Distracted Tired Bitchy Me

*grumbles* It hasn't been a full-on bad day, but I've had some very bad moments, and it's resulted in a very grumpy Vicky at times. Which, of course, is heightened by the good old PMS, so...bleh. Should I say "I hope my period comes soon" to get it to show up already? I feel like I've been locked in the old hormonal state for a while... *shakehead* Anyway, here's the daily write-up:

Work – Slightly annoying Wednesday at work – while most of the day was pretty chill, with me doing the usual morning reports, sending out a letter to someone who requested an accounting of all their payments, putting on some checks and doing a special thank-you letter for someone who sent in a gift through their IRA, and finally finishing off that list of new parishioners I’ve been working on for a few days now, there was some credit card nonsense right before lunch. Namely, my coworker took a call from some sisters who were trying to use one card to do both their gifts –

Only for the card to fail twice, for two different reasons (a policy denial and a validation error). So my lunch was a bit delayed as we tried to figure out what was going on with that, and we ended up having to tell the donors to call their credit card company. I also brought the issue up on the Useless Credit Card Company Check-In Call (… *goes to Merriam-Webster’s site to see if there are any synonyms for “useless” starting with C – no, but I learned the fun phrase “not worth the candle,” so I still consider that a win), but I’m not entirely sure my contact understood what I was trying to explain. She promised to bring it up to her boss, at least, but given the boss is the one who is the least worth the candle… Meh. We’ll try to contact the ladies tomorrow and see what’s up – I’m just glad the other credit card calls we took didn’t have similar problems! Hopefully Thursday doesn’t have any moments like that...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check, though I did not have a good workout this evening – mostly because YouTube and I got into a fight about my tendency to rewind a lot while watching “Fallout 3: Jon & Claire Are Still Sick So We're Speedrunning Fallout Live Special” in order to keep up with everything Jon and Claire were actually saying as Jon ran around doing tasks in the Jefferson memorial and Claire read out super-chat messages. Specifically, YouTube did that thing where it gets stuck in a buffering loop because it’s trying to load ads (because God forbid it not show you ads) but for some reason the ads won’t actually pop up. Cue me working myself into a fit on the bike as I tried to get my video to play (which I guess did at least burn extra calories) and having to go into and out of said video REPEATEDLY (to the point of exiting YouTube and turning the TV off at one point) before it would deign to play anything. And then I had to go back and deliberately hit a few ad triggers to make sure it would KEEP playing if I tried to fast forward to the point where the troubles actually started. *shakes head* I fucking hate YouTube… So yeah, I barely got to watch any of the livestream shenanigans on the bike tonight –

Which is why I ended up watching a proper half-hour of the stream after supper instead on FreeTube, because fuck you, YouTube, you do NOT get to deny me one of the few things giving me joy now. I obviously skipped the version on YouTube forward to the point I left off at afterwards so I could hopefully pick up from there during tomorrow’s workout, but yeah – tonight’s summary of the nightly J & C FO3 Sickness Speedrun chunklet is down in “3. Watch something on FreeTube.” See you there.

2. Continue editing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – swapped to my other major writing project and started cleaning up Chapter 3 today, which is the chapter where the POV switches to Alice so we can see what’s going on with her and Smiler! And what was going on in today’s editing session was Smiler surprising Alice by asking if they could move into Elder Gutknecht’s house with her, then doing their best to sell her on the idea by explaining that they just thought she could use a living human friend as a roommate (instead of just having a ghost, a flock of ravens, and her own hallucinations). They quickly clarified that they didn’t mean to imply that she couldn’t take care of herself –

Only for Alice to say, in essence, “Uh, actually, I’ve just spent the last month wandering around in a hallucinatory daze nearly getting killed multiple times, and while I’m doing better now I can’t promise I won’t relapse, so I just might need help taking care of myself.” Which threw Smiler a bit, admittedly. :P But they rallied, saying that in that case, she might as well have someone around who had her happiness at heart – Alice responded by assuring them she was already inclined to say “yes” to their proposal, noting that they were her friend, and they’d gotten along pretty well during the couple of days they’d already lived together at Gutknecht’s –

And that, if she let them move in, she got more of their wonderful tea. XD Because yeah, Smiler is the best at tea. I left off with them getting interrupted in discussing the bed situation (remember, there’s only one at the house) by a mysterious voice – tomorrow, we meet the owner, one Kasimir Jones – not that Alice and Smiler will know that at first...

3. Watch something on FreeTube: Weird check – as stated above, having gotten into a fight with YouTube regarding how often I’m allowed to rewind during a video during my workout, I spent the evening watching the chunk of “Fallout 3: Jon & Claire Are Still Sick So We're Speedrunning Fallout Live Special” that I expected to watch on the bike. Because, again, fuck you YouTube. *sigh* Anyway, tonight’s sample of the J & C FO3 Sickness Speedrun featured:

A) Jon finally tracking down the final super mutant and centaur (a horrible creature with tentacles for a mouth that wanders around on four arm-leg things – don’t look them up, there’s horrifying, I’m kind of glad Fallout 4 replaced them with dogs) lurking in the rotunda, allowing Player Name to FINALLY finish his assigned task of “clear the super mutants from Project Purity…”

Only to go outside and immediately encounter his dad and the scientists getting their shit wrecked by a super mutant. XD Project Purity’s totally safe, everyone!

B) Jon starting the busywork to get Project Purity off the ground and trigger THE TRAGEDY (aka P. N.’s dad sacrificing himself via massively irradiating the inner room of Project Purity to keep the purifier out of the Enclave’s hands) while he and Claire talked food – specifically, Claire admitted to the chat that the “chicken chili” she and Jon were so anticipating later wasn’t really “chili” in the proper sense – it was just a nice braised chicken with tomatoes and beans and sweet corn (Claire found the recipe thanks to a nice white American lady’s video on YouTube – it does sound tasty), and Claire clarified to Jon that when a user commented earlier about Jaffa Cakes (a kind of English baked good consisting of a small sponge “cookie,” orange jam, and a chocolate coating) being a fake version of “Pim’s,” they didn’t mean “Pimm’s” as in the English gin-based fruit drink, but “PiM’s” as in a French brand of biscuit very similar to Jaffa Cakes (Jon admitted he thought they had to mean a gelatin version of the drink, while Claire said she personally preferred Jaffa Cakes over PiM’s)

C) While waiting for THE TRAGEDY to actually happen (one has to wait through a rather long in-game cutscene before Dad actually offs the Enclave and himself), Jon cheerfully bragging that his Tale Of Two Wastelands-based FO3 playthrough from a couple of years ago is the most comprehensive FO3 playthrough since the start of human history (poor Claire was like “really???”) – only to have the wind knocked out of his sails a minute later when someone said they were probably setting all sorts of records with this FO3 speedrun – just maybe not good ones. XD Cue Jon admitting this was probably the slowest FO3 speedrun in human history, with Claire noting that they were up to one hour and two minutes at that point. Which I still think is pretty good, given how sick they sounded!

D) Jon fleeing into the nearby sewer tunnels with Dr. Li and her team after THE TRAGEDY and getting all the way to the door that P. N. needed his new friends to hack open (because P. N. doesn’t have SCIENCE, he prioritized Speech all day every day) – only to discover that his entourage had NOT followed him and were in fact waiting at the beginning of the damn tunnel because Dr. Li hadn’t spawned in. And then she refused to spawn in until P. N. finally talked to one of the other members of the team, Daniel, and gave him a gun. And THEN acted like P. N. was the one slowing them up! And THEN refused to move at anything other than a casual stroll when she finally DID get moving! (Claire: “Welcome to Fallout 3 Speedwalk!” XD) Jon was very annoyed, but went ahead and ran on –

Only to find the door he’d needed them to hack suddenly open. O.o Jon went from annoyed to confused immediately, and wondered if he’d found some sort of new skip – APPARENTLY Dr. Li was there by the computer, but couldn’t be perceived? *shrug* Got me – this game is weird when you try to speedrun it.

E) Case in point, Jon fleeing into the next set of tunnels leading to the Brotherhood of Steel Citadel, and running ALMOST as fast as he could toward the exit (I say “almost” because he did stop to grab a cool eyebot helmet on a desk, and a laser pistol off a dead Enclave soldier – he tried to take the power armor too, but it proved to be too heavy) – only to discover that Dr. Li had ONCE AGAIN not followed him when he popped up out of the sewers in front of the intercom. Cue him having to go back and find her (which at least allowed him to pick up some more guns and weapons) – turns out she was waiting a little ways back where normally you have a conversation about how one of the team, Garza, needs a rest because of his heart condition.

GARZA HAD ALREADY SURVIVED THE GHOUL ASSAULT AND MADE IT TO THE END. WITH ONE NOTCH LEFT ON HIS HEALTH BAR, GRANTED, BUT HE’D MADE IT. An annoyed Jon had P. N. use his remarkable Speech skills to convince Dr. Li to “leave him behind” (even though he did not need to be left behind), then ran back to the exit and to the Brotherhood, with Dr. Li FINALLY spawning in behind him once he re-emerged into the wasteland. She of course took her sweet time walking up to the intercom to demand the Brotherhood open up, but at least she showed up!

F) Jon leveling P. N. to Level 5 upon arrival at the Citadel (Speech was boosted the final two points up to 100; Small Guns was boosted to 50; and the “Gun Nut” perk grabbed just because), then spending Dr. Li and Elder Lyon’s long conversation (which he couldn’t skip because he wasn’t a part of) talking with Claire about – how Macaulay Culkin was apparently a member of the Legion in the Fallout TV show??? *double-checks this* Holy shit, yes, he’s Lacerta Legate! The everloving fuck. O.o ...I expect some reference to him making ridiculous traps for intruders to be made, show. :P

G) And Jon getting some power armor training for P. N. because why not, he already had a set on him, then checking his Pip-Boy to figure out his next objective in the quest line – go down to talk to Scribe Rothchild and learn officially where Vault 87 was, and that he needed to go through Little Lamplight to reach it. Jon wondered on the way down to Rothchild if this bit was skippable or not (he thought you absolutely had to do it or the game wouldn’t let you proceed, but wasn’t 100% sure), but then figured “Well, I’m almost right next to the guy now, so…” XD

And so my chunk ended with Jon almost right next to the guy, ready to learn about Vault 87! HOPEFULLY I can watch tomorrow’s chunk on the bike without any problems...keep your fingers crossed!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – only had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today, and I got that queue done yesterday, thankfully.

Yeah, not the best day, as you can see. At least I got my F03 Speedrun stuff in...and now I really have to hit the hay. Night all!