Late Start, Late Finish

As in, we had our delay this morning (nothing more than the guaranteed hour as the roads were in a much better state after a night of sanding and plowing), but I ended up getting home later because I had to stop for gas and fill up the car, which was a nightmare. I ended up abandoning my first choice gas station because it was too crowded and too few people were wearing masks -- never even got out of the car there! And then at the second one I was fighting with the card reader for a moment because I didn't know how it worked. . . I GOT the gas, and the car is now full and won't need refueling for a while, but what a pain in the ass. Ugh.

Anyway -- let's take a look at the to-do list for today, shall we?

1. Continue working on the Valice Multiverse "information page" stuff: Check – got the “Marie Multipack” section done, which is basically just a list of all of her verses that we’ve done threads together in. Felt it was more convenient to keep them all in one place than clutter up my page with her stuff. XD That’s basically all of this done! Now I just have to do some edits and clean up my tag list. . .

2. Keep up best I can with YouTube Subscriptions: Check, mostly because I had that little bit of extra time on my side --

A) Hour delay this morning? I decided to be naughty and watch James Turner’s latest “3 Brothers” episode with breakfast! XD As usual, things did not go according to James’s initial plan – what was intended as a Candle-focused episode (Candle being the youngest of the three, a teenager with plans to become a famous author and university grad – also the alien, taking after dad Ambrose) rapidly became the Candle-and-Isaiah show as they both had to head to Sulani for work-related reasons – Isaiah to do some work-from-home tasks for his Conservationist career; Candle to catch a mahi mahi fish for an Odd Job. Isaiah was successful in surveying his plants and cleaning up messes, but Candle was unable to catch his fish and ended up getting stuck on the island where he went to catch it until he peed himself, as James wouldn’t let him go home until he went back to the mainland. James is a cruel god sometimes. A cruel and funny god. XD Isaiah also got another side trip a bit later on – a quick run to Forgotten Hollow to catch some more fish for plasma packs, and pick some plasma fruit to plant on the edges of their garden. Gotta manage the thirst need somehow!

Back home, James had enabled Heroic mode for their haunted house, so Brodie spent his time communicating with specters and selling his soul to them – an act that ages you up, even if you are a vampire! Some creepy hands appeared in the kitchen too, leading to Brodie hiding under the covers in terror. XD Fortunately, Guidry finally showed up as he and Isaiah went to the local plaza to suck a few people’s plasma – Brodie talked to him about leveling up his medium skill and the specters and whatnot, while Isaiah (who was supposed to be the “good” vampire looking for a cure) embraced his heritage and his new Grand Master status with an Atrocious reputation (from drinking people’s blood unwillingly), an Undead Aura (because people aren’t going to like him anyway), and Uncontrollable Hissing (again, because people aren’t going to like him anyway), but with more power and skill gain at night and less vampire energy used. *shrug* Whatever works for him!

And then, when they went back home, they found the place infested with mischievous specters, evil energies, and goo creature puddles that everyone – even Guidry, who’s a GHOST – kept slipping in. XD On the plus side, Candle finished his first children’s book? XD And Brodie got his medium skill up to level 3, which is probably more relevant. Looking forward to more chaos, especially since James said Bonehilda was probably gonna make an appearance at some point. . .

B) Then, this evening, we had Dawn of Man from Call Me Kevin! This is supposed to be one of those civilization-building Sims where you bring a tribe of Neolithic peoples up to prosperity and scientific advancement. Kevin immediately banished the tribe’s children to faraway lands, forced everyone to focus on building a skull pole in the middle of the huts over a crafting hut or food storage, went on a killing spree to take out the local wildlife (confusing a woolly rhino with a boar in the process – he did realize eventually), taught his people to be bloodthirsty killers with bone spears, then taught them how to domesticate dogs – and then was surprised when they killed said dogs for meat, and ended by ignoring all their pleas that they had no food and watching them all starve to death. Well, not all – there were three people left when he ended the video. XD Classic Kevin in a survival situation – prioritize the cool thing to build over basic needs, be as bloodthirsty as possible, and reap the consequences! And make dumb jokes about it. Very important. XD

C) And then GrayStillPlays GTA V impossible stunt races! Today’s race – wall rides from Hell. Like, literally from Hell. Mostly because they focused on a bit of wall-riding that Gray hasn’t really had much chance to practice in past episodes – the wall TRANSFER, where you go from one wall (or sometimes one SIDE of a wall) to the other. Gray spent a LOT of time flying off into the wild blue yonder or the deep blue ocean after not getting a transfer just right. And of course the creator made it so he had very little wall space to actually master these transfers. . . He did in the end, though! As usual, the impossible board has been trumped by Gray. At the expense of his sanity. XD

3. Get in a workout: Check! Another bike ride, another chunk of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! I caught back up with Grills and Nick working their way through the Museum of Witchcraft – the Deathclaw who had had her eggs stolen was a Chameleon Deathclaw in this instance! Jon was able to take it down without much issue, and took the remaining pristine egg for later. With that portion of the “Devil’s Due” quest done, he and Nick headed back outside. . .

To find a settler sprinting away for no apparent reason. And when Grills tried to speak to him, a box asked him if he wanted to “free the prisoner.” A baffled Jon said yes, causing the settler to thank him and sprint away again, and Jon to send Grills to find out what the hell was going on. Turns out there were a couple of Super Mutants nearby – I think something went weird with a random event you can get where you get a few of them escorting a settler home to dismember and devour. O.o At any rate, Grills killed them –

And immediately got promoted to ask the “Front Desk Assistant” for a key. A deeply puzzled Jon found that this meant going to the nearby Sandy Coves Convalescent Home and getting a key from the Mr. Handy running the front desk (Grills bluffed that he was a new resident). Turns out this place had a thing for sedating and drugging its patients, as the loot Grills found inside was mainly drugs in various safes, along with a bunch of frag grenades and whatnot in the room of one troublesome Gladys. Also, some synths showed up and killed all the robots for no good reason. Oookay. . .

After that was a tangle with some mirelurks, where Jon intended to do the mini-quest Barney Rook, local militia, assigns the Sole Survivor – but it seems Barney was just inside the blast radius of Jon’s terrifyingly-powerful explosives, and ended up dead. Oops. Jon took his basement key, raided his storeroom, got some sleep, dropped a save, then headed onward, up the coast. He and Nick passed the ruins of a pre-War cafe (with a safe with no key), then took a moment to return the egg to the Deathclaw nest before continuing onward along the road. They also ran into some raiders – but to Jon’s confusion, they were friendly. So he launched a grenade at them and started shooting until they were all dead anyway – never noticing one of them recognizing Nick. Yup, good old -1 Perception Jon completely screwed up a unique random encounter you get with Nicky, whoops. XD Honestly, that and him being completely confused ended being the theme of the second half of this episode. . . I left it with him exploring the remains of a Gunner base after some Brotherhood members cleared it out for him. One day we’re going to get to Far Harbor!

So that's all good, at least. Pair that with a decent-enough day at work, it being my Mom's birthday (so cupcakes! Om nom), and getting a bit of my Victor Luvs Alice queue sorted on tumblr, and I guess it really hasn't been that bad a day. But since I'm PMSing like mad, my base state right now is low-level rage. *sigh* Really wish the stupid period would just COME already. . .I want to be over this twitchiness and grumpiness.

Welp, can't do anything to make it come faster, so better just wrap up with my DW comments and head to bed. Two more days to get through. . . Night all!