Reasonable Wednesday

Like, it wasn't the best day (still on my period, still freezing cold outside, still had to deal with some coworker bullshit), but it wasn't the worst either, so -- here's the round-up:

Work – Better day than yesterday, though that wasn’t the highest bar to clear – the traffic today wasn’t as bad going in, so I got to work on time, and my coworkers were much quieter and less annoying (one of them came in late due to a doctor’s appointment, so that helped). Morning was spent going through the exceptions and getting some credit card stuff done; afternoon was spent with the typical roster maintenance. *shrug* Kind of a very “average” day, overall, but I’ll take it.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with Tiny Town as I started “The Second Finale in Tiny Town Challenge! - Part 15” by James Turner! Yes, today it was another resident’s turn to start their Grand Finale – and the Rolodex chose Krystoff, oldest sibling and the one who got the fanciest house first because he got the most lucrative skill to be obsessed with. XD Here’s what’s happened in his episode so far –

A) James decided that he wanted to turn either the TV room or the study on the first floor into a painting studio for Krystoff, so he moved both of those rooms upstairs, into the spots that were going to be spare bedrooms! He hasn’t actually started creating the studio yet, but he has grand plans, including linking the two now-empty rooms via a sort of glass walkway area. I’m looking forward to seeing it later!

B) James also decided that Krystoff SHOULD paint portraits of all of his half-siblings and his kid, to go with the Books of Life Vivian wrote for everybody (yay :D), so James repurposed the multi-purpose room in the town hall into an art studio of sorts so he could get a jump on that – basically, he whacked down a photo subject mark in front of particular section of wall that each Sim can stand on, then put one of Krystoff’s easels nearby at an angle so Krystoff can thus paint them from reference. The wall gets redecorated for each Tiny Towner, so they all have unique backgrounds too. :) So far, Krystoff has painted Camillo, Scarlett, and Sonny – though it’s actually a copy of each painting that’s getting hung up in the town hall, as Krystoff is keeping the originals to sell on his selling wall. XD Hey, he’s still gotta make some cash so he can finish off his house!

C) ...and also so he can finish off the Grand Tiny Town Gallery that James has decided to build beneath the town center, taking one commenter’s suggestion to rejigger the book room so that the books are behind glass and cannot be snatched by Sims looking to put them away and turning it into a big long hallway displaying the books on their plinths with a matching colored floor spotlight in front of them, and the matching portrait of the Tiny Towner behind them. (I’m kind of hoping Silas’s photographs can be incorporated too!) James even has a separate room at the end for some of the side characters (like Pablo’s daughter and Krystoff’s husband), and beyond that a new room for the actual vault. It looks really awesome, but it’s VERY EXPENSIVE, so – yeah, if we’re going to get this done this episode, Krystoff needs to keep making the cash! XD James having emptied Krystoff’s coffers to do the initial build and Krystoff doing an emergency sale to make sure he had the funds to keep painting is basically where I left off – tomorrow, we’ll probably see Krystoff paint more Tiny Towners, and the Grand Tiny Town Gallery come together a bit more! And, also, at some point, James is probably gonna realize that it’s going to be a bit difficult for Krystoff to paint a portrait of HIMSELF...I mean, I THINK he can (unlike Vivienne, who straight-up CAN’T write herself a Book of Life), but I don’t think it would look very good. Hmmm.

2. Continue working on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got through Alice finding the Brotherhood flier in Kanker’s cesspit with Cheshire’s help (she was rather puzzled, as she did not think of them as the type to go leafleting) – and then, when Hatter pointed out the symbol on said flier looked vaguely familiar, getting Rabbit’s help in tracking down where she’d last seen it. I finished off the session with her following him and Mock out of the sewers – next week, we’ll pick back up after a scene break with Alice finding the Brotherhood’s headquarters! And being like “really?!” because, well, it seems a certain Tremere Regent should have considered actually stepping outside his chantry every once in a while if he truly wanted to find these plaguebearers...

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another GrayStillPlays-only night, with another GTA V video – “Can the sawblade car drive through puddles?” This board saw Gray taking a host of cars – some normal, some with extra wheels welded on, one with giant wheels on a tiny truck frame, and one gigantic monstrosity with gigantic sawblade wheels – through two distinct challenges: a water test where they had to make it through ten increasingly-deep valleys of water on a roadway in the ocean; and a suspension test where they had to tightrope across rusty pipes, drive over a bunch of concrete barriers, leap over a windmill, drive over increasingly-spaced-out concrete pipes, climb the world’s lumpiest and steepest hill, then conquer the uneven tightrope before getting the win. As you might imagine, most of the cars flooded out before they got even halfway through the water portion of the challenge, with the arena car and the Giant Tires Tiny Frame car coming within INCHES of tasting victory (aka getting to the checkpoint) before flooding out. Only three cars made it to the suspension test – the Sherp, the Sawblades, and the Moon Rover – and of those, the Sherp was able to get all the way to the lumpy hill, but wasn’t able to climb it, while the Sawblades couldn’t even do the first tightrope because it was just way too big. Meaning the Moon Rover, aka the Sherp’s slightly more competent brother, was the one to get to the end and take the win! It was a close one, but it did it! Love to see the Wastelander-Sherp-Rover family winning. :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – technically I didn’t have anything to do here, because I only had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today, and my queue for that is already sorted, but I did put a couple new things in my drafts –

A) I reblogged a gifset of the moment from the final episode of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark where Mike called a flashback so Barnaby could secretly put lead pipes in Astor’s rebuilt headquarters to give him retroactive lead poisoning XD It’s a fantastic moment, and a fantastically-made gifset – the expression on everyone’s faces as Mike goes on about how Astor’s been poisoning himself are fantastic. XD God, I still love that series so much…

B) And I reblogged one of MarlynnOfMany’s stories – specifically, one about an exorcist character who, while trying to make a spell to attract ghosts to a certain fountain and light them up so she can see what she’s doing to send them on (as they like extinguishing all light sources), accidentally invents a ghost bug zapper. I thought this was a great idea, and definitely something I needed to include in the Valicer In The Dark verse in some capacity! (Which I believe I mentioned before in a previous write-up over here, but I hadn’t gotten the story ready for reblogging before.)

So that’s nice, at least. :) Extra stuff to throw into the queue!

And yeah, that's about it! And now I need to get to bed as I keep getting distracted by stuff and need to get my sleep if I intend to keep functioning. :p Night all!