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Good If Hot Day Out
Aug. 5th, 2024 11:43 pmToday was the only day this week that was guaranteed to have half-decent weather (if high temperatures -- once we were done with our adventures we spent the rest of the day in the AC), so we took full advantage of it to get through one of our Planned Outings on my vacation! Here's how that, and the rest of my day, went --
Zoo Trip: We went to Roger Williams Park Zoo early today, arriving just after it opened at 9 AM, to beat the worst of the heat and hopefully the worst of the crowds. We ended up spending just about two hours there in total – starting by going through all the exhibits of the African animals at the front (in addition to the mainstays of the zebras, wildebeest, elephants, and giraffes, they have some new birds and a three-legged serval too), then working our way to the Dragons & Mythical Creatures trail (aka the wetlands trail repurposed to host a bunch of animatronic creatures from myth and legend), which is the main reason we wanted to come. It was – kinda goofy, I’m not gonna lie. The animatronics weren’t exactly top-notch – most of the animals had a little bit of basic movement where they could turn their heads and roar and stuff, and there were some that were just straight-up stationary. And some of them looked very silly – like, there was a Japanese creature that was basically an evil long-tongued umbrella (“You are a Pokemon” I informed it). And their animatronic for the Yeti was the Abominable Snowman from the Rankin-Bass Christmas stuff (which, admittedly, was very funny). And one of the creatures they included was freaking Cthulhu – and one that had a head out of proportion to the rest of its body to boot! (But then again, we are in Rhode Island, birthplace of one HP Lovecraft...) But it was still a good time, and I enjoyed seeing all the various creatures and taking some pictures. :) And the rest of the zoo was nice too – though some of the exhibits were a little empty, as I suspect a bunch of the creatures were hiding from the heat. But we still saw all the cool stuff, like the camels and the moon bear, and the tree kangaroo and the Komodo dragon, and the giant otters and the scarlet ibises, and the red wolf and the bald eagles. We finished up the whole thing by 11 AM, then ended up taking the long way home through Cranston and such places because we didn’t want to try and work our way onto the highway (which was sure to be a nightmare). Got home around 12 PM, just in time for Mom to start working on lunch. :) Good time!
Tumblr: Well, I meant to do more on here, but I ended up getting distracted for a good portion of the day looking at other things (I am starting to get into the “Blades In The Dark” subreddit), so my main accomplishment was getting a photoset of some of the best shots we took on the “Dragons & Mythical Creatures” trail in the zoo up on tumblr – you can see it here! For all your goofy animatronic and Cthulhu needs. :p But yeah, properly catching up on the dash and stuff will have to wait until tomorrow, I feel.
Writing: I have made the Executive Decision that, since I am on vacation, I can ignore my normal writing schedule – and so this week is gonna be all “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” all the time! (Though I do plan to do a full week of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” as well after the final chapter of SATBSO is published.) So I started work editing the final chapter of that this afternoon, and made some good progress, getting almost two pages in! The trio have made their way over to Six Towers, former-rich-neighborhood-turned-slum, and are just wandering the streets as they reflect on their current situation. Smiler has taken the view that making two new friends in Victor and Alice counts as a happy thing to happen to them, even if they are on the run for murder – Victor and Alice aren’t quite so sure at this junction. XD Tomorrow, we work our way into one of my Standard Blocks of Exposition – Alice explaining her whole deal to Victor (and Smiler too, in this case). Feels kind of weird to work on that so soon after doing basically the same thing in LB:DQ recently, but gotta be done so we can Victor and Smiler’s pure horror over her having been put in an asylum at nine years old. (Which is even more justified in THIS verse, as this might be the only world in which Rutledge was WORSE than in canon...having the ability to rip people’s souls out of their bodies will do that!)
YouTube: Got in my usual Subs video and cleared out the one in the Watch Later, yay –
A) First up, from the Subs, we had GrayStillPlays and “Video games that will ruin your childhood!” AKA Gray plays a trio of horror games based around some of our favorite kid-friendly properties! I admit that I watched most of this with half the video off the screen to avoid getting too freaked out by jumpscares (stupid overly-panicky brain – I have already forbid myself from looking at the TV Tropes pages for any of these games this evening, lest I spooketh myself to the point where I can’t sleep) but I did get through Gray’s chronological trip through childhood-ruining, starting with –
I. Elmo’s Fun World – One of those thrown-together horror games where the whole conceit is that this cute kid’s character has gone bad and is chasing you through a location, and you have to escape with your life or get jumpscared. In this case, you’re stuck in a house with 2D Elmo and Cookie Monster, looking for crayons – but after you get the second crayon, you suddenly have to run from a much creepier 2D Elmo with a big mouth of human teeth and a pair of knives, and a Cookie Monster who looks exactly the same except he’s dual-wielding glocks. XD Also Oscar the Grouch is in the backyard serving as a store, selling pills for $400 a pop. Gray found the whole thing hilariously jank (none of the assets were anywhere near in proportion to each other; the walls didn’t connect correctly; and he won by getting Elmo to glitch into a wall), but gave it extra points for Cookie Monster and his guns, so the final score was 5/10.
II. Coyote Kills The Road Runner – A game where you play as the Coyote from Looney Tunes, trying to kill the Road Runner! You have three plans you can execute – a boulder drop, a slingshot-smack, and a rocket chase – and every time you successfully kill the Road Runner, you get a skull that you can use in your dark ritual with your fellow coyote cultists to summon some sort of weird monster into the world. Unlike the last game, this one actually had some production values – the characters and worlds were actually properly animated and looked like themselves, and the game actually had the feel of a Looney Tunes cartoon! Admittedly a slightly gorier-than-usual one, but there wasn’t anything beyond ketchup-y blood splatter whenever Road Runner or Coyote bit it. Even the summoned monster wasn’t that scary – especially when it appeared in the classic “That’s All, Folks” frame that Porky Pig usually appears in. Basically, this game is not really going to ruin your childhood, because it’s made in good fun – but since “childhood ruining” was the scale Gray was using, it got a 2/10. Maybe punch up the gore next time, folks!
III. Sonic.EXE – As you might guess from the title, this is a Sonic the Hedgehog fan game with a horror twist – basically, the file has been taken over by an evil, eye-bleedy version of Sonic who, after slaughtering everybody in the original Green Hills Zone, actually talks to you and asks you to play with him. “Playing” involves getting Tails, Knuckles, and Dr. Eggman killed in brutal ways as Evil Sonic chases them, rips out their hearts, and declares himself to be God. I’ve actually seen this particular horror game before – back when I watched AVGN, he did an episode on Sonic hacks and fan games, and this was one of the games featured (I also believe he ended up fighting an evil Sonic plushy possessed by the game’s spirit). Kinda freaked me out then, but fortunately Gray taking the piss out of it (accusing it of not doing proper jump scares and sarcastically calling Evil Sonic “modest” once he pulled the “I am God” shit) helped this time around. (As did the aforementioned “only watching the bottom half of the screen” thing). Gray was somewhat impressed, but didn’t consider it quite enough to fully ruin his love of Sonic, so it only got a 4/10. Maybe if one of Sonic’s other friends had shown up with an AK-47, it would have ranked higher. XD
B) And then, after supper, I headed into my Watch Later to enjoy the latest from Petey Plays It – “I Tried To Make The Perfect College Athlete, But I Ran Into One Huge Problem | Super Sim Series 10!” Yes, Petey’s Super Sim Tina was back, focusing on athletics as she went to Foxbury to get her first college degree (well, first PROPER college degree – technically the first degree she got was her mixology certification). Her plan was to get a Biology degree, since that would help her get ahead in the “Bodybuilder” branch of the Athlete career; become a “Playmaker” on the Soccer Team, which would help her get ahead in the “Professional Athlete” branch of the Athlete career; and complete the Bodybuilder Aspiration to round it all out. How did it all go?
Almost perfectly. Tina managed to achieve some amazing things while she was in college: she took four core classes each semester and – thanks to using the power of the Research & Debate skill and the Study Spot lot trait on Laurel Library to get through her coursework a little bit faster – got A+s in all of them, earning herself a distinguished degree with honors in Biology! She completed the Bodybuilder aspiration (though it required a little rules-bending on Petey’s part to get her some workout equipment in the dorm) and got the “Long-Lived” trait! She bought the museum in Brindleton Bay, completed the Curator aspiration to get collectibles for it (and get the trait that lets her sell some collectibles to the Simsonian Museum for cash), completed the frog collection, and set up a frog display and a Moonwood Mill relics display for people to enjoy there (if you’re wondering how, Petey’s just deducting the appropriate amounts from her household funds)! She joined the School Spirit Squad and officially became “Nosy” thanks to living off the drama and putting her nose into everyone’s business! She even made things official with her current main squeeze Sergio (though she put the kibosh on them living together) and mended fences with Mars! But she also suffered some serious setbacks, namely:
I. After discovering that the crystals and jewelry she’d brought with her from home weren’t charging properly on one of the dorm balconies, she went and left them on the grid in the general world...and came back from her various adventures to find them missing. Because I believe Sims can just swipe these things if you leave them out in public. Fortunately Tina had a spare grid, some spare jewelry and crystals that hadn’t fit on the first one, and a balcony that DID allow her to charge her stuff privately, but it was a major loss, given the effort she put into making all her hematite and amethyst items!
II. Despite joining the Foxbury Spirit Squad, she wasn’t able to max out her rank and get the themed ping-pong table. Admittedly, keeping school spirit high is a tough job, so we cannot blame her for faltering, especially when she had so much else going on.
III. Her purchase of the museum and doing up the frog and Moonwood Mill relics collections left her with almost NO cash, so after graduation the only lot she could afford was a blank one in Newcrest. Ouch.
IV. And the big one – she didn’t max out her “career” on the soccer team. Because, despite being an excellent player, she was a little slow to advance in it (Petey prioritized socialization over work-performance-boosting play at first), and a couple of losses at some of her games meant that she had only achieved level 3, “Starter,” by the time she graduated and was automatically kicked off. (In fact, she got her final grades and was kicked off the team RIGHT AS HER NEXT PRACTICE WOULD HAVE STARTED. Meaning she JUST missed out on the chance to get promoted to the final rank!) Meaning she did NOT become the perfect college athlete and will have to try again later.
So yeah – close, but no cigar for Tina this episode! But she still accomplished a lot, so the episode ended on a decently high note with her making snow pals and snow angels on her new lot. We’ll see where she goes from here next time!
Workout: Got on the bike right after we got home from our little zoo trip (because I was already super-sweaty and I figured this way I could just take the one shower before lunch and hang out the rest of the day in my PJs), pedaling my way through another half-hour of the GSP Happy Wheels compilation “When you live a life of constant suffering!” Today’s boards included Segway Nixon taking a trip through the off-brand Fallout nuclear wasteland on his way to a vault; a jet fall where the jets actually fell on Gray (rather than him falling down through the jets), which regularly reduced Segway Nixon to chunks; Pogo Guy attempting to enjoy nature while everyone around him (from magical hobo to bodybuilders throwing cars to murder children to King Arthur) tried to kill him; Bike Dad and Tom Hardy going through your usual bottle run (which included a no-glass glass break and a game of “dodge the falling lines” – you know, the usual); Bike Dad trying to take Tom Hardy to school (Hell Squared Academy is an unforgiving place to learn); and Segway Nixon repeatedly getting mulched by a cannon while trying to complete a neon-themed rope swing. XD Ahh, we do love the pain Gray experiences on the regular in this game!
So yeah -- perhaps not my most productive day online, but it was good to get out and about, and I had fun. And I got plenty of writing done too, so that was nice as well. :) Tomorrow, though, it's supposed to rain and be generally kind of ick, so I suspect we'll be staying home all day. Which makes it a good day to do tumblr stuff, I think -- especially since I'm trying to avoid screwing up my sleep schedule too much this week, so no staying up super late on weekdays! So yeah, plans tomorrow include catching up on my tumblr dashes properly -- and maybe even catching up on my tags again, I haven't looked at them in a while; playing Sims 4 and seeing if I can finish off the Ministry of Joy build; working some more on "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of;" keeping up with my YouTube Subs, and possibly any OX lists that pop up (I believe OXtra should upload something tomorrow...); and getting in a workout. All achievable goals, I hope -- for now, night all!
Zoo Trip: We went to Roger Williams Park Zoo early today, arriving just after it opened at 9 AM, to beat the worst of the heat and hopefully the worst of the crowds. We ended up spending just about two hours there in total – starting by going through all the exhibits of the African animals at the front (in addition to the mainstays of the zebras, wildebeest, elephants, and giraffes, they have some new birds and a three-legged serval too), then working our way to the Dragons & Mythical Creatures trail (aka the wetlands trail repurposed to host a bunch of animatronic creatures from myth and legend), which is the main reason we wanted to come. It was – kinda goofy, I’m not gonna lie. The animatronics weren’t exactly top-notch – most of the animals had a little bit of basic movement where they could turn their heads and roar and stuff, and there were some that were just straight-up stationary. And some of them looked very silly – like, there was a Japanese creature that was basically an evil long-tongued umbrella (“You are a Pokemon” I informed it). And their animatronic for the Yeti was the Abominable Snowman from the Rankin-Bass Christmas stuff (which, admittedly, was very funny). And one of the creatures they included was freaking Cthulhu – and one that had a head out of proportion to the rest of its body to boot! (But then again, we are in Rhode Island, birthplace of one HP Lovecraft...) But it was still a good time, and I enjoyed seeing all the various creatures and taking some pictures. :) And the rest of the zoo was nice too – though some of the exhibits were a little empty, as I suspect a bunch of the creatures were hiding from the heat. But we still saw all the cool stuff, like the camels and the moon bear, and the tree kangaroo and the Komodo dragon, and the giant otters and the scarlet ibises, and the red wolf and the bald eagles. We finished up the whole thing by 11 AM, then ended up taking the long way home through Cranston and such places because we didn’t want to try and work our way onto the highway (which was sure to be a nightmare). Got home around 12 PM, just in time for Mom to start working on lunch. :) Good time!
Tumblr: Well, I meant to do more on here, but I ended up getting distracted for a good portion of the day looking at other things (I am starting to get into the “Blades In The Dark” subreddit), so my main accomplishment was getting a photoset of some of the best shots we took on the “Dragons & Mythical Creatures” trail in the zoo up on tumblr – you can see it here! For all your goofy animatronic and Cthulhu needs. :p But yeah, properly catching up on the dash and stuff will have to wait until tomorrow, I feel.
Writing: I have made the Executive Decision that, since I am on vacation, I can ignore my normal writing schedule – and so this week is gonna be all “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” all the time! (Though I do plan to do a full week of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” as well after the final chapter of SATBSO is published.) So I started work editing the final chapter of that this afternoon, and made some good progress, getting almost two pages in! The trio have made their way over to Six Towers, former-rich-neighborhood-turned-slum, and are just wandering the streets as they reflect on their current situation. Smiler has taken the view that making two new friends in Victor and Alice counts as a happy thing to happen to them, even if they are on the run for murder – Victor and Alice aren’t quite so sure at this junction. XD Tomorrow, we work our way into one of my Standard Blocks of Exposition – Alice explaining her whole deal to Victor (and Smiler too, in this case). Feels kind of weird to work on that so soon after doing basically the same thing in LB:DQ recently, but gotta be done so we can Victor and Smiler’s pure horror over her having been put in an asylum at nine years old. (Which is even more justified in THIS verse, as this might be the only world in which Rutledge was WORSE than in canon...having the ability to rip people’s souls out of their bodies will do that!)
YouTube: Got in my usual Subs video and cleared out the one in the Watch Later, yay –
A) First up, from the Subs, we had GrayStillPlays and “Video games that will ruin your childhood!” AKA Gray plays a trio of horror games based around some of our favorite kid-friendly properties! I admit that I watched most of this with half the video off the screen to avoid getting too freaked out by jumpscares (stupid overly-panicky brain – I have already forbid myself from looking at the TV Tropes pages for any of these games this evening, lest I spooketh myself to the point where I can’t sleep) but I did get through Gray’s chronological trip through childhood-ruining, starting with –
I. Elmo’s Fun World – One of those thrown-together horror games where the whole conceit is that this cute kid’s character has gone bad and is chasing you through a location, and you have to escape with your life or get jumpscared. In this case, you’re stuck in a house with 2D Elmo and Cookie Monster, looking for crayons – but after you get the second crayon, you suddenly have to run from a much creepier 2D Elmo with a big mouth of human teeth and a pair of knives, and a Cookie Monster who looks exactly the same except he’s dual-wielding glocks. XD Also Oscar the Grouch is in the backyard serving as a store, selling pills for $400 a pop. Gray found the whole thing hilariously jank (none of the assets were anywhere near in proportion to each other; the walls didn’t connect correctly; and he won by getting Elmo to glitch into a wall), but gave it extra points for Cookie Monster and his guns, so the final score was 5/10.
II. Coyote Kills The Road Runner – A game where you play as the Coyote from Looney Tunes, trying to kill the Road Runner! You have three plans you can execute – a boulder drop, a slingshot-smack, and a rocket chase – and every time you successfully kill the Road Runner, you get a skull that you can use in your dark ritual with your fellow coyote cultists to summon some sort of weird monster into the world. Unlike the last game, this one actually had some production values – the characters and worlds were actually properly animated and looked like themselves, and the game actually had the feel of a Looney Tunes cartoon! Admittedly a slightly gorier-than-usual one, but there wasn’t anything beyond ketchup-y blood splatter whenever Road Runner or Coyote bit it. Even the summoned monster wasn’t that scary – especially when it appeared in the classic “That’s All, Folks” frame that Porky Pig usually appears in. Basically, this game is not really going to ruin your childhood, because it’s made in good fun – but since “childhood ruining” was the scale Gray was using, it got a 2/10. Maybe punch up the gore next time, folks!
III. Sonic.EXE – As you might guess from the title, this is a Sonic the Hedgehog fan game with a horror twist – basically, the file has been taken over by an evil, eye-bleedy version of Sonic who, after slaughtering everybody in the original Green Hills Zone, actually talks to you and asks you to play with him. “Playing” involves getting Tails, Knuckles, and Dr. Eggman killed in brutal ways as Evil Sonic chases them, rips out their hearts, and declares himself to be God. I’ve actually seen this particular horror game before – back when I watched AVGN, he did an episode on Sonic hacks and fan games, and this was one of the games featured (I also believe he ended up fighting an evil Sonic plushy possessed by the game’s spirit). Kinda freaked me out then, but fortunately Gray taking the piss out of it (accusing it of not doing proper jump scares and sarcastically calling Evil Sonic “modest” once he pulled the “I am God” shit) helped this time around. (As did the aforementioned “only watching the bottom half of the screen” thing). Gray was somewhat impressed, but didn’t consider it quite enough to fully ruin his love of Sonic, so it only got a 4/10. Maybe if one of Sonic’s other friends had shown up with an AK-47, it would have ranked higher. XD
B) And then, after supper, I headed into my Watch Later to enjoy the latest from Petey Plays It – “I Tried To Make The Perfect College Athlete, But I Ran Into One Huge Problem | Super Sim Series 10!” Yes, Petey’s Super Sim Tina was back, focusing on athletics as she went to Foxbury to get her first college degree (well, first PROPER college degree – technically the first degree she got was her mixology certification). Her plan was to get a Biology degree, since that would help her get ahead in the “Bodybuilder” branch of the Athlete career; become a “Playmaker” on the Soccer Team, which would help her get ahead in the “Professional Athlete” branch of the Athlete career; and complete the Bodybuilder Aspiration to round it all out. How did it all go?
Almost perfectly. Tina managed to achieve some amazing things while she was in college: she took four core classes each semester and – thanks to using the power of the Research & Debate skill and the Study Spot lot trait on Laurel Library to get through her coursework a little bit faster – got A+s in all of them, earning herself a distinguished degree with honors in Biology! She completed the Bodybuilder aspiration (though it required a little rules-bending on Petey’s part to get her some workout equipment in the dorm) and got the “Long-Lived” trait! She bought the museum in Brindleton Bay, completed the Curator aspiration to get collectibles for it (and get the trait that lets her sell some collectibles to the Simsonian Museum for cash), completed the frog collection, and set up a frog display and a Moonwood Mill relics display for people to enjoy there (if you’re wondering how, Petey’s just deducting the appropriate amounts from her household funds)! She joined the School Spirit Squad and officially became “Nosy” thanks to living off the drama and putting her nose into everyone’s business! She even made things official with her current main squeeze Sergio (though she put the kibosh on them living together) and mended fences with Mars! But she also suffered some serious setbacks, namely:
I. After discovering that the crystals and jewelry she’d brought with her from home weren’t charging properly on one of the dorm balconies, she went and left them on the grid in the general world...and came back from her various adventures to find them missing. Because I believe Sims can just swipe these things if you leave them out in public. Fortunately Tina had a spare grid, some spare jewelry and crystals that hadn’t fit on the first one, and a balcony that DID allow her to charge her stuff privately, but it was a major loss, given the effort she put into making all her hematite and amethyst items!
II. Despite joining the Foxbury Spirit Squad, she wasn’t able to max out her rank and get the themed ping-pong table. Admittedly, keeping school spirit high is a tough job, so we cannot blame her for faltering, especially when she had so much else going on.
III. Her purchase of the museum and doing up the frog and Moonwood Mill relics collections left her with almost NO cash, so after graduation the only lot she could afford was a blank one in Newcrest. Ouch.
IV. And the big one – she didn’t max out her “career” on the soccer team. Because, despite being an excellent player, she was a little slow to advance in it (Petey prioritized socialization over work-performance-boosting play at first), and a couple of losses at some of her games meant that she had only achieved level 3, “Starter,” by the time she graduated and was automatically kicked off. (In fact, she got her final grades and was kicked off the team RIGHT AS HER NEXT PRACTICE WOULD HAVE STARTED. Meaning she JUST missed out on the chance to get promoted to the final rank!) Meaning she did NOT become the perfect college athlete and will have to try again later.
So yeah – close, but no cigar for Tina this episode! But she still accomplished a lot, so the episode ended on a decently high note with her making snow pals and snow angels on her new lot. We’ll see where she goes from here next time!
Workout: Got on the bike right after we got home from our little zoo trip (because I was already super-sweaty and I figured this way I could just take the one shower before lunch and hang out the rest of the day in my PJs), pedaling my way through another half-hour of the GSP Happy Wheels compilation “When you live a life of constant suffering!” Today’s boards included Segway Nixon taking a trip through the off-brand Fallout nuclear wasteland on his way to a vault; a jet fall where the jets actually fell on Gray (rather than him falling down through the jets), which regularly reduced Segway Nixon to chunks; Pogo Guy attempting to enjoy nature while everyone around him (from magical hobo to bodybuilders throwing cars to murder children to King Arthur) tried to kill him; Bike Dad and Tom Hardy going through your usual bottle run (which included a no-glass glass break and a game of “dodge the falling lines” – you know, the usual); Bike Dad trying to take Tom Hardy to school (Hell Squared Academy is an unforgiving place to learn); and Segway Nixon repeatedly getting mulched by a cannon while trying to complete a neon-themed rope swing. XD Ahh, we do love the pain Gray experiences on the regular in this game!
So yeah -- perhaps not my most productive day online, but it was good to get out and about, and I had fun. And I got plenty of writing done too, so that was nice as well. :) Tomorrow, though, it's supposed to rain and be generally kind of ick, so I suspect we'll be staying home all day. Which makes it a good day to do tumblr stuff, I think -- especially since I'm trying to avoid screwing up my sleep schedule too much this week, so no staying up super late on weekdays! So yeah, plans tomorrow include catching up on my tumblr dashes properly -- and maybe even catching up on my tags again, I haven't looked at them in a while; playing Sims 4 and seeing if I can finish off the Ministry of Joy build; working some more on "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of;" keeping up with my YouTube Subs, and possibly any OX lists that pop up (I believe OXtra should upload something tomorrow...); and getting in a workout. All achievable goals, I hope -- for now, night all!
