Return To Routine Monday

Yes, we're back to the normal grind as of today, as evidenced by the below write-up:

Work – Welp, I had my grand return to the office today after almost two full weeks off, and I spent almost the entire day doing GLs! Because while we were off work from Christmas Eve straight through January 4th, our processors and credit card people weren’t, and they uploaded some gifts while we were away. Mostly on December 30th, for some reason, unsure how that worked out. *shrug* But yeah, it meant that I had to go through and do a GL for each workday that we were out, and some of them took longer than others, so – yeah. Ate up pretty much my entire shift, apart from a few breaks to:

A) Take a call from a guy letting us know his father died last week and that he needed to shut down the recurring gift on his credit card as a result; I shut down the gift for him and made sure the dad was marked deceased in our system

B) Talk briefly with my old supervisor about a credit card gift he saw come in for the Foundation that he thought might appear on our GL – it did not, mostly because we have no Foundation-related “events” on our version of the credit card site, so he’ll have to talk to our provider about how that needs to be handled going forward

C) Call a guy in the afternoon who left us a message saying he needed to update his credit card while we were out – had to leave a message for him in return, but at least now he knows which number to contact!

D) And, after finally finishing all the GLs, spending the very end of the day pulling a report on which credit card payments failed over the long break – didn’t have time to look them up all up, but at least I have the report!

So yeah – definitely kept busy today! But on the plus side, it meant the day went by pretty fast, and the traffic both in and home wasn’t too bad, so – yeah. Not the worst return to the office! We’ll see what tomorrow’s like.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “KIDS ON BIKES – A Twixtmas Disappearance | Oxventure Holiday Special” by Oxventure! Today’s chunklet of the adventures of Tori, Corey, and Keegan as they tried to find Tori and Corey’s missing friend Christopher “Rollo” Williams-Fiarucci contained:

A) Some follow-up on the “Keegan’s Christmas involved him finding a pack of Rolos to eat because his parents were too busy working to give him presents” revelation – namely, Corey wondering if Keegan’s parents were too busy giving presents to fish; Tori becoming convinced Keegan’s parents were making super-soldier fish people; a fateful miscommunication regarding how you can’t really talk to fish making Corey think Keegan’s parents were fish; and Tori and Corey agreeing that Rollo was likely to have been abducted by Keegan’s parents as a test subject for their fish super-serum (though Corey allowed that there was probably a more rational explanation). XD Poor Keegan – he has terrible neglectful parents AND super-weird friends now!

( This Got Longer Than Expected )

2. Work on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 6: Check – I got back to the adventures of Malkavian!Alice at long last tonight, picking up right where I left off before my long break: with Alice going to tell Strauss about Pisha and see what he thought about the whole situation. Accordingly, tonight’s writing session covered:

A) Alice heading to the Chantry (fortunately not meeting any other trouble along the way) and heading to the library, where she met Strauss and informed him that she had been on the way to get the Ankaran Sarcophagus as per LaCroix’s instructions, only for Wonderland to sidetrack her straight into the abandoned hospital, where she found a zombie-like vampire had murdered most of the crew of Haunted LA. Strauss took this revelation reasonably well, restricting his shocked reaction to just his eyes widening behind his glasses

B) Alice asking Strauss if Pisha really was a vampire, even with the whole “has to eat flesh” thing, and Strauss informing her about the existence of the Nagaraja bloodline, and how they came to be (basically a sect of Indian death-mages performed a ritual to transform at least some of their number into vampires, but the nature of the ritual and their magic meant they came out of the blood pool craving both flesh and blood)

C) Alice then asking Strauss if Pisha really needed to kill all those people – and Strauss telling her technically no, explaining that Nagaraja DO need to eat fresh raw flesh nightly, but do not have to seek out a new victim every night. Rather, thanks to the necromantic rituals they know, they can kill a person, then preserve the corpse to be fed on later, meaning one dead victim can provide them with roughly ten nights of sustenance. And that while Pisha murdering the three people in the camera crew meant that she’d created a “larder” of sorts that would allow her to avoid killing for a month, it also meant that she’d killed three people linked to a reasonably-popular local TV show, whose disappearances would be investigated. Which Pisha might not care so much about, but the other vampires sure did! Not to mention, he had no proof she’d done any of this with the permission of one Sebastian LaCroix…

Yeah – basically, Pisha did a Very Bad Thing in the eyes of the Camarilla! I left off with Strauss calling LaCroix to update him on the situation and confirm that Pisha didn’t even present herself to him when she arrived in the city – tomorrow, Alice gets carte blanche to take her out! Discreetly, of course – can’t go around risking the Masquerade any further, after all.

3. Watch something on FreeTube: Substitution check – my friend Ace told me they put up a new chapter on their latest fic, “A Familiar’s Private Chef” (a Good Omens/Campfire Cooking In Another World crossover, which has Crowley as a human surprise-transported to a mystical realm and forming a familiar contract with a fenrir, who of course is Aziraphale, on the strength of their delicious cooking – which is boosted by their ability to get ingredients from their homeworld thanks to a skill called “Online Retailer” (basically, they have magical Amazon)) a few days ago, right before New Year’s, and I’ve been meaning to read it properly and leave a comment on it ever since. So I took the time this afternoon to do so! *nods* It was a fun chapter, introducing the Wind Goddess Maggie, who is now as addicted to Anthony’s otherworldly food as anyone else – mostly because she’s been eating dried fruits and honey and wine for ages, so any other kind of food is a REALLY welcome treat! She utterly devoured his chocolate crepes and iced latte. XD Glad to have that off my plate!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check again – didn’t do anything with my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue, but I did reblog and respond to SatiricalDemon’s latest addition to his write-up of recreating Victor, Alice, and Smiler in the world of TTRPG Mortasheen! Which covered:

A) How Bumby could have killed off Alice’s family in any sort of “permanent” manner, given in Mortasheen, there is ALWAYS an appropriately mad-sciencey way to come back – basically, in addition to the fire damaging the vats that Alice’s family would use to regrow their bodies, he also stole the data drives for her parents and sister, meaning that if she DID try to regrow them, they wouldn’t have any of their memories. So Alice needs to kill him (however impermanently) and get those back if she wants her family back! (I commented that he’d found a pretty clever way to get around the fact that death is impermanent in this setting, that it was nice to learn more about how the whole resurrection process works, and that I did not like Bumby having those drives, as it felt like he’d use them for some sort of nefarious purpose…)

B) A rethought backstory for Orlock!Victor, restoring Nell and William’s status as his (admittedly adoptive, given how Orlock reproduction works) parents and making the inciting incident for him leaving his “hive” was having an engagement to Victoria Spikethrubody (god, I love Orlock last names XD) thrust upon him without warning – it seems that her adoptive parents, Maudeline Femursnap and Finis Headshot, creators of a “Think Tank” selling firearm gadgets (Finis’s passion), had fallen afoul of some failed experiments and needed a source of “Data” (which I guess functions like money in this world) to get back on their feet, and Nell had seen an opportunity to get in with their remaining business contacts to make Victor a true star in the Orlock world. So Victor was engaged to Victoria, without either of them getting a say in the matter, or even learning about it until they had dinner together – prompting Victor to pack his things and sneak away with the help of Sir Rhodes Glitterfin (despite the Vampire’s attempts to talk him out of it). (I strongly approved of the rejiggering of his backstory to make it more like the actual Corpse Bride canon, and of Finis and Maudeline’s business venture (saying it was a shame it ran into such trouble...before qualifying that, well, I don’t like them THAT much, so…). And of all the ridiculous last names, of course. XD)

C) And descriptions of Bumby and Victoria’s YGOREs – Bumby has a Painchild (a horrible little child-like shadow monster that likes causing pain and destruction) named Alistair who very much enjoyed helping Bumby “undo” the Liddell Lair, and helping him with all his evil schemes since; and Victoria has a Stingernail (which is a bit like a scorpion and can deliver paralyzing venom through their clawas) named – what else – Hildegarde, who was the “librarian” for her hive’s “databones” when Victoria was younger and chose to become her YGORE when she retired and Victoria expressed interest in starting her own archive. (I agreed that the Painchild was the perfect complement to Bumby and said that I didn’t want to know how it was helping him with his other schemes, and that I like the take on Hildegarde, noting that the canonical one probably would have appreciated claws with paralytic venom when Victoria was being forced to marry Barkis!)

So that was fun. :) I like how much thought he’s putting into this – Mortasheen may not be fully my thing, but it’s still interesting to learn about, and I enjoy seeing him enjoy it. :)

And there we have it, my day! And, in another return to routine, I'm late going to bed. *shakehead* Better correct that -- night all!