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Half Day Followed By Snow Day!
Feb. 5th, 2025 11:52 pmYes, not only did I get to come home early today because of the water main repairs, I now have tomorrow off entirely because we're expected to get some sort of shitty winter storm (snow, ice, freezing rain) that's supposed to be at its worst right during the morning commute hours. So instead of having to worry about driving in that mess, I can just stay home and relax, yay~ :D I may not be a fan of winter, but I do like getting the occasional day off because of its shitty weather! Anyway, here's the day's write-up:
Work – Very credit-card-focused half-day at work, with me spending most of my time either taking or making credit card calls (with a few e-mails thrown in for flavor). Redid a couple of failed credit card gifts, set up some pledges, directed one person who didn’t want to give their info over the phone to the website, and left some voicemails/messages for people I couldn’t reach. *shrug* Pretty productive four-and-a-half hours, all told! And now I don’t have all those failed credit cards and exceptions hanging over my head, hooray~ (I mean, I still have a FEW, but at least I tried to clear them all!)
Sims 4 – After getting home in excellent time (traffic was SUPER light this afternoon for some reason) and helping my parents a bit with putting away the stuff they got at Wal-Mart today (they got home almost at the exact same time I did, hilariously), I got on the computer, updated my Sims 4 game, and headed straight back to the Polyheart OT3 House to see how much progress I could make on it! Not in the least because it occurred to me recently that, if I can try and finish it up by this Saturday, I could write up a post featuring it on Sunday for Wednesday of next week, and thus have my Valicertine’s Week queue lineup completely sorted… We’ll see how close I get! In the meantime, here’s what I accomplished in the two bonus hours I got today thanks to work closing early, sorted by room (mostly):
A) Whole House – However, first, a change that affected almost every room in the house – me changing up the doors! I was never really happy with any of the plain wooden doors I was using throughout most of the house, so when I started working on Smiler’s room to start the session, I decided to see if there were any good yellow doors I could use for their space. This led to me stumbling across the “Lavish Colored Door” from Lovestruck, which had a decent yellow swatch –
And, as it turned out, decent red and blue swatches too. AND, after sticking it on Victor and Alice’s rooms too, I realized that the door, being kinda tall, fit a lot better with the tall arches I was using to allow access to the living room and the hallways and the kitchen than the shorter doors I was using in the rest of the build. So I went ahead and replaced every interior door (I left the rainbow front door alone, as I still like that) with the new Lovestruck door in a couple of different swatches (red for Alice’s room; dark blue for Victor’s; yellow for Smiler’s; light blue for the two more public bathrooms; purple for the bedroom; and white for the en-suite bathroom). This DID necessitate the use of “bb.moveobjects on” to get the doors to fit in some tight spaces, and adjusting the placement of some objects (namely the light switch and the dresser in the bedroom, which both had to be scooted over a bit to prevent overlapping/clipping) but I’m happy with the change overall! :)
B) Living Room – Okay, onto specific changes in specific rooms, starting here in the living room! Where I –
I. Put the Movie Hangout Stuff “Sha(g)ka Bra” rug with the cool bold colorful bird pattern on a black background underneath the couch, adjusted so you can actually see the birds – and then got another one in the “colorful flowers on a white background” swatch, resized it a little and put it under the chair in the reading nook in the corner! Because I wanted a rug over there, and I thought the flowers on the rug went well with the succulents and hanging plants I’ve put over there. :)
II. Slipped a slightly-resized stack of decorative books into the little cubby in the bottom of the Life & Death side table in the reading nook with the help of MOO – I thought they would look good in there, and you know what, they do! I had to raise them into place, admittedly, but I don’t THINK they’re floating – they don’t look like they are, anyway!
III. And put a resized Get Famous mural depicting a bright colorful sunny day behind the TV, flanked on either side by those cool glowing butterflies from Kid’s Room Stuff in the rainbow swatches. Interestingly, the mural does NOT disappear along with the wall when I put the walls into “cutaway” mode! Which is not a complaint, mind – one of the things that makes me sad about this house is that so many of the decorations I put up can’t be seen because the interior walls all go away when I put things into “cutaway” mode. So any decorations I can still see are appreciated. :)
C) Bedroom – Over here, I –
I. Replaced the blue carpet with the same Vampires wooden flooring I’ve been using in the rest of the house in the gray swatch, and the purple wallpaper with the grass and butterflies with the Discover University “Melting Waves” wallpaper with a dripping mini-rainbow of reddish-pink, blue, and yellow against a white and gray background! Because the more I looked at that carpet and wallpaper combo, the more I wasn’t feeling it. (Granted, this makes the purple door I chose for the room make less sense as the wallpaper isn’t purple anymore, but fuck it, I’m sticking with it, I like purple. :p) Maybe if I’d had my CC carpets in, I would have done something with those, but as it stands… *shrug*
II. Moved the fancy blue-yellow-and-red Werewolves rug that was in the living room under the beds (remember, we’ve got a double bed tucked in under a single loft bed in this room to make sure all three have space/Alice has a bed where she can sleep alone if she wants). I did want some rugs in here, and that one fits the color scheme beautifully, so…
III. Recolored the vanity twice because I wasn’t really happy with the color scheme – first to black and gold for more contrast, then – realizing that did not fit the light-colored room at ALL – to the white and dull gold swatch. It just fit better with the walls and floor like that! I did look at the other vanity you get with Vintage Glamour Stuff, but that one had even less swatches I liked, and less slots for fun clutter, sooo – yeah. Sticking with what I’ve got! (Though I do wish it came in some better “colorful” swatches...gotta add some more color to this room with décor!)
IV. Put a Movie Hangout Stuff “plants in cups and spare books” decorative piece on top of the dresser, mostly because it had fun colors and such. Dunno if it’s going to STAY in there or if I’ll move it to another part of the house, but so far it’s doing well in keeping the trio of colorful Lovestruck birds up there company!
V. And put a “hot air balloons up against some clouds” decal up above Alice’s loft bed, in one of the more colorful and fun swatches (with starry balloons in roughly the right colors). Like I said, gotta add more color to this room with décor! The walls need shit on them! Even if I don’t see them most of the time! XD
D) Alice’s Room – Fair number of changes in here, as I –
I. Put a light switch by her new door...and then, realizing I couldn’t get it to look good either above or in the super-high paneling on the wallpaper, changed the wallpaper entirely to one of the new Life & Death in a dramatic red-and-black swatch with skulls lining the top and a line of eyes at about chair height. Honestly, it looks a lot cooler than what she had before! :D I left the floor white, though – helps brighten up the room a bit.
II. Added a bit of art to the room, including the unlockable “Cake Is No Lie” painting from City Living’s Critic career (of COURSE Alice is going to have a picture of a cake in her room XD), and a trio of framed keys on her curved wall (felt appropriate given the importance of keys in Alice: Madness Returns). Just something to add some interest to the walls!
III. Gave her a Digitalistic Sketchpad for her desk, beside her typewriter computer – she does draw, after all! I thought about giving her an easel, but decided against it – we never see anything in the games or supplementary material to suggest she works with paint, while you CAN spot some paint pots in Victor’s room if you’re looking hard enough during the beginning of Corpse Bride. (Ironic, given I made painting her thing for a while in the Chill Valicer Save…)
IV. And also gave her the nicest chess set in the bold black-and-red swatch, along with the two comfiest “Princess Cordelia”-themed dining chairs...and then I moved the whole thing in front of the window on her curved wall, as I figured it might be pleasant for her and her opponent to play chess while being able to look outside at nature. :) I then moved the camera and tripod that were originally facing the window over to the side wall, facing the back section of wall just beyond the curve – I tried for a while to find a “backdrop” for that spot (either an official photo backdrop or an interesting piece of art), but nothing doing so far. I’ll try again tomorrow!
E) Victor’s Room – Mostly art-related changes in here, as I –
I. Put up some new paintings – the Kid’s Room “triptych” painting in the butterfly swatch just above his desk (to match the Wonderland/funny-animal-themed one above Alice’s desk); and “Ode to Jazz 5: Ivory” (the base game picture of piano keys, because it’s not enough that he has a piano rug under his actual piano XD), one of the new Life & Death fancy paintings (of the Reaper with a bunch of ravens), and the “Crumplebottom” crochet-and-cross-stitch collection from Knitting Stuff. I felt those all fit with his theme – I’m jokingly headcanoning that the cross-stitch stuff was a gift from Victoria. XD Oh, and I made sure to put a light switch by HIS door too. Everyone gets light switches!
II. Adjusted the positioning of his easel, as it was slightly clipping into the wall in its corner – now it’s at an angle, which I like much better. Probably should get a tarp under it, come to think of it…
III. And FINALLY GOT THE POOR GUY A DESK CHAIR. XD The problem is, Victor sits on a STOOL when you see him briefly at his desk at the start of Corpse Bride, but you can’t pair a stool with a desk in this game, so I was a bit stuck on what chair would suit him. Ended up going for the fancy lawyer’s desk chair you can unlock as part of the Law career with Discover University – it looked nice, but not quite as ostentatiously over-the-top as the ultimate Business desk chair. XD So now he has a place to sit that isn’t the piano stool, yay~
F) Smiler’s Room – More art-related changes, plus a new activity in this room, as I –
I. Gave them the unlockable Scientist chemistry lab bench from Get To Work! Because I really wanted to have something to represent their love of chemistry, and while ideally they would have a proper LAB for their chemical work, I decided that, since this is just a show house designed to capture the essence of the three, I could put it in the corner. Though I did make sure to get one of the base game range hoods and stick it over the bench (with a little help from MOO to lift it up) to vent any fumes from Smiler’s experiments. XD Just liked that extra little detail, you know?
II. Put some art up on the walls, including a frog decal from Backyard Stuff in one of the more purplish swatches (as Smiler’s favorite animals are frogs, and I figured they’d like that); the “Stride With Pride” picture they added during one Pride month into the base game (goes well with their non-binary flag); and the “My First Framed Art” picture set from Moschino Stuff in one of the trippier “black, white, gray, and yellow stripes” swatches (talk about on BRAND!). Oh, and of course a light switch on the wall, by the door. :p Speaking of which...
III. Moved the door to the other side of the room! Yes, while I was doing the door change, I realized that you could only access the rooms in the middle of the house – Smiler’s room and the big bathroom with the corner tub – from the left-hand hallway. That felt a little silly, so I moved Smiler’s door to the right-hand hallway, putting it across from the archway into the kitchen. So now things are a mite more balanced, regarding which doors are where. :p
G) Hallway/Big Bathroom – Putting these together as I did one thing in each –
I. I added that big abstract painting with the red, yellow, and blue rectangles from Get Famous to the left-hand hallway, as I really wanted to use it SOMEWHERE but it didn’t look good in any of the rooms, sadly
II. And I put the Spa Day moisturizers on their tray on the empty counter in the big bathroom, turned so it was facing the corner tub! (Would have liked to have put it ON the tub, but slots forbid.)
Whew – lot of fiddling and poking around in different places to be sure, but everything is slowly but surely coming together! Again, we’ll see how far I get by Saturday, but if I can get everyone’s room into a workable state, I should be happy enough to share some pictures of the place on tumblr. :) (And here too, obviously. XD)
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to James Turner tonight, with his most recent video – “Building with the Free game update! 70+ new items!” Yes, the next episode of Tiny Town is just a LITTLE too long to fit neatly into the three days left in this working-out week, so instead I decided to check out this video…
Mostly because I had no idea what stuff the new base game update actually added. ^^; I’m not good at noticing when things are new when they don’t have pack symbols attached! XD Anyway, James was more than happy to show us all the new stuff via the medium of renovating Crick Cabana, one of the base game houses in Willow Creek! He’s been doing little renovations and refreshes of all the empty houses in the base game worlds to go along with the nice new houses the Gurus built for the base game families anyway, so, this worked out perfectly for everybody. XD Now, he wasn’t able to include everything in the new house because he was trying to keep the price roughly the same as the original version’s – meaning that, much as he loved it, the new fireplace had to go – but he at least showed everything off at least once while doing his renovations, and he tried to use as much new stuff as he could! Doors, windows, columns, floor tiles (including actual tile and carpeting), wall tiles, and even some new artwork (though that also proved to be too expensive and thus had to go). It was pretty neat, and gives me a good idea of what to look for if I want to find this new stuff (much of it happily has HBD – for “Happy Birthday,” since this update was released to celebrate 25 years of the franchise – in the name). And the refreshed house looks good! Mostly – I am strongly questioning James’s placement of the kitchen table on the wall leading into the mini-hall across from the kitchen. XD It’s a little crammed in there, James! But then again, the video’s not QUITE done, and I left it with him doing more fiddling as he changed up the colors and made sure he was happy with the layout. We’ll see how he finishes this starter home refresh off tomorrow!
2. Continue working on “Londerland Bloodlines: Dowtown Queensland”: Check – Alice finally reached the Brotherhood’s “temple” (the most dilapidated room in the building) today – and met one Bishop Vick! AKA the vampire that nobody can believe is a Toreador because, well, he sure as hell doesn’t fulfill the usual “prettyboy” requirements. XD But yes, Alice and he had a little chat, with Vick attempting to convince Alice to his side by talking about how the diseases he spreads are no worse than the “disease” of being a vampire, and about how no god watched over him when he was Embraced, so he became God to bring about a Judgment Day of his own making to end this awful world –
And Alice telling Vick “you are full of shit and I am going to make sure you die before you hurt anyone else.” XD So yeah, boss fight is imminent – and poor Alice isn’t going to have fun with this one, I’m sorry to say. Mostly because it involves him using both super-speed and a shotgun. *grimace* At least you don’t have to worry about it until next week, Alice?
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one GrayStillPlays video today, “Testing cars vs waves in GTA 5!” This was a two-part torture board (with separate vehicles for each part) that saw Gray having to take on:
I. Surviving 169 seconds in deeper and deeper water, by staying on a platform rotating around a central arm as it passed through two giant squares of water on either side! Or, rather, a series of 23 platforms joined together, each of which was a little lower than the others, and which gradually disappeared as time went on (I believe the numbers on each platform indicated how many seconds it would stick around – so the first few platforms disappeared almost immediately, while the ones at the end took ages to go). The trick to this one was to find a car that not only resisted flooding out as it descended the platform steps deeper and deeper into the water slices, but also one that didn’t lose its traction as it tried to keep up with the rotating platform in the water (because the further you got from the center, the faster you needed to go). Gray got cars ranging from the tiny RC car to the giant dump truck for this one – and hilariously, the dump truck did shockingly well, getting all the way up to platform 18 before finally slipping off! Most of the rest of the cars failed at about platform 14, with even my beloved Wastelander only just getting up to about 15 or 16. The winner proved to be the Mars Rover, which had the speed, the traction, and the sheer get-it-done-ness to make it all the way to the end! Though it took a few tries. Mostly because Gray had to dodge buoys and find a way over a cresting submarine as he got farther and farther out. XD Hey, Alex and company weren’t going to make it EASY on him!
II. Not only surviving bigger and bigger waves, but using them to get over bigger and bigger barriers! This one consisted of a road in the ocean with a series of script circles that Gray had to trigger to make the waves around him bigger and bigger – starting at one meter, then going to five, then ten, then twenty-five, then a full-on fifty. Gray not only had to find a car among the new set that wouldn’t drown out while trying to get through the increasingly-big waves, but which also could use the waves as ramps to get over the walls that had been placed in his path. As you might imagine, most of the cars didn’t get past the first wall – though it’s worth noting that the forklift Gray was given did better than the actual lifeguard car. At the very least, it survived longer! For a moment, it looked like the Chosen One would be the Deluxo (aka the off-brand DeLorean) with its ability to fly over the waves...but the damn thing simply couldn’t get the height to get over the first wall. So Gray went back to get the tank, wondering if he could use it as a ramp –
And found the tiny Aqua-Zip quad behind it. XD How long has it been since we had a hidden car? Anyway, Gray grabbed that, and after much blood, sweat, tears, smashing up the engine of the first one by continually ramming it into the ground coming off the waves, and nearly drowning in the giant glitch-waves of the final section, Gray made it past the final wall and to the end! So I guess now we know which two vehicles you want when trying to best the water in San Andreas! Thanks, Alex!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – today was another Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only day, and I didn’t really have anything to do other than keep up with my dash. And I suppose get my last Valicertine ready, but I can do that tomorrow morning because I will actually have the time, hooray! :p Nice to have some time where I can just chill out. :)
*nods* Not bad. And now I should prepare to hit the sheets -- don't want to stay up TOO late, even with the day off, since it's still part of the workweek. Plans for tomorrow are to do some drafting on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) and get that third Valicertine I had in mind done; work some more on the Polyheart OT3 House in Sims 4 and see if maybe I can get that done; continue editing "A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded" and have Alice start getting her stuff already; get in a workout; and keep up with whatever Subs videos I can and the OXBoxtra lists of the week (got one in my Watch Later; expect the other to come out tomorrow). I think these are all achievable goals, especially if I don't stay up all night. :p Night all!
Work – Very credit-card-focused half-day at work, with me spending most of my time either taking or making credit card calls (with a few e-mails thrown in for flavor). Redid a couple of failed credit card gifts, set up some pledges, directed one person who didn’t want to give their info over the phone to the website, and left some voicemails/messages for people I couldn’t reach. *shrug* Pretty productive four-and-a-half hours, all told! And now I don’t have all those failed credit cards and exceptions hanging over my head, hooray~ (I mean, I still have a FEW, but at least I tried to clear them all!)
Sims 4 – After getting home in excellent time (traffic was SUPER light this afternoon for some reason) and helping my parents a bit with putting away the stuff they got at Wal-Mart today (they got home almost at the exact same time I did, hilariously), I got on the computer, updated my Sims 4 game, and headed straight back to the Polyheart OT3 House to see how much progress I could make on it! Not in the least because it occurred to me recently that, if I can try and finish it up by this Saturday, I could write up a post featuring it on Sunday for Wednesday of next week, and thus have my Valicertine’s Week queue lineup completely sorted… We’ll see how close I get! In the meantime, here’s what I accomplished in the two bonus hours I got today thanks to work closing early, sorted by room (mostly):
A) Whole House – However, first, a change that affected almost every room in the house – me changing up the doors! I was never really happy with any of the plain wooden doors I was using throughout most of the house, so when I started working on Smiler’s room to start the session, I decided to see if there were any good yellow doors I could use for their space. This led to me stumbling across the “Lavish Colored Door” from Lovestruck, which had a decent yellow swatch –
And, as it turned out, decent red and blue swatches too. AND, after sticking it on Victor and Alice’s rooms too, I realized that the door, being kinda tall, fit a lot better with the tall arches I was using to allow access to the living room and the hallways and the kitchen than the shorter doors I was using in the rest of the build. So I went ahead and replaced every interior door (I left the rainbow front door alone, as I still like that) with the new Lovestruck door in a couple of different swatches (red for Alice’s room; dark blue for Victor’s; yellow for Smiler’s; light blue for the two more public bathrooms; purple for the bedroom; and white for the en-suite bathroom). This DID necessitate the use of “bb.moveobjects on” to get the doors to fit in some tight spaces, and adjusting the placement of some objects (namely the light switch and the dresser in the bedroom, which both had to be scooted over a bit to prevent overlapping/clipping) but I’m happy with the change overall! :)
B) Living Room – Okay, onto specific changes in specific rooms, starting here in the living room! Where I –
I. Put the Movie Hangout Stuff “Sha(g)ka Bra” rug with the cool bold colorful bird pattern on a black background underneath the couch, adjusted so you can actually see the birds – and then got another one in the “colorful flowers on a white background” swatch, resized it a little and put it under the chair in the reading nook in the corner! Because I wanted a rug over there, and I thought the flowers on the rug went well with the succulents and hanging plants I’ve put over there. :)
II. Slipped a slightly-resized stack of decorative books into the little cubby in the bottom of the Life & Death side table in the reading nook with the help of MOO – I thought they would look good in there, and you know what, they do! I had to raise them into place, admittedly, but I don’t THINK they’re floating – they don’t look like they are, anyway!
III. And put a resized Get Famous mural depicting a bright colorful sunny day behind the TV, flanked on either side by those cool glowing butterflies from Kid’s Room Stuff in the rainbow swatches. Interestingly, the mural does NOT disappear along with the wall when I put the walls into “cutaway” mode! Which is not a complaint, mind – one of the things that makes me sad about this house is that so many of the decorations I put up can’t be seen because the interior walls all go away when I put things into “cutaway” mode. So any decorations I can still see are appreciated. :)
C) Bedroom – Over here, I –
I. Replaced the blue carpet with the same Vampires wooden flooring I’ve been using in the rest of the house in the gray swatch, and the purple wallpaper with the grass and butterflies with the Discover University “Melting Waves” wallpaper with a dripping mini-rainbow of reddish-pink, blue, and yellow against a white and gray background! Because the more I looked at that carpet and wallpaper combo, the more I wasn’t feeling it. (Granted, this makes the purple door I chose for the room make less sense as the wallpaper isn’t purple anymore, but fuck it, I’m sticking with it, I like purple. :p) Maybe if I’d had my CC carpets in, I would have done something with those, but as it stands… *shrug*
II. Moved the fancy blue-yellow-and-red Werewolves rug that was in the living room under the beds (remember, we’ve got a double bed tucked in under a single loft bed in this room to make sure all three have space/Alice has a bed where she can sleep alone if she wants). I did want some rugs in here, and that one fits the color scheme beautifully, so…
III. Recolored the vanity twice because I wasn’t really happy with the color scheme – first to black and gold for more contrast, then – realizing that did not fit the light-colored room at ALL – to the white and dull gold swatch. It just fit better with the walls and floor like that! I did look at the other vanity you get with Vintage Glamour Stuff, but that one had even less swatches I liked, and less slots for fun clutter, sooo – yeah. Sticking with what I’ve got! (Though I do wish it came in some better “colorful” swatches...gotta add some more color to this room with décor!)
IV. Put a Movie Hangout Stuff “plants in cups and spare books” decorative piece on top of the dresser, mostly because it had fun colors and such. Dunno if it’s going to STAY in there or if I’ll move it to another part of the house, but so far it’s doing well in keeping the trio of colorful Lovestruck birds up there company!
V. And put a “hot air balloons up against some clouds” decal up above Alice’s loft bed, in one of the more colorful and fun swatches (with starry balloons in roughly the right colors). Like I said, gotta add more color to this room with décor! The walls need shit on them! Even if I don’t see them most of the time! XD
D) Alice’s Room – Fair number of changes in here, as I –
I. Put a light switch by her new door...and then, realizing I couldn’t get it to look good either above or in the super-high paneling on the wallpaper, changed the wallpaper entirely to one of the new Life & Death in a dramatic red-and-black swatch with skulls lining the top and a line of eyes at about chair height. Honestly, it looks a lot cooler than what she had before! :D I left the floor white, though – helps brighten up the room a bit.
II. Added a bit of art to the room, including the unlockable “Cake Is No Lie” painting from City Living’s Critic career (of COURSE Alice is going to have a picture of a cake in her room XD), and a trio of framed keys on her curved wall (felt appropriate given the importance of keys in Alice: Madness Returns). Just something to add some interest to the walls!
III. Gave her a Digitalistic Sketchpad for her desk, beside her typewriter computer – she does draw, after all! I thought about giving her an easel, but decided against it – we never see anything in the games or supplementary material to suggest she works with paint, while you CAN spot some paint pots in Victor’s room if you’re looking hard enough during the beginning of Corpse Bride. (Ironic, given I made painting her thing for a while in the Chill Valicer Save…)
IV. And also gave her the nicest chess set in the bold black-and-red swatch, along with the two comfiest “Princess Cordelia”-themed dining chairs...and then I moved the whole thing in front of the window on her curved wall, as I figured it might be pleasant for her and her opponent to play chess while being able to look outside at nature. :) I then moved the camera and tripod that were originally facing the window over to the side wall, facing the back section of wall just beyond the curve – I tried for a while to find a “backdrop” for that spot (either an official photo backdrop or an interesting piece of art), but nothing doing so far. I’ll try again tomorrow!
E) Victor’s Room – Mostly art-related changes in here, as I –
I. Put up some new paintings – the Kid’s Room “triptych” painting in the butterfly swatch just above his desk (to match the Wonderland/funny-animal-themed one above Alice’s desk); and “Ode to Jazz 5: Ivory” (the base game picture of piano keys, because it’s not enough that he has a piano rug under his actual piano XD), one of the new Life & Death fancy paintings (of the Reaper with a bunch of ravens), and the “Crumplebottom” crochet-and-cross-stitch collection from Knitting Stuff. I felt those all fit with his theme – I’m jokingly headcanoning that the cross-stitch stuff was a gift from Victoria. XD Oh, and I made sure to put a light switch by HIS door too. Everyone gets light switches!
II. Adjusted the positioning of his easel, as it was slightly clipping into the wall in its corner – now it’s at an angle, which I like much better. Probably should get a tarp under it, come to think of it…
III. And FINALLY GOT THE POOR GUY A DESK CHAIR. XD The problem is, Victor sits on a STOOL when you see him briefly at his desk at the start of Corpse Bride, but you can’t pair a stool with a desk in this game, so I was a bit stuck on what chair would suit him. Ended up going for the fancy lawyer’s desk chair you can unlock as part of the Law career with Discover University – it looked nice, but not quite as ostentatiously over-the-top as the ultimate Business desk chair. XD So now he has a place to sit that isn’t the piano stool, yay~
F) Smiler’s Room – More art-related changes, plus a new activity in this room, as I –
I. Gave them the unlockable Scientist chemistry lab bench from Get To Work! Because I really wanted to have something to represent their love of chemistry, and while ideally they would have a proper LAB for their chemical work, I decided that, since this is just a show house designed to capture the essence of the three, I could put it in the corner. Though I did make sure to get one of the base game range hoods and stick it over the bench (with a little help from MOO to lift it up) to vent any fumes from Smiler’s experiments. XD Just liked that extra little detail, you know?
II. Put some art up on the walls, including a frog decal from Backyard Stuff in one of the more purplish swatches (as Smiler’s favorite animals are frogs, and I figured they’d like that); the “Stride With Pride” picture they added during one Pride month into the base game (goes well with their non-binary flag); and the “My First Framed Art” picture set from Moschino Stuff in one of the trippier “black, white, gray, and yellow stripes” swatches (talk about on BRAND!). Oh, and of course a light switch on the wall, by the door. :p Speaking of which...
III. Moved the door to the other side of the room! Yes, while I was doing the door change, I realized that you could only access the rooms in the middle of the house – Smiler’s room and the big bathroom with the corner tub – from the left-hand hallway. That felt a little silly, so I moved Smiler’s door to the right-hand hallway, putting it across from the archway into the kitchen. So now things are a mite more balanced, regarding which doors are where. :p
G) Hallway/Big Bathroom – Putting these together as I did one thing in each –
I. I added that big abstract painting with the red, yellow, and blue rectangles from Get Famous to the left-hand hallway, as I really wanted to use it SOMEWHERE but it didn’t look good in any of the rooms, sadly
II. And I put the Spa Day moisturizers on their tray on the empty counter in the big bathroom, turned so it was facing the corner tub! (Would have liked to have put it ON the tub, but slots forbid.)
Whew – lot of fiddling and poking around in different places to be sure, but everything is slowly but surely coming together! Again, we’ll see how far I get by Saturday, but if I can get everyone’s room into a workable state, I should be happy enough to share some pictures of the place on tumblr. :) (And here too, obviously. XD)
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to James Turner tonight, with his most recent video – “Building with the Free game update! 70+ new items!” Yes, the next episode of Tiny Town is just a LITTLE too long to fit neatly into the three days left in this working-out week, so instead I decided to check out this video…
Mostly because I had no idea what stuff the new base game update actually added. ^^; I’m not good at noticing when things are new when they don’t have pack symbols attached! XD Anyway, James was more than happy to show us all the new stuff via the medium of renovating Crick Cabana, one of the base game houses in Willow Creek! He’s been doing little renovations and refreshes of all the empty houses in the base game worlds to go along with the nice new houses the Gurus built for the base game families anyway, so, this worked out perfectly for everybody. XD Now, he wasn’t able to include everything in the new house because he was trying to keep the price roughly the same as the original version’s – meaning that, much as he loved it, the new fireplace had to go – but he at least showed everything off at least once while doing his renovations, and he tried to use as much new stuff as he could! Doors, windows, columns, floor tiles (including actual tile and carpeting), wall tiles, and even some new artwork (though that also proved to be too expensive and thus had to go). It was pretty neat, and gives me a good idea of what to look for if I want to find this new stuff (much of it happily has HBD – for “Happy Birthday,” since this update was released to celebrate 25 years of the franchise – in the name). And the refreshed house looks good! Mostly – I am strongly questioning James’s placement of the kitchen table on the wall leading into the mini-hall across from the kitchen. XD It’s a little crammed in there, James! But then again, the video’s not QUITE done, and I left it with him doing more fiddling as he changed up the colors and made sure he was happy with the layout. We’ll see how he finishes this starter home refresh off tomorrow!
2. Continue working on “Londerland Bloodlines: Dowtown Queensland”: Check – Alice finally reached the Brotherhood’s “temple” (the most dilapidated room in the building) today – and met one Bishop Vick! AKA the vampire that nobody can believe is a Toreador because, well, he sure as hell doesn’t fulfill the usual “prettyboy” requirements. XD But yes, Alice and he had a little chat, with Vick attempting to convince Alice to his side by talking about how the diseases he spreads are no worse than the “disease” of being a vampire, and about how no god watched over him when he was Embraced, so he became God to bring about a Judgment Day of his own making to end this awful world –
And Alice telling Vick “you are full of shit and I am going to make sure you die before you hurt anyone else.” XD So yeah, boss fight is imminent – and poor Alice isn’t going to have fun with this one, I’m sorry to say. Mostly because it involves him using both super-speed and a shotgun. *grimace* At least you don’t have to worry about it until next week, Alice?
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one GrayStillPlays video today, “Testing cars vs waves in GTA 5!” This was a two-part torture board (with separate vehicles for each part) that saw Gray having to take on:
I. Surviving 169 seconds in deeper and deeper water, by staying on a platform rotating around a central arm as it passed through two giant squares of water on either side! Or, rather, a series of 23 platforms joined together, each of which was a little lower than the others, and which gradually disappeared as time went on (I believe the numbers on each platform indicated how many seconds it would stick around – so the first few platforms disappeared almost immediately, while the ones at the end took ages to go). The trick to this one was to find a car that not only resisted flooding out as it descended the platform steps deeper and deeper into the water slices, but also one that didn’t lose its traction as it tried to keep up with the rotating platform in the water (because the further you got from the center, the faster you needed to go). Gray got cars ranging from the tiny RC car to the giant dump truck for this one – and hilariously, the dump truck did shockingly well, getting all the way up to platform 18 before finally slipping off! Most of the rest of the cars failed at about platform 14, with even my beloved Wastelander only just getting up to about 15 or 16. The winner proved to be the Mars Rover, which had the speed, the traction, and the sheer get-it-done-ness to make it all the way to the end! Though it took a few tries. Mostly because Gray had to dodge buoys and find a way over a cresting submarine as he got farther and farther out. XD Hey, Alex and company weren’t going to make it EASY on him!
II. Not only surviving bigger and bigger waves, but using them to get over bigger and bigger barriers! This one consisted of a road in the ocean with a series of script circles that Gray had to trigger to make the waves around him bigger and bigger – starting at one meter, then going to five, then ten, then twenty-five, then a full-on fifty. Gray not only had to find a car among the new set that wouldn’t drown out while trying to get through the increasingly-big waves, but which also could use the waves as ramps to get over the walls that had been placed in his path. As you might imagine, most of the cars didn’t get past the first wall – though it’s worth noting that the forklift Gray was given did better than the actual lifeguard car. At the very least, it survived longer! For a moment, it looked like the Chosen One would be the Deluxo (aka the off-brand DeLorean) with its ability to fly over the waves...but the damn thing simply couldn’t get the height to get over the first wall. So Gray went back to get the tank, wondering if he could use it as a ramp –
And found the tiny Aqua-Zip quad behind it. XD How long has it been since we had a hidden car? Anyway, Gray grabbed that, and after much blood, sweat, tears, smashing up the engine of the first one by continually ramming it into the ground coming off the waves, and nearly drowning in the giant glitch-waves of the final section, Gray made it past the final wall and to the end! So I guess now we know which two vehicles you want when trying to best the water in San Andreas! Thanks, Alex!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – today was another Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only day, and I didn’t really have anything to do other than keep up with my dash. And I suppose get my last Valicertine ready, but I can do that tomorrow morning because I will actually have the time, hooray! :p Nice to have some time where I can just chill out. :)
*nods* Not bad. And now I should prepare to hit the sheets -- don't want to stay up TOO late, even with the day off, since it's still part of the workweek. Plans for tomorrow are to do some drafting on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) and get that third Valicertine I had in mind done; work some more on the Polyheart OT3 House in Sims 4 and see if maybe I can get that done; continue editing "A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded" and have Alice start getting her stuff already; get in a workout; and keep up with whatever Subs videos I can and the OXBoxtra lists of the week (got one in my Watch Later; expect the other to come out tomorrow). I think these are all achievable goals, especially if I don't stay up all night. :p Night all!
