Not Too Bad Monday Off
Jul. 22nd, 2024 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI mean, yeah, I had to deal with the old period tired and such, but since I got to stay home and chill out instead of getting all stressed dealing with idiots on the road and whatnot, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. And I had a pretty good and productive day off --
Tumblr: As today was Monday, I only had Victor Luvs Alice to worry about, and I did some good work there –
A) Got the image alt text done on the remaining five Chill Valicer Save posts (along with a bit of updating tags and rearranging pictures) before lunch, meaning this weirdly-long seven parter is officially good to go for Wednesday
B) And reblogged a few things this evening, including WeirdKev’s reblog of his birthday fic (agreeing with him that this character “The Great and Mighty Kevin” would get along with Phillianne, as he too believes in paying ghouls living wages); Moose’s latest McFly July fic (about Biff opening his Auto Detailing business – and getting STRICKLAND, of all people, as his first customer); and a poll about how you first learned about BTTF and its fandom (through the movies, the recent musical, or a third mystery option – I took the opportunity to go on in the tags how I discovered BTTF through The Ride. Still bitter that Universal closed it!)
*thumbs up* So that’s all sorted, yay.
Sims 4: Well, I did end up playing another day of the Chill Valicer Save (now featuring Marm L. Iser the Servo), and I did end up getting the quartet over to the store for a final sales day before the patch tomorrow potentially Ruins Everything. Let me tell you how it went –
A) Started with Victor and Alice in bed and Smiler and Marm watching romantic TV together – I decided to check on Marm’s enhancement status, and upon learning he could be enhanced, had Smiler upgrade him so he’d charge a bit faster. Nice! Marm then got to recharging on the couch (apparently robots can take naps, who knew?) while Smiler lectured Surprise on scratching the furniture (Surprise pretended to have no idea what they were talking about) before heading out to the porch to ask Shadow, sadly chewing on her ball, what was wrong. Turns out Shadow was feeling down and needed hugs and treats – Smiler was only too happy to provide, along with a brushing. :) I then had them feed Toothy before heading down into the barn basement to make some strawberry nectar – I mean, they were feeling flirty anyway, so why not? I don’t think it had any effect on the final product, of course, but it feels like it should have. :p
B) While that was going on, Victor and Alice both woke up around 3 AM – I put Victor on “upgrading the tub in the black-and-yellow bathroom” duty, since he had a want to increase his Handiness (and in fact was very close to maxing it), having him give it a water recycler (using eco parts), pulsating jets, soothing jets, and a self-cleaning coating. I mean, he did all that for the shower, might as well do the same for the tub! Alice, for her part, talked to Snappy the Sixam Mosquito Trap for a bit (it was a want), then got back to working on her book (in Smiler’s room, because of course she did – never mind that I clicked on HER computer in HER and Victor’s room). While they were thus occupied, Smiler finished their nectar and put it in storage (the vitality and potato nectar Victor found in there the other day also made it in there), then went upstairs to stand by the robotics bench so I could sort out the pictures in their and Alice’s inventory and pick my favorites from the family reunion to put up. The best two of Alice’s pictures of the group and Marm himself, along with one of Smiler and Marm’s selfies, went into the free “column of three pictures” frames they got from the reunion and hung up near the robotics station, while another Smiler-and-Marm selfie went up in Smiler’s room, on the side wall between the windows (over their yoga mat). Though, while I was doing that, I noticed there was a Potion of the Nimble Mind in the household inventory for some reason –
And then looked in the barn basement and realized that Victor’s potion display was missing a cube! >.< Yeah, I remember that I had trouble getting that top left corner display case to slot in, but I didn’t expect it to just POP OFF THE WALL! (If you’re wondering what happened to the shelf itself, I am pretty sure I recycled it by accident.) Even more annoying, I was actually able to move the display right below it up into that slot no problem, then add in a new case into the vacated spot. *shakehead* These snap-together shelves sometimes, man. At least I was able to fix the display!
C) With pictures sorted and Victor, Alice, and Marm all occupied, I had Smiler head into the greenhouse to clean up some cursed objects there (a slime monster and a creepy doll), then had them clean Moory’s shed (which really needed it) while making the recently-awakened Marm clean the chicken coop instead of watching Politi-Sim (trust me, Marm, you don’t wanna watch politics). Smiler then pulled the recyclable trash out of the bin, before returning to the greenhouse to drop off Elmer and Bugs the gardening bots and put them to work! Because we hadn’t used the little bots in a while, and judging by the state of the greenhouse, Victor was going to need the help. XD
Speaking of Victor, by this point he’d finished all the tub upgrades (without maxing out his Handiness, boo) – he went and had a little chat with Alice as she finished off her book, then showed a little love to Shadow before heading downstairs to finish off the last of the banana split waffles while I had Alice clean up some of the dirty plates around the place. And as for Marm – well, having FINALLY gotten around to the front of the house to throw away the chicken poop, he decided he wanted to play with the cowplant. I allowed this, but I first made him turn on hover mode so he’d move quicker – a walking Servo walks VERY SLOWLY, I have discovered. *grimace*
D) And then – farm chores time, as always! For everyone except Marm, who flew up to Smiler’s room to use their computer to “troll teh forums,” then went limp to download enhancement data – a process that takes a LOT LONGER than I thought it would. They were out for most of the damn morning! *shakehead* Servos, man…
Anyway – Victor of course went to the greenhouse to help Elmer and Bugs with their efforts (the over-sized crops needed lots of weeding, watering, and bug-spraying), while Smiler sprinkled feed for the chickens, chatted with them, and got the eggs (six normal eggs and one hatchable this time) and Alice cleaned off poor dirty Moory. And then attempted to appease the specter bobbing around the cow paddock with her basic silver bracelet, only for the specter to go “what, no crystal?” and get all snippy. *shakehead* Damn picky specters… Anyway, as Alice was hungry anyway, I had her flee the area in favor of going to the kitchen, setting the table (I keep meaning to use that feature more!), cleaning all the spoiled stuff out of the fridge, and having most of a plate of spinach frittata for lunch. Smiler, meanwhile, kept busy making an eco-upgrade part, then fixing a busted water collector before going upstairs to have a nice bath in their newly-upgraded tub. Once I was sure they were good, I had Alice head back over to Moory’s shed to refill her feed, then try to bond with the cow – unfortunately, the conversation went poorly. “Okay,” I thought, “let’s have her give the cow some prairie grass hay instead” –
And then watched as Moory VANISHED and Alice did the glitch thing of putting her hands behind her to “feed” the invisible cow. O.o I checked both her personal inventory and the household one, but didn’t see the cow. Fortunately she reappeared a little bit later, but that was WEIRD. Game – game, can you not.
E) Anyway – I had Alice go do some more recycling (clearing out the bin and a bunch of rotten stuff in everyone’s inventories, including some of the massive amount of Granite-Falls-specific fruit and mushrooms in the household inventory), then – upon seeing Moory was back to normal – sent her to give Moory a PROPER treat (Animal Party, to improve her social need) and milk her. While that was happening, I woke Marm from his “enhancement downloading” trance and had him chat with Smiler for a bit (gotta get him to bond with the other members of the household, after all), then had Smiler head down to see if they could help Victor in the greenhouse while Marm went to play with the cowplant again (I guess Toothy is now officially “his” pet). By the time they got down there, though, pretty much all the tending had been taken care of, so I instead had them initiate the great super-sell while Victor got the beeswax and honey from his bee box, and then collected a swarm to pollinate the trees at the back of the greenhouse. Victor then went in to use the bathroom while Smiler deactivated Bugs and Elmer (though they left them in the greenhouse, since they still have decent battery). I then took a moment to make sure everyone was in a good spot and all the milk and eggs and such were in the fridge –
F) And then, right after noon, it was off to San MyShuno and Van Liddelton Groceries! Because I wanted my gang to sell some shit, damn it. XD I had Alice open the place up, then sent her and Smiler to grab some posters while Marm and Victor went to one of the outdoor chess sets to play a game together as they waited for customers to show up. It didn’t take long for the first people of the day to walk through the big sliding doors – I had Alice and Smiler hurry back to greet Umber Grove and Ekram Elderberry respectively and start working on them. Alice ended up convincing Umber to buy a bottle of milk as the first sale of the day (possibly helped by the fact that Umber found her rather attractive), while Smiler “closed the deal” to encourage Ekram to purchase something properly –
Only for Ekram to then run afoul of the “for some reason my Sims keep acting like they cannot get to you to ring you up” bug. *grimace* Oh, that just figures. I was thus forced to let Ekram just stand there until his shopping bubble timed out while sending the gang to tend to the other customers in the store (I mean, I kept TRYING to get them to ring him up, but it never worked). Fortunately, the rest of the sales of the day went pretty smoothly –
I. Guy named Yosef yanked a cichlid out of the fish section while Smiler and Victor got their flirt on in the chess area, which was nice
II. Alice successfully rang up the first “proper” sale of the day: a guy named Asa buying one of Victor’s Potions of Emotional Stability
III. Smiler spent some time chatting with Leila, their semi-stalkerish buddy from Sulani (the one who kept interrupting the Valicer honeymoon) – my INTENT was for them to talk her into letting them have some plasma, but they ended up accidentally convincing her to buy a can of green peas instead. They ended up getting their wanted drink from Brant Hecking instead
IV. Victor talked a guy named Valentino into buying some mayonnaise, then cleaned up some spoiled fizzy juice I spotted in the juice fridge (which is supposed to be a FLOWER fridge, admittedly, but it also works for that purpose) – once he was done with that he then rang up Clara Bjergsen for a single small mushroom
V. Marm kept trying to slip away from customers to mop some puddles outside, but I did get him to talk to a guy named Tai for a while, which seemed to contribute to the old fellow buying a plantain. And then another customer who’d gone over to talk to Marm earlier while he was playing chess with Victor, Scarlet, bought another one right after, so I guess the robot inspires people to buy bananas. XD I eventually just let him mop the puddle, then told him to start recharging while he was out there because he wasn’t a fan of all the people anyway
VI. After some confusion about who was ringing up who because Victor insisted on walking all the way downstairs despite me canceling the “make waffles” interaction he had to ring someone up, Smiler eventually rang up a lady named Aleah (not the hermit, someone else) for a box of canned peas and a guy named Masara for some watermelon conserve, while Victor rang up Brent Hecking for a bottle of synthetic food tablets. Victor then tried to run off and make a hamburger on one of the outside grills until I went “just use Delicioso you fool” and had him conjure up some prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, which he went and ate on the edge of the big fountain I put on the side of the lot. *shrug* Okay then
VII. Speaking of the fountain, I caught Alice randomly playing in it as Victor was making his meal, and told her to go inside and ring up a guy named Tsutoma for a robot salvage part (first one we’ve sold!). She tried to slip back off to the fountain later, but then ended up doing something useful and emptying the trash instead. And then licked herself clean out there as she was getting a little manky and it was out of view of the judgmental customers. XD
VIII. While all this was going on, I woke up Marm to help Smiler with ringing up more people – he rang up a lady named Martina for some pumpkin conserve, while Smiler rang up a returning Leila for a jar of blueberry jam (she just can’t stay away from them!). Meanwhile, in the background, someone named Raven bought an egg, a returning Brant Hecking got a Gutsberry, and a lady named Mabel some chocolate milk. Talk about things just flying off the shelves!
IX. And finally, once he was done with his dinner, Victor rang up a guy named Masato for some canned fishcakes, while Smiler rang up a guy named Omar for some beeswax. All while Marm watched TV in the break room, Alice hung out by the trash can licking herself, and Thorne Bailey lingered by the robotics shelves attracting paparazzi and talking to fans.
Yeah, as you might imagine, at that point, I was done, and so were my Sims. Smiler officially closed up shop at 8 PM, right after ringing up Omar. As for the stats, our quartet had 19 total sales today, for a total profit of $996 – yeah, while there was a lot of buying going on, a lot of it was for pretty cheap items. *shrug* As I have said multiple times before, they do NOT need the money!
G) With the selling day finally done, I had Smiler take a moment to tune up Marm (whose reliability was slowly failing) while Victor and Alice cleaned up all the out-of-stock signs around the store, then I sent everyone home by 9 PM. Victor was promptly sent to bed, while Alice finished off the final bites of her spinach frittata before it went bad (as she could super-speed her way to it faster than it could spoil) before joining him. Smiler, feeling flirty thanks to the nearness of their partner, wandered into the living room to sculpt the bonsai there into a heart, while Marm cleaned up Alice’s plate for her, took a moment to pet Shock (making friends with the cat), then flew outside to rake up all the leaves falling around the property, with a quick break to feed Toothy. *nods* Good robot. I thus sent Smiler to play chess once they were done with the bonsai (mostly because they’d swapped moods from Flirty to Focused) and prepared to end the day –
H) And then I noticed that the ENTIRE FUCKING WIND FARM was broken again. *sigh* Cue me waking Victor up to Repairio the lot of them, and Alice waking up in turn to react to his magic skills. I mean, they both did already have full energy, sooo… I sent Alice downstairs to read a werewolf book (she wanted to read a book as a want, and I figured I might as well try to unlock the werewolf power that lets her read secret werewolf writings), had Marm pause in his raking to recharge some more, then set Victor on upgrading one of the upstairs bathroom sinks with an automatic soap dispenser, with the playsession ACTUALLY ending shortly after in-game midnight, with him completing the upgrade and getting maxed Handiness skill! Yay! XD
Whew – that was a lot, wasn’t it? And I can’t say I’m very impressed with Marm yet as a member of the family – like, I know part of it is me not being used to controlling another Sim, especially not a Servo, but he seems to lose charge pretty fast, and take a pretty decent amount of time to charge up when I do power him down. Meaning there’s good chunks of time where he’s just not doing anything. And I didn’t think that “enhancement data” thing would take so long either. Hmmmm...still, I need to give him a fair shake. Maybe he’ll impress me more when I come back to the family once all my mods are updated post-patch. Fingers crossed!
Writing: Decided to get this sorted right after lunch, since after having food is when my brain tends to work the best during the early days of my period – got a good chunk done editing the beginning of Chapter 3 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” with Alice having just unpacked her (admittedly minimal) stuff and helping Victor get in all his things. Which includes his Bio-Bot butterfly toy robots, which he was a little shy about until Alice started showing a genuine interest. He’ll explain momentarily that he’s not used to people WANTING to see them – his mother never really approved of them, and he never got the chance to talk about them much with Victoria, who never got to see his room and watched different shows. But yes, off to a solid start on the next chapter.
YouTube: Once again, started later and took longer than I hoped, but I got everything watched that I wanted to get watched –
A) First up, the last thing I had to get out of my Watch Later this weekend – “7 Spiritual Sequels that Embarrassed Big Publishers: Commenter Edition!” Featuring Mike and Ellen talking about yet more games that serve as unofficial sequels/remakes to other popular titles published by companies that didn’t do anything good with said titles. Or, well, MAY still be doing something good with said titles – but Story of Seasons (aka Harvest Moon) is never going to match the success of one Stardew Valley. But hey, SoS, don’t take it too hard – at least you’re not SimCity (2013) getting surpassed in pretty much all ways by Cities Skylines, or the mobile Dungeon Keeper reboot getting blown out of the water by War For The Overworld’s superior dungeon management. And at least your publisher never published a game about the nuclear apocalypse and then sat on it for years, refusing to do anything with it beyond make one shitty sequel, causing the developers who actually made it, Interplay, to release their own version of the Wasteland, a little game called Fallout… Yeah, uh, this video could basically be called “EA Fucks Up: The List.” XD
B) And second up, the daily Subs video from GrayStillPlays – “I destroyed reality using pencils,” aka Gray plays Long Pencil Run! This is one of those runner games where you have to make your running “thing” as big as possible before you hit the finish line – as per the title, you are a pencil, and you must get all the various height and width-increasing bonuses so you hit the finish line as tall and wide as possible. So you can then spend all of that height and girth scribbling out a famous painting, like the Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, or Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Because this game is weird. XD Gray had some fun trying to get his pencil to ridiculous proportions, but the real amusement value of the video was in him bitching about how he wanted stupid anime girl art instead of famous paintings at the end, and admitting he knew nothing about art and couldn’t name any of the paintings if he tried (for example, he misidentified Starry Night as a Monet). So naturally the comments are taking it upon themselves to educate him. XD Maybe spend five minutes Googling before making the video next time, Gray!
Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with the GrayStillPlays compilation “I spent two hours clicking so you don't have to!” I got through the rest of the “shove as much food down your gullet as possible” game (Gray managing to get his guy all the way up to being a cape-wearing weirdo stuffing giant “King Broccolis” down his gullet), the entirety of the related “shove as many DRINKS down your gullet as possible” (Gray got his dude kicked out of all the “free refill” places and leveled up his drink power so far he crashed the game), and I’m currently in the “planet clicker” game (where you must upgrade your planets with farms, factories, oil mines, and “Marsian Technology” to produce energy to unlock more planets and more stuff to produce more energy). I suspect this and Gray’s Cookie Clicker episodes will take up the rest of the compilation, but we shall see...
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that, especially for the first day of my period. And now I have to get myself to bed so I can get some sleep before going back to work tomorrow. Hopefully there's nothing ridiculous waiting for me there... Night all!
Tumblr: As today was Monday, I only had Victor Luvs Alice to worry about, and I did some good work there –
A) Got the image alt text done on the remaining five Chill Valicer Save posts (along with a bit of updating tags and rearranging pictures) before lunch, meaning this weirdly-long seven parter is officially good to go for Wednesday
B) And reblogged a few things this evening, including WeirdKev’s reblog of his birthday fic (agreeing with him that this character “The Great and Mighty Kevin” would get along with Phillianne, as he too believes in paying ghouls living wages); Moose’s latest McFly July fic (about Biff opening his Auto Detailing business – and getting STRICKLAND, of all people, as his first customer); and a poll about how you first learned about BTTF and its fandom (through the movies, the recent musical, or a third mystery option – I took the opportunity to go on in the tags how I discovered BTTF through The Ride. Still bitter that Universal closed it!)
*thumbs up* So that’s all sorted, yay.
Sims 4: Well, I did end up playing another day of the Chill Valicer Save (now featuring Marm L. Iser the Servo), and I did end up getting the quartet over to the store for a final sales day before the patch tomorrow potentially Ruins Everything. Let me tell you how it went –
A) Started with Victor and Alice in bed and Smiler and Marm watching romantic TV together – I decided to check on Marm’s enhancement status, and upon learning he could be enhanced, had Smiler upgrade him so he’d charge a bit faster. Nice! Marm then got to recharging on the couch (apparently robots can take naps, who knew?) while Smiler lectured Surprise on scratching the furniture (Surprise pretended to have no idea what they were talking about) before heading out to the porch to ask Shadow, sadly chewing on her ball, what was wrong. Turns out Shadow was feeling down and needed hugs and treats – Smiler was only too happy to provide, along with a brushing. :) I then had them feed Toothy before heading down into the barn basement to make some strawberry nectar – I mean, they were feeling flirty anyway, so why not? I don’t think it had any effect on the final product, of course, but it feels like it should have. :p
B) While that was going on, Victor and Alice both woke up around 3 AM – I put Victor on “upgrading the tub in the black-and-yellow bathroom” duty, since he had a want to increase his Handiness (and in fact was very close to maxing it), having him give it a water recycler (using eco parts), pulsating jets, soothing jets, and a self-cleaning coating. I mean, he did all that for the shower, might as well do the same for the tub! Alice, for her part, talked to Snappy the Sixam Mosquito Trap for a bit (it was a want), then got back to working on her book (in Smiler’s room, because of course she did – never mind that I clicked on HER computer in HER and Victor’s room). While they were thus occupied, Smiler finished their nectar and put it in storage (the vitality and potato nectar Victor found in there the other day also made it in there), then went upstairs to stand by the robotics bench so I could sort out the pictures in their and Alice’s inventory and pick my favorites from the family reunion to put up. The best two of Alice’s pictures of the group and Marm himself, along with one of Smiler and Marm’s selfies, went into the free “column of three pictures” frames they got from the reunion and hung up near the robotics station, while another Smiler-and-Marm selfie went up in Smiler’s room, on the side wall between the windows (over their yoga mat). Though, while I was doing that, I noticed there was a Potion of the Nimble Mind in the household inventory for some reason –
And then looked in the barn basement and realized that Victor’s potion display was missing a cube! >.< Yeah, I remember that I had trouble getting that top left corner display case to slot in, but I didn’t expect it to just POP OFF THE WALL! (If you’re wondering what happened to the shelf itself, I am pretty sure I recycled it by accident.) Even more annoying, I was actually able to move the display right below it up into that slot no problem, then add in a new case into the vacated spot. *shakehead* These snap-together shelves sometimes, man. At least I was able to fix the display!
C) With pictures sorted and Victor, Alice, and Marm all occupied, I had Smiler head into the greenhouse to clean up some cursed objects there (a slime monster and a creepy doll), then had them clean Moory’s shed (which really needed it) while making the recently-awakened Marm clean the chicken coop instead of watching Politi-Sim (trust me, Marm, you don’t wanna watch politics). Smiler then pulled the recyclable trash out of the bin, before returning to the greenhouse to drop off Elmer and Bugs the gardening bots and put them to work! Because we hadn’t used the little bots in a while, and judging by the state of the greenhouse, Victor was going to need the help. XD
Speaking of Victor, by this point he’d finished all the tub upgrades (without maxing out his Handiness, boo) – he went and had a little chat with Alice as she finished off her book, then showed a little love to Shadow before heading downstairs to finish off the last of the banana split waffles while I had Alice clean up some of the dirty plates around the place. And as for Marm – well, having FINALLY gotten around to the front of the house to throw away the chicken poop, he decided he wanted to play with the cowplant. I allowed this, but I first made him turn on hover mode so he’d move quicker – a walking Servo walks VERY SLOWLY, I have discovered. *grimace*
D) And then – farm chores time, as always! For everyone except Marm, who flew up to Smiler’s room to use their computer to “troll teh forums,” then went limp to download enhancement data – a process that takes a LOT LONGER than I thought it would. They were out for most of the damn morning! *shakehead* Servos, man…
Anyway – Victor of course went to the greenhouse to help Elmer and Bugs with their efforts (the over-sized crops needed lots of weeding, watering, and bug-spraying), while Smiler sprinkled feed for the chickens, chatted with them, and got the eggs (six normal eggs and one hatchable this time) and Alice cleaned off poor dirty Moory. And then attempted to appease the specter bobbing around the cow paddock with her basic silver bracelet, only for the specter to go “what, no crystal?” and get all snippy. *shakehead* Damn picky specters… Anyway, as Alice was hungry anyway, I had her flee the area in favor of going to the kitchen, setting the table (I keep meaning to use that feature more!), cleaning all the spoiled stuff out of the fridge, and having most of a plate of spinach frittata for lunch. Smiler, meanwhile, kept busy making an eco-upgrade part, then fixing a busted water collector before going upstairs to have a nice bath in their newly-upgraded tub. Once I was sure they were good, I had Alice head back over to Moory’s shed to refill her feed, then try to bond with the cow – unfortunately, the conversation went poorly. “Okay,” I thought, “let’s have her give the cow some prairie grass hay instead” –
And then watched as Moory VANISHED and Alice did the glitch thing of putting her hands behind her to “feed” the invisible cow. O.o I checked both her personal inventory and the household one, but didn’t see the cow. Fortunately she reappeared a little bit later, but that was WEIRD. Game – game, can you not.
E) Anyway – I had Alice go do some more recycling (clearing out the bin and a bunch of rotten stuff in everyone’s inventories, including some of the massive amount of Granite-Falls-specific fruit and mushrooms in the household inventory), then – upon seeing Moory was back to normal – sent her to give Moory a PROPER treat (Animal Party, to improve her social need) and milk her. While that was happening, I woke Marm from his “enhancement downloading” trance and had him chat with Smiler for a bit (gotta get him to bond with the other members of the household, after all), then had Smiler head down to see if they could help Victor in the greenhouse while Marm went to play with the cowplant again (I guess Toothy is now officially “his” pet). By the time they got down there, though, pretty much all the tending had been taken care of, so I instead had them initiate the great super-sell while Victor got the beeswax and honey from his bee box, and then collected a swarm to pollinate the trees at the back of the greenhouse. Victor then went in to use the bathroom while Smiler deactivated Bugs and Elmer (though they left them in the greenhouse, since they still have decent battery). I then took a moment to make sure everyone was in a good spot and all the milk and eggs and such were in the fridge –
F) And then, right after noon, it was off to San MyShuno and Van Liddelton Groceries! Because I wanted my gang to sell some shit, damn it. XD I had Alice open the place up, then sent her and Smiler to grab some posters while Marm and Victor went to one of the outdoor chess sets to play a game together as they waited for customers to show up. It didn’t take long for the first people of the day to walk through the big sliding doors – I had Alice and Smiler hurry back to greet Umber Grove and Ekram Elderberry respectively and start working on them. Alice ended up convincing Umber to buy a bottle of milk as the first sale of the day (possibly helped by the fact that Umber found her rather attractive), while Smiler “closed the deal” to encourage Ekram to purchase something properly –
Only for Ekram to then run afoul of the “for some reason my Sims keep acting like they cannot get to you to ring you up” bug. *grimace* Oh, that just figures. I was thus forced to let Ekram just stand there until his shopping bubble timed out while sending the gang to tend to the other customers in the store (I mean, I kept TRYING to get them to ring him up, but it never worked). Fortunately, the rest of the sales of the day went pretty smoothly –
I. Guy named Yosef yanked a cichlid out of the fish section while Smiler and Victor got their flirt on in the chess area, which was nice
II. Alice successfully rang up the first “proper” sale of the day: a guy named Asa buying one of Victor’s Potions of Emotional Stability
III. Smiler spent some time chatting with Leila, their semi-stalkerish buddy from Sulani (the one who kept interrupting the Valicer honeymoon) – my INTENT was for them to talk her into letting them have some plasma, but they ended up accidentally convincing her to buy a can of green peas instead. They ended up getting their wanted drink from Brant Hecking instead
IV. Victor talked a guy named Valentino into buying some mayonnaise, then cleaned up some spoiled fizzy juice I spotted in the juice fridge (which is supposed to be a FLOWER fridge, admittedly, but it also works for that purpose) – once he was done with that he then rang up Clara Bjergsen for a single small mushroom
V. Marm kept trying to slip away from customers to mop some puddles outside, but I did get him to talk to a guy named Tai for a while, which seemed to contribute to the old fellow buying a plantain. And then another customer who’d gone over to talk to Marm earlier while he was playing chess with Victor, Scarlet, bought another one right after, so I guess the robot inspires people to buy bananas. XD I eventually just let him mop the puddle, then told him to start recharging while he was out there because he wasn’t a fan of all the people anyway
VI. After some confusion about who was ringing up who because Victor insisted on walking all the way downstairs despite me canceling the “make waffles” interaction he had to ring someone up, Smiler eventually rang up a lady named Aleah (not the hermit, someone else) for a box of canned peas and a guy named Masara for some watermelon conserve, while Victor rang up Brent Hecking for a bottle of synthetic food tablets. Victor then tried to run off and make a hamburger on one of the outside grills until I went “just use Delicioso you fool” and had him conjure up some prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, which he went and ate on the edge of the big fountain I put on the side of the lot. *shrug* Okay then
VII. Speaking of the fountain, I caught Alice randomly playing in it as Victor was making his meal, and told her to go inside and ring up a guy named Tsutoma for a robot salvage part (first one we’ve sold!). She tried to slip back off to the fountain later, but then ended up doing something useful and emptying the trash instead. And then licked herself clean out there as she was getting a little manky and it was out of view of the judgmental customers. XD
VIII. While all this was going on, I woke up Marm to help Smiler with ringing up more people – he rang up a lady named Martina for some pumpkin conserve, while Smiler rang up a returning Leila for a jar of blueberry jam (she just can’t stay away from them!). Meanwhile, in the background, someone named Raven bought an egg, a returning Brant Hecking got a Gutsberry, and a lady named Mabel some chocolate milk. Talk about things just flying off the shelves!
IX. And finally, once he was done with his dinner, Victor rang up a guy named Masato for some canned fishcakes, while Smiler rang up a guy named Omar for some beeswax. All while Marm watched TV in the break room, Alice hung out by the trash can licking herself, and Thorne Bailey lingered by the robotics shelves attracting paparazzi and talking to fans.
Yeah, as you might imagine, at that point, I was done, and so were my Sims. Smiler officially closed up shop at 8 PM, right after ringing up Omar. As for the stats, our quartet had 19 total sales today, for a total profit of $996 – yeah, while there was a lot of buying going on, a lot of it was for pretty cheap items. *shrug* As I have said multiple times before, they do NOT need the money!
G) With the selling day finally done, I had Smiler take a moment to tune up Marm (whose reliability was slowly failing) while Victor and Alice cleaned up all the out-of-stock signs around the store, then I sent everyone home by 9 PM. Victor was promptly sent to bed, while Alice finished off the final bites of her spinach frittata before it went bad (as she could super-speed her way to it faster than it could spoil) before joining him. Smiler, feeling flirty thanks to the nearness of their partner, wandered into the living room to sculpt the bonsai there into a heart, while Marm cleaned up Alice’s plate for her, took a moment to pet Shock (making friends with the cat), then flew outside to rake up all the leaves falling around the property, with a quick break to feed Toothy. *nods* Good robot. I thus sent Smiler to play chess once they were done with the bonsai (mostly because they’d swapped moods from Flirty to Focused) and prepared to end the day –
H) And then I noticed that the ENTIRE FUCKING WIND FARM was broken again. *sigh* Cue me waking Victor up to Repairio the lot of them, and Alice waking up in turn to react to his magic skills. I mean, they both did already have full energy, sooo… I sent Alice downstairs to read a werewolf book (she wanted to read a book as a want, and I figured I might as well try to unlock the werewolf power that lets her read secret werewolf writings), had Marm pause in his raking to recharge some more, then set Victor on upgrading one of the upstairs bathroom sinks with an automatic soap dispenser, with the playsession ACTUALLY ending shortly after in-game midnight, with him completing the upgrade and getting maxed Handiness skill! Yay! XD
Whew – that was a lot, wasn’t it? And I can’t say I’m very impressed with Marm yet as a member of the family – like, I know part of it is me not being used to controlling another Sim, especially not a Servo, but he seems to lose charge pretty fast, and take a pretty decent amount of time to charge up when I do power him down. Meaning there’s good chunks of time where he’s just not doing anything. And I didn’t think that “enhancement data” thing would take so long either. Hmmmm...still, I need to give him a fair shake. Maybe he’ll impress me more when I come back to the family once all my mods are updated post-patch. Fingers crossed!
Writing: Decided to get this sorted right after lunch, since after having food is when my brain tends to work the best during the early days of my period – got a good chunk done editing the beginning of Chapter 3 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” with Alice having just unpacked her (admittedly minimal) stuff and helping Victor get in all his things. Which includes his Bio-Bot butterfly toy robots, which he was a little shy about until Alice started showing a genuine interest. He’ll explain momentarily that he’s not used to people WANTING to see them – his mother never really approved of them, and he never got the chance to talk about them much with Victoria, who never got to see his room and watched different shows. But yes, off to a solid start on the next chapter.
YouTube: Once again, started later and took longer than I hoped, but I got everything watched that I wanted to get watched –
A) First up, the last thing I had to get out of my Watch Later this weekend – “7 Spiritual Sequels that Embarrassed Big Publishers: Commenter Edition!” Featuring Mike and Ellen talking about yet more games that serve as unofficial sequels/remakes to other popular titles published by companies that didn’t do anything good with said titles. Or, well, MAY still be doing something good with said titles – but Story of Seasons (aka Harvest Moon) is never going to match the success of one Stardew Valley. But hey, SoS, don’t take it too hard – at least you’re not SimCity (2013) getting surpassed in pretty much all ways by Cities Skylines, or the mobile Dungeon Keeper reboot getting blown out of the water by War For The Overworld’s superior dungeon management. And at least your publisher never published a game about the nuclear apocalypse and then sat on it for years, refusing to do anything with it beyond make one shitty sequel, causing the developers who actually made it, Interplay, to release their own version of the Wasteland, a little game called Fallout… Yeah, uh, this video could basically be called “EA Fucks Up: The List.” XD
B) And second up, the daily Subs video from GrayStillPlays – “I destroyed reality using pencils,” aka Gray plays Long Pencil Run! This is one of those runner games where you have to make your running “thing” as big as possible before you hit the finish line – as per the title, you are a pencil, and you must get all the various height and width-increasing bonuses so you hit the finish line as tall and wide as possible. So you can then spend all of that height and girth scribbling out a famous painting, like the Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, or Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Because this game is weird. XD Gray had some fun trying to get his pencil to ridiculous proportions, but the real amusement value of the video was in him bitching about how he wanted stupid anime girl art instead of famous paintings at the end, and admitting he knew nothing about art and couldn’t name any of the paintings if he tried (for example, he misidentified Starry Night as a Monet). So naturally the comments are taking it upon themselves to educate him. XD Maybe spend five minutes Googling before making the video next time, Gray!
Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with the GrayStillPlays compilation “I spent two hours clicking so you don't have to!” I got through the rest of the “shove as much food down your gullet as possible” game (Gray managing to get his guy all the way up to being a cape-wearing weirdo stuffing giant “King Broccolis” down his gullet), the entirety of the related “shove as many DRINKS down your gullet as possible” (Gray got his dude kicked out of all the “free refill” places and leveled up his drink power so far he crashed the game), and I’m currently in the “planet clicker” game (where you must upgrade your planets with farms, factories, oil mines, and “Marsian Technology” to produce energy to unlock more planets and more stuff to produce more energy). I suspect this and Gray’s Cookie Clicker episodes will take up the rest of the compilation, but we shall see...
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that, especially for the first day of my period. And now I have to get myself to bed so I can get some sleep before going back to work tomorrow. Hopefully there's nothing ridiculous waiting for me there... Night all!
