening In The Sims 4” by Petey Plays It! One of his latest videos, it talks about – well, see the title. XD Specifically, he talked about the vertical planters (great for saving space – and turns out, you can upgrade them to automatically water your plants and ward off pests!), the meat wall upgrade for that planter and the hydroponic planter fabrication blueprint you can unlock as a “Green Technician” in the Civil Designer career (a bit fiddly, but worth it to have auto-watered plants and fake meat at your massaging fingertips), the new soybean plant and how it produces both veggies and wax (the former good for cooking, the latter good for candle-making), the community garden you can build with community spaces (fingers crossed the townies plant stuff you want to harvest!), the “green gardening” NAP that gives you influence if you have a nice garden (and hits you with a fine if you don’t), and the “Green Fiend” trait that makes Sims very happy to do things such as gardening. :) A nice little video showing how this pack really enhances gardening if you like doing that in the game – and hey, I had no idea the vertical planters could be upgraded in any way OTHER than turning them into meat walls, so that’s cool! :)
B) “Testing Cars vs Moving Bridges in GTA 5” by GrayStillPlays! Another Alex Torture Board, and this one was a doozy, with all different kinds of moving bridges for Gray to test his wits and his fleet of cars against! The four horrors Gray had to face today were:
I. The “Who would build this kind of bridge” Moving Bridge – a series of spinning platforms, each attached to a pillar at one end and passing through another pillar at the spinning end – Gray basically had to pass from pillar to pillar by getting on and riding the platforms, driving fast enough to stay on without falling off. Each platform was longer and faster than the last, with the second-to-last one also being weirdly curvy to give Gray an extra curveball to deal with. Oh, and all of the pillars had a pizza-slice hole missing from them so Gray could fall to his doom in the ocean. Fun!
II. The “Destroyed Subway Bridge” Moving Bridge – a busted-up “bridge” above a moving subway train where Gray had to shalom from right to left and ramp the occasional gap, driving over loads of exposed rebar and plywood and whatnot to make it to the end. He then had to fall down to the subway line at JUST the right time to hit the teleporter on top of the train, which would teleport him to the end of the tracks – and THEN he had to quickly drive OFF said tracks and onto the next part of the course to avoid being hit by the train. XD Because this is an Alex board.
III. The “Round, Spinning, Timed, Slow, Support Sticking” Moving Bridge – a bridge made up of a series of spinning discs with large concrete support beams sticking up through them, that Gray had to make it across in 22 seconds before they suddenly dropped downward and dropped him in the ocean. Not too bad, right? Except you forgot the “Slow” part of the title – every one of these discs was filled with stop strips. Meaning the only way Gray could hope to complete the course was to do it in REVERSE. Alex has gotten downright MEAN.
IV. And the “Renovated, Flying” Moving Bridge – a long fancy piece of humped highway that was flown between two busted-up pieces of a bridge by helicopters, forcing Gray to drive along its length JUST fast enough to keep up and reach the end when the actual highway reached the end. Did I mention Alex littered this with stop strips too? And that it was ABSURDLY easy to hit them because turning on this bridge made it very easy to spin out? Sheesh. . .as I said, MEAN.
So yeah, that was the look of Gray’s suffering today. He tried a number of different cars – the quad did surprisingly well on the spinning platforms, but fell off the subway bridge into the water and then glitched out HARD, forcing Gray to abandon it lest his character be trapped with it; the motorcycle did GREAT up until the spinning circles, mostly because it doesn’t have a proper “reverse” mode and thus could NOT get over the stop sticks in time; the winner of last week’s challenge, a fast car with a tire tied to the back (it’s apparently called the “Dragur!”) got ALL the way to the flying highway but just couldn’t go fast enough – or avoid hitting the stop strips. The winner turned out to be a red race car with what I think was “Inkline” branding and a “1st” license plate, which managed to go the distance and – with a little luck and a lot of teeth gritting – got past the flying highway and to the win. Where it promptly nearly crashed into some wind turbines. XD They had to show up sometime! Poor Gray, he really puts himself through it for our entertainment.
Other: Lovely weather (they said it was going to get more humid, but so far so nice) meant that we did go out this afternoon, once I’d finished Sims and had my snack – and while I didn’t do nearly as well as I did on Thursday, I managed to ramp up from a poor start to a good finish with a couple of wins. :) Dad regained his champ status with a couple of wins and the rest seconds, while Mom had a great first game, an okay second one, then just crashed and burned. Final scores were me 3-3-2-W-W; Dad 2-W-W-2-2; Mom W-2-3-3-3. At least we all won at least once!
So yeah, I did get a lot done today, it just took me a lot longer than I expected, and -- yes. So I am now going to bed so I can at least TRY to get up a little earlier tomorrow morning and maybe get going on the tumblr stuff earlier. Not having so much to catch up on should help. . . Also need to play Fallout 4 and start the Silver Shroud stuff; update the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; keep up with Gray and Jon; and get in my workout with James's two building videos. *nods* Hopefully all doable! Keep your fingers crossed... Night all!
Tumblr: Wasn’t QUITE as productive over here as I would like, but I got stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Spent the hour or so before lunch and the half-hour between lunch and Sims catching up on my dash and my tracked tags as much as I could – so now I don’t feel nearly as behind as I did before! Even managed to throw some nice new A:MR and CB fanart into my drafts for later. Then, this evening, I spent some time FINALLY finishing off getting all the pictures sorted for this week’s Chill Valicer Save. . .all NINETY of them. O.O I mean, I know this was a big update with Harvestfest, the trips to Brindleton Bay’s Pawspital and the Bramblewood, and the arrival of the kittens, but – yeah, damn. Even with an extra day to work with, I’m starting to think I’ll have to delay this one until NEXT week. I mean, we’ll see what happens. . .
Valice Multiverse – Nothing happening over here tonight (which, given everything ELSE I was trying to accomplish this evening, I’m kinda grateful for), so I just slapped “First(ish) Meeting” in the queue and called it a night. We’ll see what happens with that tomorrow!
Sims 4: Another day where my Sims-playing got away from me a bit – look, I always think I can wrap these sessions up sooner than I actually can, especially when it comes to store days. I keep forgetting that I pause a LOT to look at where stuff is in that store. . . Anyway, let’s see how quickly I can sum up this nonsense for you –
A) First things first, discovered a bit of a bizarre bug when loading up – namely, the sound didn’t kick in until AFTER I’d clicked the checkmark on the pop-up saying “hey you have loads of mods and CC installed, is that cool.” O.o Uh, game, please don’t freak me out like that – I thought my stupid computer had switched the sound output to something other than my actual speakers again!
B) Anyway – once into the save, it was time to start giving the trio their tasks for the day –
Victor: Started by hitting the mildly-stinky Smiler with a Scruberoo, then made a noir-dyed (aka black) cylindrical candle (setting out some sacred candles to work by because the fear of the dark and the haunted house was upon him). I then checked the recipe for the potion of Emotional Stability on his cauldron – he was just missing some Obtainium, so I quickly took a look at the metal collection upstairs. Happily, there was indeed a piece available, so I had him Copypasto it a couple of times and head up to collect the duplicates. I then noticed Shadow looked a little upset and like she needed to go potty, so I had Victor head back downstairs to ask what was wrong (taking a moment to stop and feed the cowplant along the way). Turned out Shadow was angry about something – Victor calmed her down, then took her off on a nice long jog. Where she proceeded to constantly run off in random directions while Victor just stood there, stretching the leash to kingdom come. *rolls eyes* This game and its glitches sometimes. . . Poor Victor ended up stuck on the bridge over the river by their lot by the end, waiting for the dog to actually come back so they could go home and feeling EXTREMELY stinky. Good thing he has Scruberoo! He and the dog eventually got back, and he treated himself to some leftover grand breakfast after cleaning out the fridge of all the empty plates and spoiled food. I think he did indeed deserve that after the weird shit he endured on his jog!
Smiler: They got sent straight to the robot workbench to tune up Elmer and Bugs, then – because they were getting distracted by the specters hanging around the back yard – I had them go upstairs to their party barn area and make some drinks, a fancy glass of nectar and a Ridgeport, to give to the specter by the tree and in the greenhouse. Both were received well, and both resulted in a soul scrap, nice! :) They then activated Elmer and Bugs for another day of work in said greenhouse, before getting to all the chores Victor and Alice couldn’t – namely, cleaning up all the spoiled food left around from the “family reunion,” doing the laundry, harvesting all their herbalism stuff and the plasma fruit tree in the greenhouse, and giving Moory a good clean when she came out of her shed. Though she still wasn’t impressed by their jokes. Smiler left the cow to Alice and went over to the chickens to spread feed and collect eggs (two regular eggs, one hatchable egg – I just sold that one), then cleaned the coop, emptied the rest of the trash around the lot, and started sorting out recyclables. Gotta get those bits and pieces, after all!
Alice: Got put on wind turbine repair duty when she woke up, because the moon phase indicated she’d get increased Handiness out of it. Might as well take advantage of that, right? She did that nice and quick and – after sorting through the trash piles for parts – transformed into her beast form and went off for a nice hunt. She came back, chowed down, then had some Zoomies to lower her Fury while Victor took Shadow out for a jog. She came back nice and refreshed and with her Fury nice and low – and a quick somber howl after that took it straight down to zero. :) After that, though, the old werewolf instincts demanded a nap, so after “marking her territory,” she laid down for a wolfy snooze. Once she’d refreshed herself, she had a little dance with one of the kittens, then I had her change back and try chatting with Moory. The cow wasn’t having any of HER jokes either, so I decided to just have Alice milk her and be done with it. Though, right before that, I noticed that Alice had a “clean out spoiled food” interaction on herself – opening her inventory revealed she had a bunch of spoiled milk in her inventory. “Okay, I’ll hand that over to Smiler,” I decided, “they can add it in with the other recycling” –
Except. The moment I took it out of her inventory – it wasn’t spoiled anymore. Perfectly good milk with a day to go. O.o I had Smiler put it all in THEIR inventory to see if its status would change again, but – nope. Okay, uh – just bring that over to the store then!
C) Okay, cool, everyone’s back on the lot, a light snow is falling (it IS winter), the pets are keeping themselves entertained, let’s keep this chore train going –
Alice: Having milked Moory, she proceeded to clean out the cow’s shed (getting a fertilizer out of it) and then herself (useful werewolf licking is useful!). She then went to fill the pet feeders before they ran out, then headed into the greenhouse to pick the strawberries, blueberries, green beans, and green peas for later processing purposes. She and Smiler proceeded to have a nice chat together (Alice discussing her werewolf experiences with them for some XP), before she went outside to do a little light scavenging in the snow and play with the clay blob that had been left on the front porch. Gotta keep that creative mind sharp! Oh, and she got a song from – Surprise? Shock? Crap, I can’t tell the kittens apart, and I think they’re both Talkative. . .one of them! XD
Smiler: Noticing the clothes were done washing, they moved them to the dryer, then went outside to try chatting with the chickens and give them some attention. Unfortunately, the hens were also not having any of their jokes today – come on, farm animals, we all know Smiler is the most likable person in this save! *shakehead* I instead directed them into the greenhouse to fertilize a couple of their herbalism plants with the pet poops in their inventory (I’m pretty sure it was both the morel and false morel mushrooms), then had them dump some mite treatment on the bees so they wouldn’t be enraged when they woke up from their dormant state. As stated above, they then had a chat with Alice, then deactivated Bugs and Elmer (whose batteries were once again looking super low) before heading upstairs to their room to answer comments on their SimsTube videos and play some SimScuffle. Techie Sims gotta use their tech!
Victor: BANISHED TO THE GREENHOUSE. Fortunately he enjoys that. XD But yes, he spent a good few hours tending the plants, then harvesting all the ones that Smiler and Alice hadn’t got to yet. This left him pretty well exhausted – fortunately, he had more than enough aspiration points to buy a cup of sleep replacement and drink that down after he was done!
D) And with that, it was FINALLY time to head to the store! I was a little annoyed that it had taken me until 3 PM to get there in-game, but comforted myself with the idea that the gang could stay there for a while as they were all in good moods with pretty high energy –
And then I arrived there to find a whole bunch of people standing outside the lot. O.o I was briefly puzzled – but then I remembered, “Oh yeah, today’s Sunday – the Flea Market! Clement called Alice about it earlier! Forgot it was in this neighborhood.” Alice and Victor ignored the people heading to the market and headed inside to start processing, but I spotted a friend of Smiler’s in the crowed, Sai Basu, and had them chat for a while – mostly because Smiler was thirsty and we all know fresh Sim plasma fills them up best. XD It was a good conversation, though – Smiler asked Sai about their orientation and identity, and they replied they were still figuring it out, which was cool. And, because they were technically at the flea market, they were able to trade collectibles – Smiler trading their spotted leaf frog for a spotted eggplant frog. :) Dunno if they already have that one in their collection or not, but still, nice to have! And yes, they DID end up getting their drink, which was great. :) Hooray for willing plasma donors!
E) Anyway – store tasks! Because I wanted to do as much shelf-filling as I possibly could –
Alice: Straight down to the bulk food processor to make a box of dried sage to fill in THAT gap on the shelves, then – after realizing I didn’t have enough green peas to make a box of them – had her check out the canning situation and make some mayo to go with the tomato sauce. That was followed by a few jars of custard, then (after making some fresh sugar) a box of apple jam. Lunch was a jar of mushroom conserve, which she seemed to quite enjoy, and then – after Victor had put the necessary peas into the machine – back to the bulk food processor to make a box of green peas. AFTER I clicked on “green beans” by accident. *grumble* I guess that’ll be good as a spare to help with restocking later! Alice then moved on to making some more boxes of vegetarian MREs, before running upstairs for a bathroom break and a dinner break – which consisted of her stealing a piece of meat out of the meat display. *grumbles* Stop eating raw steak in your human form! Fortunately Victor’s Copypasto was able to make up the difference. . . Anyway, she then fixed the busted sink in the bathroom, mopped up the puddles, and went back downstairs to make boxes of tomato sauce and meat substitute, as we only had three of each and I needed four. Plus a box of chocolate sauce jars because I needed those too. Bulk processing queen, our Alice.
Victor: As you might expect, he started off the day with a little Copypasto, copying Smiler’s herbalism potions to help fill out that shelf. Then it was downstairs to the processing room to make some potions of Emotional Stability now that he had the ingredients for it, filling up THAT portion of the potions shelf. He then moved onto the Nimble Mind potion, putting a few on the shelf and saving a few for later use himself – I mean, always nice to have extras, right? I then took a look at the animal treats shelf and the recipes everyone knew, and determined that, now that Alice had made custard, Victor could make a chocolatey animal treat! So that’s what he did, making one and later Copypastoing it to make more magically. :p I then had him make some Inspiring perfume before moving onto Copypastoing stuff in earnest to fill in the gaps on the shelves (going hard on the mayo) –
And then noticed “shit, the flower arrangements are wilting!” So I unmarked all of them for sale and had Victor start selling all of the wilted ones straight – didn’t get much for them, but I got SOMETHING, which is better than nothing. As he was looking rather charged now, I sent him downstairs to take a break making deodorant perfume, then let him use the toilet before remembering, “wait, he has that ability that lets him get rid of his magical charge every so often!” So I had him do that and continued doing Copypasto on all the likely candidates. :p I mean, it’s the most useful spell he knows right at this moment! And, so, SO overpowered. XD
Smiler: After finishing up with Sai, it was downstairs to make synthetic food tablets and deodorant and spirit lifting gummies! Gotta fill out that pharmacy section, after all. . .they got to Apothecary level 3 with all that tableting and gummying, which allows them to make Rose Perfume tablets now – though I didn’t see the option on the table yet. Maybe next time! After that, they made a box of cheese, mostly so I could see if that needed to be refrigerated – it does not, so I rearranged the set of shelves facing the bakery section and the counter so I could have a shelf of cheese boxes by the freezers – and then had them start making a new flower arrangement to replace one of the ones that had wilted. They made a lovely Speckled Pink arrangement – AND, because they’re high enough in the skill now and the arrangement was excellent quality, they were able to scent it with a bluebell and have it become “timeless.” This either slows the wilting process way down or stops it entirely – so yeah, important thing to have if they’re selling the arrangements in the store!
F) And then I looked at the time in-game and in real life and was like, “Okay, I suppose I should send them home – let me just check on what they need here. . .” I made some notes about what I wanted them to make later (mainly boxes of the various jams, more boxes of cheese, meat MREs (need fish for those), another couple of cylinder candles, and more flower arrangements), then sent them home.
Where they were immediately put back to work. XD Smiler was put on the robot bench to make a couple more chatterbots; Victor sent to the candle-making station to make another cylinder candle in canary yellow (after getting a little more beeswax out of the box – got him to level 4 Fabrication skill though); and Alice to make lots of bulk sugar using lemons before taking a nap on the barn floor. XD Look, guys, I’m sorry for working you so hard, but I am DETERMINED to actually open this store the next time I play, and that means having as much product ready to go on the floor beforehand as possible! I will send you someplace fun to relax AFTER the grand opening (and probably the next game patch).
Writing: Got to this late because, well, got to everything kind of late today thanks to sleeping in later than I expected and the Sims session running long, but I DID get another chunk written on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland!” Though I think it very much helped that the scene I wrote today – Alice attempting to feed on Victor for the first time, only for him to, ah, pop a stiffie when she went in to bite his neck, and him having to explain, “Okay, fine, I have a bit of a THING for vampires but I didn’t think that was going to happen!” – is one I’d actually already drafted out AGES ago in my Londerland Bloodlines Notes doc. So all I had to do was clean up the rough draft! :) That made things a little easier! And I even got to add in my headcanon that all modern Victors (or at least those born after the 1800s) had Dracula and the scene with Jonathan and the vampire brides as their sexual awakening. XD Good stuff! And I still have plenty of rough draft to keep guiding me forward during the next part too. . .
YouTube: Watched both videos I wanted to watch today, yay –
A) “How Eco Lifestyle Adds To Gardening In The Sims 4” by Petey Plays It! One of his latest videos, it talks about – well, see the title. XD Specifically, he talked about the vertical planters (great for saving space – and turns out, you can upgrade them to automatically water your plants and ward off pests!), the meat wall upgrade for that planter and the hydroponic planter fabrication blueprint you can unlock as a “Green Technician” in the Civil Designer career (a bit fiddly, but worth it to have auto-watered plants and fake meat at your massaging fingertips), the new soybean plant and how it produces both veggies and wax (the former good for cooking, the latter good for candle-making), the community garden you can build with community spaces (fingers crossed the townies plant stuff you want to harvest!), the “green gardening” NAP that gives you influence if you have a nice garden (and hits you with a fine if you don’t), and the “Green Fiend” trait that makes Sims very happy to do things such as gardening. :) A nice little video showing how this pack really enhances gardening if you like doing that in the game – and hey, I had no idea the vertical planters could be upgraded in any way OTHER than turning them into meat walls, so that’s cool! :)
B) “Testing Cars vs Moving Bridges in GTA 5” by GrayStillPlays! Another Alex Torture Board, and this one was a doozy, with all different kinds of moving bridges for Gray to test his wits and his fleet of cars against! The four horrors Gray had to face today were:
I. The “Who would build this kind of bridge” Moving Bridge – a series of spinning platforms, each attached to a pillar at one end and passing through another pillar at the spinning end – Gray basically had to pass from pillar to pillar by getting on and riding the platforms, driving fast enough to stay on without falling off. Each platform was longer and faster than the last, with the second-to-last one also being weirdly curvy to give Gray an extra curveball to deal with. Oh, and all of the pillars had a pizza-slice hole missing from them so Gray could fall to his doom in the ocean. Fun!
II. The “Destroyed Subway Bridge” Moving Bridge – a busted-up “bridge” above a moving subway train where Gray had to shalom from right to left and ramp the occasional gap, driving over loads of exposed rebar and plywood and whatnot to make it to the end. He then had to fall down to the subway line at JUST the right time to hit the teleporter on top of the train, which would teleport him to the end of the tracks – and THEN he had to quickly drive OFF said tracks and onto the next part of the course to avoid being hit by the train. XD Because this is an Alex board.
III. The “Round, Spinning, Timed, Slow, Support Sticking” Moving Bridge – a bridge made up of a series of spinning discs with large concrete support beams sticking up through them, that Gray had to make it across in 22 seconds before they suddenly dropped downward and dropped him in the ocean. Not too bad, right? Except you forgot the “Slow” part of the title – every one of these discs was filled with stop strips. Meaning the only way Gray could hope to complete the course was to do it in REVERSE. Alex has gotten downright MEAN.
IV. And the “Renovated, Flying” Moving Bridge – a long fancy piece of humped highway that was flown between two busted-up pieces of a bridge by helicopters, forcing Gray to drive along its length JUST fast enough to keep up and reach the end when the actual highway reached the end. Did I mention Alex littered this with stop strips too? And that it was ABSURDLY easy to hit them because turning on this bridge made it very easy to spin out? Sheesh. . .as I said, MEAN.
So yeah, that was the look of Gray’s suffering today. He tried a number of different cars – the quad did surprisingly well on the spinning platforms, but fell off the subway bridge into the water and then glitched out HARD, forcing Gray to abandon it lest his character be trapped with it; the motorcycle did GREAT up until the spinning circles, mostly because it doesn’t have a proper “reverse” mode and thus could NOT get over the stop sticks in time; the winner of last week’s challenge, a fast car with a tire tied to the back (it’s apparently called the “Dragur!”) got ALL the way to the flying highway but just couldn’t go fast enough – or avoid hitting the stop strips. The winner turned out to be a red race car with what I think was “Inkline” branding and a “1st” license plate, which managed to go the distance and – with a little luck and a lot of teeth gritting – got past the flying highway and to the win. Where it promptly nearly crashed into some wind turbines. XD They had to show up sometime! Poor Gray, he really puts himself through it for our entertainment.
Other: Lovely weather (they said it was going to get more humid, but so far so nice) meant that we did go out this afternoon, once I’d finished Sims and had my snack – and while I didn’t do nearly as well as I did on Thursday, I managed to ramp up from a poor start to a good finish with a couple of wins. :) Dad regained his champ status with a couple of wins and the rest seconds, while Mom had a great first game, an okay second one, then just crashed and burned. Final scores were me 3-3-2-W-W; Dad 2-W-W-2-2; Mom W-2-3-3-3. At least we all won at least once!
So yeah, I did get a lot done today, it just took me a lot longer than I expected, and -- yes. So I am now going to bed so I can at least TRY to get up a little earlier tomorrow morning and maybe get going on the tumblr stuff earlier. Not having so much to catch up on should help. . . Also need to play Fallout 4 and start the Silver Shroud stuff; update the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; keep up with Gray and Jon; and get in my workout with James's two building videos. *nods* Hopefully all doable! Keep your fingers crossed... Night all!
