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Somewhat Less Stressful Wednesday
Feb. 19th, 2025 11:52 pmLike, the morning wasn't great, but the afternoon's been an improvement, so... *waggles hand* Let me give you the write-up:
Work – Somewhat better day – my missing coworker was back in action for part of the day, meaning I didn’t have to handle all her stuff on top of my own stuff, BUT I did have to deal with more credit card nonsense (a batch that was never posted on top of the gifts that were never posted). Plus a donor getting a thank-you letter under a deceased parent’s name. That’s fun. *sigh* Only two credit card calls, though, both of them relatively simple one time gifts – and both of them coming EARLIER in the day, so no last-minute calls to deal with! (Did have to PRINT something last-minute, but that was on me – I forgot I hadn’t printed it earlier.) Overall better, but the morning with all the bullshit was very frustrating, so...meh. Two more days!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike yet again, pedaling my way through most of “Building an Island House in Tiny Town Challenge! - Part 21” by James Turner! And Sonny’s home has come together rather nicely, with James aping the house he likes so much in Sulani a lot, just at a smaller scale and with a more blue color scheme. Oh, and with a secret basement vault under the house that connects up to the vault area under the town hall. XD He had to put all of Judith’s accumulated riches somewhere! But yeah, it’s all looking good – there’s an entrance right at the edge of the lot (eliminating the need for Sims to wade through the water) that leads into the kitchen, then most of the bottom level is open-air living space, with a living area (with a cool glass floor) and a small dining table tucked under the second story bedroom and balcony (along with an enclosed bathroom), and a dock with a larger dining table and a couple of loungers on it off to the side. And Sonny’s music studio attached to the edge of the dock at an angle, as James forgot to build a proper room for all his instruments in the house itself. XD It’s a very interesting house, though the shape of it and all the docks and water everywhere is making landscaping, uh, challenging. XD Poor Sonny’s blue tree doesn’t fit anywhere anymore! But James is determined to make it work – I left it with him where he could stick some palm trees (sized down of course). Tomorrow we’ll see the house come together in full, and then move onto something else to finish off the week!
2. Continue working on “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded”: Check – picked back up at the beginning of Chapter 3 today, with the gang heading upstairs now that they’ve finished clearing out Alice’s room! Along the way, Smiler spotted a copy of the Doskvol Illustrated on a side table with a story about a fire, and the climb up thus featured the trio talking about how the Advocates would react to the tragedy, with Alice noting that the cult seems to have its fingers in all the pies (Smiler pointing out that, in order to keep everyone in the city happy, they have to be prepared for all situations where they might find an unhappy person) and Victor wondering how the Advocates would consecrate the shelter Smiler said they’d build as a base (with a certain swirly-eyed piano-keyed smile, of course). Prompting Alice to joke that they should put the face in the bathroom so Mar-Mal can see why pooping is necessary to happiness – and Smiler apparently actually considering that. XD I left off with the trio stumbling across Abigail in the upstairs hallway – tomorrow, they figure out a way to stop her running off and telling Bumby about their presence! (Which hopefully will go a little smoother than today’s writing, as I was rethinking things a LOT tonight. Meeeh – why does writing have to be such a slog even on the things you love sometimes?)
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check, though it was a bit of an odd one tonight – GrayStillPlays never uploaded! O.o And the one video Josh uploaded was REALLY short. Fortunately, though, I had another video that I’d meant to watch yesterday to help keep me occupied –
A) First, though, the Josh Way video of the night – “Fun With Shorts PATREON PREVIEW: Buying Food!” A two-minute teaser of the beginning of his latest Fun With Shorts episode, about grocery shopping in the 40s! I guess it’s intended to tempt people to join his Patreon and see the exclusive stuff – and I have to admit, if that’s the aim, he chose a pretty good short to preview! Some quality riffs about how women were seen back then and how “impulse buying” is the best part of shopping. XD Not bad for two minutes!
B) And from there, it was over to The Sims official channel and “The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies | Official Gameplay Trailer!” A seven-minute dive into what makes this upcoming pack tick, including a look at the new pottery skill and how that works; how one might set up their Small Business at home or in the world at large; how running a Small Business works; the kinds of perks you can earn as a small business owner (and the “alignments” you can pick – Dreamer, Schemer, or just plain old neutral); how lectures (putting free info into the world) and classes (making people pay for your knowledge) work; the new skill mastery system and some of the perks you can earn from doing a lot with the skills you have maxed; how the new tattoo “paint mode” works; and a brief overview of some of the Build/Buy items, CAS assets, and traits that come with the pack. Overall, it does look very interesting, and something that I might want to play with –
And then I look at the system for designating certain parts of a building “residential,” “public,” and “employees only” again, and I go “what are the chances of this pack being released in a playable state?” *sigh* Hell, apparently there’s a bug now with For Rent where it straight-up corrupts save games, so – yeah. I am intrigued, but I am DEFINITELY going to wait and see how buggy it is before I touch it! (And if Paralives wants to go into Early Access anytime soon, I still have some money on my Steam account…)
C) And then just for funsies I rewatched “Baldur’s Gate 3: Modding Mayhem - An Animated Short” by Larian Studios because it’s a good time and I’ve gotten back into the game. Gale just yanking out a gun to deal with the Wizard of Mod is the best. As is Lae’zel taking a chainsaw to the guy after he dared to give her a real nose. XD As the comments said, Larian understands its fanbase!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just had to finish off the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue for the week tonight, with:
A) Saturday – a reblog of my post “Born Again Teen” by Lucius! I stumbled across this song while trawling some of the later pages in the “#song saturday” tag, and realized that I’d never actually reblogged it. Which was a shame, because I consider this song a bop. So into the queue it went for another go-round! :)
B) Sunday – the official “Happy Birthday” post for Brynlee Marie with her fic of Malk!Maddie and Malk!Alice killing Sabbat vampire assholes in the Hallowbrook! Hopefully she likes it. :)
So yeah -- not as stressful as yesterday, but it had its moments. But I am through it now, and I am off to bed. Once I've looked at a few more pictures of Victor, Alice, and Smiler being cute. :P Night all!
Work – Somewhat better day – my missing coworker was back in action for part of the day, meaning I didn’t have to handle all her stuff on top of my own stuff, BUT I did have to deal with more credit card nonsense (a batch that was never posted on top of the gifts that were never posted). Plus a donor getting a thank-you letter under a deceased parent’s name. That’s fun. *sigh* Only two credit card calls, though, both of them relatively simple one time gifts – and both of them coming EARLIER in the day, so no last-minute calls to deal with! (Did have to PRINT something last-minute, but that was on me – I forgot I hadn’t printed it earlier.) Overall better, but the morning with all the bullshit was very frustrating, so...meh. Two more days!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike yet again, pedaling my way through most of “Building an Island House in Tiny Town Challenge! - Part 21” by James Turner! And Sonny’s home has come together rather nicely, with James aping the house he likes so much in Sulani a lot, just at a smaller scale and with a more blue color scheme. Oh, and with a secret basement vault under the house that connects up to the vault area under the town hall. XD He had to put all of Judith’s accumulated riches somewhere! But yeah, it’s all looking good – there’s an entrance right at the edge of the lot (eliminating the need for Sims to wade through the water) that leads into the kitchen, then most of the bottom level is open-air living space, with a living area (with a cool glass floor) and a small dining table tucked under the second story bedroom and balcony (along with an enclosed bathroom), and a dock with a larger dining table and a couple of loungers on it off to the side. And Sonny’s music studio attached to the edge of the dock at an angle, as James forgot to build a proper room for all his instruments in the house itself. XD It’s a very interesting house, though the shape of it and all the docks and water everywhere is making landscaping, uh, challenging. XD Poor Sonny’s blue tree doesn’t fit anywhere anymore! But James is determined to make it work – I left it with him where he could stick some palm trees (sized down of course). Tomorrow we’ll see the house come together in full, and then move onto something else to finish off the week!
2. Continue working on “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded”: Check – picked back up at the beginning of Chapter 3 today, with the gang heading upstairs now that they’ve finished clearing out Alice’s room! Along the way, Smiler spotted a copy of the Doskvol Illustrated on a side table with a story about a fire, and the climb up thus featured the trio talking about how the Advocates would react to the tragedy, with Alice noting that the cult seems to have its fingers in all the pies (Smiler pointing out that, in order to keep everyone in the city happy, they have to be prepared for all situations where they might find an unhappy person) and Victor wondering how the Advocates would consecrate the shelter Smiler said they’d build as a base (with a certain swirly-eyed piano-keyed smile, of course). Prompting Alice to joke that they should put the face in the bathroom so Mar-Mal can see why pooping is necessary to happiness – and Smiler apparently actually considering that. XD I left off with the trio stumbling across Abigail in the upstairs hallway – tomorrow, they figure out a way to stop her running off and telling Bumby about their presence! (Which hopefully will go a little smoother than today’s writing, as I was rethinking things a LOT tonight. Meeeh – why does writing have to be such a slog even on the things you love sometimes?)
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check, though it was a bit of an odd one tonight – GrayStillPlays never uploaded! O.o And the one video Josh uploaded was REALLY short. Fortunately, though, I had another video that I’d meant to watch yesterday to help keep me occupied –
A) First, though, the Josh Way video of the night – “Fun With Shorts PATREON PREVIEW: Buying Food!” A two-minute teaser of the beginning of his latest Fun With Shorts episode, about grocery shopping in the 40s! I guess it’s intended to tempt people to join his Patreon and see the exclusive stuff – and I have to admit, if that’s the aim, he chose a pretty good short to preview! Some quality riffs about how women were seen back then and how “impulse buying” is the best part of shopping. XD Not bad for two minutes!
B) And from there, it was over to The Sims official channel and “The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies | Official Gameplay Trailer!” A seven-minute dive into what makes this upcoming pack tick, including a look at the new pottery skill and how that works; how one might set up their Small Business at home or in the world at large; how running a Small Business works; the kinds of perks you can earn as a small business owner (and the “alignments” you can pick – Dreamer, Schemer, or just plain old neutral); how lectures (putting free info into the world) and classes (making people pay for your knowledge) work; the new skill mastery system and some of the perks you can earn from doing a lot with the skills you have maxed; how the new tattoo “paint mode” works; and a brief overview of some of the Build/Buy items, CAS assets, and traits that come with the pack. Overall, it does look very interesting, and something that I might want to play with –
And then I look at the system for designating certain parts of a building “residential,” “public,” and “employees only” again, and I go “what are the chances of this pack being released in a playable state?” *sigh* Hell, apparently there’s a bug now with For Rent where it straight-up corrupts save games, so – yeah. I am intrigued, but I am DEFINITELY going to wait and see how buggy it is before I touch it! (And if Paralives wants to go into Early Access anytime soon, I still have some money on my Steam account…)
C) And then just for funsies I rewatched “Baldur’s Gate 3: Modding Mayhem - An Animated Short” by Larian Studios because it’s a good time and I’ve gotten back into the game. Gale just yanking out a gun to deal with the Wizard of Mod is the best. As is Lae’zel taking a chainsaw to the guy after he dared to give her a real nose. XD As the comments said, Larian understands its fanbase!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just had to finish off the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue for the week tonight, with:
A) Saturday – a reblog of my post “Born Again Teen” by Lucius! I stumbled across this song while trawling some of the later pages in the “#song saturday” tag, and realized that I’d never actually reblogged it. Which was a shame, because I consider this song a bop. So into the queue it went for another go-round! :)
B) Sunday – the official “Happy Birthday” post for Brynlee Marie with her fic of Malk!Maddie and Malk!Alice killing Sabbat vampire assholes in the Hallowbrook! Hopefully she likes it. :)
So yeah -- not as stressful as yesterday, but it had its moments. But I am through it now, and I am off to bed. Once I've looked at a few more pictures of Victor, Alice, and Smiler being cute. :P Night all!
