Middling Monday
Jan. 29th, 2024 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAs I think will be made clear by my to-do list here --
Work – Mildly irritating day – there was more credit card nonsense (including the credit card company having posted a bunch of batches yesterday, forcing me to do a surprise Sunday GL), plus a bunch of credit card calls interrupting me throughout the day. But I did get both GLs done, and I was able to keep busy during the slower parts of the day by matching cards up to ID numbers on the scanning app we have for the processing company, so. . . *shrug* I’ve had worse, I’ve had better. Hopefully tomorrow is better!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with Oxventure: Deadlands, starting “Dead Man’s Worth, Part II!” Naturally, picking up right where the first part left off – that is, right after Bellows shot poor Nate and killed him – we started with Delacy furiously screaming that Bellows was a dead man as the fellow swanned off, while Garnet went after the undertaker to make sure Nate didn’t get buried in the local boot hill, but could instead be “boxed up to go,” as it were. The undertaker was fine with that, but began asking her who would be paying for the pine box and the embalming and all that – Garnet initially tried to appeal to an unspoken bond between gravediggers and undertakers, but then (on a good Notice roll) remembered seeing on the posters for the contest in the Jewel saloon that Bellows pays for all these burials (presumably just because he can and it amuses him). The undertaker was like “well, you wouldn’t believe all the people who DO fall for that.” XD A teary-eyed, snot-nosed Delacy chose this moment to run in and angrily accuse Garnet of not doing anything to help Nate, while Garnet tried to comfort him from arm’s length because she did not get the sense that Delacy was huggable. And while the undertaker dragged in Rex Randall the Singing Cowboy’s body, which had been stripped naked after Delacy shot the guy in the throat by opportunistic townsfolk looking for souvenirs/things to sell. Delacy, seeing a dead man who was NOT his emotional substitute for a grandfather, took out some of his rage by kicking Rex’s corpse. XD The undertaker left to get to embalming, and Garnet told Delacy that they’d be getting justice for Nate, while Delacy continued snapping and being a moody, recently-bereaved thirteen-year-old.
And then, from outside, the call came – the next bracket was being drawn! For the high noon showdown, we had Delacey versus Slim (the drunken guy with TB who was doing this because it beats dying in a hospital), and Bellows versus Rosa (the woman in the black jacket who showed mercy to her previous opponent, the prisoner Big Bill). As the morning duels had taken about an hour all-told, this left Garnet and Delacy with some time to kill. Delacy began pondering Nate’s words about finding out what people want, and his “magic trick” of giving the driver of the stage that got them there jerky to convince him to let them ride for free, and wondered what Bellows wanted. Garnet was pretty sure it was “continuing to kill people” – but maybe it could be jerky. Guy looked like he didn’t eat much. So the two headed up with their samples to the big manor house on a platform, where they were met by two guards. The guards complimented Delacy’s shooting of Rex, but refused to let them in the house, stating that Bellows probably wouldn’t want any of their jerky – hell, one of them said that he’d never even HAD jerky. Delacy and Garnet promptly made a big production over that, with Delacy loudly declaring that anyone who said they hadn’t ever had jerky was lying, and that lying was a SIN – one Performance roll later, they’d made enough of a nuisance of themselves that one of the guards offered to take some jerky and give it to Mr. Bellows later. Delacy said he’d get the good stuff and turned to grab some jerky with Garnet –
And quickly asked her “how do we poison this in the next five seconds?” XD Fortunately Garnet had remembered that the stuff was ALREADY laced with opium (why the stage driver loved it so much), and so they handed over a healthy-sized packet, stammering their way through how good it was and how it was made from the finest cat – COWS. Unless Bellows was into eating cat. XD The guard took the jerky, and was JUST persuaded by Delacy not to eat any himself (Luke rolled the wrong combo of dice at first, and Andy was nice and let him reroll). Delacy expected him to go straight into the house, but he said that he was going to deliver it at the end of his shift in a few hours. Garnet and Delacy couldn’t tell if that meant Bellows would be getting the jerky before or after the high noon duel, but didn’t know how to get the guard to end his shift early to guarantee it was before (beyond shooting him in the legs), so they ended up just leaving as the guards shooed them away (for like the fiftieth time). They then spent the rest of their allotted time before the duel desperately trying to come up with ways to kill Bellows – most of which involved Delacy’s dynamite stash (like getting Delacy to fake being fatally shot in his duel with Slim, and then filling the coffin with dynamite – but what if Bellows didn’t attend the funeral; or somehow finding a way to dynamite his house – but the guards made getting close VERY difficult; or getting a stick of dynamite near or on Bellows so Delacy could dead-eye it – but if they were doing THAT, they might as well just shoot Bellows. . .). Andy eventually had the NPCs start calling for the contestants to step forward to put a stop to the nonsense, and the pair came up with a quick plan – Garnet would go to the town doctor and see if she could bribe him to declare Delacy dead should he deliberately lose his duel. If she could, she’d give Delacy the thumbs up (or equivalent sign), and Delacy would throw his match and they’d work with him being fake-dead; if not, she’d give him the thumbs down, and he’d just kill Slim.
And so the pair split up, with Delacy heading to the staging area (where he was patted down for anything suspicious by one of the guards from earlier – and told that while Bellows hadn’t actually eaten any of the jerky, he HAD asked to see Delacy after the duel. . .provided he lived, of course) and Garnet to town doctor Dr. Debunsen (because Andy apparently learned nothing from the “Christopher Englebert The Sixteenth” incident and didn’t think to name all of his NPCs XD). Unfortunately for Garnet, she immediately ran into problems, because as it turned out, Debunsen was VERY USED to people trying to bribe him to declare people dead in this duel when they weren’t. And, well, Bellows paid him an enormous wage to stop that from happening. A wage so enormous that the good doctor was able to spend a good portion of the year in South America high on opium. XD Garnet ATTEMPTED to offer the opium jerky, but the doctor declined it – even as an addict, he knew he needed a clear head for this. In frustration, she eventually just asked the guy his price, and he informed her it was a thousand dollars – mostly because he didn’t know Garnet, but he did know Bellows, and he knew what Bellows could do to him if he helped someone cheat. Garnet attempted to intimidate him, but rolled poorly, and thus had to suffer Debunsen’s pity as he told her he understood it was hard, but this shit was how things were in Dead Man’s Worth. Garnet thus went outside and gave Delacy the thumbs down – time to kill Slim! I ended it with Delacy and Slim preparing for their duel, with Slim still not taking anything too seriously. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow! I mean, I strongly doubt that Andy is going to kill ANOTHER player character in episode 3, but you never know. . .
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I have indeed flipped my schedule for this week to see if I prefer doing vampires Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Today was a bit of a tough day in LB:DQ, as I struggled for a while getting the description of the upstairs level of The Last Round just right, but I conquered it in the end, and now Alice is in the middle of getting her lecture from Nines about what shitheads the Camarilla are. She’s not about to argue, having met Prince Shithead himself previously, but given her experience with Skelter downstairs, she’s not all “rar rar Anarchs” either. And Damsel is about to make her OWN poor first impression soon, thus cementing Alice’s suspicions that both sides are full of shitheads. Fun!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just GrayStillPlays today, with “Surviving every drive thru in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, this one was a series of challenges themed around various fast food restaurants that Gray had to conquer with the help of the right car. The challenges consisted of –
I. KFC: Wack A Chicken – a whack-a-mole chicken game that Gray had to play with the deletion gun! He had to drive past the KFC itself and onto a burger patty rotating around the play area, and he had to use the deletion gun to “whack” all the teleporting chicken heads to clear the teleporters clustering around his exit platform. However, he only got three rotations of the patty around the whack-a-chicken board before it disappeared. This one was all about learning the pattern, and getting as many chickens as possible on the starting platform before IT disappeared and Gray had to get on his rotating burger. Once he learned the pattern, he did really well!
II. Dunkin’ Donuts: Don’t Forget Your Order! – a “stalking object” course, this one saw Gray having to dodge various obstacles on the road (including barrels, various speed bumps, and of course a windmill embedded in the middle of the pavement) while being stalked on a parallel road by a Dunkin’ throwing “donuts” (aka those ring pool floaties) at him with such speed that, if he got hit too hard, he’d be whacked practically halfway across the map. Because they didn’t want him to leave without his order, you see. XD This one was all about having a car that could take a hit and get past all the obstacles FAST. And having enough luck to not get violated by the windmill. XD
III. McDonald’s: Special Combo – two timed tightrope courses – Gray first had thirty seconds to make it across a wriggly tightrope of burger buns before the burger at the end flipped up, then another thirty seconds to make it across an even more janky tightrope covered in various little triangular objects that represented his twenty Chicken McNuggets to go with all the burgers. This one was all about figuring out where to drive on the burger buns so the car didn’t go bouncing all over the place, then using the deletion gun to clear the “nuggets” out of the second tightrope so all Gray had to worry about was all the sharp turns on said tightrope. Oh, and the deletion gun could delete parts of the actual tightrope too. Yeah, Gray had a fun time on this one. XD
IV. Pizza Smutt: Special Ingredient – this one was particularly weird – Gray had to teleport onto a spinning pizza and smack into the spider that was crawling and teleporting all over it. All while avoiding the pepperoni circles, as those were teleporters that sent him back to the actual Pizza Hut building (though at least it wasn’t all the way back to the beginning of the entire board). This one was just about figuring out how to maneuver around those pepperoni teleporters while keeping enough speed to catch up with the spider when he appeared. I’m – assuming this was inspired by an incident where someone found a spider in a Pizza Hut pizza and sued. *shudder* Reasons why we don’t really eat out.
V. Taco Hell: No More Tacos – the boss level, which was another “stalking object” course – Gray had to navigate an even HARDER obstacle course (full of little walls and slow-down circles – some of which moved – and, near the end, flipper platforms teleporting up and down) while being chased by a Taco Bell – or, more specifically, by the port-a-potties outside the Taco Bell. Which were SPEWING FLAME. This one was all about keeping ahead of the port-a-flamethrowers for as long as possible, and then just pushing his car as far as he could before the tires popped from the heat when he inevitably got set on fire. And trying not to hate Taco Bell too much. XD
So, which car made it to the end? Well, the ‘Murica SUV didn’t even make it past Whack-A-Chicken, while its follow-up the blue-and-pink car got beaten to death by Dunkin’. The classic yellow Bug (or at least a car that kind of resembled a classic Bug) and the orange super-car both got to the beginning of the McDonald’s combo, but no farther, leaving a yellow four-door covered in pink graffiti-like paint to power through the rest of the challenges and take the win! I mean, it got cooked a LOT in the final challenge, but it FINALLY managed to chassis-slide itself through the win with no tires, so – good job, graffiti car! XD May you take your rightful place among the “cars that won a challenge despite looking like they should have blown up ages ago.” XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – I’m about 95% done with my “Tav!Smiler in BG3” post for Wednesday on Victor Luvs Alice – the main text is pretty much finished, I just have to do the remaining image alt text and tags. That SHOULD be something I can do tomorrow – I mean, it kind of HAS to be if I want to post it on Wednesday, but you know what I mean.
Not too bad, though I wish my day at work had been a little less annoying -- and that I'd been able to get a bit more done on my tumblr queues and such. Meh -- everything always seems to take so much longer than I think it will. . . But I did my best, and now it is time to head to bed. Night all!
Work – Mildly irritating day – there was more credit card nonsense (including the credit card company having posted a bunch of batches yesterday, forcing me to do a surprise Sunday GL), plus a bunch of credit card calls interrupting me throughout the day. But I did get both GLs done, and I was able to keep busy during the slower parts of the day by matching cards up to ID numbers on the scanning app we have for the processing company, so. . . *shrug* I’ve had worse, I’ve had better. Hopefully tomorrow is better!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with Oxventure: Deadlands, starting “Dead Man’s Worth, Part II!” Naturally, picking up right where the first part left off – that is, right after Bellows shot poor Nate and killed him – we started with Delacy furiously screaming that Bellows was a dead man as the fellow swanned off, while Garnet went after the undertaker to make sure Nate didn’t get buried in the local boot hill, but could instead be “boxed up to go,” as it were. The undertaker was fine with that, but began asking her who would be paying for the pine box and the embalming and all that – Garnet initially tried to appeal to an unspoken bond between gravediggers and undertakers, but then (on a good Notice roll) remembered seeing on the posters for the contest in the Jewel saloon that Bellows pays for all these burials (presumably just because he can and it amuses him). The undertaker was like “well, you wouldn’t believe all the people who DO fall for that.” XD A teary-eyed, snot-nosed Delacy chose this moment to run in and angrily accuse Garnet of not doing anything to help Nate, while Garnet tried to comfort him from arm’s length because she did not get the sense that Delacy was huggable. And while the undertaker dragged in Rex Randall the Singing Cowboy’s body, which had been stripped naked after Delacy shot the guy in the throat by opportunistic townsfolk looking for souvenirs/things to sell. Delacy, seeing a dead man who was NOT his emotional substitute for a grandfather, took out some of his rage by kicking Rex’s corpse. XD The undertaker left to get to embalming, and Garnet told Delacy that they’d be getting justice for Nate, while Delacy continued snapping and being a moody, recently-bereaved thirteen-year-old.
And then, from outside, the call came – the next bracket was being drawn! For the high noon showdown, we had Delacey versus Slim (the drunken guy with TB who was doing this because it beats dying in a hospital), and Bellows versus Rosa (the woman in the black jacket who showed mercy to her previous opponent, the prisoner Big Bill). As the morning duels had taken about an hour all-told, this left Garnet and Delacy with some time to kill. Delacy began pondering Nate’s words about finding out what people want, and his “magic trick” of giving the driver of the stage that got them there jerky to convince him to let them ride for free, and wondered what Bellows wanted. Garnet was pretty sure it was “continuing to kill people” – but maybe it could be jerky. Guy looked like he didn’t eat much. So the two headed up with their samples to the big manor house on a platform, where they were met by two guards. The guards complimented Delacy’s shooting of Rex, but refused to let them in the house, stating that Bellows probably wouldn’t want any of their jerky – hell, one of them said that he’d never even HAD jerky. Delacy and Garnet promptly made a big production over that, with Delacy loudly declaring that anyone who said they hadn’t ever had jerky was lying, and that lying was a SIN – one Performance roll later, they’d made enough of a nuisance of themselves that one of the guards offered to take some jerky and give it to Mr. Bellows later. Delacy said he’d get the good stuff and turned to grab some jerky with Garnet –
And quickly asked her “how do we poison this in the next five seconds?” XD Fortunately Garnet had remembered that the stuff was ALREADY laced with opium (why the stage driver loved it so much), and so they handed over a healthy-sized packet, stammering their way through how good it was and how it was made from the finest cat – COWS. Unless Bellows was into eating cat. XD The guard took the jerky, and was JUST persuaded by Delacy not to eat any himself (Luke rolled the wrong combo of dice at first, and Andy was nice and let him reroll). Delacy expected him to go straight into the house, but he said that he was going to deliver it at the end of his shift in a few hours. Garnet and Delacy couldn’t tell if that meant Bellows would be getting the jerky before or after the high noon duel, but didn’t know how to get the guard to end his shift early to guarantee it was before (beyond shooting him in the legs), so they ended up just leaving as the guards shooed them away (for like the fiftieth time). They then spent the rest of their allotted time before the duel desperately trying to come up with ways to kill Bellows – most of which involved Delacy’s dynamite stash (like getting Delacy to fake being fatally shot in his duel with Slim, and then filling the coffin with dynamite – but what if Bellows didn’t attend the funeral; or somehow finding a way to dynamite his house – but the guards made getting close VERY difficult; or getting a stick of dynamite near or on Bellows so Delacy could dead-eye it – but if they were doing THAT, they might as well just shoot Bellows. . .). Andy eventually had the NPCs start calling for the contestants to step forward to put a stop to the nonsense, and the pair came up with a quick plan – Garnet would go to the town doctor and see if she could bribe him to declare Delacy dead should he deliberately lose his duel. If she could, she’d give Delacy the thumbs up (or equivalent sign), and Delacy would throw his match and they’d work with him being fake-dead; if not, she’d give him the thumbs down, and he’d just kill Slim.
And so the pair split up, with Delacy heading to the staging area (where he was patted down for anything suspicious by one of the guards from earlier – and told that while Bellows hadn’t actually eaten any of the jerky, he HAD asked to see Delacy after the duel. . .provided he lived, of course) and Garnet to town doctor Dr. Debunsen (because Andy apparently learned nothing from the “Christopher Englebert The Sixteenth” incident and didn’t think to name all of his NPCs XD). Unfortunately for Garnet, she immediately ran into problems, because as it turned out, Debunsen was VERY USED to people trying to bribe him to declare people dead in this duel when they weren’t. And, well, Bellows paid him an enormous wage to stop that from happening. A wage so enormous that the good doctor was able to spend a good portion of the year in South America high on opium. XD Garnet ATTEMPTED to offer the opium jerky, but the doctor declined it – even as an addict, he knew he needed a clear head for this. In frustration, she eventually just asked the guy his price, and he informed her it was a thousand dollars – mostly because he didn’t know Garnet, but he did know Bellows, and he knew what Bellows could do to him if he helped someone cheat. Garnet attempted to intimidate him, but rolled poorly, and thus had to suffer Debunsen’s pity as he told her he understood it was hard, but this shit was how things were in Dead Man’s Worth. Garnet thus went outside and gave Delacy the thumbs down – time to kill Slim! I ended it with Delacy and Slim preparing for their duel, with Slim still not taking anything too seriously. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow! I mean, I strongly doubt that Andy is going to kill ANOTHER player character in episode 3, but you never know. . .
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I have indeed flipped my schedule for this week to see if I prefer doing vampires Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Today was a bit of a tough day in LB:DQ, as I struggled for a while getting the description of the upstairs level of The Last Round just right, but I conquered it in the end, and now Alice is in the middle of getting her lecture from Nines about what shitheads the Camarilla are. She’s not about to argue, having met Prince Shithead himself previously, but given her experience with Skelter downstairs, she’s not all “rar rar Anarchs” either. And Damsel is about to make her OWN poor first impression soon, thus cementing Alice’s suspicions that both sides are full of shitheads. Fun!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just GrayStillPlays today, with “Surviving every drive thru in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, this one was a series of challenges themed around various fast food restaurants that Gray had to conquer with the help of the right car. The challenges consisted of –
I. KFC: Wack A Chicken – a whack-a-mole chicken game that Gray had to play with the deletion gun! He had to drive past the KFC itself and onto a burger patty rotating around the play area, and he had to use the deletion gun to “whack” all the teleporting chicken heads to clear the teleporters clustering around his exit platform. However, he only got three rotations of the patty around the whack-a-chicken board before it disappeared. This one was all about learning the pattern, and getting as many chickens as possible on the starting platform before IT disappeared and Gray had to get on his rotating burger. Once he learned the pattern, he did really well!
II. Dunkin’ Donuts: Don’t Forget Your Order! – a “stalking object” course, this one saw Gray having to dodge various obstacles on the road (including barrels, various speed bumps, and of course a windmill embedded in the middle of the pavement) while being stalked on a parallel road by a Dunkin’ throwing “donuts” (aka those ring pool floaties) at him with such speed that, if he got hit too hard, he’d be whacked practically halfway across the map. Because they didn’t want him to leave without his order, you see. XD This one was all about having a car that could take a hit and get past all the obstacles FAST. And having enough luck to not get violated by the windmill. XD
III. McDonald’s: Special Combo – two timed tightrope courses – Gray first had thirty seconds to make it across a wriggly tightrope of burger buns before the burger at the end flipped up, then another thirty seconds to make it across an even more janky tightrope covered in various little triangular objects that represented his twenty Chicken McNuggets to go with all the burgers. This one was all about figuring out where to drive on the burger buns so the car didn’t go bouncing all over the place, then using the deletion gun to clear the “nuggets” out of the second tightrope so all Gray had to worry about was all the sharp turns on said tightrope. Oh, and the deletion gun could delete parts of the actual tightrope too. Yeah, Gray had a fun time on this one. XD
IV. Pizza Smutt: Special Ingredient – this one was particularly weird – Gray had to teleport onto a spinning pizza and smack into the spider that was crawling and teleporting all over it. All while avoiding the pepperoni circles, as those were teleporters that sent him back to the actual Pizza Hut building (though at least it wasn’t all the way back to the beginning of the entire board). This one was just about figuring out how to maneuver around those pepperoni teleporters while keeping enough speed to catch up with the spider when he appeared. I’m – assuming this was inspired by an incident where someone found a spider in a Pizza Hut pizza and sued. *shudder* Reasons why we don’t really eat out.
V. Taco Hell: No More Tacos – the boss level, which was another “stalking object” course – Gray had to navigate an even HARDER obstacle course (full of little walls and slow-down circles – some of which moved – and, near the end, flipper platforms teleporting up and down) while being chased by a Taco Bell – or, more specifically, by the port-a-potties outside the Taco Bell. Which were SPEWING FLAME. This one was all about keeping ahead of the port-a-flamethrowers for as long as possible, and then just pushing his car as far as he could before the tires popped from the heat when he inevitably got set on fire. And trying not to hate Taco Bell too much. XD
So, which car made it to the end? Well, the ‘Murica SUV didn’t even make it past Whack-A-Chicken, while its follow-up the blue-and-pink car got beaten to death by Dunkin’. The classic yellow Bug (or at least a car that kind of resembled a classic Bug) and the orange super-car both got to the beginning of the McDonald’s combo, but no farther, leaving a yellow four-door covered in pink graffiti-like paint to power through the rest of the challenges and take the win! I mean, it got cooked a LOT in the final challenge, but it FINALLY managed to chassis-slide itself through the win with no tires, so – good job, graffiti car! XD May you take your rightful place among the “cars that won a challenge despite looking like they should have blown up ages ago.” XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – I’m about 95% done with my “Tav!Smiler in BG3” post for Wednesday on Victor Luvs Alice – the main text is pretty much finished, I just have to do the remaining image alt text and tags. That SHOULD be something I can do tomorrow – I mean, it kind of HAS to be if I want to post it on Wednesday, but you know what I mean.
Not too bad, though I wish my day at work had been a little less annoying -- and that I'd been able to get a bit more done on my tumblr queues and such. Meh -- everything always seems to take so much longer than I think it will. . . But I did my best, and now it is time to head to bed. Night all!
