Drier Wednesday

Started out kind of chilly and foggy, but the day improved as it went on, and it was back to being kinda summery by the afternoon. Though no beanbags -- grass was still too wet to play. And I don't know if we'll be playing tomorrow, because Mom's going out to see a friend...we'll see, I suppose! (Friday is definitely out, it's supposed to be cold and pouring that day.) As for the daily round-up --

Work – The quiet times continued today, with me spending the day doing roster maintenance and taking a handful of credit card calls (plus one lady who called the wrong office). On the plus side, that lady I was complaining about the other day? The one who we were playing constant phone tag with? Yeah, she finally called back at a time when we could actually take the call and I finally got her pledge set up! :) On the minus side, my coworkers were a lot more talky today, including some political nonsense, so that ended up getting on my nerves a bit. *grumble* But overall, not a bad day. We’ll see if the streak holds through Thursday!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, back with the next just-over-a-half-hour-of “Oxventure in BALDUR'S GATE 3 | Co-op Multiplayer Baldur's Gate with Oxventure Characters” by Outside XBox! And let me tell you, the chaos continued today, with Andy and Mike –

A) Surviving Nettie’s “exam” of Egbert, with Egbert very reluctantly swearing to drink the wyvern poison if he felt himself starting to change into a mind flayer (to be fair, I would be reluctant too)

B) Going outside briefly to talk to Arabella’s parents and finish off that quest, with Egbert being nice and not asking for a reward for saving the kid – but getting SOMETHING anyway; I didn’t see what, and I don’t think Mike did either because he and Andy were distracted by the chat telling them how to get the dirt on Kagha. Though he DID get inspired, which was nice – turns out Egbert’s background is “Folk Hero,” cute :) (Another inspirational moment revealed Prudence has the “Sage” background – I don’t think we’ve seen Corazon’s yet, but I’m guessing it’s “Criminal” – though, given his actual backstory in Oxventure, “Noble” would suit too...)

C) Investigating the druid’s sanctum for said dirt, and then teaming up to break into Kagha’s secret chest in the main quarters, with Egbert keeping a certain NPC nearby busy by spamming chatting with him while Corazon lockpicked the chest and got a scrap of a note inside! It – took him rather a lot longer to figure out how to READ said note, granted (too many menus – especially since THEY’RE playing using controllers, when this game was really made for a mouse and keyboard), but he managed it eventually XD

D) Heading over to the Nautiloid crash site via waypoint fast-travel in order to find their way to the swamp that Kagha was meeting someone in, as per the note they found, and – after a quick stop to level up Egbert and Prudence – encountering Astarion, still waiting for someone to fall for him claiming he had an intellect devourer cornered. Egbert SOMEHOW actually passed the Perception check to spot Astarion pulling his knife before it ended up at his throat (if you’re wondering why I’m surprised, it’s because that’s a WISDOM check, and Egbert is notoriously poor at those) and engaged Astarion in the recruitment conversation while Andy – offscreen because he wasn’t involved in the cutscene – circled around Astarion and robbed him blind –

Only for Astarion to notice his VERY LAST ATTEMPT at pickpocketing as Egbert tried to send Astarion to his camp and go hostile. Cue Corazon promptly fucking off back to camp to level up while Egbert and Lae’zel were stuck trying to deal with the hostile Astarion and his grease. And I mean LITERALLY stuck – not only could they not move for fear of falling, they ALSO couldn’t proceed with the fight because, well, Andy was controlling Prudence and WOULDN’T TAKE HER TURN because of the aforementioned leveling up. He did eventually have Prudence run away as well (mostly because Mike went “ANDY” and I think he realized “okay, maybe he’s genuinely mad”) –

But at that point, Mike was so annoyed by Astarion attacking him that he ended up just straight-up killing the guy. Meaning that, in this save file, Astarion is now perma-dead. I can already hear all his fifty million fans complaining. XD Egbert made sure to loot his fancy clothes off him (as the only thing left on him worth looting), and refused to give them to Corazon because he’d started the fight but hadn’t done the work of finishing it. *nods* Fair. XD

E) Hitting their camp for their first long rest (after Mike leveled up Lae’zel into an Eldritch Knight), where Egbert learned about Withers’s services (resurrecting people, mainly), got sassed by Gale for not having studied magic (being a Paladin, he gets his magic in different ways, and I think Gale kinda looks down on any magic user who isn’t a fellow wizard – snob)...and got robbed YET AGAIN by Corazon, who of course took Astarion’s fancy outfit. XD Mike was very sour about this, muttering how he should have put it on himself. XD

And right after that is where I left it, with the party wandering around near the Nautiloid, trying to figure out the best way to the swamp (apparently they need to find the Blighted Village first). Fun stuff, though Andy’s actions during the Astarion fight are pretty much the main reason I don’t play video games with other people – I personally would have found a way to beat him about the head with his own Steam Deck if I was the one left to deal with the consequences of his actions. XD But it’s amusing enough to watch. Tomorrow, we’ll see if they find that swamp so they can get the info they need to depose that anti-tiefling bitch Kagha!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice successfully made it all the way to the main hallway/atrium area of Grout’s mansion in today’s editing session, creeping invisibly down the little hallway of (very loud) clocks and past the wandering ghouls, the half-blocked hallway, and the barred door to the tape recorder at the very end of the room. She was a little reluctant to hit play, but Wonderland assured her that it was important to listen to the tape inside, and that she wouldn’t find herself in the middle of a brawl if she did, so she went ahead and did so – only to get a startled scream out of the room’s natives. Though they’re not on the warpath, I can assure you of that much. Next time, Alice gets to listen to her very first Grout tape, and figure out why the local ghouls would NOT enjoy hearing his voice...

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another GrayStillPlays-only day, with “Cars vs narrow tunnel in GTA 5!” Or, rather, narrow tunnels, plural, because there is never just the one when it comes to these types of torture boards. XD Anyway, Gray was given a selection of cars – ranging from various arena vehicles to more normal cars to F-1 racers – and four tunnel-based challenges to complete. Each was worth a point, and the car with the most points at the end got crowned Tunnel Champion. *nods* Pretty standard stuff! So, in order, we had:

I. The “tunnel of shove,” where Gray had to find the right car to shove its way through a tunnel packed to the brim with various vehicles – various HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE vehicles, no less. Gray thought the big monster truck arena car with its sign plow had this one in the bag, but in fact the winner was the smaller arena car with its littler plow – mostly because it not only had the ability to shove stuff out of the way, but also the ability to just squeeze past some of the more annoying obstacles at the end. Even when it doesn’t look like a challenge will require speed and agility, it will require speed and agility!

II. The “one way tunnel,” where Gray had forty seconds to make it down a rather trippy patterned tube – while various cars (including the lifeguard SUV, the ambulance, the firetruck, and the military rocket truck) all came rocketing at him, ready to smash into him and make his life miserable. And thanks to the way they were programmed, Gray couldn’t even predict where they were going, because half the time they started doing loop-de-loops around the walls of the tunnel. XD Gray attempted a few different vehicles, including the biggest arena car (which didn’t even FIT INTO THE TUNNEL), but the winner, was, unsurprisingly, the F-1 style open-wheel racer, which had the turning, the speed, and the ability to drive on the ceiling to avoid shit that Gray needed to beat this challenge. XD

III. The “insert name here” tunnel, where Gray had 32 seconds to make it down a tunnel with various cars and simple barriers in his way, slaloming around them and going under them when he absolutely had to. The open-wheel car did pretty well here, as did a few others, but none of them had the speed to make it to the end in time –

And then Gray moved the old rusty pickup, preparing to drive it into the challenge to see how it did...only to see the Bandito RC car underneath it. XD A return to the hidden vehicles of old! And yes, naturally the tiniest car was able to complete the challenge – just BARELY, as its not the fastest, but the fact that it didn’t get slowed down by anything due to being able to dodge it all gave it the edge.

IV. And finally, the “Rush Hour 6” tunnel, where Gray had to navigate a tunnel full of various interesting scenes – an armed robbery of a bank vehicle, a car on fire, a crash with a spinning car and a police cordon, and a sideways bus near the end – in under twenty seconds to reach the win. The Bandito proved to be a little too small and slow, and the small arena car did better, but still couldn’t reach the end in the time limit – meaning the winner, earning its second point after a few tries to finally come off the opening ramp right, was the open-wheeled car! Again, probably unsurprising, given this thing has amazing turning and can drive on the ceiling to get away from problems if necessary. :p Congrats, faux F-1! We salute you!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice to worry about today – which is good, as tonight was another one of those nights where EVERYTHING ran late. *sigh* But I did get my Friday “here’s ‘A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded’ from the beginning” post done (though I couldn’t make it a proper link post, as those STILL aren’t working correctly it seems), and I found the song that I wanted to reblog for Song Saturday – “Angel With A Shotgun” by The Cab, which I tend to associate with Alice being protective. Which, given the story I just finished was all about her doing her best to protect and help the kids of Houndsditch – yeah, I felt that it had the right vibes. Still have to finish off the text and tags of the reblog, but it’s IN the queue at least!

Not too shabby, though I do wish I could have done more on the queue -- but I was late getting back to my computer after supper, then I had to finish up catching up on everything, THEN it took me longer than anticipated to sum up the workout vid, and -- yeah. Time management is STILL not good. But I'm going to make an attempt to get better, starting with getting off and heading to bed now instead of in ten minutes. Night all!