Hey, Guess What?

It showed up later than expected -- after lunch (fortunately without ruining my panties) -- but my period DID actually show up today! What did I tell you? The minute I go "I hope my period shows up soon," there it fucking is! Which is a relief in one way, but an annoyance in another, as my brain is very sludgy right now, and that made it very hard to do things this evening. Not to mention, Dad was NOT doing great tonight, which did not help matters...but I accomplished a few things nonetheless:

Work – It was, for the most part, a pretty boring Thursday at work – I spent almost the entire day catching up on some old obituaries and going through a bit of old returned mail. But there were a handful of notable incidents:

A) Getting a call from a guy who’d gotten an e-mail thanking him for a four-cent charge who wanted to be sure that we knew that wasn’t his gift for this year’s Appeal and worrying that his card had been hacked – fortunately, I’d already seen that charge on the daily transaction report and knew it was just a case of “the computer was very very stupid when it divided up the payments on your online pledge.” So that was honestly rather amusing

B) Getting an e-mail from my former supervisor (now working in a different office) asking me to go on a certain site and download a file for him that he needed – I do not understand WHY he does not set up a username and password of HIS OWN for that damn site. I did it, but it really does piss me off. >(

C) Getting a call from someone who had two mailings sent to her house (turns out we had her husband in twice, once under his preferred name and once under his actual first name), who proceeded to ramble on for a while about how their financial situation had changed and how she wasn’t sure she could commit to anything yet, especially with their old pledge unpaid. I did my best to reassure her that she didn’t have to set up anything until she knew what they could actually give, and that she shouldn’t give more than she could, and all of that, and she seemed calmer by the end of the conversation. Glad to have calmed her fears – I just wish the call hadn’t come in while one of the songs I really like was on the radio! Hmph.

D) And my coworker getting a call from the sisters whose card failed yesterday – apparently they managed to clear everything up with the card company, and their gifts went through today, hooray~

And, well, getting my period, but we covered that earlier. *nods* So yeah – nothing too terrible, even if a few things managed to really annoy me. We’ll see how Friday goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout 3: Jon & Claire Are Still Sick So We're Speedrunning Fallout Live Special” – because this time YouTube didn’t get all pissy with me. (Granted, I also rewound a lot less, but – still). Tonight’s penultimate chunk of the J & C FO3 Sickness Speedrun featured:

A) Jon wandering the halls of the Citadel trying to find the damn computer lab after talking to Scribe Rothchild while Claire said they’d stop talking about the Fallout TV show because those who were waiting for the whole season to drop didn’t want the spoilers, and telling Jon about Macaulay Culkin’s turn in The Good Son, where he plays a very creepy bastard kid (apparently because she and Jon had trouble accepting Grown Up Kevin McCallister as an evil bastard in the show)

B) Jon, upon finding the lab and looking up the info on Vault 87, returning to Rothchild to tell him what he’d found – only to get very frustrated when Rothchild insisted on leading him over to the big wall map where he could show Player Name the location of the vault, because – like most of the NPCs – Rothchild moved at a snail’s place – cue Jon ramming P. N. into the guy’s back a few times to try and get to him to move faster. XD Fortunately, the walk to the map wasn’t that long, and Jon got to talk about Power Rangers some more while he sped through the resultant conversation and headed outside to go fast travel to Little Lamplight (mostly about how he considers Wildforce a pretty “mid” season, saying that the “Forever Red” episode is a highlight but it just ended up having too many Zords)

C) Jon getting outside, fast-traveling to Little Lamplight, getting past Mayor MacCready with his incredible Speech skill, and running straight through the settlement to Murder Pass (what it is actually called in the game, incidentally, because it is teeming with super mutants) because he thought he could just get in and out no problem – only to discover that the game wouldn’t let him use the pulleys to open the gate TO Murder Pass. Cue the chat explaining he had to go talk to MacCready again so he and Princess could open the gate, and Jon having to go all the way back to the front gate to find the mayor and get him to allow P. N. access…

And then MacCready getting stuck on one of the crooked sets of steps back to the Murder Pass entrance. Jon: “...it’s not my fault if this isn’t world record.” XD Jon had P. N. shove him a few times to try and unstick him – nope – then tried saving and reloading the game – nope – then tried just going on ahead a bit to try and reload things – yes, turns out the problem was P. N. was staring at MacCready and it was apparently making him nervous. :p At least he got unstuck!

D) Jon running through Murder Pass navigating by vibes, picking up an impressive conga line of super mutants trying to kill him, some healing items, some ammo, and a Stealth Boy – then entering Vault 87 proper (leaving the conga line of mutants behind), which scored him a bunch of XP for completing one of the quests. He couldn’t level up because he was still in danger, though, so he continued on through the reactor chamber, dropping into a crouch as the music finally started to calm down to confirm he’d moved into [CAUTION] –

And then, the SECOND the level-up music played, he rounded a corner and caught the attention of some super mutants at the top of some stairs. Leading to him having to hastily retreat and pop the Stealth Boy he just acquired. And then murder some radroaches that had already noticed him and were determined to have him for dinner. XD Eventually he was allowed to reach Level 6! (Which saw him bring Small Guns up to 75 to improve his murder capabilities, and take the “Toughness” perk to increase his chances of survival, if you were curious.)

E) Jon then attempting to stealth past the super mutants at the top of the stairs with his new Stealth Boy – only to be immediately detected because P. N. was wearing power armor and thus was the noisiest son of a bitch in the vicinity. XD And almost immediately after that, the game crashed when Jon tried to enter the living quarters! Claire was nice enough to pause the timer – but then Jon had her restart it because he was pretty sure that proper speedrunners included such things in their timing, and chat later backed him up by saying the game crashing is what made it a proper run of FO3. XD I mean, it is a Bethesda game, so...it’s really just lucky that Jon had made a save immediately before attempting to do his clanky clanky sneaking!

F) Jon stumbling through Vault 87, discovering that the super mutants here could follow him through load zones and ending up with quite the conga line of mutants wailing on him (while Claire reported on a super-chat fan giving them $200 Australian, damn) – cue him eventually having to do like every healing item in his inventory to stay alive, even with the advantage of power armor, then – after being reminded by Claire and the chat – using the two frag grenades he picked up from Project Purity to beat the hordes back just a little bit so he had some breathing room to continue onto into the testing labs wing. Unfortunately, they and all their other friends seemed to catch up with him the moment he set off the fire alarm at the end of the wing to free Fawkes, the friendly super mutant, resulting in quite the pile up in the hall and P. N. getting stuck in front of a couple of centaurs – fortunately, once P. N. got free, they were able to book it thanks to Fawkes marching into the fray and him and the freed human prisoners keeping the main mass of mutants busy. P. N. still got very shot as he wandered around looking desperately for Rad-X and Rad-Away (to help him brave the world’s most radioactive room containing the Garden Of Eden Creation Kit he was here to find), but at least it wasn’t by fifty million mutants – just five at most. :P

G) Jon deciding to just plunge into the World’s Most Radioactive Room after not finding any medicine (and apparently forgetting that he actually had some on him) – and, despite a super mutant following him in and nearly ruining things by crippling poor P. N.’s torso as the tube holding the GECK opened, managing to secure the GECK and get out of the World’s Most Radioactive Room without dying! I mean, he took a deadly amount of radiation poisoning, but he did not immediately die! He was almost deliriously happy about this, as you might expect. XD

H) Jon getting through:

I. P. N. getting kidnapped by the Enclave after getting the GECK

II. P. N. getting saved from Colonel Autumn demanding the code for the purifier by the President Eden, the Enclave’s supercomputer leader

III. P. N. retrieving his stuff from the locker near the door of his cell and leveling up (Level 7 – maxed out Small Guns with all the skill points and a little bonus from Level 2 of “Gun Nut”)

IV. P. N. making his way as quickly as he could through the corridors of Raven Rock to the President’s office (getting shot at by a few enemies along the way who kept crippling his chest)

V. P. N. talking to President Eden and accepting the modified FEV vial to poison the purified water (Claire revealed at least one super-chat fan wanted Jon to poison the water supply, and Jon was like “sure, why not” – given he did this in the TTW FO3 run too, I am starting to wonder if he ever DOESN’T poison the water)

VI. And P. N. starting his great escape from the Enclave base, with the help of the security system (which was now of course on his side, being controlled by President Eden and all)

All before realizing that he never actually had P. N. put his power armor back on before attempting the escape. ...that might have made things easier, huh? XD To be fair, the Brotherhood Outcast power armor he was wearing before was broken, so it wouldn’t have helped anyway. He ended up ditching it for some of the Enclave power armor he picked up off some of the corpses, repairing it up with more he found along the way (because, you know, a lot of Enclave kept dying to the security measures keeping P. N. safe).

I) And Jon finally escaping the Enclave base and getting back to the Citadel via fast travel, announcing that they should be completing the endgame soon (at about Level 8) – to which Claire responded like “we had better because I SO NEED TO PEE, you promised me this would be like an HOUR” (Jon: “But you should have taken into account that was ME saying it!”). XD She ended up going for a bathroom break when Jon got stuck watching another conversation between Elder Lyons, his daughter, and Scribe Rothchild and she realized she’d caught up with the super chat. XD Poor Claire – at least the game provided a nice break point for her!

And that’s more or left where I left off! Tomorrow, we wrap things up with however long it takes Jon to make it through the big finale of the main game! I’m excited – especially since I want to know if the run is sub-two hours or not! The livestream isn’t, but I already figured there must be time for intros and outros, so...

2. Continue editing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – it was tough, but I did edit a little over another page tonight, with Alice and Smiler stepping aside to let what looked like a grizzled old employee of the Van Dorts through the door they were waiting beside...then Alice noting “hang on, that guy had a bum leg, and I don’t think Victor’s parents would hire someone like that; I suspect shenanigans” and the pair heading inside after him to confirm that whatever plan the guy had didn’t include hurting Victor. I left off with Cheshire directing Alice to open the double doors to her left – tomorrow, if all goes well, the pair are confronted with the Van Dort kitchen in full “the mistress is giving a party” swing!

3. Watch something on FreeTube: No check – thanks to the ever-present stress of “what the fuck is going on with Dad” combined with my general brain sludginess, I ended up having to rewatch some of the FO3 Sickness Speedrun to remember everything that I wanted to comment on, which left no time for anything else. At least the OXBox list video of the week is short – fingers crossed I can squeeze it in tomorrow!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – everything taken care of for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); nothing happening on Valice Multiverse. Which is good as I didn’t have time for either of THOSE either.

Yeah, not the most productive night. And now I have to try and get to bed and get some sleep, if that's at all possible, because I can hear more yelps of pain from outside my door. *grimace* We'll see what happens. Night all.