No Counters Monday

As our new cabinets are due to be installed on Wednesday, my parents did the final bits of demo work to get rid of the old ones today while I was at work -- we now have a table to hold all the necessary stuff for making food until such time as the cabinets are in and we can hopefully get some of our old counter on top of them. (Because we're only getting the CABINETS -- the COUNTER comes in ANOTHER two to four weeks! Kitchen renovation is fucking irritating.) So far the system is working, but -- meh. I am going to be SO GLAD when all this nonsense is over and we have real ovens and stoves and whatnot again.

Apart from that, some trouble sleeping last night when I went to bed, and a surprise rain shower this evening (we're trying to track down a drip in our bathroom ceiling fan), it was a pretty decent Monday --

Work – Another fairly quiet day, though as it turned out our outside processors put up a LOT of stuff while I was out Friday. Ended up spending pretty much the entire morning on the GL – and then, after lunch, was back to organizing my own e-mails. XD Eh, I’ve had much worse Mondays at work!

Beanbags – Check – certainly a nice enough day for them! And it proved to be a very egalitarian day for them too – I had a great first game; Dad dominated the second game; and Mom pulled out a last-minute win in the third game. Final scores were me W-2-3; Dad 3-W-2; Mom 2-3-W. Nice! :)

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, to finish off my James Turner High School Years Rags To Riches episode, and start on the next “OX Blades In The Dark” (as I will now be labeling it) score, “The Cab-Con Caper!” Here’s how those went down:

HSY RTR – Last eight or so minutes with Reginald Bigwallet was spent mainly watching James desperately trying to figure out the “Simfluencer” thing and how it worked in-game. Including making a business plan and taking it to “The Llama’s Den” (where Reginald didn’t do well) and drafting reviews of the homemade rocket school project he made in a blizzard on Easter (the first two, done while he was only partway through, didn’t go so hot; the last one, after it finally completed, was Outstanding and got published). He also got in a little more time with Sidney and posted some new business headshots. XD We’ll see if James has figured out any of this by the time I get to episode 10!

The Cab-Con Caper – Otherwise known as “Luke insists the gang complete ALL of the starter adventures he came up with, damn it.” XD This one involved Kasimir and Edvard (Johnny and Andy), who had been left behind to lock up their antique shop lair while Barnaby and Lilith, awash with pride over their success at stealing the anchor from the last score, took Zillah (and presumably them, once they’d locked up) for drinks. A knock on the door from the postman stopped Edvard and Kasimir’s locking-up, however, with Edvard cheerfully accepting the two packages under a false name (to the surprise of the postman, who was not used to being greeted with such, er, enthusiasm). He and Kasimir opened them to find a vase and a hammer; Edvard applied his vast scientific knowledge to this conundrum, then applied hammer to vase. XD Vase proved to have a bunch of silver coins in it (their cut of the sale of the anchor) and a note from their mysterious patron Eleanor, congratulating them on their successful scores, explaining her role as a fence for people with particularly unusual objects or information to move, and asking if they could get some such information for her – find out what the Clelland Company is “feeding that thing.” Kasimir and Edvard were briefly puzzled by this, until a Luke-prompted jogging of the memory made Kasimir realize this was related to that Cab-Con event in their notes. Seems the Clelland Company has debuted something rather important on the cab-driving stage – a new and hardier kind of goat! (Goats are the preferred beasts of burden in the Blades In The Dark setting, you see. The horses are too busy knocking on doors, if you believe Luke’s attempts to simulate a knock by clicking his tongue. XD) And what Eleanor wants to know is what they’re giving it to MAKE it such an awesome goat. Edvard admitted that he’d been extremely keen on going, and – after confirming with Luke that it was possible for a non-cab-driver to attend (it was – members of the public could apply for tickets with a fee; exhibitors got in with a pass) – revealed that he’d gotten some tickets for himself and his assistant, Aloysius! And he was only too happy to let Kasimir pose as said assistant to get in, as Aloysius had dropped his favorite “retort” (apparently some sort of baked good, I’m not entirely sure I heard him correctly). Luke promptly made it canon that, during the events of this whole score, poor Aloysius was waiting by the door, eager to hit Cab-Con before it closed. XD

Anyway – it was the last day of Cab-Con, so the two had to hurry if they wanted to make it there in time. Kasimir kind of set the tone for the start of the score by asking why Edvard kept glaring at certain inventions along the way, leading him to another rant about his hated rival Astor and how he is a liar and a cheat and a fraud and all those fun things. XD And indeed, Luke ended up rolling poorly for their engagement roll (even with Johnny bullshitting that they were hitting the company where they were exposed because the goat they needed to examine was on display). The result was, when they went to present their tickets, Kasimir accidentally pulled out one of his blades too, causing it to flip in the air and land point-down in the desk. Edvard promptly tried to pretend it was a “science knife,” for science, but the ticket-taker explained there was a strict “no weapons” policy at the con and they would have to go through the “extra security” line now. They went over to said line, where the guard insisted that they hand over ALL of their kit – that is, stripping them of basically their entire loadout. And while he didn’t have a metal detector to back him up, he did have a guy CALLED “Metal” who was doing some pretty thorough pat-downs. Kasimir decided to surrender all weapons and suchlike, but was able to convince the guy to let him keep his cane (secretly an unusual weapon) – Edvard, meanwhile, was willing to give up just about everything BUT his tinkering tools, because, well, how could THOSE be considered weapons? The guard was unmoved by his pleas, so Kasimir took him aside a bit and spun a bullshit story about how it was his boss’s birthday, and how he’d gotten him a special ticket to a display where he could tinker with some new kinds of pocket watch, and how it would mean a lot to him to use his own tools, and how he was putting some money in the guy’s hand to make this happen. XD The guy was like “yeah, great sob story” but accepted the bribe and turned to okay the tools –

Turns out Edvard had already thrown them and his alchemical bandoleer into a shadowy corner just past Metal while they were distracted. XD The guard was able to spot the tools in said corner, and Edvard claimed that they must have fallen off the desk and been kicked there. The guard was like “a little something for me to believe that?” – fortunately, Kasimir nailed a Sway roll to intimidate the guy and point out he’d already GOTTEN his bribe, and the guard let them through. So Kasimir is down to only his cane, and Edvard, thanks to his quick thinking, his tinkering tools and his bandoleer. Hopefully that will be enough to carry them through the score! I left it off with them actually entering the con, and Edvard getting excited at all the fun things on display – like the penny-penny, the bicycle with two GIANT wheels! (Or is it a farthing-farthing?) We’ll see how distracted he gets by silly sciencey things next time!

2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – having defeated Jezebel and bluffed her way past the front desk again (claiming the battle was just a sisterly fight that turned a bit destructive), Alice has made it back to the Last Round to report her success. Damsel was actually a bit impressed, but also let her know that they’ve killed ANOTHER of the cult in a different part of the city, meaning that this thing is spread pretty far and wide. Meaning Alice DEFINITELY needs some better weapons. . .next time, I think she’ll get pointed in the direction of one Fat Larry, and also learn about a certain annoying ghoul who needs dealing with. . .

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – easy two-in, two-out today –

A) First up tonight, we had Call Me Kevin and “Beating the Minecraft Zombie Apocalypse Mod!” Yes, this was apparently the conclusion to his little miniseries about the Minecraft Zombie Apocalypse Mod, and he wanted to go out with the best base he could make! This involved such activities as luring more sheep into his new upstairs pen, getting the basement sheep upstairs so they could also “enjoy” said pen, and shearing them all to create carpet as a weird fence topper that he could jump up on but they couldn’t; going hunting in the wild for a swamp biome (passing by a desert village full of trapped villagers on the way – Kevin couldn’t recall if he’d tormented them previously or not), creating a little tree fort overnight to survive the blood moon, then hunting down slimes so he could make sticky blocks; using those sticky blocks to redo his crusher so he could smash zombies and gather their rotten flesh (as per the suggestions in his comments), and then redoing it again when the crusher kept killing itself instead of zombies; eventually redoing the layout of the outside moat (sneaking into Creative Mode to do so) and fixing his bridges so he had a proper singular front entrance with a drop into the lava for the zombies; creating an entertainment room with couches and a TV (showing nothing but a gif of Sans dancing as that was the only one he had that was the right size); and gushing over the cool stone paths that the mod provided as he settled in to live out his life in the apocalypse, surrounded by lava and suffering and wearing a cool hat. :p Ah – living the dream. XD

B) And then it was over to GrayStillPlays and “I went to a school with 100% death rate,” aka Gray Plays Scary School! This is one of those awful mobile games where you have to make the right choices to advance the “story” – and the story in this case is that, during a game of spin-the-bottle after class with your friends, the player character is dared to summon a ghost in the school, and shenanigans result. Mostly because the ghost they summon is nasty and wants to kill the entire planet. Starting with your character and their friends. Trust me, the bodies rapidly start hitting the floor after your first friend, Kim, is possessed and killed, and you bring your mutual crush Dave into the circle. . . Gray was deeply amused by all of it, talking about how you should NEVER bring a UV light into a school because you’ll probably see all SORTS of things that you don’t want to see, and trying his damndest to get everyone killed (generally by flirting inappropriately with the ghost). Which – he succeeded in! By the end of Episode 1 of this game, the ghost has triumphed and all of your original characters, save one (the blue-haired girl noped out early), is dead and being floated toward their pre-prepared graves! Yaaay, kill ‘em all, w000~ XD Maybe we’ll get lucky and Gray will play Episode 2 (if it exists) and help cause even MORE ghost murder!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – did a quick draft of a post for this Thursday, featuring one of the Valicer snippets (well, technically it’s PRE-Valicer officially, but it’s got the vibe) I’ve written for my HypnoSnippet Archive. Because, well, this week is the Love Day Double Date update from the Chill Save, and I’m just feeling my odd little OTP. XD We’ll see if anyone else likes it, or if I’m howling into the void. :p

And that's about it for the day -- and now to go to bed and prepare to do it all again tomorrow! Meh. . . Night all!