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Happy Fourth of July (Observed)!
Jul. 5th, 2021 11:08 pmYes, as the final day of my long weekend, today is the day everyone in RI got off because of actual Independence Day being on a Sunday. We spent the majority of it at my aunt and uncle's, having lunch and playing some beanbags -- I actually threw twice as much as anyone else because everyone decided I should be on both the "home" team of my aunt and uncle and the "away" team of my parents. Not that it particularly helped me -- the beanbags they have are much heavier, and they play on their driveway, so the boards shift a hell of a lot more when the bags hit them. I DID score a seven at one point, at least? And me and my parents played well enough that we were able to beat my aunt and uncle in four games out of five. *shrug* So I guess I'm better than I think!
Anyway, apart from eating quite a lot of vegetarian food (chips and hummus dip, corn and bean salad, stuff like that) and some lemon cake and fruit, I managed the following:
1. Edit some more on "Londerland Bloodlines": Check! Decided the best way to handle this one would be to do it before we left for my aunt’s – then it wouldn’t be hanging over my head. Alice has successfully broken into Dr. St. Martin’s office (though she is concerned over the lack of staff around. . .and annoyed that she currently can’t pick locks while invisible. You’re not QUITE that good at Obfuscate yet, Alice!) and gotten into his e-mails with Cheshire’s riddling help. Right now all she’s going to learn is that St. Martin’s having an affair with a nurse, but more useful information will be provided shortly. . .
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs – James, Kevin, Gray: Check! Caught up with everything from them for the past couple of days, yay~
A) Started with James Turner – and the first video I actually got in before we left for my aunt’s as well! We had –
I. Renovating one of his old builds! Specifically, he redid Lady Bigwallet II’s old mansion to update its old, “hacky” method of split-leveling (using foundations and making sure the area isn’t really a room and whatnot) in favor of updating it with actual platforms. It was a bit tricky – especially when James decided to start playing around with a few of the OTHER rooms as well and trying to make fun-shaped platform stairs and the like – but he eventually got something that looked good (with a new big sectional couch and a proper TV stand and a homemade bookshelf from counters) and was usable (as tested by Father Winter – no, really, he grabbed the standard Father Winter Sim, Clement Frost, to go around and make sure everything was all right). It was a fun little video, and James indicated he wanted to go back to other older builds and redo them with the new tools as well (such as his Alpine Mountain home, currently suspended on rocks – though he thinks he might hold off until the release of Cottage Living, as that will finally give us the opportunity to create our own ponds). I’m game!
II. “Rags to Redecoration, Part 19!” Caught up with Hazel after Portal Reloaded (below) and before supper. James started off the episode with a quick bit of basement renovation (making the window wells smaller with platforms, and planning out spaces for a bedroom, en-suite bathroom, and walk-in wardrobe down there so Hazel’s upstairs bedroom could be turned into an office or something), then picked out a gym renovation (headed by Tatiana Goth, relationship to main Goth family unknown) for Hazel’s next gig. Turned out that didn’t start until Monday, though, so Hazel spent her weekend –
a. Trying to train her very stubborn Chow Chow Hagrid, who disdained her corrections to the point they lost enough friendship to become mere acquaintances. Fortunately, Hazel was able to turn things around via walks and repeated trainings on Sunday, successfully getting the dog to stop drinking out of the toilet, pee outside, and play fetch.
b. Hanging out with new love interest Hanna – Hanna in fact called Hazel for a date while she was out running with Hagrid on Saturday morning! Hazel had to decline at the time because her energy was in the toilet, but called her back once her needs were better and took her to the lounge James built in Mt. Komorebi. The date went – well enough; for some reason Hanna was Very Sad, and things got awkward at the end when Hanna refused Hazel’s attempt at a kiss. But the date was still scored as Silver, and Hazel dropped by her house on Sunday to chat a bit and informally “apologize” for misreading the signals. :p And then Hanna called her up for another date, making James complain she was getting clingy. XD
After all that, Hazel finally got to her gig, where Tatiana told her she liked the color blue, Queen Anne décor, painting, and dancing! James decided that the best thing to do in that case would be to convert one side of the gym into a dance studio, taking out the weird “hallway to nowhere” and some changing rooms in the process. Not a lot of Queen Anne décor, admittedly, but he got a nice dance floor, plenty of speakers and stereos, and some nice jazzy paintings on the wall. Tatiana loved it, and Hazel headed home and paid her bills – very important as she’d lost her power due to non-bill-payment on Sunday. XD James instantly turned off her thermostat and started planning more gigs so Hazel had more than just $200 to her name. At least she’s friends with her dog again! XD
B) Then, after supper, it was time to catch up with Call Me Kevin –
I. Kevin plays TimeSplitters 2! A PS2 cult classic, apparently. It seems to be a first-person shooter set in a variety of weird time periods, with your character taking on time-appropriate appearances (or possibly possessing people) to collect time crystals and shoot up anyone in their way. Kevin played through 1990s Siberia (defeating a horde of zombies at a strange Soviet military base); 1932 Chicago (where he got involved in the business of Fat Tony, a gang boss); and 1895 Notre Dame (rescuing damsels and helping Quasimodo (here played by a garden gnome) escape this weird demon creature with his lady love). Very weird game, but certainly very creative and fun! I can see why people liked it! XD
II. Kevin plays Prison Tycoon! Because there’s not just ONE prison-management game on the block, oh no. Kevin chose to build his prison on a swamp for the chance to see Shrek, and proceeded to make the absolute filthiest prison you ever saw. Literally – one janitor for multiple complexes, and, by the end, thousands of garden gnomes. Kevin built two cells, made a cafeteria permanently dependent on understocked vending machines, created a “staring room” consisting of a couch and a poster (behind the couch), and tried zero-G therapy for the prisoners before realizing it was draining all his power all the time and switched to pole-dancing therapy. Yes, this is actually a thing in this game. And it actually really worked – by the end of the episode, he managed to rehabilitate four prisoners with it! Who knew? Anyway, the prison was a wreck and everyone was either escaping or being sent away for medical attention – but Kevin’s warden made a shit-ton of money and left before defaulting on his bank loan, so he sees it as a win! XD
C) And we finally wrapped up with GrayStillPlays –
I. Another GTA V stunt board, this time with the twist that the car involved was a remote-controlled monster truck! It weighed very little and went flying all over the board at the slightest provocation, as Gray found out to his extreme annoyance. He had to take this thing over various rainbows of pain (including a series of ramps that probably took him longer than he ever wants to admit), a series of “!” signs all moving just rapidly enough that you had to have the pattern EXACTLY to get across them (Gray, fortunately, is good at patterns), a jumble of planes with a final jump at the end that just did NOT want to work (apparently Gray was missing a boost? He eventually managed to launch himself at the right angle), and a final crawl over the roofs of dozens of fruit stands (his most hated enemy). He won, sure, but it was a HELL of a hard-fought win, poor bastard.
II. Fortunately for Gray, the next video was him abusing a game instead of the game abusing him – time for more Minecraft experiments! Today was sucking the DNA out of various mobs (ranging from bunnies and cows to Creepers and Withers) and shooting it back out again to spawn bigger and more powerful clones. He also had “Magical Mush” to just grow things to gigantic sizes. The end goal of his experiment today had him cloning a bunch of Piglins, then – when he got his Ender Pearls – blowing them up with a giant Creeper; fighting a bunch of Wither Skeletons he created for the purpose of creating a Wither to harvest DNA from; then setting his newly evolved super-Wither up against the Ender Dragon – and kicking her ass before either of them really knew what was happening. XD So he respawned her and force-fed her and the Endermen Magical Mush until everything was a terrifying clash of the titans. XD I already knew “bigger equals better” was the Gray way, but seriously now. XD
3. Work on tumblr queues for Wednesday: Check! Got the text ready for my Chill Save Wedding Update on Victor Luvs Alice, and started a Thursday post for later! Now I just have to remember to ACTUALLY PROPERLY SET UP MY QUEUE THIS WEEK. No more forgetting to switch how many posts go up which days!
4. OPTIONAL: Play a bit more Portal Reloaded: Check! After we got home from my aunt’s, I figured that since we’d be eating supper a little later given all we’d eaten there, I would be good to play roughly an hour’s worth of game. Got through chambers 20 and 21 – again, needed walkthroughs, but I had a reasonably good idea of what needed to be done before I did it, at least. It’s just hard to figure out where exactly to put the portals sometimes, or what needs to go when, basically. But I’m up to Chamber 22 now, which features turrets, bouncing cubes, and apparently having to funnel one of these cubes through a glass box onto a button. …you see why I’m using walkthroughs so often.
Additionally:
-->More haircut cleaning up from Mom – I cannot believe how crooked this woman apparently cut my damn hair. Everyone, avoid SuperCuts, I don’t think they do a particularly good job. This one certainly didn’t. :(
And that's about everything! Time to wrap everything up and head to bed -- I've got one day of work before my next day off, after all. :p Night all!
Anyway, apart from eating quite a lot of vegetarian food (chips and hummus dip, corn and bean salad, stuff like that) and some lemon cake and fruit, I managed the following:
1. Edit some more on "Londerland Bloodlines": Check! Decided the best way to handle this one would be to do it before we left for my aunt’s – then it wouldn’t be hanging over my head. Alice has successfully broken into Dr. St. Martin’s office (though she is concerned over the lack of staff around. . .and annoyed that she currently can’t pick locks while invisible. You’re not QUITE that good at Obfuscate yet, Alice!) and gotten into his e-mails with Cheshire’s riddling help. Right now all she’s going to learn is that St. Martin’s having an affair with a nurse, but more useful information will be provided shortly. . .
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs – James, Kevin, Gray: Check! Caught up with everything from them for the past couple of days, yay~
A) Started with James Turner – and the first video I actually got in before we left for my aunt’s as well! We had –
I. Renovating one of his old builds! Specifically, he redid Lady Bigwallet II’s old mansion to update its old, “hacky” method of split-leveling (using foundations and making sure the area isn’t really a room and whatnot) in favor of updating it with actual platforms. It was a bit tricky – especially when James decided to start playing around with a few of the OTHER rooms as well and trying to make fun-shaped platform stairs and the like – but he eventually got something that looked good (with a new big sectional couch and a proper TV stand and a homemade bookshelf from counters) and was usable (as tested by Father Winter – no, really, he grabbed the standard Father Winter Sim, Clement Frost, to go around and make sure everything was all right). It was a fun little video, and James indicated he wanted to go back to other older builds and redo them with the new tools as well (such as his Alpine Mountain home, currently suspended on rocks – though he thinks he might hold off until the release of Cottage Living, as that will finally give us the opportunity to create our own ponds). I’m game!
II. “Rags to Redecoration, Part 19!” Caught up with Hazel after Portal Reloaded (below) and before supper. James started off the episode with a quick bit of basement renovation (making the window wells smaller with platforms, and planning out spaces for a bedroom, en-suite bathroom, and walk-in wardrobe down there so Hazel’s upstairs bedroom could be turned into an office or something), then picked out a gym renovation (headed by Tatiana Goth, relationship to main Goth family unknown) for Hazel’s next gig. Turned out that didn’t start until Monday, though, so Hazel spent her weekend –
a. Trying to train her very stubborn Chow Chow Hagrid, who disdained her corrections to the point they lost enough friendship to become mere acquaintances. Fortunately, Hazel was able to turn things around via walks and repeated trainings on Sunday, successfully getting the dog to stop drinking out of the toilet, pee outside, and play fetch.
b. Hanging out with new love interest Hanna – Hanna in fact called Hazel for a date while she was out running with Hagrid on Saturday morning! Hazel had to decline at the time because her energy was in the toilet, but called her back once her needs were better and took her to the lounge James built in Mt. Komorebi. The date went – well enough; for some reason Hanna was Very Sad, and things got awkward at the end when Hanna refused Hazel’s attempt at a kiss. But the date was still scored as Silver, and Hazel dropped by her house on Sunday to chat a bit and informally “apologize” for misreading the signals. :p And then Hanna called her up for another date, making James complain she was getting clingy. XD
After all that, Hazel finally got to her gig, where Tatiana told her she liked the color blue, Queen Anne décor, painting, and dancing! James decided that the best thing to do in that case would be to convert one side of the gym into a dance studio, taking out the weird “hallway to nowhere” and some changing rooms in the process. Not a lot of Queen Anne décor, admittedly, but he got a nice dance floor, plenty of speakers and stereos, and some nice jazzy paintings on the wall. Tatiana loved it, and Hazel headed home and paid her bills – very important as she’d lost her power due to non-bill-payment on Sunday. XD James instantly turned off her thermostat and started planning more gigs so Hazel had more than just $200 to her name. At least she’s friends with her dog again! XD
B) Then, after supper, it was time to catch up with Call Me Kevin –
I. Kevin plays TimeSplitters 2! A PS2 cult classic, apparently. It seems to be a first-person shooter set in a variety of weird time periods, with your character taking on time-appropriate appearances (or possibly possessing people) to collect time crystals and shoot up anyone in their way. Kevin played through 1990s Siberia (defeating a horde of zombies at a strange Soviet military base); 1932 Chicago (where he got involved in the business of Fat Tony, a gang boss); and 1895 Notre Dame (rescuing damsels and helping Quasimodo (here played by a garden gnome) escape this weird demon creature with his lady love). Very weird game, but certainly very creative and fun! I can see why people liked it! XD
II. Kevin plays Prison Tycoon! Because there’s not just ONE prison-management game on the block, oh no. Kevin chose to build his prison on a swamp for the chance to see Shrek, and proceeded to make the absolute filthiest prison you ever saw. Literally – one janitor for multiple complexes, and, by the end, thousands of garden gnomes. Kevin built two cells, made a cafeteria permanently dependent on understocked vending machines, created a “staring room” consisting of a couch and a poster (behind the couch), and tried zero-G therapy for the prisoners before realizing it was draining all his power all the time and switched to pole-dancing therapy. Yes, this is actually a thing in this game. And it actually really worked – by the end of the episode, he managed to rehabilitate four prisoners with it! Who knew? Anyway, the prison was a wreck and everyone was either escaping or being sent away for medical attention – but Kevin’s warden made a shit-ton of money and left before defaulting on his bank loan, so he sees it as a win! XD
C) And we finally wrapped up with GrayStillPlays –
I. Another GTA V stunt board, this time with the twist that the car involved was a remote-controlled monster truck! It weighed very little and went flying all over the board at the slightest provocation, as Gray found out to his extreme annoyance. He had to take this thing over various rainbows of pain (including a series of ramps that probably took him longer than he ever wants to admit), a series of “!” signs all moving just rapidly enough that you had to have the pattern EXACTLY to get across them (Gray, fortunately, is good at patterns), a jumble of planes with a final jump at the end that just did NOT want to work (apparently Gray was missing a boost? He eventually managed to launch himself at the right angle), and a final crawl over the roofs of dozens of fruit stands (his most hated enemy). He won, sure, but it was a HELL of a hard-fought win, poor bastard.
II. Fortunately for Gray, the next video was him abusing a game instead of the game abusing him – time for more Minecraft experiments! Today was sucking the DNA out of various mobs (ranging from bunnies and cows to Creepers and Withers) and shooting it back out again to spawn bigger and more powerful clones. He also had “Magical Mush” to just grow things to gigantic sizes. The end goal of his experiment today had him cloning a bunch of Piglins, then – when he got his Ender Pearls – blowing them up with a giant Creeper; fighting a bunch of Wither Skeletons he created for the purpose of creating a Wither to harvest DNA from; then setting his newly evolved super-Wither up against the Ender Dragon – and kicking her ass before either of them really knew what was happening. XD So he respawned her and force-fed her and the Endermen Magical Mush until everything was a terrifying clash of the titans. XD I already knew “bigger equals better” was the Gray way, but seriously now. XD
3. Work on tumblr queues for Wednesday: Check! Got the text ready for my Chill Save Wedding Update on Victor Luvs Alice, and started a Thursday post for later! Now I just have to remember to ACTUALLY PROPERLY SET UP MY QUEUE THIS WEEK. No more forgetting to switch how many posts go up which days!
4. OPTIONAL: Play a bit more Portal Reloaded: Check! After we got home from my aunt’s, I figured that since we’d be eating supper a little later given all we’d eaten there, I would be good to play roughly an hour’s worth of game. Got through chambers 20 and 21 – again, needed walkthroughs, but I had a reasonably good idea of what needed to be done before I did it, at least. It’s just hard to figure out where exactly to put the portals sometimes, or what needs to go when, basically. But I’m up to Chamber 22 now, which features turrets, bouncing cubes, and apparently having to funnel one of these cubes through a glass box onto a button. …you see why I’m using walkthroughs so often.
Additionally:
-->More haircut cleaning up from Mom – I cannot believe how crooked this woman apparently cut my damn hair. Everyone, avoid SuperCuts, I don’t think they do a particularly good job. This one certainly didn’t. :(
And that's about everything! Time to wrap everything up and head to bed -- I've got one day of work before my next day off, after all. :p Night all!
