Pretty Standard Cleaning Saturday
Feb. 24th, 2024 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYou guys know the drill on how these usually go, but I'll give you the specific details anyway :p --
Cleaning: – Very typical day for cleaning – started around 10:40 AM, had the dusting and the Swiffering done shortly after 1 PM in time for lunch, then – after a fairly long lunch break – did the vacuuming and wrapped everything up by 2:15 PM. *shrug* Nothing new to report here!
Tumblr: As per usual, didn’t really get anything done on here – fortunately it was a fairly quiet day on both tumblrs. Ended up sticking a “send me this emoji and text to learn what my muse would wear in the related situation” meme in my queue for Valice Multiverse this evening, and looking at my Smiler Otherland stuff in the Victor Luvs Alice drafts. Maybe I should see if I can get that “domains” post fully completed to post this week. . .
Sims 4: Yes, I did indeed visit my Chill Valicer Save again – I REALLY wanted to get Van Liddelton Snacks up and running at least ONCE before the patch hits next Tuesday and I go back into “just build mode” for a while. And while today was, unfortunately, one of those days where it was rather hard to get my Sims to do what I wanted them to do (and had the save file once again showing its age), I did in fact get the snack stand off the ground, among other things –
A) Started with Victor snoozing in his bed, Alice sitting at her computer, and Smiler working on a mechanism in the middle of the night, as they do. I was going to have Alice resume the mystery book she was working on (“Who Stole The Tarts?”), but then noticed a specter bopping around in the hallway just outside her and Victor’s bedroom door and decided to see if she could appease it. She thus went out and offered it some aubergine (aka eggplant) conserve – which was accepted, happily! :D The specter left her some wraith wax, and I prepared to have her go get a little bit more sleep (after soothing Shock nearby, who hadn’t liked the appearance of the specter) while Smiler came up to their room to do some upgrades on their streaming drone (namely make it hardier with better parts) –
B) Aaaand immediately the house started making spooky noises. Waking Victor and Alice up and distracting Smiler from their upgrades. I thus was like “okay, maybe it’s time to do a ceremony and see if we can calm things down a bit around here” and tried to set up one with Victor –
Only for him to lose the plot when Temperance basically spawned INSIDE him next to the bed. *sigh* I canceled out the interaction for Smiler and Alice, then reset it up with all of them once I’d taken out Victor’s personal bizarre idol and put it on the side table under the window to scare her away. Temperance, you’re getting to be ALMOST as annoying as Guidry here. Almost.
C) Anyway – as Temperance proceeded to have a bad time with the bizarre idol before storming away, I had Victor lead Smiler and Alice in a group ceremony to increase the spiritual serenity of the house. Everything went very well (and looked very cool with all their crystals and magical stuff in the background), and by the end, not only was the serenity of the house increased, Victor had leveled his Medium skill to level 4, and Smiler theirs to level 2! :D I was very happy with that result and promptly sent Victor and Alice back to bed, and Smiler back to upgrade their drone –
Only for a specter to appear in Smiler’s bedroom RIGHT NEXT to the drone, distracting them with sprinkles. And for Surprise to start yowling outside Victor and Alice’s bedroom to wake Victor up. And then the house to make MORE creepy noises, waking Alice up too. *facepalm* So the ceremony kinda did jack shit. I had Smiler grab their drone and fly down to the crafting barn to do the upgrades AWAY from any further supernatural distraction, while Victor lectured Surprise and FINALLY got the cat to understand she shouldn’t wake up Sims before using the toilet and FINALLY going and getting a bit more sleep with Alice. *sigh* This house sometimes, I swear. . .
D) Anyway – I sped up time for a little bit, letting Smiler do their upgrades and Alice and Victor sleep. . .then noticed Shock clawing one of the living room chairs and had Alice (now full energy, at least) wake up and run downstairs to tell her not to do that. The cat wasn’t sure why she was being lectured, but at least she stopped! Seeing that Alice was burning with Fury and also hungry, I then had her transform into her werewolf form and go out for a hunt –
And briefly encountered a weird bug where my game didn’t have sound for maybe half a minute. O.o I’m not sure what caused it, unfortunately – it happened a couple more times while on the home lot this morning, but then stopped once I got the gang out and about in Brindleton Bay. Could just be random Sims weirdness, could be a sign that this save file is on its way out. Not sure which, but something to look out for in future, I guess.
E) Speaking of bugs, I also discovered that Surprise had an in-game one – specifically, she was suddenly a bright, frosty blue, with a glowing red nose! Well, I’d already planned to bring her and her sister in to be spayed during this playsession, so I added “get Surprise cured” to my plans at the Pawspital and continued having my Sims do their things:
Smiler finished their drone upgrades, so I sent them upstairs to give their spare teal quadcopter to the specter haunting their room to get it to piss off – it fortunately really liked the gift, and gave Smiler their own supply of wraith wax. They collected it, then got sent outside to take care of the chickens – spreading some feed, cleaning the coop, and chatting with the hens and roosters (who fortunately liked their company today). I then had them plop Elmer in the greenhouse to help with the tending (though the bot promptly got stuck on a glitched-out weedy plant, AND I got an LE around the same time – apparently from Alice trying to interact with something that didn’t go well?), grab some plasma fruit, then tend to a dirty Moory, cleaning her off and chatting with her. She also liked Smiler’s presence today, so they milked her and picked up the eggs for the day (just two normal ones) before heading into the greenhouse for a Plasma Fizz to refresh.
Victor, finally refreshed after a bit of uninterrupted nap time, came downstairs and refilled one of the empty pet feeders before having some more berry waffles for breakfast – Alice joined him after returning from her hunting trip, but unfortunately a poorly-timed question about juice fizzing kind of ruined the mood at the table. Dunno why it’s such a crapshoot to ask him for juice-fizzing tips. . . Anyway, I then sent him out to go play a bit of fetch with Shadow, who’d been complaining about wanting to have some fun (and I mean a BIT – Victor got in one throw, and rather than fetch the ball, Shadow just ran off), before having him collect her latest poop and then go tend the greenhouse like he always does. Those oversized crops aren’t going to de-bug themselves!
And Alice, after successfully returning from her hunting trip and chowing down at the table with Victor, got put on kitchen clean-up duty – clearing both her and Victor’s plates and the spoiled food out of the fridge – before going out to feed Toothy the cowplant. She then proceeded to spend a good chunk of time howling, going places ferociously, leaving puddles all over the front yard, and scavenging (picking up one chunk of punium) so I could max out her already-high Fury and get her to rampage and get it out of her system. Took a little while, but she finally tipped over the edge, and as usual I had her do a bit of scavenging (nothing this time) before having her regain control. :p What – after a certain point, it really DOES become the easiest way to clear out her Fury gauge! And she is BRIMMING with self-control, I promise you. :P
F) And then it was time for everyone to converge on the greenhouse and help out Victor – specifically, by doing some targeted harvesting while he finished up his tending! I had Alice return to normal and rush in there to pick the coconuts, the pineapples, the soy and black beans (and evolve a couple of plants while she was at it), while Smiler picked a bunch of their herbalism stuff (with a focus on stuff like the noxious elderberries and poison fireleaf I didn’t have before). Smiler then dusted Victor’s bees with mite treatment, fertilized their noxious elderberries so they could evolve them up to nice level, and headed upstairs to have a nice bath –
G) And Alice got sent to the kitchen to make some more food for the food stand, using her new appliances! :D Because if we’re going to have a food sale, we need to have food to sell! She’d already made a garden pizza last playsession while at the store, which was already in the stand – I thus had her make a fresh batch of dough in the stand mixer, then bake up some banana split waffles, a loaf of artful focaccia, some minty mocha cupcakes (in the oven! :D), and a pineapple pizza! Yes, I was thinking a bit about food that Smiler would probably like, as they were the one who was going to be running the stand – sometimes I regret that they’re a vampire who can’t eat regular food in this save, as I know any human Smilers would be all over banana split waffles and pineapple pizza. In another save, Smiler, I promise! I’ll fudge things a bit in my potential future Valicer In The Dark save! XD
H) While Alice was getting her cooking on, Victor and Smiler were keeping busy with the last of the farm chores – Victor FINALLY finished the tending (and deactivated poor Elmer to stop the bot from constantly trying to weed a glitched plant) and got the initial batch of super-selling done, then left Smiler to finish off selling everything while he cleared out the cow shed (and once again dropped the results on the ground next to said cow shed – I just had him put the trash in his inventory for later recycling). Smiler got Gardening skill 9 from all the super-selling (and harvesting the lemon tree in the corner that had gotten skipped in all the super-sell batching), which pleased me greatly –
And then I realized “wait a minute. Isn’t it supposed to be New Skill Day? Where’s the holiday thing?” Concerned, I checked the calendar, and confirmed that it was indeed a holiday – but that I didn’t have the overlay for it in the corner of my screen. Uh-oh. That DEFINITELY seemed like a sign the save file was on its way out. I decided not to worry TOO much about it at the moment, as New Skill Day is just a pop-up holiday, and not a particularly important one, and instead had Smiler grab the food stand and gather everyone up to bring them to the Brindleton Bay Pawspital –
I) And the moment I arrived, THERE was the holiday overlay! Whew – so changing lots got the game to acknowledge the holiday. Still worrying, but at least my Sims could PARTICIPATE! First things first, though – it was hot in Brindleton, so I had Smiler change into their hot weather wear, then start looking around for a good spot for the food stand while Victor felt the love with Shadow and Alice signed up Surprise to be cured of her affliction. I finally got Smiler to put the stand in a good location as Alice and Surprise waited for the vet, made sure it was stocked, and prepared to start a food sale –
Only for the game to tell me it couldn’t have “two social events” going on at the same time. Hmmm. All right, I was game to wait until after Surprise was cured. I instead had Smiler entertain Kelly with a laser pointer to pass the time –
J) And decided, “you know what, Victor’s Pet Training skill is almost up to Level 4, meaning leveling it up would count toward New Skill Day – why not train Shadow to heel?” So that’s exactly what he did, getting the dog to follow him around outside the hospital. Shadow was – a BIT distracted at first by her own tail, but as time went on she got better at keeping pace with Victor. XD I then checked in on how things were going with Surprise’s examination. . .
Only to discover they weren’t. For some reason, midway through the exam, the vet just stopped what she was doing, and Surprise was left go without anyone even trying to diagnose what was wrong with her. >( Damn glitchy game. . .I instead decided to have Alice get Shock spayed instead and see what happened there – fortunately THAT worked, and it went a lot faster too. Maybe because both vets were awake and working this time, instead of one sleeping on the waiting room couch. XD (Seriously, that ALWAYS seems to happen when I first load into the lot for some reason. . .) Alice was starting to get twitchy from being around all those strangers, though, so I had Smiler sign Surprise up for examination number two and let her clear her head by running off to a far-away dig site to see what was inside. Ended up digging up a new fossil rock with a fossilized egg inside, nice. :) She then went and entertained poor coned Shock with some laser pointer while Smiler chatted with Brant Hecking inside the vet (learning he was a Personal Sports Trainer for The Other Sports Team, apparently) –
And Victor got Pet Training 4 from working with Shadow! :D One person’s New Skill Day skill down – two to go!
K) But first – finally getting Surprise cured! Yes, this time Surprise got checked over by the OTHER vet, who successfully determined she had Winterfest Fever. Smiler paid the big bucks for the best treatment (as I say so often, my Sims can afford it), and the cat was given a shot that brought her back to normal. I was very pleased with this, both because hooray, the vet lot decided to work –
And hooray, I can finally have my food sale! I promptly had Smiler set up outside and restock the table before starting their sale, calling out to any passers-by to check out their wares while Victor and Shadow continued working on Heel training. And seeing them, I got an idea for how Alice could get HER New Skill Day Skill – specifically I sent her to take some pictures of Smiler at the stand! (And Shadow spinning around chasing her tail nearby.) Because she wasn’t QUITE at level 5 Photography skill yet, and what better time to max out that mini-skill than New Skill Day? She got some good shots of Smiler in full salesperson mode (probably gonna put one up on the wall in the house – or maybe in the store?), then went to chat with Victor for a bit as the first customer of the day walked up to see the wares –
Morgyn Ember! Who I did NOT recognize in their hot weather wear because they’d traded their curly locks for a giant bun and their iconic red coat for a red shirt and black shorts. O.o They started chatting with Smiler about the food available (Smiler, as usual, becoming their good friend up on introducing themselves), while Victor finally finished teaching Shadow how to heel (nice) and followed Alice into one of the vet treatment rooms to give her a little serenade. XD I had Alice respond by taking some pictures, including of him and some cute posters around the room –
And THAT knocked her over the edge, maxing out Photography at level 5 and getting her the New Skill Day skill she needed! w00!
L) With THAT settled, I had Alice go entertain the cats a bit more and sent Victor to go get a burger from the local food stand by the big old fountain (which he ate with one of the local strays), while Smiler continued hawking their food! Morgyn ended up buying a minty mocha cupcake, with Brant Hecking stopping buy to grab a slice of garden pizza. Brytani Cho (that celebrity Smiler slightly dislikes for reasons unknown to me) then showed up and started being annoying, trying to hype up all her fans in front of the stand, but fortunately sales continued, with Roxana Lopes stopping by for a cupcake and Morgyn coming back to snag some banana split waffles (and an autographed picture from Brytani). During a break in the action, I had Victor return to the vet lot to check up on the pets (he also got to know Butter, one of the other patients, who was a big cute fluffy Loyal dog) while Alice went to grab a haddock sandwich from the food stand (the eating of which taught her how to make it – was a little surprised, but hey, new recipe) – and then the sales started up again! Brytani decided to actually BUY something after Smiler hit her with a sales pitch and picked up some garden pizza, with Brant coming back in for another slice of same, while Catarina, Justic, Morgyn, and Brent Hecking all got some cupcakes before the sale ended. Final totals were six minty mocha cupcakes, three garden pizza slices, and one serving of banana split waffles sold for a total of $249 profit! Not bad – I like how the sale specifically breaks down what was sold. Seems like cupcakes might be the way to go for future sales. . . Plus Smiler got TWO levels of the Entrepreneur skill from the sale, meaning they completed New Skill Day upon finishing it! w00!
M) By this point, it was getting pretty late, but there was one thing left for the gang to do before I could have them head home. Specifically, get Surprise spayed so I don’t get any more unanticipated kittens! Victor signed Surprise in for the procedure while Smiler – who was feeling pretty damn thirsty after all that pitching of sales – flew over to Alice and got a drink from her. She then settled in for a nap by the fountain while Smiler flew back to join Victor in the waiting room as Surprise had her operation. I noticed that they’d managed to pick up eight power points in the process (those had been stacking up for a while) – and, with nothing better to spend them on, I had them pick up the “Command” and “Vampire Creation” powers. *shrug* I mean, I sure as hell can’t have them get “Dampened Emotions,” that’s WAAAY off base for their character, and I don’t like most of the “max out a need forever” ones, sooo. . .be nice if Vampires also had a way to convert unused power points into satisfaction points, like werewolves do! Maybe one day we will get an update. . . Anyway, they amused themselves playing SimScuffle on the office computer while Victor got to know Butter better until Surprise was released from the operating room sporting her cone of shame –
N) And then it was finally back home at 10:30 PM! As you might imagine, Victor and Alice went immediately to bed. XD Smiler headed back out to the barn to finish updating their streaming drone with a lithium battery (extending its recording life) while Surprise and Kelly wandered off into the night on cat adventures (which did NOT involve getting pregnant, yay) –
And Shock headed back into the living room to scratch up the furniture. Cue me getting Alice back up to scold the cat, who ran away onto the front porch to try and avoid it. *sigh* I figured while Alice was up she could resume her book and sent her to do that –
And, hilariously, just like Smiler always uses Victor and Alice’s computer for gaming now, Alice went and continued writing on Smiler’s computer. XD At this point, I noticed Smiler was no longer upgrading their drone (though I’m not sure if they were truly done or if they’d been distracted out of it), so I had them fix a broken water collector by the side of the house, then sent them upstairs to upgrade their video production station to make it unbreakable – a process slowed down a bit by the fact that they and Alice got to talking, but it still got Smiler max Handiness! :D So that’s cool. And, as everyone else was up and Shadow was whining about being bored again, I woke Victor up and sent him downstairs to play with the dog –
Only for Temperance to spawn in AGAIN while Victor was waiting for Shadow to finish bounding around the obstacle course. Once again, she was easily dealt with by dragging Victor’s bizarre idol downstairs and into her general vicinity, but – come on, do we REALLY need a visit from this woman every night?! Haunted houses, man – sometimes I wonder if they’re worth it.
But yes – playsession ended with Victor playing with a (very dirty) Shadow; Alice writing her book; and Smiler finishing up their video station upgrades, along with everyone successfully completing New Skill Day. A good note to leave the family on for a while, I feel. :)
Writing: Worked on my OT3 Week prompts again, this time writing something for probably the most specific and unusual prompt of the bunch: “The knight, the princess, and the dragon are actually all together!” Obviously this one had to be some sort of medieval fantasy AU, and I already knew that Victor would be the knight, Alice the princess, and Smiler the dragon – the trick was figuring out the plot of the story. I eventually decided on Victor making a (very hot, because plate armor) trek up to the cave where Alice and Smiler were living, publicly to try and defeat the dragon and rescue the “kidnapped” princess, privately to get his brains melted by the dragon’s hypnotic stare while the princess (who willingly left with said dragon because her throne has been usurped by Bumby and she needed protection and a good place to hide while she thought up ways to take her crown back) – well, makes the trip worth his while, let’s say. XD Oh, and it’s clear this has been going on for a while, and Alice and Smiler have been gradually wearing down Victor’s resistance to being “kidnapped” as well. XD Yeaaah, this one ended up pretty damn hypnokinky on my part, at least near the end – nothing TOO explicit, but we’ll see how I feel about it when I start editing!
YouTube: Well, it’s a good thing that I didn’t have any videos to catch up with (beyond the one I have saved for my workout tomorrow), because between cleaning, Sims, and my writing, I got to the YouTubes VEEEERY late today. Fortunately I just had the one GrayStillPlays video in my Subs – “Long Car Vs Bulges in GTA!” Another Alex Torture Board setting a bunch of the longest cars in the game against a variety of fun bulges, including –
I. Natural Noob, Pro, Legend Bulges – Three rock bulges that got progressively bigger, with the “Legend” bulge being basically a small mountain that you could only go around, not climb. You know Alex is serious when THIS is the first challenge.
II. Bulging Bulge – A bulge made up of stacked circular platforms – that separated and “popped up” roughly every three seconds. This one was more or less all about the timing – you had to get over it during the three seconds it was down, or get thrown off in the glitchiest way possible. Not fun!
III. Thumbnail Bulges – Two large hump bulges that went straight across the road (so there was no getting around them), with the second being basically a wall of bulge. This one – well, you just had to HOPE your car could climb them.
IV. Poisonous Mushroom Bulge (don’t touch the mushroom tip when it’s fuming) – A mushroom bulge surrounded by toxic waste and fire that occasionally spewed purple gas from its tip. Touch the purple gas, and your car would turn red and get set on fire – maybe not enough to immediately explode, but eventually the engine would just stop working. Again, timing was the key for this one!
V. Bulges That Get Steeper – A set of small triangular bulges that got gradually steeper and steeper, until the final one was sticking out with walls at an almost 90 degree angle. Just had to pop over them and hope your car could take the ever-sharpening angles!
VI. Mutated Hot Dog Bulge – A ring made out of a weird mutated hot dog and bun combination (I thought it was a doughnut bulge at first). You had to climb up the bulge, get into the ring, then climb up the bulge AGAIN on the other side to get OUT of the ring. Easy so long as your car could do that!
VII. Bulge Rush – A timed run across a short stretch of many, many little bulges – you had to climb up, drive over them, and drop down off the other side before the wall came up. Again, easy so long as your car could do that (and had the right suspension to handle all the bumps).
VIII. Sticky Lollipop Bulge – A giant circular bulge that was apparently one giant slow-down circle, glistening in the sunlight right before the end. This one was all about finding the right angle to climb it, all while knowing your car wouldn’t be able to rely on any speed boosts – this was all about sticking to the globe with the tires!
So – what long car could possibly get through all of those challenges? I can tell you that most of them couldn’t even make it past the initial rock bulges (even when Gray found a way to cheat by jumping off a nearby mountain back onto the board BEHIND the rock bulge), and of those that did – the Hummer limo, a weird cart-car carrying gas and ammo (think a glorified baggage car at an airport), the Draugur, the six-wheeled truck, and the military vehicles – they were all stopped by the Thumbnail Bulges. The Draugur and the six-wheeler both made it over the first one, but the second one was just too steep. Leaving only one challenger to make it all the way to the end –
THE WASTELANDER! :D Yes, my beloved rustbucket, after struggling in the past few challenges, finally got a chance to shine again with its INCREDIBLE bulge-conquering capabilities. I mean, granted, even IT had to cheat the “Legend” natural bulge, but after that, pretty much smooth sailing over every other bulge! Well, except for the poison mushroom bulge, but that was more “Gray wanted to see what would happen” than actual failure. XD Wastelander supremacy, baby! Glad to see it win once more.
*shrugs* Like I said, pretty typical cleaning Saturday! At least I had fun with Sims and Gray and my prompts. :) And tomorrow is a Fallout Sunday -- gotta do some more tumblr catch-up and see about getting drafts sorted; play Fallout 4 and get Victor and Deacon at least as far as Abernathy Farm; update the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; keep up on Gray and Jon's videos; and get in a workout and start James Turner's "Every Lot Challenge Again" mini-series. Hopefully all doable -- night all!
Cleaning: – Very typical day for cleaning – started around 10:40 AM, had the dusting and the Swiffering done shortly after 1 PM in time for lunch, then – after a fairly long lunch break – did the vacuuming and wrapped everything up by 2:15 PM. *shrug* Nothing new to report here!
Tumblr: As per usual, didn’t really get anything done on here – fortunately it was a fairly quiet day on both tumblrs. Ended up sticking a “send me this emoji and text to learn what my muse would wear in the related situation” meme in my queue for Valice Multiverse this evening, and looking at my Smiler Otherland stuff in the Victor Luvs Alice drafts. Maybe I should see if I can get that “domains” post fully completed to post this week. . .
Sims 4: Yes, I did indeed visit my Chill Valicer Save again – I REALLY wanted to get Van Liddelton Snacks up and running at least ONCE before the patch hits next Tuesday and I go back into “just build mode” for a while. And while today was, unfortunately, one of those days where it was rather hard to get my Sims to do what I wanted them to do (and had the save file once again showing its age), I did in fact get the snack stand off the ground, among other things –
A) Started with Victor snoozing in his bed, Alice sitting at her computer, and Smiler working on a mechanism in the middle of the night, as they do. I was going to have Alice resume the mystery book she was working on (“Who Stole The Tarts?”), but then noticed a specter bopping around in the hallway just outside her and Victor’s bedroom door and decided to see if she could appease it. She thus went out and offered it some aubergine (aka eggplant) conserve – which was accepted, happily! :D The specter left her some wraith wax, and I prepared to have her go get a little bit more sleep (after soothing Shock nearby, who hadn’t liked the appearance of the specter) while Smiler came up to their room to do some upgrades on their streaming drone (namely make it hardier with better parts) –
B) Aaaand immediately the house started making spooky noises. Waking Victor and Alice up and distracting Smiler from their upgrades. I thus was like “okay, maybe it’s time to do a ceremony and see if we can calm things down a bit around here” and tried to set up one with Victor –
Only for him to lose the plot when Temperance basically spawned INSIDE him next to the bed. *sigh* I canceled out the interaction for Smiler and Alice, then reset it up with all of them once I’d taken out Victor’s personal bizarre idol and put it on the side table under the window to scare her away. Temperance, you’re getting to be ALMOST as annoying as Guidry here. Almost.
C) Anyway – as Temperance proceeded to have a bad time with the bizarre idol before storming away, I had Victor lead Smiler and Alice in a group ceremony to increase the spiritual serenity of the house. Everything went very well (and looked very cool with all their crystals and magical stuff in the background), and by the end, not only was the serenity of the house increased, Victor had leveled his Medium skill to level 4, and Smiler theirs to level 2! :D I was very happy with that result and promptly sent Victor and Alice back to bed, and Smiler back to upgrade their drone –
Only for a specter to appear in Smiler’s bedroom RIGHT NEXT to the drone, distracting them with sprinkles. And for Surprise to start yowling outside Victor and Alice’s bedroom to wake Victor up. And then the house to make MORE creepy noises, waking Alice up too. *facepalm* So the ceremony kinda did jack shit. I had Smiler grab their drone and fly down to the crafting barn to do the upgrades AWAY from any further supernatural distraction, while Victor lectured Surprise and FINALLY got the cat to understand she shouldn’t wake up Sims before using the toilet and FINALLY going and getting a bit more sleep with Alice. *sigh* This house sometimes, I swear. . .
D) Anyway – I sped up time for a little bit, letting Smiler do their upgrades and Alice and Victor sleep. . .then noticed Shock clawing one of the living room chairs and had Alice (now full energy, at least) wake up and run downstairs to tell her not to do that. The cat wasn’t sure why she was being lectured, but at least she stopped! Seeing that Alice was burning with Fury and also hungry, I then had her transform into her werewolf form and go out for a hunt –
And briefly encountered a weird bug where my game didn’t have sound for maybe half a minute. O.o I’m not sure what caused it, unfortunately – it happened a couple more times while on the home lot this morning, but then stopped once I got the gang out and about in Brindleton Bay. Could just be random Sims weirdness, could be a sign that this save file is on its way out. Not sure which, but something to look out for in future, I guess.
E) Speaking of bugs, I also discovered that Surprise had an in-game one – specifically, she was suddenly a bright, frosty blue, with a glowing red nose! Well, I’d already planned to bring her and her sister in to be spayed during this playsession, so I added “get Surprise cured” to my plans at the Pawspital and continued having my Sims do their things:
Smiler finished their drone upgrades, so I sent them upstairs to give their spare teal quadcopter to the specter haunting their room to get it to piss off – it fortunately really liked the gift, and gave Smiler their own supply of wraith wax. They collected it, then got sent outside to take care of the chickens – spreading some feed, cleaning the coop, and chatting with the hens and roosters (who fortunately liked their company today). I then had them plop Elmer in the greenhouse to help with the tending (though the bot promptly got stuck on a glitched-out weedy plant, AND I got an LE around the same time – apparently from Alice trying to interact with something that didn’t go well?), grab some plasma fruit, then tend to a dirty Moory, cleaning her off and chatting with her. She also liked Smiler’s presence today, so they milked her and picked up the eggs for the day (just two normal ones) before heading into the greenhouse for a Plasma Fizz to refresh.
Victor, finally refreshed after a bit of uninterrupted nap time, came downstairs and refilled one of the empty pet feeders before having some more berry waffles for breakfast – Alice joined him after returning from her hunting trip, but unfortunately a poorly-timed question about juice fizzing kind of ruined the mood at the table. Dunno why it’s such a crapshoot to ask him for juice-fizzing tips. . . Anyway, I then sent him out to go play a bit of fetch with Shadow, who’d been complaining about wanting to have some fun (and I mean a BIT – Victor got in one throw, and rather than fetch the ball, Shadow just ran off), before having him collect her latest poop and then go tend the greenhouse like he always does. Those oversized crops aren’t going to de-bug themselves!
And Alice, after successfully returning from her hunting trip and chowing down at the table with Victor, got put on kitchen clean-up duty – clearing both her and Victor’s plates and the spoiled food out of the fridge – before going out to feed Toothy the cowplant. She then proceeded to spend a good chunk of time howling, going places ferociously, leaving puddles all over the front yard, and scavenging (picking up one chunk of punium) so I could max out her already-high Fury and get her to rampage and get it out of her system. Took a little while, but she finally tipped over the edge, and as usual I had her do a bit of scavenging (nothing this time) before having her regain control. :p What – after a certain point, it really DOES become the easiest way to clear out her Fury gauge! And she is BRIMMING with self-control, I promise you. :P
F) And then it was time for everyone to converge on the greenhouse and help out Victor – specifically, by doing some targeted harvesting while he finished up his tending! I had Alice return to normal and rush in there to pick the coconuts, the pineapples, the soy and black beans (and evolve a couple of plants while she was at it), while Smiler picked a bunch of their herbalism stuff (with a focus on stuff like the noxious elderberries and poison fireleaf I didn’t have before). Smiler then dusted Victor’s bees with mite treatment, fertilized their noxious elderberries so they could evolve them up to nice level, and headed upstairs to have a nice bath –
G) And Alice got sent to the kitchen to make some more food for the food stand, using her new appliances! :D Because if we’re going to have a food sale, we need to have food to sell! She’d already made a garden pizza last playsession while at the store, which was already in the stand – I thus had her make a fresh batch of dough in the stand mixer, then bake up some banana split waffles, a loaf of artful focaccia, some minty mocha cupcakes (in the oven! :D), and a pineapple pizza! Yes, I was thinking a bit about food that Smiler would probably like, as they were the one who was going to be running the stand – sometimes I regret that they’re a vampire who can’t eat regular food in this save, as I know any human Smilers would be all over banana split waffles and pineapple pizza. In another save, Smiler, I promise! I’ll fudge things a bit in my potential future Valicer In The Dark save! XD
H) While Alice was getting her cooking on, Victor and Smiler were keeping busy with the last of the farm chores – Victor FINALLY finished the tending (and deactivated poor Elmer to stop the bot from constantly trying to weed a glitched plant) and got the initial batch of super-selling done, then left Smiler to finish off selling everything while he cleared out the cow shed (and once again dropped the results on the ground next to said cow shed – I just had him put the trash in his inventory for later recycling). Smiler got Gardening skill 9 from all the super-selling (and harvesting the lemon tree in the corner that had gotten skipped in all the super-sell batching), which pleased me greatly –
And then I realized “wait a minute. Isn’t it supposed to be New Skill Day? Where’s the holiday thing?” Concerned, I checked the calendar, and confirmed that it was indeed a holiday – but that I didn’t have the overlay for it in the corner of my screen. Uh-oh. That DEFINITELY seemed like a sign the save file was on its way out. I decided not to worry TOO much about it at the moment, as New Skill Day is just a pop-up holiday, and not a particularly important one, and instead had Smiler grab the food stand and gather everyone up to bring them to the Brindleton Bay Pawspital –
I) And the moment I arrived, THERE was the holiday overlay! Whew – so changing lots got the game to acknowledge the holiday. Still worrying, but at least my Sims could PARTICIPATE! First things first, though – it was hot in Brindleton, so I had Smiler change into their hot weather wear, then start looking around for a good spot for the food stand while Victor felt the love with Shadow and Alice signed up Surprise to be cured of her affliction. I finally got Smiler to put the stand in a good location as Alice and Surprise waited for the vet, made sure it was stocked, and prepared to start a food sale –
Only for the game to tell me it couldn’t have “two social events” going on at the same time. Hmmm. All right, I was game to wait until after Surprise was cured. I instead had Smiler entertain Kelly with a laser pointer to pass the time –
J) And decided, “you know what, Victor’s Pet Training skill is almost up to Level 4, meaning leveling it up would count toward New Skill Day – why not train Shadow to heel?” So that’s exactly what he did, getting the dog to follow him around outside the hospital. Shadow was – a BIT distracted at first by her own tail, but as time went on she got better at keeping pace with Victor. XD I then checked in on how things were going with Surprise’s examination. . .
Only to discover they weren’t. For some reason, midway through the exam, the vet just stopped what she was doing, and Surprise was left go without anyone even trying to diagnose what was wrong with her. >( Damn glitchy game. . .I instead decided to have Alice get Shock spayed instead and see what happened there – fortunately THAT worked, and it went a lot faster too. Maybe because both vets were awake and working this time, instead of one sleeping on the waiting room couch. XD (Seriously, that ALWAYS seems to happen when I first load into the lot for some reason. . .) Alice was starting to get twitchy from being around all those strangers, though, so I had Smiler sign Surprise up for examination number two and let her clear her head by running off to a far-away dig site to see what was inside. Ended up digging up a new fossil rock with a fossilized egg inside, nice. :) She then went and entertained poor coned Shock with some laser pointer while Smiler chatted with Brant Hecking inside the vet (learning he was a Personal Sports Trainer for The Other Sports Team, apparently) –
And Victor got Pet Training 4 from working with Shadow! :D One person’s New Skill Day skill down – two to go!
K) But first – finally getting Surprise cured! Yes, this time Surprise got checked over by the OTHER vet, who successfully determined she had Winterfest Fever. Smiler paid the big bucks for the best treatment (as I say so often, my Sims can afford it), and the cat was given a shot that brought her back to normal. I was very pleased with this, both because hooray, the vet lot decided to work –
And hooray, I can finally have my food sale! I promptly had Smiler set up outside and restock the table before starting their sale, calling out to any passers-by to check out their wares while Victor and Shadow continued working on Heel training. And seeing them, I got an idea for how Alice could get HER New Skill Day Skill – specifically I sent her to take some pictures of Smiler at the stand! (And Shadow spinning around chasing her tail nearby.) Because she wasn’t QUITE at level 5 Photography skill yet, and what better time to max out that mini-skill than New Skill Day? She got some good shots of Smiler in full salesperson mode (probably gonna put one up on the wall in the house – or maybe in the store?), then went to chat with Victor for a bit as the first customer of the day walked up to see the wares –
Morgyn Ember! Who I did NOT recognize in their hot weather wear because they’d traded their curly locks for a giant bun and their iconic red coat for a red shirt and black shorts. O.o They started chatting with Smiler about the food available (Smiler, as usual, becoming their good friend up on introducing themselves), while Victor finally finished teaching Shadow how to heel (nice) and followed Alice into one of the vet treatment rooms to give her a little serenade. XD I had Alice respond by taking some pictures, including of him and some cute posters around the room –
And THAT knocked her over the edge, maxing out Photography at level 5 and getting her the New Skill Day skill she needed! w00!
L) With THAT settled, I had Alice go entertain the cats a bit more and sent Victor to go get a burger from the local food stand by the big old fountain (which he ate with one of the local strays), while Smiler continued hawking their food! Morgyn ended up buying a minty mocha cupcake, with Brant Hecking stopping buy to grab a slice of garden pizza. Brytani Cho (that celebrity Smiler slightly dislikes for reasons unknown to me) then showed up and started being annoying, trying to hype up all her fans in front of the stand, but fortunately sales continued, with Roxana Lopes stopping by for a cupcake and Morgyn coming back to snag some banana split waffles (and an autographed picture from Brytani). During a break in the action, I had Victor return to the vet lot to check up on the pets (he also got to know Butter, one of the other patients, who was a big cute fluffy Loyal dog) while Alice went to grab a haddock sandwich from the food stand (the eating of which taught her how to make it – was a little surprised, but hey, new recipe) – and then the sales started up again! Brytani decided to actually BUY something after Smiler hit her with a sales pitch and picked up some garden pizza, with Brant coming back in for another slice of same, while Catarina, Justic, Morgyn, and Brent Hecking all got some cupcakes before the sale ended. Final totals were six minty mocha cupcakes, three garden pizza slices, and one serving of banana split waffles sold for a total of $249 profit! Not bad – I like how the sale specifically breaks down what was sold. Seems like cupcakes might be the way to go for future sales. . . Plus Smiler got TWO levels of the Entrepreneur skill from the sale, meaning they completed New Skill Day upon finishing it! w00!
M) By this point, it was getting pretty late, but there was one thing left for the gang to do before I could have them head home. Specifically, get Surprise spayed so I don’t get any more unanticipated kittens! Victor signed Surprise in for the procedure while Smiler – who was feeling pretty damn thirsty after all that pitching of sales – flew over to Alice and got a drink from her. She then settled in for a nap by the fountain while Smiler flew back to join Victor in the waiting room as Surprise had her operation. I noticed that they’d managed to pick up eight power points in the process (those had been stacking up for a while) – and, with nothing better to spend them on, I had them pick up the “Command” and “Vampire Creation” powers. *shrug* I mean, I sure as hell can’t have them get “Dampened Emotions,” that’s WAAAY off base for their character, and I don’t like most of the “max out a need forever” ones, sooo. . .be nice if Vampires also had a way to convert unused power points into satisfaction points, like werewolves do! Maybe one day we will get an update. . . Anyway, they amused themselves playing SimScuffle on the office computer while Victor got to know Butter better until Surprise was released from the operating room sporting her cone of shame –
N) And then it was finally back home at 10:30 PM! As you might imagine, Victor and Alice went immediately to bed. XD Smiler headed back out to the barn to finish updating their streaming drone with a lithium battery (extending its recording life) while Surprise and Kelly wandered off into the night on cat adventures (which did NOT involve getting pregnant, yay) –
And Shock headed back into the living room to scratch up the furniture. Cue me getting Alice back up to scold the cat, who ran away onto the front porch to try and avoid it. *sigh* I figured while Alice was up she could resume her book and sent her to do that –
And, hilariously, just like Smiler always uses Victor and Alice’s computer for gaming now, Alice went and continued writing on Smiler’s computer. XD At this point, I noticed Smiler was no longer upgrading their drone (though I’m not sure if they were truly done or if they’d been distracted out of it), so I had them fix a broken water collector by the side of the house, then sent them upstairs to upgrade their video production station to make it unbreakable – a process slowed down a bit by the fact that they and Alice got to talking, but it still got Smiler max Handiness! :D So that’s cool. And, as everyone else was up and Shadow was whining about being bored again, I woke Victor up and sent him downstairs to play with the dog –
Only for Temperance to spawn in AGAIN while Victor was waiting for Shadow to finish bounding around the obstacle course. Once again, she was easily dealt with by dragging Victor’s bizarre idol downstairs and into her general vicinity, but – come on, do we REALLY need a visit from this woman every night?! Haunted houses, man – sometimes I wonder if they’re worth it.
But yes – playsession ended with Victor playing with a (very dirty) Shadow; Alice writing her book; and Smiler finishing up their video station upgrades, along with everyone successfully completing New Skill Day. A good note to leave the family on for a while, I feel. :)
Writing: Worked on my OT3 Week prompts again, this time writing something for probably the most specific and unusual prompt of the bunch: “The knight, the princess, and the dragon are actually all together!” Obviously this one had to be some sort of medieval fantasy AU, and I already knew that Victor would be the knight, Alice the princess, and Smiler the dragon – the trick was figuring out the plot of the story. I eventually decided on Victor making a (very hot, because plate armor) trek up to the cave where Alice and Smiler were living, publicly to try and defeat the dragon and rescue the “kidnapped” princess, privately to get his brains melted by the dragon’s hypnotic stare while the princess (who willingly left with said dragon because her throne has been usurped by Bumby and she needed protection and a good place to hide while she thought up ways to take her crown back) – well, makes the trip worth his while, let’s say. XD Oh, and it’s clear this has been going on for a while, and Alice and Smiler have been gradually wearing down Victor’s resistance to being “kidnapped” as well. XD Yeaaah, this one ended up pretty damn hypnokinky on my part, at least near the end – nothing TOO explicit, but we’ll see how I feel about it when I start editing!
YouTube: Well, it’s a good thing that I didn’t have any videos to catch up with (beyond the one I have saved for my workout tomorrow), because between cleaning, Sims, and my writing, I got to the YouTubes VEEEERY late today. Fortunately I just had the one GrayStillPlays video in my Subs – “Long Car Vs Bulges in GTA!” Another Alex Torture Board setting a bunch of the longest cars in the game against a variety of fun bulges, including –
I. Natural Noob, Pro, Legend Bulges – Three rock bulges that got progressively bigger, with the “Legend” bulge being basically a small mountain that you could only go around, not climb. You know Alex is serious when THIS is the first challenge.
II. Bulging Bulge – A bulge made up of stacked circular platforms – that separated and “popped up” roughly every three seconds. This one was more or less all about the timing – you had to get over it during the three seconds it was down, or get thrown off in the glitchiest way possible. Not fun!
III. Thumbnail Bulges – Two large hump bulges that went straight across the road (so there was no getting around them), with the second being basically a wall of bulge. This one – well, you just had to HOPE your car could climb them.
IV. Poisonous Mushroom Bulge (don’t touch the mushroom tip when it’s fuming) – A mushroom bulge surrounded by toxic waste and fire that occasionally spewed purple gas from its tip. Touch the purple gas, and your car would turn red and get set on fire – maybe not enough to immediately explode, but eventually the engine would just stop working. Again, timing was the key for this one!
V. Bulges That Get Steeper – A set of small triangular bulges that got gradually steeper and steeper, until the final one was sticking out with walls at an almost 90 degree angle. Just had to pop over them and hope your car could take the ever-sharpening angles!
VI. Mutated Hot Dog Bulge – A ring made out of a weird mutated hot dog and bun combination (I thought it was a doughnut bulge at first). You had to climb up the bulge, get into the ring, then climb up the bulge AGAIN on the other side to get OUT of the ring. Easy so long as your car could do that!
VII. Bulge Rush – A timed run across a short stretch of many, many little bulges – you had to climb up, drive over them, and drop down off the other side before the wall came up. Again, easy so long as your car could do that (and had the right suspension to handle all the bumps).
VIII. Sticky Lollipop Bulge – A giant circular bulge that was apparently one giant slow-down circle, glistening in the sunlight right before the end. This one was all about finding the right angle to climb it, all while knowing your car wouldn’t be able to rely on any speed boosts – this was all about sticking to the globe with the tires!
So – what long car could possibly get through all of those challenges? I can tell you that most of them couldn’t even make it past the initial rock bulges (even when Gray found a way to cheat by jumping off a nearby mountain back onto the board BEHIND the rock bulge), and of those that did – the Hummer limo, a weird cart-car carrying gas and ammo (think a glorified baggage car at an airport), the Draugur, the six-wheeled truck, and the military vehicles – they were all stopped by the Thumbnail Bulges. The Draugur and the six-wheeler both made it over the first one, but the second one was just too steep. Leaving only one challenger to make it all the way to the end –
THE WASTELANDER! :D Yes, my beloved rustbucket, after struggling in the past few challenges, finally got a chance to shine again with its INCREDIBLE bulge-conquering capabilities. I mean, granted, even IT had to cheat the “Legend” natural bulge, but after that, pretty much smooth sailing over every other bulge! Well, except for the poison mushroom bulge, but that was more “Gray wanted to see what would happen” than actual failure. XD Wastelander supremacy, baby! Glad to see it win once more.
*shrugs* Like I said, pretty typical cleaning Saturday! At least I had fun with Sims and Gray and my prompts. :) And tomorrow is a Fallout Sunday -- gotta do some more tumblr catch-up and see about getting drafts sorted; play Fallout 4 and get Victor and Deacon at least as far as Abernathy Farm; update the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; keep up on Gray and Jon's videos; and get in a workout and start James Turner's "Every Lot Challenge Again" mini-series. Hopefully all doable -- night all!
