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Windy And Cooler Monday
May. 19th, 2025 11:46 pmLike, it wasn't as bad as some days have been, but it was pretty fucking windy outside today -- and chilly too, with temperatures only in the mid-60s. And tomorrow is supposed to be similar, only cloudy and even cooler. *grumbles* We're coming up on Memorial Day here -- aka the start of summer! And while I suppose it's good to be able to avoid using the AC as long as we can, I'd like it to be a BIT warmer! Meeeeh.
Apart from the weather, though, I didn't have all that bad a Monday --
Work – Fairly quiet start to the work week – mostly because my chatty coworker left early for an appointment, thank God. But yeah, not a lot happened today – I did the GL; I took a couple of credit card calls; I went through a QC file for one of the remits we’re doing for a capital campaign; and I did a little bit of roster maintenance. *shrug* Bit of a boring Monday, but I’ve had much worse. And at least tomorrow I get more of the day to myself, given the building’s closed to provide parking for the new Bishop’s installation Mass. Just gotta sit through that for a few hours tomorrow afternoon and hope I don’t get sick like the last time!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike tonight, and back with “D&D But... It's Pokémon | Oxventure” by Oxventure! Today saw Backpacker Pearl (Ellen), Skull (Andy), and New Yorker Meowth (Johnny) –
A) Visit the PokeMart, get taken into the back by the shopkeeper to arrange an illicit deal for ranch-flavored snacks, and then get dragged into a battle with the shopkeep’s Beedrill when NY Meowth encouraged them to just take the stuff without paying – Pearl’s Spearow ended up basically decimating the poor Beedrill, and then Skull had his Weepinbell Plant-Skull put it to sleep before stamping on its head. The horrified shopkeeper told them to take what they wanted, and they grabbed a bunch of extra potions and six Pokeballs (three each for Pearl and Skull). Nice!
B) Enter Mount Moon and start exploring the caves, only to have a random encounter with a Zubat – this creature held its own against the gang far more effectively (dodging Spearow’s attacks, tanking Plant-Skull’s Sleeping Powder, and confusing the poor Weepinbell), to the point where Skull was ready to charge in and just punch the damn thing himself. XD Fortunately, Spearow managed to get off an attack and weaken it – and even more fortunately, Pearl and Meowth managed to remind Skull that he could capture the Pokemon instead of punching it to death. XD He did indeed secure the creature, and promptly renamed it Bat-Skull. XD Also, as Meowth was steadfastly refusing to join in the fights – partially because, as a consequence of learning to speak human language, they’d ended up with a human’s crappy stats (4 hit points! No modifiers!) and partially because they didn’t want to join in, they were here to observe – Luke granted them basically Bardic Inspiration so they could buff the others by saying something encouraging. Johnny basically replied that they would be using that VERY sparingly. XD
C) Continue working their way through Mount Moon, only for Meowth to spot something trying to get their attention and walk off to “take a piss” (which they actually did indeed do – for three minutes XD); turns out what was trying to talk to them was a Clefairy, who asked if they were here to join them – and when Meowth said “no,” if they were there to HURT them – especially the big guy. Meowth managed to convince the Clefairy that they weren’t there to hurt anything, but that made the Clefairy think they wanted to help them with whatever issue they were having, and said that it would fetch them when it was time. Meowth was not pleased. XD Also, Skull tried to imitate Meowth’s extra-long pee and ended up rolling so badly he got a kidney infection, knocking him down to three hit points and reducing his movement speed to reflect how gingerly he had to walk now. XD
D) Encounter a split in the path and head down the right passage, where they heard echoing laughter – Skull and Meowth managed to hide in the shadows, but poor Pearl stacked it right in front of an avuncular man thanks to a bad roll (she’s still not used to walking without her backpack!), and got pulled into a Pokemon battle with him and his Growlithe. Cue Pearl watching as both her Spearow and her Ekans got toasted by the Growlithe while Skull and Meowth chatted in the darkness about Meowth’s divorce (their wife took the house, and they worked as a trucker for a while before rejoining Team Rocket) and Skull’s reasons for joining Team Rocket (he said that he thought he might as well get paid for standing in people’s way, though it appears his original motivation for joining was because he thought they were involved with arugula salad). However, when I left off, Ekans was trying to turn the tide of battle with a successful Poison Sting on the Growlithe – we’ll see how the battle wraps up tomorrow!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice both successfully solved Grout’s (admittedly not-that-difficult) library candle puzzle and stole the Weekapaug Thistle (a magical item that slightly raises her defense against danger) in his desk drawer for herself tonight! So a productive evening for our favorite Malkavian fledgling. :p Tomorrow, it’s time to head back to the atrium so she can proceed onward through the newly-unbarred door in there…after she listens to another of Grout’s audio diaries, of course. Can’t have her continuing without knowing just how much of a monster Grout really was! We want her good and mad by the time she finds his remains!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one GrayStillPlays video tonight, “Golf carts vs ramps in GTA 5!” Another point-based challenge, this time pitting a bunch of meme vehicles – including the titular golf cart, the dump truck, both FLY US vehicles (the small one to tow baggage carts and the big one whose purpose I am unsure of), the lawnmower, the camper van, and the bus – up against various ramp-based challenges! As per usual, each challenge was worth one point, and whoever had the most at the end was the winner! Let’s dive straight into the challenges and the meme vehicles who conquered them –
I. A super-long ramp with various gaps, off-center bits, and even TILTED bits, with sixteen wind turbines spinning above it to ruin Gray’s day! The dump truck got smacked off almost immediately, and the small FLY US vehicle didn’t have the speed to do the ramp at the end properly, but the golf cart was small enough, agile enough, and – in the end – fast enough to get down the ramp, avoid the windmills, and launch itself into the ending “arena” with the teleporter! Gray wasn’t quite sure it could do it at first, but launch at just ten miles more per hour got it a point, yay.
II. An “escalator ramp” which consisted of a large yellow moving platform going down a set of rails, getting faster all the time – Gray’s job was to stay on the platform and dodge the balloons and helicopter that had been put in his way before jumping off at the end into the teleporter above the lake. The golf cart gave it its best go, but simply didn’t have the speed necessary, and the bus was just too long and clunky – but surprisingly, the camper van proved legit, with a shockingly high max speed allowing it to ride the platform to the bottom, and its general chonkiness allowing it to slap the helicopter out of the way. One dip into the teleporter later (taking out a guy along the way), and it too had a point!
III. A ramp that went through that one house with a fake front door, curving under the map before popping out on a hill on the other side with the teleporter on it. Gray here was tasked with figuring out which of the meme vehicles were small and slim enough to go down the ramp and through the door (but still had enough heft to knock away the peds that kept insisting on standing in front of said door). The golf cart didn’t quite fit, and the lawnmower got stuck on SOMETHING in the void right past the door – but the small FLY US vehicle proved to fit PERFECTLY, and easily coasted up the ramp back into reality. It struggled rather a lot more with climbing the hill to get to the teleporter, but it got there in the end, and earned a point!
IV. A ramp made up of layered sloping LEGO bricks, meaning it was very slim and quite uneven, that Gray had to get down in under 27 seconds so he could drive across the top of the factory it led down to and up another mini-ramp to the checkpoint before the wall blocking said mini-ramp came up. The small FLY US vehicle couldn’t make it down without spinning out, while the bulldozer could make it down – in three whole minutes...but the ultimate winner here turned out to be the Dashhound bus! Seriously, that long disaster managed to go down the ramp damn near perfectly, and the only reason it didn’t one-time the challenge is because Gray left one of his previous failures in the way! But he got it to the jump and through the checkpoint after a few goes, giving it a point as well!
V. And finally, a “splitting” ramp consisting of two thin ramps that continually came together and then split apart, forcing Gray to continually pick a side so he didn’t fall through the middle or off the side. Oh, AND it had the occasionally raised bit for him to jump or avoid, just for fun. The bus proved unable to handle the bumps; the golf cart proved able to get to the bottom, but not ramp onto the island with the win waiting on it –
But the camper van, with its superior speed and better handling, managed to do the ramp and get the win with two whole points! So yes, if you’re doing ramps, get yourself a camper van. Even if you can’t do the challenge, you can at least have a good laugh looking at how badly it’s deformed after you fail. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – while I didn’t get anything done queue or draft-wise, I did just straight-up reblog a couple of things onto Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight –
A) Some very cute Baldur’s Gate III fanart of Shadowheart, Astarion, Gale, Karlach, and Scratch running through what I believe is part of the forest in the first act of the game, by user “solpoogaa” – it’s seriously adorable, check it out
B) And a post asking you to reblog if your blog is a safe space for nonbinary people (which, yes, I have some nonbinary friends AND part of my OT3 is nonbinary, soooo – no-brainer)
So that was good! Trying to get back into the habit of just reblogging stuff sometimes again, instead of always saving it for queued posts.
Yeah, I'll take that for the start of the work week...especially since, for once, I have SOMEHOW managed to wrap up things BEFORE MIDNIGHT. Which, okay, I had a SHIT time sleeping last night (my brain pulled the "oh, I don't want to sleep so I'm going to make you feel like you're overheating" bullshit), so I am going to try and take advantage of this to get a semi-early night. I may not be going to work normally tomorrow, but I DO want to get up around regular time just to not completely ruin my sleep schedule and to make sure I have time to do some stuff in the morning. Gonna try and complete a couple more drafts sitting and waiting in the backstage of Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)! So yeah, heading out now. Night all!
Apart from the weather, though, I didn't have all that bad a Monday --
Work – Fairly quiet start to the work week – mostly because my chatty coworker left early for an appointment, thank God. But yeah, not a lot happened today – I did the GL; I took a couple of credit card calls; I went through a QC file for one of the remits we’re doing for a capital campaign; and I did a little bit of roster maintenance. *shrug* Bit of a boring Monday, but I’ve had much worse. And at least tomorrow I get more of the day to myself, given the building’s closed to provide parking for the new Bishop’s installation Mass. Just gotta sit through that for a few hours tomorrow afternoon and hope I don’t get sick like the last time!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike tonight, and back with “D&D But... It's Pokémon | Oxventure” by Oxventure! Today saw Backpacker Pearl (Ellen), Skull (Andy), and New Yorker Meowth (Johnny) –
A) Visit the PokeMart, get taken into the back by the shopkeeper to arrange an illicit deal for ranch-flavored snacks, and then get dragged into a battle with the shopkeep’s Beedrill when NY Meowth encouraged them to just take the stuff without paying – Pearl’s Spearow ended up basically decimating the poor Beedrill, and then Skull had his Weepinbell Plant-Skull put it to sleep before stamping on its head. The horrified shopkeeper told them to take what they wanted, and they grabbed a bunch of extra potions and six Pokeballs (three each for Pearl and Skull). Nice!
B) Enter Mount Moon and start exploring the caves, only to have a random encounter with a Zubat – this creature held its own against the gang far more effectively (dodging Spearow’s attacks, tanking Plant-Skull’s Sleeping Powder, and confusing the poor Weepinbell), to the point where Skull was ready to charge in and just punch the damn thing himself. XD Fortunately, Spearow managed to get off an attack and weaken it – and even more fortunately, Pearl and Meowth managed to remind Skull that he could capture the Pokemon instead of punching it to death. XD He did indeed secure the creature, and promptly renamed it Bat-Skull. XD Also, as Meowth was steadfastly refusing to join in the fights – partially because, as a consequence of learning to speak human language, they’d ended up with a human’s crappy stats (4 hit points! No modifiers!) and partially because they didn’t want to join in, they were here to observe – Luke granted them basically Bardic Inspiration so they could buff the others by saying something encouraging. Johnny basically replied that they would be using that VERY sparingly. XD
C) Continue working their way through Mount Moon, only for Meowth to spot something trying to get their attention and walk off to “take a piss” (which they actually did indeed do – for three minutes XD); turns out what was trying to talk to them was a Clefairy, who asked if they were here to join them – and when Meowth said “no,” if they were there to HURT them – especially the big guy. Meowth managed to convince the Clefairy that they weren’t there to hurt anything, but that made the Clefairy think they wanted to help them with whatever issue they were having, and said that it would fetch them when it was time. Meowth was not pleased. XD Also, Skull tried to imitate Meowth’s extra-long pee and ended up rolling so badly he got a kidney infection, knocking him down to three hit points and reducing his movement speed to reflect how gingerly he had to walk now. XD
D) Encounter a split in the path and head down the right passage, where they heard echoing laughter – Skull and Meowth managed to hide in the shadows, but poor Pearl stacked it right in front of an avuncular man thanks to a bad roll (she’s still not used to walking without her backpack!), and got pulled into a Pokemon battle with him and his Growlithe. Cue Pearl watching as both her Spearow and her Ekans got toasted by the Growlithe while Skull and Meowth chatted in the darkness about Meowth’s divorce (their wife took the house, and they worked as a trucker for a while before rejoining Team Rocket) and Skull’s reasons for joining Team Rocket (he said that he thought he might as well get paid for standing in people’s way, though it appears his original motivation for joining was because he thought they were involved with arugula salad). However, when I left off, Ekans was trying to turn the tide of battle with a successful Poison Sting on the Growlithe – we’ll see how the battle wraps up tomorrow!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice both successfully solved Grout’s (admittedly not-that-difficult) library candle puzzle and stole the Weekapaug Thistle (a magical item that slightly raises her defense against danger) in his desk drawer for herself tonight! So a productive evening for our favorite Malkavian fledgling. :p Tomorrow, it’s time to head back to the atrium so she can proceed onward through the newly-unbarred door in there…after she listens to another of Grout’s audio diaries, of course. Can’t have her continuing without knowing just how much of a monster Grout really was! We want her good and mad by the time she finds his remains!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one GrayStillPlays video tonight, “Golf carts vs ramps in GTA 5!” Another point-based challenge, this time pitting a bunch of meme vehicles – including the titular golf cart, the dump truck, both FLY US vehicles (the small one to tow baggage carts and the big one whose purpose I am unsure of), the lawnmower, the camper van, and the bus – up against various ramp-based challenges! As per usual, each challenge was worth one point, and whoever had the most at the end was the winner! Let’s dive straight into the challenges and the meme vehicles who conquered them –
I. A super-long ramp with various gaps, off-center bits, and even TILTED bits, with sixteen wind turbines spinning above it to ruin Gray’s day! The dump truck got smacked off almost immediately, and the small FLY US vehicle didn’t have the speed to do the ramp at the end properly, but the golf cart was small enough, agile enough, and – in the end – fast enough to get down the ramp, avoid the windmills, and launch itself into the ending “arena” with the teleporter! Gray wasn’t quite sure it could do it at first, but launch at just ten miles more per hour got it a point, yay.
II. An “escalator ramp” which consisted of a large yellow moving platform going down a set of rails, getting faster all the time – Gray’s job was to stay on the platform and dodge the balloons and helicopter that had been put in his way before jumping off at the end into the teleporter above the lake. The golf cart gave it its best go, but simply didn’t have the speed necessary, and the bus was just too long and clunky – but surprisingly, the camper van proved legit, with a shockingly high max speed allowing it to ride the platform to the bottom, and its general chonkiness allowing it to slap the helicopter out of the way. One dip into the teleporter later (taking out a guy along the way), and it too had a point!
III. A ramp that went through that one house with a fake front door, curving under the map before popping out on a hill on the other side with the teleporter on it. Gray here was tasked with figuring out which of the meme vehicles were small and slim enough to go down the ramp and through the door (but still had enough heft to knock away the peds that kept insisting on standing in front of said door). The golf cart didn’t quite fit, and the lawnmower got stuck on SOMETHING in the void right past the door – but the small FLY US vehicle proved to fit PERFECTLY, and easily coasted up the ramp back into reality. It struggled rather a lot more with climbing the hill to get to the teleporter, but it got there in the end, and earned a point!
IV. A ramp made up of layered sloping LEGO bricks, meaning it was very slim and quite uneven, that Gray had to get down in under 27 seconds so he could drive across the top of the factory it led down to and up another mini-ramp to the checkpoint before the wall blocking said mini-ramp came up. The small FLY US vehicle couldn’t make it down without spinning out, while the bulldozer could make it down – in three whole minutes...but the ultimate winner here turned out to be the Dashhound bus! Seriously, that long disaster managed to go down the ramp damn near perfectly, and the only reason it didn’t one-time the challenge is because Gray left one of his previous failures in the way! But he got it to the jump and through the checkpoint after a few goes, giving it a point as well!
V. And finally, a “splitting” ramp consisting of two thin ramps that continually came together and then split apart, forcing Gray to continually pick a side so he didn’t fall through the middle or off the side. Oh, AND it had the occasionally raised bit for him to jump or avoid, just for fun. The bus proved unable to handle the bumps; the golf cart proved able to get to the bottom, but not ramp onto the island with the win waiting on it –
But the camper van, with its superior speed and better handling, managed to do the ramp and get the win with two whole points! So yes, if you’re doing ramps, get yourself a camper van. Even if you can’t do the challenge, you can at least have a good laugh looking at how badly it’s deformed after you fail. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – while I didn’t get anything done queue or draft-wise, I did just straight-up reblog a couple of things onto Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight –
A) Some very cute Baldur’s Gate III fanart of Shadowheart, Astarion, Gale, Karlach, and Scratch running through what I believe is part of the forest in the first act of the game, by user “solpoogaa” – it’s seriously adorable, check it out
B) And a post asking you to reblog if your blog is a safe space for nonbinary people (which, yes, I have some nonbinary friends AND part of my OT3 is nonbinary, soooo – no-brainer)
So that was good! Trying to get back into the habit of just reblogging stuff sometimes again, instead of always saving it for queued posts.
Yeah, I'll take that for the start of the work week...especially since, for once, I have SOMEHOW managed to wrap up things BEFORE MIDNIGHT. Which, okay, I had a SHIT time sleeping last night (my brain pulled the "oh, I don't want to sleep so I'm going to make you feel like you're overheating" bullshit), so I am going to try and take advantage of this to get a semi-early night. I may not be going to work normally tomorrow, but I DO want to get up around regular time just to not completely ruin my sleep schedule and to make sure I have time to do some stuff in the morning. Gonna try and complete a couple more drafts sitting and waiting in the backstage of Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)! So yeah, heading out now. Night all!
