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A Surprisingly Okay Wednesday
Feb. 8th, 2023 11:40 pmYeah, my period is giving me the usual grief (no consistent body temperature, tiredness, irritability), and traffic to and from work wasn't great, but the bulk of the day wasn't actually that bad --
Work – Not as horrible as I feared it would be! Yes, it was busy and I had plenty to catch up on, BUT there weren’t as many calls waiting for me as I thought, and as it turned out my coworkers actually managed to handle a bunch of stuff in the two days that they worked and I didn’t. Spent most of my day catching up on various e-mails, calling people back about credit card stuff (most of them got back to me), and rescheduling the call I missed last week with the credit card people. Like I said, busy, but I was expecting a lot worse. I will take this.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark – “The Astor Gambit!” Picked up again with Edvard and Zillah and their fellow interviewees being taken into a room for making things – specifically, a room for THEM to make things! As it turns out, the first phase of the interview was for all of the interviewees to make something from the materials provided (which included various bits of tubing, wood, metal, and a weakened spirit in a jar). Edvard asked what the itinerary for the rest of the day was, and the woman in charge of the group, Peggy, let him know that generally, after the “innovention” test, three people would be picked to go and have an informal chat with Peggy and her colleagues, and then whoever impressed them most there got to meet all the department heads and such. But that was only if you did well enough with your “innovention,” so chop chop, everyone, you have fifteen minutes! Edvard promptly Studied his items and came up with an idea for a glorious lightbox where you could watch the weakened spirit put on plays for your amusement, such as that of an ogre and his talking donkey friend, while Zillah began pounding on a piece of sheet metal with a wrench. XD She attempted to get the lay of the land while she did that, but a bad roll meant she only spotted one other door out of the place. Edvard whispered to her while getting more supplies that she should use one of his inventions to pass the test, and she picked out the incandescent (or “candy,” as she called it) light bulb to present.
Some minutes later, time was up, and presenting began! After a few entries from the NPCs (including one who who’d basically invented a Roomba – unfortunately, one of the springs came loose and stabbed him in the eye – and one who’d tried to make a megaphone but forgot to calibrate the spirit correctly), Zillah came up and presented “her” light bulb, with Edvard trying hard to help her sell it by pointing out what it was called and what it did. :p Unfortunately, Zillah did NOT roll well enough to get Peggy on board, who noted that she could NOT have made that with the materials provided. Zillah was promptly dragged off by security for cheating, shouting about how she should have stuck with banging on a piece of sheet metal. XD She did try to take advantage of her situation, at least, by waiting until she and her guard were on a back staircase alone, then wanging him over the head with the wrench she’d taken from her workbench – and thanks to a good Skirmish roll, that worked out wonderfully!
What didn’t work out wonderfully was basically everything ELSE that happened after that point. XD Luke warned her that people came up and down the staircase she was on all the time, so she poked her head into the nearest door, which just so happened to lead into the Defense wing of the building. Her attempts to scan for a bathroom were unsuccessful at first (Luke insisting all the doors were unmarked and didn’t have keyholes), but fortunately she remembered the map that Wester had drawn them and realized that this floor looked identical to the one they wanted to be on (Security, one floor up), and thus the layout was likely identical too – it’s what she would do if she was building a place like this! So she was able to infer where the bathroom was and drag her unconscious guard there to prop him up on a toilet and lock him in a stall. However, a poor roll meant that while she was able to do this and vault over the top of the stall –
She did so JUST as another guard came out of another stall. And as the original guard started to stir. She attempted to use the light bulb to glass the first guard, but a horrible roll (double ones! Jane is lucky that Blades in the Dark doesn’t have critical fails) meant he didn’t even flinch and started wrestling her into a half-Nelson hold, giving her a twisted shoulder (Level One harm – on the plus side, Luke realized that he hadn’t given Zillah a chance to heal from her previous harm before (Level Two, Piledriven) and to make up for the lack of downtime action allowed her to drop THAT to Level One harm before piling on the shoulder). Zillah managed to get free by running up a wall, flipping over the guard, and either scorpion-or-bicycle-kicking him (there was some debate as to which she could actually accomplish), kneeing him in the face, and then smashing him through a sink – but then the other guard burst out of his stall and came flying at her tiger-style. . .
And what was Edvard doing during all of this? Well, after deeply impressing Peggy with his “Lumiere – it’s not my name just the name of the product – Magic Lanthorn Box” and its ability to play Steampunk Shrek (Luke let him have an extra die to make it with the caveat that, if it worked, Astor would definitely steal the idea – Edvard went for it on the basis of “he’s stolen all my OTHER ideas”), he ended up the ONLY candidate to move to Round Two! With Peggy telling him that Amadeus Astor himself was in the building and was likely to stop by so he could see the innovention. Edvard managed to play it cool, though internally he was really sweating about being recognized by his hated rival. . .and he got much less cool as Peggy brought him to her office and started Round Two of the interview by asking him when he fell in love with Astor products. Cue Edvard praising Astor locks and how original Astor products are through gritted teeth. XD I suspect that what is going to happen here is either he’s going to explode into a rant about Astor products despite himself, or Astor is going to come in and NOT recognize him at all, which will set him off. We’ll see what happens tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen:” Check – after wrapping up their conversation with talking about how well she healed from Barkis’s shovel-stabbing (and how neither Victoria nor Emily think the less of her or Victor for ending HIM), Alice has made it inside the gas station – only to discover the cashier dead thanks to a robbery turned violent. Cue her feeling kind of sad and guilty because it’s a “revenge” mission, and she prefers when she arrives in time to actually SAVE someone. But a job is a job, and she’s just murdered the first guy who helped rob the place with a perfect knife throw to the throat. Not that she’s going to know there’s a second guy she needs to kill right away. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Er, about two-thirds check – Call Me Kevin surprised me with another upload today, breaking his new normal of “every other day.” Then again, it was Hitman: Freelancer, so maybe he was excited? *shrug* I got to the actual YouTubes too late to watch it, though, so I concentrated on the other, shorter stuff –
A) First up, Josh Way and “SKETCHY: Tom Cruise Running!” Which is basically exactly what it says on the tin – this is an early export from when he was learning how to use Procreate on his iPad, and he was doing a lot of celeb portraits and such, and when he came to Tom Cruise, he decided to do a couple of shots of him running. XD First one came out all right, second one – second one was a bit of a bitch, involving him changing the entire pose once, and then fixating on the right hand until he finally resorted to taking a picture of his OWN hand in the position he wanted and tracing over it. XD As I said in my comment, you ARE supposed to use reference for this shit! XD
B) And then we had GrayStillPlays and “Which cursed ramp gives you the highest jump in GTA 5?” But the cursed ramps weren’t built by Alex this time – or, at least, not Alex solely. First one was built by Danny (great to have you back, kid!), and the other three by Alex’s friend Petey. And oooh boy, were they all masterworks of pain... Danny’s board was a long fall from hell, with platforms that switched sides to block Gray’s path, a helicopter that he had to shoot down with a very specific car in order to clear a wall cutting him off from the rest of the board, random speed bumps and wind turbines and basically anything Danny could think of to knock him off before he could launch himself toward the checkpoint. Took Gray a good few tries and a few near misses, but he got there in the end! And then it was time for Petey’s boards, and WOW. Started off with a ramp made almost ENTIRELY of breakable glass, forcing Gray to drive relatively slowly in the go-kart to have any chance of making it down – while also having him pursued by cops in helicopters and dodging random planes. And windmills, of course. XD And then there was the HUMAN ramp, where Gray had to use a buggy to make it over a double set of human tightropes (broken up by mutant wind turbines made of wind turbines), then through a set of human canons before doing a final tightrope in to the check point. And then there was the BLOODY ramp, which he HAD to do in a hearse equipped with boosting powers, all while avoiding the random gravestones, coffins, and of course windmills put into his path before being allowed to rocket into space. The poor man was SUFFERING the whole time, and it was delightful. 10/10 Gray pain. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – one of the first things I did upon getting on Victor Luvs Alice was go to the queue and reset the speed to one post per day. Gotta make sure the correct posts fire on the correct days!
And that's been about it, apart from hot chocolate and chocolate biscotti for dessert. Because I'm on my period and that means I get cold really easily, damn it. XD And now it is time to retire and get ready to do it all again tomorrow! Night all!
Work – Not as horrible as I feared it would be! Yes, it was busy and I had plenty to catch up on, BUT there weren’t as many calls waiting for me as I thought, and as it turned out my coworkers actually managed to handle a bunch of stuff in the two days that they worked and I didn’t. Spent most of my day catching up on various e-mails, calling people back about credit card stuff (most of them got back to me), and rescheduling the call I missed last week with the credit card people. Like I said, busy, but I was expecting a lot worse. I will take this.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark – “The Astor Gambit!” Picked up again with Edvard and Zillah and their fellow interviewees being taken into a room for making things – specifically, a room for THEM to make things! As it turns out, the first phase of the interview was for all of the interviewees to make something from the materials provided (which included various bits of tubing, wood, metal, and a weakened spirit in a jar). Edvard asked what the itinerary for the rest of the day was, and the woman in charge of the group, Peggy, let him know that generally, after the “innovention” test, three people would be picked to go and have an informal chat with Peggy and her colleagues, and then whoever impressed them most there got to meet all the department heads and such. But that was only if you did well enough with your “innovention,” so chop chop, everyone, you have fifteen minutes! Edvard promptly Studied his items and came up with an idea for a glorious lightbox where you could watch the weakened spirit put on plays for your amusement, such as that of an ogre and his talking donkey friend, while Zillah began pounding on a piece of sheet metal with a wrench. XD She attempted to get the lay of the land while she did that, but a bad roll meant she only spotted one other door out of the place. Edvard whispered to her while getting more supplies that she should use one of his inventions to pass the test, and she picked out the incandescent (or “candy,” as she called it) light bulb to present.
Some minutes later, time was up, and presenting began! After a few entries from the NPCs (including one who who’d basically invented a Roomba – unfortunately, one of the springs came loose and stabbed him in the eye – and one who’d tried to make a megaphone but forgot to calibrate the spirit correctly), Zillah came up and presented “her” light bulb, with Edvard trying hard to help her sell it by pointing out what it was called and what it did. :p Unfortunately, Zillah did NOT roll well enough to get Peggy on board, who noted that she could NOT have made that with the materials provided. Zillah was promptly dragged off by security for cheating, shouting about how she should have stuck with banging on a piece of sheet metal. XD She did try to take advantage of her situation, at least, by waiting until she and her guard were on a back staircase alone, then wanging him over the head with the wrench she’d taken from her workbench – and thanks to a good Skirmish roll, that worked out wonderfully!
What didn’t work out wonderfully was basically everything ELSE that happened after that point. XD Luke warned her that people came up and down the staircase she was on all the time, so she poked her head into the nearest door, which just so happened to lead into the Defense wing of the building. Her attempts to scan for a bathroom were unsuccessful at first (Luke insisting all the doors were unmarked and didn’t have keyholes), but fortunately she remembered the map that Wester had drawn them and realized that this floor looked identical to the one they wanted to be on (Security, one floor up), and thus the layout was likely identical too – it’s what she would do if she was building a place like this! So she was able to infer where the bathroom was and drag her unconscious guard there to prop him up on a toilet and lock him in a stall. However, a poor roll meant that while she was able to do this and vault over the top of the stall –
She did so JUST as another guard came out of another stall. And as the original guard started to stir. She attempted to use the light bulb to glass the first guard, but a horrible roll (double ones! Jane is lucky that Blades in the Dark doesn’t have critical fails) meant he didn’t even flinch and started wrestling her into a half-Nelson hold, giving her a twisted shoulder (Level One harm – on the plus side, Luke realized that he hadn’t given Zillah a chance to heal from her previous harm before (Level Two, Piledriven) and to make up for the lack of downtime action allowed her to drop THAT to Level One harm before piling on the shoulder). Zillah managed to get free by running up a wall, flipping over the guard, and either scorpion-or-bicycle-kicking him (there was some debate as to which she could actually accomplish), kneeing him in the face, and then smashing him through a sink – but then the other guard burst out of his stall and came flying at her tiger-style. . .
And what was Edvard doing during all of this? Well, after deeply impressing Peggy with his “Lumiere – it’s not my name just the name of the product – Magic Lanthorn Box” and its ability to play Steampunk Shrek (Luke let him have an extra die to make it with the caveat that, if it worked, Astor would definitely steal the idea – Edvard went for it on the basis of “he’s stolen all my OTHER ideas”), he ended up the ONLY candidate to move to Round Two! With Peggy telling him that Amadeus Astor himself was in the building and was likely to stop by so he could see the innovention. Edvard managed to play it cool, though internally he was really sweating about being recognized by his hated rival. . .and he got much less cool as Peggy brought him to her office and started Round Two of the interview by asking him when he fell in love with Astor products. Cue Edvard praising Astor locks and how original Astor products are through gritted teeth. XD I suspect that what is going to happen here is either he’s going to explode into a rant about Astor products despite himself, or Astor is going to come in and NOT recognize him at all, which will set him off. We’ll see what happens tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen:” Check – after wrapping up their conversation with talking about how well she healed from Barkis’s shovel-stabbing (and how neither Victoria nor Emily think the less of her or Victor for ending HIM), Alice has made it inside the gas station – only to discover the cashier dead thanks to a robbery turned violent. Cue her feeling kind of sad and guilty because it’s a “revenge” mission, and she prefers when she arrives in time to actually SAVE someone. But a job is a job, and she’s just murdered the first guy who helped rob the place with a perfect knife throw to the throat. Not that she’s going to know there’s a second guy she needs to kill right away. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Er, about two-thirds check – Call Me Kevin surprised me with another upload today, breaking his new normal of “every other day.” Then again, it was Hitman: Freelancer, so maybe he was excited? *shrug* I got to the actual YouTubes too late to watch it, though, so I concentrated on the other, shorter stuff –
A) First up, Josh Way and “SKETCHY: Tom Cruise Running!” Which is basically exactly what it says on the tin – this is an early export from when he was learning how to use Procreate on his iPad, and he was doing a lot of celeb portraits and such, and when he came to Tom Cruise, he decided to do a couple of shots of him running. XD First one came out all right, second one – second one was a bit of a bitch, involving him changing the entire pose once, and then fixating on the right hand until he finally resorted to taking a picture of his OWN hand in the position he wanted and tracing over it. XD As I said in my comment, you ARE supposed to use reference for this shit! XD
B) And then we had GrayStillPlays and “Which cursed ramp gives you the highest jump in GTA 5?” But the cursed ramps weren’t built by Alex this time – or, at least, not Alex solely. First one was built by Danny (great to have you back, kid!), and the other three by Alex’s friend Petey. And oooh boy, were they all masterworks of pain... Danny’s board was a long fall from hell, with platforms that switched sides to block Gray’s path, a helicopter that he had to shoot down with a very specific car in order to clear a wall cutting him off from the rest of the board, random speed bumps and wind turbines and basically anything Danny could think of to knock him off before he could launch himself toward the checkpoint. Took Gray a good few tries and a few near misses, but he got there in the end! And then it was time for Petey’s boards, and WOW. Started off with a ramp made almost ENTIRELY of breakable glass, forcing Gray to drive relatively slowly in the go-kart to have any chance of making it down – while also having him pursued by cops in helicopters and dodging random planes. And windmills, of course. XD And then there was the HUMAN ramp, where Gray had to use a buggy to make it over a double set of human tightropes (broken up by mutant wind turbines made of wind turbines), then through a set of human canons before doing a final tightrope in to the check point. And then there was the BLOODY ramp, which he HAD to do in a hearse equipped with boosting powers, all while avoiding the random gravestones, coffins, and of course windmills put into his path before being allowed to rocket into space. The poor man was SUFFERING the whole time, and it was delightful. 10/10 Gray pain. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – one of the first things I did upon getting on Victor Luvs Alice was go to the queue and reset the speed to one post per day. Gotta make sure the correct posts fire on the correct days!
And that's been about it, apart from hot chocolate and chocolate biscotti for dessert. Because I'm on my period and that means I get cold really easily, damn it. XD And now it is time to retire and get ready to do it all again tomorrow! Night all!
