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Grumpy Wednesday Eve
Jun. 21st, 2023 11:47 pmThe explanation for why is below --
Work – Work itself was pretty quiet – it was another day of going through duplicates, with just one credit card call in the afternoon to break things up. Traffic wasn’t even that bad! Which is good, because shit started going wrong once I got home – starting with me starting to change in the bathroom (from work clothes to working-out clothes) and discovering, oops, my period managed to sneak up on me this month! (In my defense, I knew it was coming, but generally I get more of a warning from my body – in fact, generally it gets panicky about it days ahead of schedule, so I thought it would come closer to the weekend!) Which delayed the start of beanbags, meaning when we came in from that, I had to go straight downstairs to work out. . .only to discover that I’d been logged out of my YouTube account down there and had to come back upstairs to get my password to sign in again so I could actually watch “Baking Bad,” below. Which of course delayed my WORKOUT, and – yeah. As you might imagine, I’ve had to spend a LOT of time this evening tamping down the period fury. >(
On the plus side, I did actually do pretty good at beanbags, getting second in the first game and squeezing through with wins in the second and third! Mostly because Dad picked up a bad habit of overshooting the board in those games. . .while Mom had a FEW good throws, but could never truly get it together. Final scores were me 2-W-W; Dad W-2-2; Mom 3-3-3. We’ll see how things shake out next time we get to play, as now it seems ready to rain for days on end. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and eventually back to the Live Oxventure “Baking Bad!” After a little trouble with George’s repeating dialogue (Corazon desperately trying to skip through it before just opening up the menu and setting his dialogue to “Very Fast” XD), the gang managed to learn that the massive boiler nearby was the citadel’s weak point, and if it overheated, they’d all be in a lot of trouble. Therefore, there are very many ways to vent heat in the citadel, including using the cannons, taking the mysterious magical core out of the machine for a minute, and redirecting excess heat into the kitchen! Which was in fact very nearby, and which George knew very well because he’d already been put to work in there. Corazon decided to head to the kitchen, get George on croissant duty, and see what he could do to destroy the heat sinks in there, while Merilwen and Prudence decided to be Team Boiler and go investigate the boiler. (Egbert/Mike protested that surely he and Dob should be Team Boiler as they were physically IN it, but Prudence/Jane pointed out that she and Merilwen didn’t know that). So the party split up, with Corazon leading George to the kitchen and getting him to make croissants (while stopping up his ears with wax to avoid hearing George going through all of his now-unskippable dialogue), and Merilwen and Prudence going to investigate the boiler situation. What they found was not the main boiler tank, but instead a sort of “bathysphere of heat” as Johnny put it, containing a strange glowing orb, with a being trapped within – on a decent Arcana roll, Prudence was able to guess that it was either a fire elemental or a demon. The orb was the intensely-magical thing Prudence had sensed, a powerful spell keeping the fiery being within, and it was set up between two mechanical hands with stone-tipped figures that prodded it on the regular and forced it to keep giving off the heat that powered the citadel. . .and now I am suddenly thinking of Mistmire’s whole deal with that golden dragon under the keep and wondering if this was like a “preview.” O.o
Anyway – cut back to Team Actually In The Boiler. XD With the heat rising (and Dob suffering just a tiny bit of “starting to turn into soup” damage), the boys figured it was best to get out of there as fast as possible – so Dob cast Shatter on the greatest concentration of pipes he could find. It was super effective, smashing up the boiler and sending the boys sprawling on the floor again. Fortunately, Dob was saved from finding another pipe to crawl into by sharing a high-five with Egbert about being “Team Boiler” and hearing Prudence go “Actually we’re Team Boiler” from the other room. The four reconnected, with Prudence bringing Boiler Sub-Team A up to speed, and discussion started on what to do – especially since, with Dob having blasted a hole in the boiler, the pressure was dropping and the temperature was starting to rise, meaning the citadel was coming close to blowing up. The general feeling was “well, we SHOULD try to release the elemental or demon – maybe it’ll wreck everything when it gets freed, but it seems like we’re on the verge of blowing up anyway” so Dob attempted to kick the orb, but only stubbed his toe on the outer bathysphere. Merilwen’s attempt to Stoneshape the hands into little metal stubs was similarly hampered – looked like they would have to open up the actual containing sphere itself to get at it! But numerous lizard-folk safety notices around let them know they would need safety equipment to have ANY chance of getting inside. Johnny had them roll for it –
Cut back to Corazon, who had run into his own problem – the croissants weren’t proving fast enough! Desperate, and knowing he needed to be doing something about the heat sinks anyway, he found a frozen leg of lamb and attacked everything but the thing that George needed to make croissants, destroying a few heat sinks in the form of steam-powered kitchen equipment, then threatened George to go faster already. George obliged, though he continued with his unskippable dialogue, just happening to mention along the way that removing the super-magical core from its container would cause the temperature of the room it was in to skyrocket –
Cut back to Team Boiler, where Dob had gotten an 18, Merilwen a 13, and Prudence a 20 on their “safety equipment” rolls, while Egbert hadn’t bothered rolling at all. Turns out the roll was for the safety equipment’s RATING, not if they found any – so Dob and Prudence were quite well protected, Merilwen less so, and Egbert – well, it’s a good thing he’s fire resistant! Just pulling open the door blasted them with heat, with Merilwen taking ten points of damage and Egbert taking 20! But Dob and Prudence were able to get the elemental orb out of the workings, immediately making the room that much hotter and setting off all sorts of alarms. . .
Back in the kitchen, Corazon heard the alarms and everything, but couldn’t bring himself to move as the croissants were ALMOST ready. So he waited until they were done, grabbed them, scarfed one down fresh out of the oven, then dove out the kitchen – and elected to take seven points of random damage over dropping any of them. And yes, he did just happily abandon George in said kitchen, now dealing with an oven that was on fire – Johnny had to allow that, with croissants made and information got, the escort mission was done, so, yeah. XD
Back with Team Boiler again, and the heat was definitely starting to get to the gang – Egbert took another 10 points of damage because Johnny was desperately trying not to kill him (BEFORE HIS BIG CHARACTER ARC NO LESS, cripes Mike XD), and even Prudence was feeling the heat (though she too is fire-resistant, so it was only half what it could have been). Dob, trying to come up with a plan, cast Greater Invisibility on the elemental orb to hide it, then suggested they pretend someone else had stolen the orb to the lizard men coming in, with Prudence pointing out that they could pretend to BE lizard-folk with their safety equipment – cue Johnny making Merilwen, Prudence, and Egbert roll Wisdom/Insight and then telling them that they realize that plan is [bleep]. XD THAT is where I left it, with ten minutes to go in the episode – we’ll see what the NEW plan is, and how many people actually make it out of the citadel (and if Corazon drops any precious croissants) tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – Alice and Victor have finally reunited, awww. <3 There was much kissing and “I missed yous.” Victor’s also been reunited with Victoria and Emily, and had just introduced his new Coaster Crew friends to them and Alice – when Wickerman showed up, with a plan to just burn Sanctuary to the ground. Naturally, no one is in favor of this plan, least of all Alice – meaning Wickerman’s gonna do something REALLY nasty when I come back to this story. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another day, another GrayStillPlays with “Mentos vs Coke in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, of course, this time with a theme of “extremely unusual bridge challenges vs the biggest, most unwieldy trucks in the game!” Gray had to get one of these honking badonkers over the Cola Bridge (a very crooked bridge made of giant popsicle sticks, supported by giant art installation men holding cans of cola that sprayed out deadly water jets), the Cliffhanger Bridge (a “bridge” that was basically Alex forcing Gray to off-road along the side of a cliff, with a few rocks falling down and a jump at the end to make it more difficult), the Domino Bridge (actually probably the easiest bridge – it was a bunch of trailers balanced on buses laid out like a row of dominoes, but Gray was pretty good at not making the businoes fall; his main complaint was that the trailers were slippery to drive on), the “Rainbow Bridge, but it’s not actually rainbow, it’s just rusty pipe in the shape of a rainbow, makes sense” Bridge (literally the name and rather self-explanatory – a rusty pipe archway over the local train bridge), the Under Construction Bridge (a bridge made out of twine and hope, basically – not destructible, but there were gaps the farther along Gray got), and the Spinny, Tubey Thingy Bridge (a spinning tube bridge with a staggered chunk cut out of it – the idea was to get across it before it spun out the road from underneath you) to get the win. Gray tried out a variety of trucks, and some did better than others – the safari jeep and the military truck did pretty well, the golden giant trailer with solar panels literally SPUN itself back onto the board after nearly missing the Cliffhanger jump, and the tractor trailer truck with the giant spikey plow nose did better than expected until it started catching on the Under Construction bridge), but only one truck could make it to the end – and the hint was in the title. Yes, there was an off-brand Mentos truck available for Gray to try, and when he did try it, he was surprised at both the excellent top speed and the smooth handling. It struggled briefly on the businoes, but once it was past that bit, it made it all the way over the spinning tube and into the end, yay! :D Great job as usual, Gray! And another chunk of sanity goes fluttering away. . . :P
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – set the queue speed for Victor Luvs Alice to two posts per day, finished up the post for tomorrow’s Very First Mention Of Shipping Valice Anniversary (that mention was “why the hell are you shipping Victor Van Dort and Alice Liddell” XD), and found something to queue up for Friday (a fanfic bingo table on a friend’s blog). Still gotta decide on a Song Saturday, but I’ll figure that out tomorrow, considering how much I’m playing with the queue speed on VLA this week.
Okay, so, at least I got some productive stuff done, but damn it I REALLY could have done with not getting a stealth period this month. *grumbles* Like I said, usually my body's panicking about the possibility a day or two beforehand! I'm not used to them sneaking up on me. At least I didn't full-on ruin my clothes. . .but now it's time to head to bed and try to get some sleep, since I still have two days of work to get through. Meeeh. Night all!
Work – Work itself was pretty quiet – it was another day of going through duplicates, with just one credit card call in the afternoon to break things up. Traffic wasn’t even that bad! Which is good, because shit started going wrong once I got home – starting with me starting to change in the bathroom (from work clothes to working-out clothes) and discovering, oops, my period managed to sneak up on me this month! (In my defense, I knew it was coming, but generally I get more of a warning from my body – in fact, generally it gets panicky about it days ahead of schedule, so I thought it would come closer to the weekend!) Which delayed the start of beanbags, meaning when we came in from that, I had to go straight downstairs to work out. . .only to discover that I’d been logged out of my YouTube account down there and had to come back upstairs to get my password to sign in again so I could actually watch “Baking Bad,” below. Which of course delayed my WORKOUT, and – yeah. As you might imagine, I’ve had to spend a LOT of time this evening tamping down the period fury. >(
On the plus side, I did actually do pretty good at beanbags, getting second in the first game and squeezing through with wins in the second and third! Mostly because Dad picked up a bad habit of overshooting the board in those games. . .while Mom had a FEW good throws, but could never truly get it together. Final scores were me 2-W-W; Dad W-2-2; Mom 3-3-3. We’ll see how things shake out next time we get to play, as now it seems ready to rain for days on end. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and eventually back to the Live Oxventure “Baking Bad!” After a little trouble with George’s repeating dialogue (Corazon desperately trying to skip through it before just opening up the menu and setting his dialogue to “Very Fast” XD), the gang managed to learn that the massive boiler nearby was the citadel’s weak point, and if it overheated, they’d all be in a lot of trouble. Therefore, there are very many ways to vent heat in the citadel, including using the cannons, taking the mysterious magical core out of the machine for a minute, and redirecting excess heat into the kitchen! Which was in fact very nearby, and which George knew very well because he’d already been put to work in there. Corazon decided to head to the kitchen, get George on croissant duty, and see what he could do to destroy the heat sinks in there, while Merilwen and Prudence decided to be Team Boiler and go investigate the boiler. (Egbert/Mike protested that surely he and Dob should be Team Boiler as they were physically IN it, but Prudence/Jane pointed out that she and Merilwen didn’t know that). So the party split up, with Corazon leading George to the kitchen and getting him to make croissants (while stopping up his ears with wax to avoid hearing George going through all of his now-unskippable dialogue), and Merilwen and Prudence going to investigate the boiler situation. What they found was not the main boiler tank, but instead a sort of “bathysphere of heat” as Johnny put it, containing a strange glowing orb, with a being trapped within – on a decent Arcana roll, Prudence was able to guess that it was either a fire elemental or a demon. The orb was the intensely-magical thing Prudence had sensed, a powerful spell keeping the fiery being within, and it was set up between two mechanical hands with stone-tipped figures that prodded it on the regular and forced it to keep giving off the heat that powered the citadel. . .and now I am suddenly thinking of Mistmire’s whole deal with that golden dragon under the keep and wondering if this was like a “preview.” O.o
Anyway – cut back to Team Actually In The Boiler. XD With the heat rising (and Dob suffering just a tiny bit of “starting to turn into soup” damage), the boys figured it was best to get out of there as fast as possible – so Dob cast Shatter on the greatest concentration of pipes he could find. It was super effective, smashing up the boiler and sending the boys sprawling on the floor again. Fortunately, Dob was saved from finding another pipe to crawl into by sharing a high-five with Egbert about being “Team Boiler” and hearing Prudence go “Actually we’re Team Boiler” from the other room. The four reconnected, with Prudence bringing Boiler Sub-Team A up to speed, and discussion started on what to do – especially since, with Dob having blasted a hole in the boiler, the pressure was dropping and the temperature was starting to rise, meaning the citadel was coming close to blowing up. The general feeling was “well, we SHOULD try to release the elemental or demon – maybe it’ll wreck everything when it gets freed, but it seems like we’re on the verge of blowing up anyway” so Dob attempted to kick the orb, but only stubbed his toe on the outer bathysphere. Merilwen’s attempt to Stoneshape the hands into little metal stubs was similarly hampered – looked like they would have to open up the actual containing sphere itself to get at it! But numerous lizard-folk safety notices around let them know they would need safety equipment to have ANY chance of getting inside. Johnny had them roll for it –
Cut back to Corazon, who had run into his own problem – the croissants weren’t proving fast enough! Desperate, and knowing he needed to be doing something about the heat sinks anyway, he found a frozen leg of lamb and attacked everything but the thing that George needed to make croissants, destroying a few heat sinks in the form of steam-powered kitchen equipment, then threatened George to go faster already. George obliged, though he continued with his unskippable dialogue, just happening to mention along the way that removing the super-magical core from its container would cause the temperature of the room it was in to skyrocket –
Cut back to Team Boiler, where Dob had gotten an 18, Merilwen a 13, and Prudence a 20 on their “safety equipment” rolls, while Egbert hadn’t bothered rolling at all. Turns out the roll was for the safety equipment’s RATING, not if they found any – so Dob and Prudence were quite well protected, Merilwen less so, and Egbert – well, it’s a good thing he’s fire resistant! Just pulling open the door blasted them with heat, with Merilwen taking ten points of damage and Egbert taking 20! But Dob and Prudence were able to get the elemental orb out of the workings, immediately making the room that much hotter and setting off all sorts of alarms. . .
Back in the kitchen, Corazon heard the alarms and everything, but couldn’t bring himself to move as the croissants were ALMOST ready. So he waited until they were done, grabbed them, scarfed one down fresh out of the oven, then dove out the kitchen – and elected to take seven points of random damage over dropping any of them. And yes, he did just happily abandon George in said kitchen, now dealing with an oven that was on fire – Johnny had to allow that, with croissants made and information got, the escort mission was done, so, yeah. XD
Back with Team Boiler again, and the heat was definitely starting to get to the gang – Egbert took another 10 points of damage because Johnny was desperately trying not to kill him (BEFORE HIS BIG CHARACTER ARC NO LESS, cripes Mike XD), and even Prudence was feeling the heat (though she too is fire-resistant, so it was only half what it could have been). Dob, trying to come up with a plan, cast Greater Invisibility on the elemental orb to hide it, then suggested they pretend someone else had stolen the orb to the lizard men coming in, with Prudence pointing out that they could pretend to BE lizard-folk with their safety equipment – cue Johnny making Merilwen, Prudence, and Egbert roll Wisdom/Insight and then telling them that they realize that plan is [bleep]. XD THAT is where I left it, with ten minutes to go in the episode – we’ll see what the NEW plan is, and how many people actually make it out of the citadel (and if Corazon drops any precious croissants) tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – Alice and Victor have finally reunited, awww. <3 There was much kissing and “I missed yous.” Victor’s also been reunited with Victoria and Emily, and had just introduced his new Coaster Crew friends to them and Alice – when Wickerman showed up, with a plan to just burn Sanctuary to the ground. Naturally, no one is in favor of this plan, least of all Alice – meaning Wickerman’s gonna do something REALLY nasty when I come back to this story. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another day, another GrayStillPlays with “Mentos vs Coke in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, of course, this time with a theme of “extremely unusual bridge challenges vs the biggest, most unwieldy trucks in the game!” Gray had to get one of these honking badonkers over the Cola Bridge (a very crooked bridge made of giant popsicle sticks, supported by giant art installation men holding cans of cola that sprayed out deadly water jets), the Cliffhanger Bridge (a “bridge” that was basically Alex forcing Gray to off-road along the side of a cliff, with a few rocks falling down and a jump at the end to make it more difficult), the Domino Bridge (actually probably the easiest bridge – it was a bunch of trailers balanced on buses laid out like a row of dominoes, but Gray was pretty good at not making the businoes fall; his main complaint was that the trailers were slippery to drive on), the “Rainbow Bridge, but it’s not actually rainbow, it’s just rusty pipe in the shape of a rainbow, makes sense” Bridge (literally the name and rather self-explanatory – a rusty pipe archway over the local train bridge), the Under Construction Bridge (a bridge made out of twine and hope, basically – not destructible, but there were gaps the farther along Gray got), and the Spinny, Tubey Thingy Bridge (a spinning tube bridge with a staggered chunk cut out of it – the idea was to get across it before it spun out the road from underneath you) to get the win. Gray tried out a variety of trucks, and some did better than others – the safari jeep and the military truck did pretty well, the golden giant trailer with solar panels literally SPUN itself back onto the board after nearly missing the Cliffhanger jump, and the tractor trailer truck with the giant spikey plow nose did better than expected until it started catching on the Under Construction bridge), but only one truck could make it to the end – and the hint was in the title. Yes, there was an off-brand Mentos truck available for Gray to try, and when he did try it, he was surprised at both the excellent top speed and the smooth handling. It struggled briefly on the businoes, but once it was past that bit, it made it all the way over the spinning tube and into the end, yay! :D Great job as usual, Gray! And another chunk of sanity goes fluttering away. . . :P
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – set the queue speed for Victor Luvs Alice to two posts per day, finished up the post for tomorrow’s Very First Mention Of Shipping Valice Anniversary (that mention was “why the hell are you shipping Victor Van Dort and Alice Liddell” XD), and found something to queue up for Friday (a fanfic bingo table on a friend’s blog). Still gotta decide on a Song Saturday, but I’ll figure that out tomorrow, considering how much I’m playing with the queue speed on VLA this week.
Okay, so, at least I got some productive stuff done, but damn it I REALLY could have done with not getting a stealth period this month. *grumbles* Like I said, usually my body's panicking about the possibility a day or two beforehand! I'm not used to them sneaking up on me. At least I didn't full-on ruin my clothes. . .but now it's time to head to bed and try to get some sleep, since I still have two days of work to get through. Meeeh. Night all!
