Rather Meh Birthday

Like, I knew it wasn't going to be great simply because I'm on my period, and that automatically makes everything worse, but -- Mom was all stressed out a good portion of the day from all the stuff she had to do (like making spinach filling and dough for tomorrow, and cooking some extra ones for my aunt and uncle to take home), which made me all stressed out on her behalf; my aunt and uncle showed up and ended up chatting with my parents for two hours, which, uh, was not ideal when it came to me getting the stuff I wanted to get done, done (Mom allowed me to leave the table a little early, but -- yeah); and Game Night with the new BTTF "escape room" game I got for Christmas wasn't exactly great simply because the game involves a lot more reading than I expected, which was not conducive to eating. Also we got really stuck on one puzzle, so the game's been tabled for the time being (we may try again to get through a little more of it tomorrow -- we'll see!)

As for my actual presents, and the stuff I did accomplish today --

Birthday Presents: In addition to the usual cards, I received from my folks and my aunt:

-->A new white work shirt (since I needed one of those)

-->A new beige work cardigan (as I can always use more sweaters to layer – it’s nice and soft too)

-->A Blades In The Dark-themed T-shirt I found online and requested, advertising “Lord Scurlock’s Old One.7 Brand Risky Standard” (Lord Scurlock being an NPC you can encounter in the game, and “Risky Standard” referring to the standard “position” and “effect” you get when rolling dice to do anything)

-->A hardcover physical copy of Blades In The Dark (I wanted this because, while the PDF is good, I wanted the actual book too – feel like it might make things easier to look up)

-->And three pairs of BTTF socks from my aunt – two sets of the “Part I Doc and Marty” OddSox set, and one flux-capacitors-and-DeLoreans-print set she found on Redbubble (Mom apparently told her my previous Doc & Marty set was wearing out, which, true, but...at least I got one new pattern as well!)

Plus I have one present still in the mail – a Smiler scarf that Mom ordered from England! It was supposed to come before Christmas, but got delayed, so now it’s EXPECTED to arrive here this upcoming Tuesday. We’re hoping it might get here before then (according to the tracking app, it’s now in Connecticut), but – kinda up to the whims of the post office, sadly! We’ll see what happens.

Tumblr: Not much happened over here today, but I got the most important stuff done –

Victor Luvs Alice – Three key things to report on here:

A) I went through “#the smiler,” “#alice madness returns,” and “#corpse bride” tags again today, just for funsies – added another really nice piece of Alice fan art to my drafts, which was nice

B) I ended up revamping my tumblr blog to properly feature Smiler! The blog’s title is now “Victor Luvs Alice N Smiler,” and I changed my icon and header to be pictures of the trio from the old Valicertine’s Day photoshoot (the one I did to make the OT3 Math picture – my new icon is the trio from the first picture, and the header is the third picture with them posing goofily). I also updated my blog’s theme to better show these off. Now, my intent was also to change my username/url on the site to “victorluvsalicensmiler” – but when I did that and went to announce the change, I discovered that I’d completely broken all the links in my previous posts. Because, well, they were still pointing to my old username. I was like “shit, sorry Smiler, but NOPE – I cannot spend all my time fixing all those” and scurried back to change my username back to just “victorluvsalice.” Shame, but – yeah. At least everything else now properly shows off my OT3 ways!

C) And earlier tonight, I made a quick photo post showcasing my favorite presents from the above list – the BITD book and shirt, and my newest pair of BTTF socks. :) Satirical Demon then reblogged it to say “happy birthday,” so I reblogged it to say “thank you.” Nice to be acknowledged!

Valice Multiverse – Just one anon ask to stick in the queue tonight, with the asker saying their wife left them because they were insecure, only to reveal that she only went to get coffee – Cuddlepile!Smiler praised them on the good joke, while Alice said she hoped it was just a joke. Because my anons get weird sometimes. :P

Sims 4: Despite being kept away from my computer a good portion of the day, I decided I wanted to do something with one of my video games and popped in here very briefly this afternoon, where I accomplished the following –

A) First, because I really wanted to see my old Valicer trio again and play around with some of the clothes in the new packs I just purchased, I decided to do a quick experiment and drop one of the variants I had saved in my Gallery into CAS – sure, I didn’t have any of my modded clothes in, but I figured I could replace those outfits with new ones. However, the minute I did so and loaded up Smiler, their eyes went from the bright yellow in the thumbnail to ordinary human green. *sigh* Damn it. And thanks to the bug that I’ve heard about, I don’t know if turning them into a vampire would actually allow me to KEEP those yellow eyes I love so much. I suppose I could try it, at least for some CAS-flavored fun, but – meeeh. I want Smiler to just HAVE their right eye color, darn it!

B) Well, if I couldn’t have my CAS OT3 fun, I could at least do some work on their house! So I swung by the Polyheart OT3 House and futzed around with the place a bit –

I. I replaced the toiletries that got deleted out of the en-suite bathroom when I wallpapered the hallway outside with the new Lovestruck toiletries set, moving both that and the toothbrush cup into place on the counter with good old “bb.moveobjects on”

II. I removed the Life & Death inkwell from Victor’s desk – much as I like the look of it, I think the unlockable base game one I grabbed originally works better for him because it has a bigger quill, which matches the one he uses in the movie better

III. I replaced Smiler’s old base game guitar with the new Lovestruck one because it has a slightly nicer yellow swatch (and that’s important when it comes to Smiler)

IV. And I made some decent progress in the living room, updating the TV stand to the Life & Death one in a nice brown swatch and sticking the fancier gaming console beside it on the floor; adding a Life & Death bookshelf to the left side of the main archway in and putting a Paranormal Stuff armchair next to it under the window (I would have gone with one of the new furniture items, but as I had the Paranormal Stuff couch already, I decided that would match better); and – after looking around for a while for the perfect set of shelves – sticking the High School Years “Thrifted Storage Display” on the other side of the main archway in, next to the games table, with the decorative Growing Together stacks of puzzles and games and the new Lovestruck game box on it and in it (the puzzles in the lower compartment and the games on the top). *nods* So that’s all slowly but surely coming together! :) Looking forward to making more progress later...

Writing: Got another page done on “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded,” with Alice getting briefly annoyed over the fact that, if she hadn’t started stabbing people, she, Victor, and Smiler probably would have been let loose the minute the Spirit Wardens showed up to confirm that Barkis wasn’t their own and that he was killed by a ghost (with Wonderland going “hey, we only had as much information as you did in that moment”), and the trio telling Matt and Carol about Bumby’s murder and handing over his ledger for them to read (Matt and Carol, after a few pages, were like “yes, his murder was totally justified”). I should be able to wrap this up tomorrow, with the trio being invited back to the Ministry of Joy to tell Matt and Carol all about what they’ve been up to and to have some food and maybe get their clothes washed. :p Gonna feel good to get another first draft in the can, yaaay~

YouTube: Only had time for one video tonight, the latest from GrayStillPlays in my Subs – “I ate all of mankind and this happened,” aka Gray plays The Visitor! This is a puzzle game where you must manipulate the environment to allow an alien grub that landed on earth to go around and invade the bodies of the other animals around it to gain powerful mutations and eventually eat whatever humans they may find. Gray helped one alien that landed in a pond explodicate a frog, then launch itself via a fishing pole over to a house, then first confuse a cat before going up its butt and exploding IT to get its powers, then invade the house, then set things up so the lady washing dishes in the kitchen tripped a got a knife to the forehead, then invade the air conditioning system to get to a bedroom, then eat in quick succession a fish and a bird, then finally use the new fish and bird powers to murder all the remaining humans in the building. And then he helped another alien use the power of trash to get inside and explode a raccoon, then head over to a camper to devour a spider to gain its webbing powers, then a skunk to get its stinky powers, then get inside the camper and get the guy there to send out his dog so it could be devoured for its toothy may, then go back inside the camper and use the power of a Raid flamethrower to set the guy on fire and distract him so his throat could be torn out, then finally face the guy’s gun-toting wife and kill her in a variety of fun ways (from ripping out her heart to just straight-up poisoning her to crawling in her dismembered jaw to eat her from the inside out and gain the powers of her terrible haircut). *snrrk* It was ridiculously gross and over the top, and Gray was constantly reassuring us that everything was fine, everyone getting exploded was just fine, all that terrible blood animation was just dancing Twizzlers. XD Good stuff!

Workout: Last night on the bike this week, and I spent it with “CaFae Latte Season 10 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi! (Along with a few clips of Corpse Bride, “Alice: Madness Returns,” and The Smiler ads to fill in the last few minutes.) This video saw the regulars:

A) Dealing with the aftermath of the whole “Bob kidnapped” debacle from last season, with Mike the witch coming in and apologizing because the kidnappers were actually previously from HIS coven until they were expelled for being toxic, and thus he felt weirdly responsible for them capturing Bob (Bob assured him that it wasn’t his fault, and if there WAS any responsibility, it was cleared by his CURRENT protege, Nicole, helping rescue her)...and one of the kidnappers, Lindsay, showing up and asking if her portion of the “cursed with infamy for kidnapping Bob until you each help seven people significantly improve their lives” curse could be uncoupled from her sister’s, as she’s trying actively to break it (having started volunteering at a soup kitchen and already helped one person there score a job) but she’s realized Nancy will never try to improve and thus is trying to cut her out of her life (Bob, having already sussed that Lindsay has more of a moral backbone, agreed to untether her from Nancy so she just has to help her seven to lift her curse)

B) Bob having trouble with Doordash (both a Dasher lying to a client about how much of the order they received from the cafe (and a furious Bob tracking them down to curse them to be able only to speak truth for a year) and a Dasher telling Bob about how sometimes CLIENTS lie about whether or not they’d received the food to get a free meal (leading Bob to put a new enchantment on the establishment to protect her food and its messengers))

C) The introduction of new nonhuman races like goblins, dwarves, and gnomes (who do love to needle each other, especially if one ends up in a “stereotypical” profession)

D) And the cafe dealing with religious folks (in the form of a Bible-thumper attempting to get Bob and Cyrus to pack up and leave for being “Godless demons” (didn’t work) and a priest who proved to be ultra-chill about the supernatural and even friends with Mike (who was like “those bible-thumping assholes give the rest of us a bad name”).

E) Oh, and JC spent the night at Nicole’s after heading there to look at her collection of vintage so-bad-they’re-good movies, and came to the cafe the next morning in her jacket. :D So that was cute. Still thoroughly enjoying these and looking forward to when I can watch the next compilation for Season 11!

Yeah, not horrible, just -- eh. I've had better birthdays. And now I really should head to bed and get some sleep. Tomorrow -- well, it would have been a cleaning Saturday, but my birthday present to myself is that I'm going to skip this week's clean and pick up next week instead. My room is hardly filthy, so I think I'll live. Anyway, goals include doing some drafting on Victor Luvs Alice N Smiler; doing something with Baldur's Gate III already; finishing off "A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded;" and keeping up with my Subs and trying to get some of the stuff out of my Watch Later -- got two rather long OXBox videos sitting in there that need watching! We'll see what I manage tomorrow...night all!