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Somewhat Stressful Saturday
Apr. 8th, 2023 11:48 pmYeah, for some reason I found myself in a bit of a mood about some stuff -- largely things in Sims 4 that were annoying me and trying to keep up with everything I want to do. I don't like these days where even my free time feels like I'm at work. :( I think I need to take more time to just -- chill and not think about stuff. (And not in the "brain is stalled out and won't LET me do something I want to do" way of Wednesday.) Fortunately this evening has been a little better in this regard, which I appreciate. . .and I did get a good amount of stuff done today!
Cleaning: Got this done in decent time today – started around 10:40ish AM (after my smoothie, and while waiting for my dad to get out of the bathroom so I could brush my teeth), wrapped up dusting and Swiffering right before lunch about 1 PM, then did the vacuuming between 1:35 PM and 1:45 PM. Laundry this week was sheets, pajamas, and bathrobe and got folded into the other stuff Mom was doing – took ‘em down around 11:30 AM, got ‘em back – well, like I said, got folded into the other stuff, and we’re not always the best at remembering, so got ‘em back at 6:40 PM. XD Hey, the important thing is I got them back!
Tumblr: Didn’t have a lot of time for Victor Luvs Alice today, but I did fix the formatting issues on the Valicer In The Dark Playbook post draft, w00! Also answered an ask and a reblog over on Valice Multiverse – not much going on over there at the moment, though. Gonna work on those formatting issues and/or see if I can get the pictures ready for this week’s Chill Valicer Save update done before bed tonight!
Sims 4: Had a relatively short session (I started around 4:45 PM, wrapped up around 6:15 PM) in the Chill Valicer save today, with an eye on tweaking the farmhouse and grounds –
A) First, a bit of prepwork – stumbled upon some new bugfix mods (forcing the game to skip trying to create or update relationship data for Sims who may not exist anymore) thanks to checking out some Sim modder Tweets and put those in my game. I also downloaded the Simsonian Library’s Canning Factory mod (as that seems IDEAL for my trio now that they own a grocery store), but I haven’t put in my game yet – thinking of combining it with some other crafting stuff I’ve seen around first. . .
B) Then it was into the game, where I got the trio to go out and wait around the front of the house despite the raging thunderstorm – and actually managed to capture a cool lightning strike on the tree behind the greenhouse! :D I very rarely manage to get shots of lightning in the game, so that was honestly pretty cool.
C) Okay, down to business – one of the first things I wanted to try was scooting the entire lot forward a few tiles to see if that helped with getting me a little more room out back for stuff like maybe more wind turbines or a bigger greenhouse. I moved all the stuff that was liable to be deleted from the front and tried a couple of times to slide it forward –
No dice. Game kept telling me there was an object affected that couldn’t be put into the household inventory. Fiddlesticks. :(
D) All right, can’t get room for more wind turbines? I will instead change out almost every light on the lot for something that works “off the grid” so my gang can at least SEE while they’re inside! The light of choice proved to be the short Vampires chandelier – there are NOT a lot of ceiling lights that are “Off The Grid” compatible, and the only other chandeliers I was interested in were either a) too big (a very cool Realm of Magic one – I tried sizing it down, but then the lights went weird) or b) didn’t light up the room enough (a rustic chandelier I think was either base game or Outdoor Retreat – great look for the barn, WAY too dim to work with). I replaced almost every light on the lot with those chandeliers (or, in the case of the downstairs bathroom and mud room, the matching wall light), leaving only the porch lights (there’s only a few of them, and I JUST replaced them), the greenhouse lights (there’s no really good “off the grid” wall lights either – certainly none that fit nicely between the windows), and the lights in Smiler’s “party barn” space (I did the first level of the barn, but felt they’d look weird on the second level – Smiler clearly renovated that space, so. . .). Used Victor to adjust the lighting color (I don’t like lights that are too yellow, which these were) and auto-light the candles, and yeah – now they have working lights no matter if they have working electricity! I’m HOPING that this will allow a surplus to actually build again so they can use computers and such for more than two seconds at a time. . .
E) While I was in Build Mode, though, I also saw an opportunity to make a few little updates around the place –
I. I swapped out Victor’s CC upright piano (a Bioshock model I found while CC hunting in the past) for the new “official” version from Growing Together (a nice colorful model – with slots at the top! I promptly put Smiler’s latest MySims find, Lyndsay, atop it). I also replaced the lamp between the two chairs in front of the fireplace in the living room with a Growing Together side table I liked the look of, and Smiler’s game table in their party space with the Growing Together version in yellow. Already getting some use out of the pack! XD (Well, I got some use out of it before too, granted – their grocery store has a community infant changing table in the bathroom now! But colorful pianos and games tables are more likely to be used in my actual gameplay.)
II. I put the Werewolves cute little moon night light and crescent moon mirror in the séance room (the latter idea put in my head by my friend Squid, who bought the mirror for their witchy Sim Runa – it does definitely have the right vibes). I also shifted the séance table back slightly to properly center it in the room (even if that puts it out of line with the side table – nothing I can do without moving the window, and that’s a whole thing).
III. I put a couch on the back porch for lounging around purposes – made that one yellow and recolored one of the ones on the front porch purple, since I felt the yellow one worked better with the back porch color scheme.
IV. I did actually expand the greenhouse! Mostly because I decided to move the tree that was in the back corner to allow myself a little more room in the back. It’s now almost to the edge of the lot, and should have more room for planters, tree plots, or whatever else Victor may decide to put in there. :) I’ll reorganize later! As for the tree, I ended up putting that big oak tree in the opposite front corner of the lot (that is, it was in the back right, now it’s front left) with some plants around it, and put one of the hawthorn trees that was along the side of the bath along the back edge with a few plants and rocks. It looks all right enough!
V. And as a final touch, I hung up the poster Alice found in San Myshuno in her room, and a painting Victor recently did on his sketchpad by his new piano. :)
F) Oh, and while I was getting everyone safely back inside to avoid the bad weather and suchlike, the house making a few freaky haunted noises prompted the game to ONCE AGAIN ask me if Victor wanted to take on the “Paranoid” trait. *sigh* So yeah, no more “Self Discovery” mechanic – said no to the pop-up box and promptly shut that shit off. If I want to adjust anybody’s traits, I’ll use the Re-Traiting Potion. Or a mod.
So yeah, house is updated so we can see no matter the power situation; the greenhouse is ready for new plants whenever Victor is; and now the game will no longer keep pestering me to make him “Paranoid” because he lives in a slightly spooky location. Tomorrow, finally back to Fallout 4 to do some gunsmithing and continue heading over to Nordhagen! XD
Writing: Another Valicer Polyship Week prompt edited – though it took longer than I expected! For some reason, the Day Three prompt of “Bed Sharing” really gave me some trouble even though I had the PERFECT inspiration of that one gif of the trio from The Bastard Son And The Devil Himself doing just that. I dunno, it was like I couldn’t QUITE get the descriptions of how they were supposed to be lying up against each other down. . .fortunately switching it fully to Alice’s POV, complete with a few bits of inner monologue, seemed to do the trick in the end. And I do still like the mental images it gave me, of the three of them cuddled up safe and warm together in their caravan bed (as this is part of the Odd Numbered Prompts Road Trip for the Modern Au trio). Good stuff, even if I did have to fight with it a bit!
YouTube: Actually managed to get a couple of items out of the Watch Later today, yay! Still no OXBox RE4 Remake stuff, admittedly, but I’ll take what I can get –
A) Started with a quick one from Petey Plays It I noticed the other day – “5 Little Known Outfits That Can Change Your Sim's Mood | The Sims 4 Guide!” Yes, apparently there are a handful of outfits in the game that can change Sims' moods and confer other special effects. There’s a feminine-tagged outfit of glittery shorts, bustier, and palm trees short jacket that makes a Sim playful for a few hours, and a masculine-tagged glittery suit that makes a Sim flirty for a few hours; the unisex firefighter outfit adds a confident moodlet AND makes it so Sims handle fire better (both being on fire and putting them out); the unisex “tragic clown” outfit naturally makes Sims sad – and makes the Sims AROUND them sad too, because tragic clown; and the Forbidden Sweater you get from mastering the “Lord/Lady Of The Knits” aspiration from Nifty Knitting is slightly uncomfortable due to being itchy – though I think it confers knitting bonuses while you wear the fashion disaster, so. . . XD I knew about the latter two, but the first three were surprises to me – always something new to learn in this game! :)
B) Then it was time for an OXtra list – “7 Surprisingly Distressing Moments in Mario Games!” Luke and Ellen taking us through all the surprise creepy that pops up across the Mario titles! Of course the infamous toothy piano from Super Mario 64 made an appearance (along with a buttload of terrible piano puns from Ellen), but we also had Bowser having all his skin burned off in lava (and becoming “Dry Bowser”) in New Super Mario Bros; the horror of Toadwood Forest and all its Toads sucked dry by alien trees in Mario and Luigi: Partners In Time; and the absolutely HORRIFYING “final girl meeting the slasher” scream that Peach gives should she get knocked into the electrified fence surrounding the soccer field in Super Mario Strikers. Oh, and yes, the fact that the blocks in the original games are in fact people (the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom transformed by Bowser) was brought up, though the comments were quick to clarify that they’re only the ITEM blocks, and by hitting them you actually free the people (or at least their souls) trapped inside. So that bit of surprise creepy is nerfed, at least. Sort of.
C) And finally we moved onto the Subs for GrayStillPlays and a fresh GTA V Alex Torture Board – “Big & Small Cars vs TRAIN in GTA 5!” A series of four challenges for the two train types in GTA V, the freight train and the subway train, to see which one could complete them all. You had “They Keep Getting Bigger” (a series of cars that the trains had to crash through, starting with sedans, moving through monster trucks, and ending with dump trucks – oh, and the entire course was surrounded by wind turbines, meaning if Gray went any way but dead straight, he’d be flung off the board); “Tightrope Cars” followed by “Jammed Cars” (a couple of tightropes covered with more cars to crash into – the first had ramps on the sides to fling Gray off if he wiggled, while the second was just very thin – followed by two narrow corridors where the train of choice had to smash through the party buses and a bunch of taco trucks in succession); “Explosive Cars” followed by “Dancing Tanks” (a bunch of highly explosive gas tankers, followed by spinning tanks that STRONGLY resisted being shoved off the platform); and finally a course that I don’t know the “official” name of but that I’m calling “Beer Dominoes” (a bunch of beer trucks stood up on end in domino formation – Gray was able to knock them over by stealing a rocket launcher from a guy, then plowed his train through the carnage that was left). Gray gave the subway train a try on the first three boards, but it proved to be much too light and wiggly to make it all the way through any challenge. The freight train struggled too, to be sure (especially against the wind turbines and the dancing tanks), but it had the weight and power behind it to finally make it all the way to the end. XD Sheer ridiculousness – just another day on the GrayStillPlays channel!
Other: Mom said it was warm enough to try playing our beanbag toss game, so we did a few rounds before playing in the shade and the breeze chased us back inside (it MAY have been nearer 60F in the sun, but I kinda doubt it – DEFINITELY wasn’t up against the house, though!). Dad had a good day, while I had a pretty poor one – final scores were me 3-3-2; Dad W-2-W; Mom 2-W-3. And both the first and the last games were pretty close in terms of who got second and third – Mom got past me in the first, I squeaked by her in the third after a couple of ties. I blame my icy fingers. :p
So yeah, not a bad day, I just had some annoyingly grumpy moments. Hopefully tomorrow will be better in that regard -- does NOT look like we're doing mini-golf due to it being colder than initially predicted, so I'll at least have the morning to work on tumblr stuff! Hopefully I can fit in some more OXBox stuff too, along with my Gray and Jon must-watches. . . We'll see, though. I'm trying not to stress over it. Shit gets done when it gets done! Night all!
Cleaning: Got this done in decent time today – started around 10:40ish AM (after my smoothie, and while waiting for my dad to get out of the bathroom so I could brush my teeth), wrapped up dusting and Swiffering right before lunch about 1 PM, then did the vacuuming between 1:35 PM and 1:45 PM. Laundry this week was sheets, pajamas, and bathrobe and got folded into the other stuff Mom was doing – took ‘em down around 11:30 AM, got ‘em back – well, like I said, got folded into the other stuff, and we’re not always the best at remembering, so got ‘em back at 6:40 PM. XD Hey, the important thing is I got them back!
Tumblr: Didn’t have a lot of time for Victor Luvs Alice today, but I did fix the formatting issues on the Valicer In The Dark Playbook post draft, w00! Also answered an ask and a reblog over on Valice Multiverse – not much going on over there at the moment, though. Gonna work on those formatting issues and/or see if I can get the pictures ready for this week’s Chill Valicer Save update done before bed tonight!
Sims 4: Had a relatively short session (I started around 4:45 PM, wrapped up around 6:15 PM) in the Chill Valicer save today, with an eye on tweaking the farmhouse and grounds –
A) First, a bit of prepwork – stumbled upon some new bugfix mods (forcing the game to skip trying to create or update relationship data for Sims who may not exist anymore) thanks to checking out some Sim modder Tweets and put those in my game. I also downloaded the Simsonian Library’s Canning Factory mod (as that seems IDEAL for my trio now that they own a grocery store), but I haven’t put in my game yet – thinking of combining it with some other crafting stuff I’ve seen around first. . .
B) Then it was into the game, where I got the trio to go out and wait around the front of the house despite the raging thunderstorm – and actually managed to capture a cool lightning strike on the tree behind the greenhouse! :D I very rarely manage to get shots of lightning in the game, so that was honestly pretty cool.
C) Okay, down to business – one of the first things I wanted to try was scooting the entire lot forward a few tiles to see if that helped with getting me a little more room out back for stuff like maybe more wind turbines or a bigger greenhouse. I moved all the stuff that was liable to be deleted from the front and tried a couple of times to slide it forward –
No dice. Game kept telling me there was an object affected that couldn’t be put into the household inventory. Fiddlesticks. :(
D) All right, can’t get room for more wind turbines? I will instead change out almost every light on the lot for something that works “off the grid” so my gang can at least SEE while they’re inside! The light of choice proved to be the short Vampires chandelier – there are NOT a lot of ceiling lights that are “Off The Grid” compatible, and the only other chandeliers I was interested in were either a) too big (a very cool Realm of Magic one – I tried sizing it down, but then the lights went weird) or b) didn’t light up the room enough (a rustic chandelier I think was either base game or Outdoor Retreat – great look for the barn, WAY too dim to work with). I replaced almost every light on the lot with those chandeliers (or, in the case of the downstairs bathroom and mud room, the matching wall light), leaving only the porch lights (there’s only a few of them, and I JUST replaced them), the greenhouse lights (there’s no really good “off the grid” wall lights either – certainly none that fit nicely between the windows), and the lights in Smiler’s “party barn” space (I did the first level of the barn, but felt they’d look weird on the second level – Smiler clearly renovated that space, so. . .). Used Victor to adjust the lighting color (I don’t like lights that are too yellow, which these were) and auto-light the candles, and yeah – now they have working lights no matter if they have working electricity! I’m HOPING that this will allow a surplus to actually build again so they can use computers and such for more than two seconds at a time. . .
E) While I was in Build Mode, though, I also saw an opportunity to make a few little updates around the place –
I. I swapped out Victor’s CC upright piano (a Bioshock model I found while CC hunting in the past) for the new “official” version from Growing Together (a nice colorful model – with slots at the top! I promptly put Smiler’s latest MySims find, Lyndsay, atop it). I also replaced the lamp between the two chairs in front of the fireplace in the living room with a Growing Together side table I liked the look of, and Smiler’s game table in their party space with the Growing Together version in yellow. Already getting some use out of the pack! XD (Well, I got some use out of it before too, granted – their grocery store has a community infant changing table in the bathroom now! But colorful pianos and games tables are more likely to be used in my actual gameplay.)
II. I put the Werewolves cute little moon night light and crescent moon mirror in the séance room (the latter idea put in my head by my friend Squid, who bought the mirror for their witchy Sim Runa – it does definitely have the right vibes). I also shifted the séance table back slightly to properly center it in the room (even if that puts it out of line with the side table – nothing I can do without moving the window, and that’s a whole thing).
III. I put a couch on the back porch for lounging around purposes – made that one yellow and recolored one of the ones on the front porch purple, since I felt the yellow one worked better with the back porch color scheme.
IV. I did actually expand the greenhouse! Mostly because I decided to move the tree that was in the back corner to allow myself a little more room in the back. It’s now almost to the edge of the lot, and should have more room for planters, tree plots, or whatever else Victor may decide to put in there. :) I’ll reorganize later! As for the tree, I ended up putting that big oak tree in the opposite front corner of the lot (that is, it was in the back right, now it’s front left) with some plants around it, and put one of the hawthorn trees that was along the side of the bath along the back edge with a few plants and rocks. It looks all right enough!
V. And as a final touch, I hung up the poster Alice found in San Myshuno in her room, and a painting Victor recently did on his sketchpad by his new piano. :)
F) Oh, and while I was getting everyone safely back inside to avoid the bad weather and suchlike, the house making a few freaky haunted noises prompted the game to ONCE AGAIN ask me if Victor wanted to take on the “Paranoid” trait. *sigh* So yeah, no more “Self Discovery” mechanic – said no to the pop-up box and promptly shut that shit off. If I want to adjust anybody’s traits, I’ll use the Re-Traiting Potion. Or a mod.
So yeah, house is updated so we can see no matter the power situation; the greenhouse is ready for new plants whenever Victor is; and now the game will no longer keep pestering me to make him “Paranoid” because he lives in a slightly spooky location. Tomorrow, finally back to Fallout 4 to do some gunsmithing and continue heading over to Nordhagen! XD
Writing: Another Valicer Polyship Week prompt edited – though it took longer than I expected! For some reason, the Day Three prompt of “Bed Sharing” really gave me some trouble even though I had the PERFECT inspiration of that one gif of the trio from The Bastard Son And The Devil Himself doing just that. I dunno, it was like I couldn’t QUITE get the descriptions of how they were supposed to be lying up against each other down. . .fortunately switching it fully to Alice’s POV, complete with a few bits of inner monologue, seemed to do the trick in the end. And I do still like the mental images it gave me, of the three of them cuddled up safe and warm together in their caravan bed (as this is part of the Odd Numbered Prompts Road Trip for the Modern Au trio). Good stuff, even if I did have to fight with it a bit!
YouTube: Actually managed to get a couple of items out of the Watch Later today, yay! Still no OXBox RE4 Remake stuff, admittedly, but I’ll take what I can get –
A) Started with a quick one from Petey Plays It I noticed the other day – “5 Little Known Outfits That Can Change Your Sim's Mood | The Sims 4 Guide!” Yes, apparently there are a handful of outfits in the game that can change Sims' moods and confer other special effects. There’s a feminine-tagged outfit of glittery shorts, bustier, and palm trees short jacket that makes a Sim playful for a few hours, and a masculine-tagged glittery suit that makes a Sim flirty for a few hours; the unisex firefighter outfit adds a confident moodlet AND makes it so Sims handle fire better (both being on fire and putting them out); the unisex “tragic clown” outfit naturally makes Sims sad – and makes the Sims AROUND them sad too, because tragic clown; and the Forbidden Sweater you get from mastering the “Lord/Lady Of The Knits” aspiration from Nifty Knitting is slightly uncomfortable due to being itchy – though I think it confers knitting bonuses while you wear the fashion disaster, so. . . XD I knew about the latter two, but the first three were surprises to me – always something new to learn in this game! :)
B) Then it was time for an OXtra list – “7 Surprisingly Distressing Moments in Mario Games!” Luke and Ellen taking us through all the surprise creepy that pops up across the Mario titles! Of course the infamous toothy piano from Super Mario 64 made an appearance (along with a buttload of terrible piano puns from Ellen), but we also had Bowser having all his skin burned off in lava (and becoming “Dry Bowser”) in New Super Mario Bros; the horror of Toadwood Forest and all its Toads sucked dry by alien trees in Mario and Luigi: Partners In Time; and the absolutely HORRIFYING “final girl meeting the slasher” scream that Peach gives should she get knocked into the electrified fence surrounding the soccer field in Super Mario Strikers. Oh, and yes, the fact that the blocks in the original games are in fact people (the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom transformed by Bowser) was brought up, though the comments were quick to clarify that they’re only the ITEM blocks, and by hitting them you actually free the people (or at least their souls) trapped inside. So that bit of surprise creepy is nerfed, at least. Sort of.
C) And finally we moved onto the Subs for GrayStillPlays and a fresh GTA V Alex Torture Board – “Big & Small Cars vs TRAIN in GTA 5!” A series of four challenges for the two train types in GTA V, the freight train and the subway train, to see which one could complete them all. You had “They Keep Getting Bigger” (a series of cars that the trains had to crash through, starting with sedans, moving through monster trucks, and ending with dump trucks – oh, and the entire course was surrounded by wind turbines, meaning if Gray went any way but dead straight, he’d be flung off the board); “Tightrope Cars” followed by “Jammed Cars” (a couple of tightropes covered with more cars to crash into – the first had ramps on the sides to fling Gray off if he wiggled, while the second was just very thin – followed by two narrow corridors where the train of choice had to smash through the party buses and a bunch of taco trucks in succession); “Explosive Cars” followed by “Dancing Tanks” (a bunch of highly explosive gas tankers, followed by spinning tanks that STRONGLY resisted being shoved off the platform); and finally a course that I don’t know the “official” name of but that I’m calling “Beer Dominoes” (a bunch of beer trucks stood up on end in domino formation – Gray was able to knock them over by stealing a rocket launcher from a guy, then plowed his train through the carnage that was left). Gray gave the subway train a try on the first three boards, but it proved to be much too light and wiggly to make it all the way through any challenge. The freight train struggled too, to be sure (especially against the wind turbines and the dancing tanks), but it had the weight and power behind it to finally make it all the way to the end. XD Sheer ridiculousness – just another day on the GrayStillPlays channel!
Other: Mom said it was warm enough to try playing our beanbag toss game, so we did a few rounds before playing in the shade and the breeze chased us back inside (it MAY have been nearer 60F in the sun, but I kinda doubt it – DEFINITELY wasn’t up against the house, though!). Dad had a good day, while I had a pretty poor one – final scores were me 3-3-2; Dad W-2-W; Mom 2-W-3. And both the first and the last games were pretty close in terms of who got second and third – Mom got past me in the first, I squeaked by her in the third after a couple of ties. I blame my icy fingers. :p
So yeah, not a bad day, I just had some annoyingly grumpy moments. Hopefully tomorrow will be better in that regard -- does NOT look like we're doing mini-golf due to it being colder than initially predicted, so I'll at least have the morning to work on tumblr stuff! Hopefully I can fit in some more OXBox stuff too, along with my Gray and Jon must-watches. . . We'll see, though. I'm trying not to stress over it. Shit gets done when it gets done! Night all!
