This Saturday Is Canceled
Jun. 29th, 2024 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI regret to inform you all that I had a fairly shitty Saturday due to a combination of period moodiness, chores, and other such distractions, meaning that I only got to THREE things on my to-do list (and one of them wasn't even a COMPLETE thing) --
Cleaning & Laundry: Welp, I got a late start on this thanks to various delays this morning (such as a basket of laundry sitting in the kitchen when I got up that I started folding because both my parents were in the garden doing – something, they had the extendable saw thing so I presume trimming shit in the gully behind the house – and then stopped when Mom told me to leave the rest, she’d do it later; she did NOT do it later and I ended up folding all the rest of it anyway because I needed the basket to move the REST of the laundry she was doing so I start getting MY laundry in the washing machine), and it ended up taking most of my day to get this done – finally started dusting shortly after 11 AM, wrapped up with the vacuuming around 3 PM (obviously with a break for lunch), and got the last of my laundry out of the dryer around 5:45 PM (admittedly this is partly because of me forgetting to get the blankets out earlier because I was attempting to play Sims 4). *heavy sigh* At least it’s done for another couple of weeks.
Sims 4: My attempt to do a Chill Valicer Save “building episode” in the game today didn’t go according to plan (just after I’d booted up my game, my aunt and uncle showed up, so I felt like I had to go outside and say hello – and see if my parents had gotten the ice cream I’d asked them to get (they had not at this point; Dad went out and got it later), and then after that, I was distracted by suddenly remembering I had to get my blankets out of the dryer so I could finish my laundry sometime this century), but I did get a few things done –
A) Despite my INTENTION being to figure out what I wanted to do with the new barn basement area I built last time, the only things I accomplished there was to get Alice down there so the lights would be on as I tried to decorate, and putting the food processing machine down there – and I’m already second-guessing that because now it feels like there’s a big old gap in the barn where it used to be, and I’m not sure how to fill it. *shrug* I’ll figure out something with this space later.
B) The main thing I accomplished? Widening the kitchen! I believe I mentioned last time that my attempt to widen it by making the back porch bigger and then trying to pull the room out toward the greenhouse was stymied by the fact that this would screw up a bunch of stuff upstairs (notably the séance room and the upstairs hallway, where the stairs are) – but that I thought that if I instead widened it into the gap where the pet obstacle course was, I might be able to pull it off successfully. So that’s what I did today, and it worked pretty well! Had to move a few objects temporarily to keep them from getting dumped into the household inventory (for example, part of the egg collection on the hallway wall outside tried to yeet themselves because I had to place them with MOO), but once I got them out of the way, the widening went off without a hitch. :) So now the kitchen is two tiles wider on the right side! I’ve so far –
I. added in more counters and cabinets (including a second cabinet of plates, since I felt it didn’t look right with just the one)
II. adjusted the placement of the windows on either side of the room slightly (to match the windows that I adjusted upstairs on the séance room, see below)
III. adjusted the placement of the side table with the fruit bowl, ghost candy jar, and picnic basket in front of the window and the plant in the corner accordingly (the old “press ALT to freely place items” tip came in handy there)
IV. scooched the dining table over so it’s more in line with both the center of the new, longer kitchen island and the archway in (gotta make sure things aren’t off-kilter)
V. moved the kitchen island in slightly so it wasn’t crowding the dining table (there’s still plenty of room to maneuver between that and the side counters – I think, anyway)
VI. bought two more pet feeders in yellow and pink after being unable to line the original two up like I wanted, and then thinking “hang on, we have four pets anyway, why not just get more to fill in the gaps?”
VII. swapped the placement of Alice’s “Lady and Tramp” painting with the photographs of Smiler at the food stand during the first sale (the painting is now with the other cute cat-and-dog painting above the pet bowls, while the photographs are now on the wall with the side table and the plant)
VIII. got the trio a popcorn maker, a second ice cream maker, and a dishwasher (the popcorn maker is on the kitchen island, while the ice cream maker is on the counter next to the sink, above the dishwasher – I’m not sure if the popcorn maker will stay in the kitchen or end up in Smiler’s inventory, as my primary use for it would be for food sales, but I wanted them to have one)
IX. and did a little more decorating, adding things like the Home Chef Hustle spice rack, the Horse Ranch “utensils in a rustic can” clutter, and the big fork and spoon wall decorations that I BELIEVE are base game (may be Dine Out, though) all around the stove; some canisters of tea by the tea machine; and some more generic canisters to the kitchen island. I’m not FULLY satisfied with the placement of everything yet, but it’s nice to be able to clutter the place up a little more. :)
C) Of course, widening the kitchen meant widening the séance room above it – I briefly considered putting a chunk of roof there, but I thought it might look weird, and I didn’t want to lose the windows on that side of the room. So I had to rejigger that a bit to make sure the séance table was nice and centered in the room – which meant adjusting the position of the door (so it opened up with a good view of the séance table) and the windows on either side (so I could then scoot the sideboard over slightly and make sure THAT was properly lined up with the table as well). I also added in more candle chandeliers to make sure the space was adequately lit (when we’re not using the sacred candles for “the vibes” anyway) and moved over Victor’s curio cabinet with his unused familiar orbs – I haven’t done anything else yet when it comes to updating the decorations or rearranging what’s already in there, though. A project for another day! (And I do have a long weekend coming up…)
D) And I also spent some time adjusting the placements of the various objects in the pet obstacle course to see if there was a better configuration that worked with the smaller space I was now working with out front. I THINK I’ve got everything how I like it, with it all positioned so it’ll flow into each other – we have the weaving poles going up the side of the study, then a small hoop parallel to the side of the kitchen, then the big red macaroni bend tube along the side of the lot, then a new medium-height hoop (I traded in my second small one for that) perpendicular to that, then the ramp up and down, and finally the big platform at the end, by the tree. *shrug* It’s not PERFECT, but I think it’ll work – I’ll have to have someone take Shadow or one of the cats through it to test it!
So yeah – ended up being a day where I spent a lot of time just fiddling with stuff while being distracted. But I AM glad that I figured out how to make the kitchen wider so I could fit in more small appliances for the gang to play with if they so chose, and more fun kitchen décor. I’ve been wanting to do that for quite a while now. :) We’ll see if I make any better headway on more house improvements over Independence Day weekend!
YouTube: Welp, didn’t get anything out of the Watch Later, but I did at least keep up with GrayStillPlays, watching “Building My Own DIY Car in GTA 5!” A brand-new type of Alex Torture Board (and this one was EXPLICITLY Alex, he name-checked himself while talking to Gray in the floating text along the courses), this one saw Gray having to build his own cars to complete the various horrible challenges presented to him! Of course, he didn’t get NORMAL car parts, because that would be just silly – instead, the items available to him included arcade racing car shells (complete with floating arcade screens) and giant mice for the bodies, pool float and surfboards for the chassis, beach balls and coin-like batteries for the tires, various types of D-cell-type batteries for the engine (and those were the BEST engines), and weird monitor mounts to hold on tires and boosts. And, as he learned later in the boards, he could buy multiple of each item, so long as he had the points! Gray got fifteen free points to make his initial car, and earned more (though he never learned how many) for completing challenges. And what were the challenges?
I. The starter challenge didn’t get a special name – it was just a simple ramp jump up through the blades of a wind turbine! Well, I say simple – with the amount of points Gray got for just starting the challenge, he could either afford tires or a boost, but not both. XD But he managed to make it work and get through the jump to get his first sweet points!
II. Something New But Familiar – this one saw Alex call out the traditional windmill as old, sad, and boring, and dramatically replace it with the Weebmill – a wind turbine with four neon katana blades as props and a central hole that could be used for thumbnailing purposes! For this course, though, Gray just had to do the usual “jumping gaps while avoiding a variety of Weebmill hazards” (set slightly to the side, set in the middle of the gap, multiple Weebmills covering a gap, a thumbnail-hole-type jump through two Weebmills facing each other, etc). New item, familiar danger, geddit?
III. Yeet Vs Weebmill – this one combined the Weebmills with the Yeeters (those hydraulic platforms that bounce you into the air), making Gray have to use the Yeeters to get past the Weebmills in his way – first bouncing straight over a regular Weebmill, then having to make a 90 degree turn to get past a Weebmill, then having to bounce over a pair of horizontally-stacked Weebmills! This was all about having a car with decent aerodynamics – fortunately by this point Gray had stacked up enough wins to start being able to build GOOD CARS with actual WHEELS instead of beach balls. XD
IV. Weebmill Thumbnail Holes – remember how I said above the Weebmills have a central hole for thumbnailing purposes? Well, Alex made Gray go down a tunnel of them, and even provided a script circle to turn the board to nighttime so Gray could see the cool neon effects he’d included on them all. (Gray was in fact very impressed, and I now want a board done at night with glowy stuff.) Gray quickly learned he couldn’t touch the sides of the hole unless he wanted to pop out – took him a few tries to get that perfect run!
V. Back To The Beginning – the first part of the board ended with a tightrope made out of boomerangs with “Back To The Beginning” printed on them (also available as one of Gray’s spoiler options), with Weebmills located at key points to make him hate himself. Fortunately by this point Gray was rolling it with good cars with decent suspension and handling, but this one still gave him a bit of trouble just because dodging the Weebmills was about equal parts luck AND skill. He made it to the end eventually, though, and was rewarded with a lovely checkpoint, yay!
VI. Mug Gaps – past the checkpoint was a new area with new parts (this is when Gray started driving around a computer mouse powered by pink batteries with button battery wheels), starting with a simple tightrope made out of mugs! Which Gray did his best to cheat at first with the power of boosts to just go straight past it. XD I mean, it worked and got him the extra points he needed to improve his car, sooo...
VII. Weebmill Speedbumps – this course forced Gray to take it a little more seriously, combining the Weebmill with one of Grays’s other favorite challenges, the speedbump! Starting with slowly-raising octagons (one with a Weebmill inside of it) walls, and moving onto Weebmills embedded in the road, slowly getting higher and higher and getting more and more able to take out Gray’s wheels. Gray had to get all the computer monitor mounts to get enough suspension to take them on!
VIII. Stalking Weebmill (but it’s tentative for now) – and finally, the video ended with Gray having to drive down a road while being chased by a Weebmill circling around and around him! Except that Gray had amassed enough points by this point to buy loads of batteries for his engine AND multiple boosts, so he just straight up outran the thing without a problem and flew through the win. XD Ah, we love it when the boards get creatively weird like this. Shows Alex hasn’t lost his touch!
Soo -- yeah. Enjoyed the GSP stuff, and I'm glad I was able to make some progress in the Chill Valicer Save file on the house (and of course the chores just had to be done), but the fact that I wasn't able to do anything with tumblr, or my writing, or even with my Watch Later... *sigh* I can only hope tomorrow will be better. Which, considering it's supposed to be thunderstormy...we'll see. Tentative plans are to get some tumblr drafting done; play Fallout 4 and upgrade Victor's power armor with that final piece he picked up from Rust Devil HQ; update the Playthrough Progression appropriately; get in a workout; and keep up with GrayStillPlays and Jon's latest. Oh, and post Gigs's gift fic, which I shall endeavor to do tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I'm wrapping up the social thing with a tumblr friend, then going to bed. Night all.
Cleaning & Laundry: Welp, I got a late start on this thanks to various delays this morning (such as a basket of laundry sitting in the kitchen when I got up that I started folding because both my parents were in the garden doing – something, they had the extendable saw thing so I presume trimming shit in the gully behind the house – and then stopped when Mom told me to leave the rest, she’d do it later; she did NOT do it later and I ended up folding all the rest of it anyway because I needed the basket to move the REST of the laundry she was doing so I start getting MY laundry in the washing machine), and it ended up taking most of my day to get this done – finally started dusting shortly after 11 AM, wrapped up with the vacuuming around 3 PM (obviously with a break for lunch), and got the last of my laundry out of the dryer around 5:45 PM (admittedly this is partly because of me forgetting to get the blankets out earlier because I was attempting to play Sims 4). *heavy sigh* At least it’s done for another couple of weeks.
Sims 4: My attempt to do a Chill Valicer Save “building episode” in the game today didn’t go according to plan (just after I’d booted up my game, my aunt and uncle showed up, so I felt like I had to go outside and say hello – and see if my parents had gotten the ice cream I’d asked them to get (they had not at this point; Dad went out and got it later), and then after that, I was distracted by suddenly remembering I had to get my blankets out of the dryer so I could finish my laundry sometime this century), but I did get a few things done –
A) Despite my INTENTION being to figure out what I wanted to do with the new barn basement area I built last time, the only things I accomplished there was to get Alice down there so the lights would be on as I tried to decorate, and putting the food processing machine down there – and I’m already second-guessing that because now it feels like there’s a big old gap in the barn where it used to be, and I’m not sure how to fill it. *shrug* I’ll figure out something with this space later.
B) The main thing I accomplished? Widening the kitchen! I believe I mentioned last time that my attempt to widen it by making the back porch bigger and then trying to pull the room out toward the greenhouse was stymied by the fact that this would screw up a bunch of stuff upstairs (notably the séance room and the upstairs hallway, where the stairs are) – but that I thought that if I instead widened it into the gap where the pet obstacle course was, I might be able to pull it off successfully. So that’s what I did today, and it worked pretty well! Had to move a few objects temporarily to keep them from getting dumped into the household inventory (for example, part of the egg collection on the hallway wall outside tried to yeet themselves because I had to place them with MOO), but once I got them out of the way, the widening went off without a hitch. :) So now the kitchen is two tiles wider on the right side! I’ve so far –
I. added in more counters and cabinets (including a second cabinet of plates, since I felt it didn’t look right with just the one)
II. adjusted the placement of the windows on either side of the room slightly (to match the windows that I adjusted upstairs on the séance room, see below)
III. adjusted the placement of the side table with the fruit bowl, ghost candy jar, and picnic basket in front of the window and the plant in the corner accordingly (the old “press ALT to freely place items” tip came in handy there)
IV. scooched the dining table over so it’s more in line with both the center of the new, longer kitchen island and the archway in (gotta make sure things aren’t off-kilter)
V. moved the kitchen island in slightly so it wasn’t crowding the dining table (there’s still plenty of room to maneuver between that and the side counters – I think, anyway)
VI. bought two more pet feeders in yellow and pink after being unable to line the original two up like I wanted, and then thinking “hang on, we have four pets anyway, why not just get more to fill in the gaps?”
VII. swapped the placement of Alice’s “Lady and Tramp” painting with the photographs of Smiler at the food stand during the first sale (the painting is now with the other cute cat-and-dog painting above the pet bowls, while the photographs are now on the wall with the side table and the plant)
VIII. got the trio a popcorn maker, a second ice cream maker, and a dishwasher (the popcorn maker is on the kitchen island, while the ice cream maker is on the counter next to the sink, above the dishwasher – I’m not sure if the popcorn maker will stay in the kitchen or end up in Smiler’s inventory, as my primary use for it would be for food sales, but I wanted them to have one)
IX. and did a little more decorating, adding things like the Home Chef Hustle spice rack, the Horse Ranch “utensils in a rustic can” clutter, and the big fork and spoon wall decorations that I BELIEVE are base game (may be Dine Out, though) all around the stove; some canisters of tea by the tea machine; and some more generic canisters to the kitchen island. I’m not FULLY satisfied with the placement of everything yet, but it’s nice to be able to clutter the place up a little more. :)
C) Of course, widening the kitchen meant widening the séance room above it – I briefly considered putting a chunk of roof there, but I thought it might look weird, and I didn’t want to lose the windows on that side of the room. So I had to rejigger that a bit to make sure the séance table was nice and centered in the room – which meant adjusting the position of the door (so it opened up with a good view of the séance table) and the windows on either side (so I could then scoot the sideboard over slightly and make sure THAT was properly lined up with the table as well). I also added in more candle chandeliers to make sure the space was adequately lit (when we’re not using the sacred candles for “the vibes” anyway) and moved over Victor’s curio cabinet with his unused familiar orbs – I haven’t done anything else yet when it comes to updating the decorations or rearranging what’s already in there, though. A project for another day! (And I do have a long weekend coming up…)
D) And I also spent some time adjusting the placements of the various objects in the pet obstacle course to see if there was a better configuration that worked with the smaller space I was now working with out front. I THINK I’ve got everything how I like it, with it all positioned so it’ll flow into each other – we have the weaving poles going up the side of the study, then a small hoop parallel to the side of the kitchen, then the big red macaroni bend tube along the side of the lot, then a new medium-height hoop (I traded in my second small one for that) perpendicular to that, then the ramp up and down, and finally the big platform at the end, by the tree. *shrug* It’s not PERFECT, but I think it’ll work – I’ll have to have someone take Shadow or one of the cats through it to test it!
So yeah – ended up being a day where I spent a lot of time just fiddling with stuff while being distracted. But I AM glad that I figured out how to make the kitchen wider so I could fit in more small appliances for the gang to play with if they so chose, and more fun kitchen décor. I’ve been wanting to do that for quite a while now. :) We’ll see if I make any better headway on more house improvements over Independence Day weekend!
YouTube: Welp, didn’t get anything out of the Watch Later, but I did at least keep up with GrayStillPlays, watching “Building My Own DIY Car in GTA 5!” A brand-new type of Alex Torture Board (and this one was EXPLICITLY Alex, he name-checked himself while talking to Gray in the floating text along the courses), this one saw Gray having to build his own cars to complete the various horrible challenges presented to him! Of course, he didn’t get NORMAL car parts, because that would be just silly – instead, the items available to him included arcade racing car shells (complete with floating arcade screens) and giant mice for the bodies, pool float and surfboards for the chassis, beach balls and coin-like batteries for the tires, various types of D-cell-type batteries for the engine (and those were the BEST engines), and weird monitor mounts to hold on tires and boosts. And, as he learned later in the boards, he could buy multiple of each item, so long as he had the points! Gray got fifteen free points to make his initial car, and earned more (though he never learned how many) for completing challenges. And what were the challenges?
I. The starter challenge didn’t get a special name – it was just a simple ramp jump up through the blades of a wind turbine! Well, I say simple – with the amount of points Gray got for just starting the challenge, he could either afford tires or a boost, but not both. XD But he managed to make it work and get through the jump to get his first sweet points!
II. Something New But Familiar – this one saw Alex call out the traditional windmill as old, sad, and boring, and dramatically replace it with the Weebmill – a wind turbine with four neon katana blades as props and a central hole that could be used for thumbnailing purposes! For this course, though, Gray just had to do the usual “jumping gaps while avoiding a variety of Weebmill hazards” (set slightly to the side, set in the middle of the gap, multiple Weebmills covering a gap, a thumbnail-hole-type jump through two Weebmills facing each other, etc). New item, familiar danger, geddit?
III. Yeet Vs Weebmill – this one combined the Weebmills with the Yeeters (those hydraulic platforms that bounce you into the air), making Gray have to use the Yeeters to get past the Weebmills in his way – first bouncing straight over a regular Weebmill, then having to make a 90 degree turn to get past a Weebmill, then having to bounce over a pair of horizontally-stacked Weebmills! This was all about having a car with decent aerodynamics – fortunately by this point Gray had stacked up enough wins to start being able to build GOOD CARS with actual WHEELS instead of beach balls. XD
IV. Weebmill Thumbnail Holes – remember how I said above the Weebmills have a central hole for thumbnailing purposes? Well, Alex made Gray go down a tunnel of them, and even provided a script circle to turn the board to nighttime so Gray could see the cool neon effects he’d included on them all. (Gray was in fact very impressed, and I now want a board done at night with glowy stuff.) Gray quickly learned he couldn’t touch the sides of the hole unless he wanted to pop out – took him a few tries to get that perfect run!
V. Back To The Beginning – the first part of the board ended with a tightrope made out of boomerangs with “Back To The Beginning” printed on them (also available as one of Gray’s spoiler options), with Weebmills located at key points to make him hate himself. Fortunately by this point Gray was rolling it with good cars with decent suspension and handling, but this one still gave him a bit of trouble just because dodging the Weebmills was about equal parts luck AND skill. He made it to the end eventually, though, and was rewarded with a lovely checkpoint, yay!
VI. Mug Gaps – past the checkpoint was a new area with new parts (this is when Gray started driving around a computer mouse powered by pink batteries with button battery wheels), starting with a simple tightrope made out of mugs! Which Gray did his best to cheat at first with the power of boosts to just go straight past it. XD I mean, it worked and got him the extra points he needed to improve his car, sooo...
VII. Weebmill Speedbumps – this course forced Gray to take it a little more seriously, combining the Weebmill with one of Grays’s other favorite challenges, the speedbump! Starting with slowly-raising octagons (one with a Weebmill inside of it) walls, and moving onto Weebmills embedded in the road, slowly getting higher and higher and getting more and more able to take out Gray’s wheels. Gray had to get all the computer monitor mounts to get enough suspension to take them on!
VIII. Stalking Weebmill (but it’s tentative for now) – and finally, the video ended with Gray having to drive down a road while being chased by a Weebmill circling around and around him! Except that Gray had amassed enough points by this point to buy loads of batteries for his engine AND multiple boosts, so he just straight up outran the thing without a problem and flew through the win. XD Ah, we love it when the boards get creatively weird like this. Shows Alex hasn’t lost his touch!
Soo -- yeah. Enjoyed the GSP stuff, and I'm glad I was able to make some progress in the Chill Valicer Save file on the house (and of course the chores just had to be done), but the fact that I wasn't able to do anything with tumblr, or my writing, or even with my Watch Later... *sigh* I can only hope tomorrow will be better. Which, considering it's supposed to be thunderstormy...we'll see. Tentative plans are to get some tumblr drafting done; play Fallout 4 and upgrade Victor's power armor with that final piece he picked up from Rust Devil HQ; update the Playthrough Progression appropriately; get in a workout; and keep up with GrayStillPlays and Jon's latest. Oh, and post Gigs's gift fic, which I shall endeavor to do tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I'm wrapping up the social thing with a tumblr friend, then going to bed. Night all.
