Grumpy Grumpy Thursday
Jul. 31st, 2025 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickMostly because I didn't get to bed until nearly 1 AM because I ended up in a battle with a bug that was flying around the bathroom (which Dad says was a fly, but sure as hell looked a lot more like a bee or wasp to me!). A battle I lost, by the way -- I couldn't suck it up with the vacuum cleaner because it kept flying away too fast, so eventually I said "screw it," retrieved my bathrobe, and closed the door to trap it in there. And then a lot of today was just a procession of things annoying me -- from the weather being crappier than they said (it was still pretty warm and sticky this morning, though it HAD cooled down nicely by the afternoon), to various things at work getting under my skin (I'll go into more detail on THAT below), to having to stop for gas on my way home (up to $3 a gallon), to -- despite the cool weather and me opening my windows this afternoon a couple of times -- my room staying unpleasantly warm to the point where I had to turn on the AC to cool it down. *sigh* It's just -- it wasn't the WORST day, but it was definitely not a fun one. Hmph.
Well, anyway -- here's the typical nightly write-up:
Work – A somewhat-annoying day at work, I must admit – though that’s probably at least partly because I arrived in a bad mood thanks to the lack of sleep from the bug shenanigans. But yeah, it was a day full of things that irritated me, such as:
A) Looking over the report of one-time gifts that had to be moved to the new Appeal year and pledge overpayments that had to be fixed with my coworker and listening to her go on about how the recurring gifts were hard to spot when they didn’t have the recurring gift source code (which was a legit complaint, but she kept going on about it in a way that suggested she expected me to have all the answers, which, I don’t)
B) Trying to call one of our database people to answer some questions about the report and the call not connecting for unknown reasons, then e-mailing her to let her know we had some questions, only for her to call back right before lunch (fortunately it wasn’t a LONG call, and it gave us the answers we needed, but still)
C) Having to e-mail our credit card people after lunch to get them to sort out the source codes on their end (who knows when THAT will fucking happen, because they’re useless idiots)
D) Having to coach my coworker through the reversals on the one-time gifts because for some reason she couldn’t figure out which gifts should get which updated source codes (hint: only the RECURRING GIFTS get the RECURRING SOURCE CODE)
E) Having to send an e-mail to my supervisor to ask his opinion on what I should do about some partial overpayments on credit cards (which are a pain in the ass to deal with)
F) And contacting a guy to let him know that we couldn’t process his credit card information to update his capital campaign pledge because of an error (known one on our end), but I could take it for him over the phone (since I could do a work-around to get around the error)...and him not calling back until RIGHT BEFORE IT WAS TIME TO GO (fortunately he did NOT make me leave late, but still)
Yeaaaah, it was a bitchy day. I mean, some very important stuff got done, but not without me being in a very bad mood throughout. *sigh* At least tomorrow’s only a half day...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 6: Shapes in the Mist!” Tonight’s chunklet featured:
A) Lug, having guessed that the magical melody on the air was the cause of all their woes, and seeing that Morven was paralyzed and unable to cover her ears, getting some moss and plugging up her ears (and his, as Johnny assumed – Willowfine just covered hers) to save her from the tune’s effects. This rendered Morven able to move again –
Just in time, as the fey creatures making the creepy folk music – a pair of satyr-like beings covered in bark, with legs hairy with lichen, one of which was carrying pan pipes – appeared from behind some trees, looking very annoyed that Lug had spoilt all of Johnny’s plans to whisk the group away one by one. XD Morven promptly got out the Sorcerous Blast and straight-up incinerated the one with the pan pipes, reducing it to ashes. Like, this thing just WENT UP. Naturally, the other one was like “oh fuck this” and BOOKED it away, and the remaining three members of our team gave chase, hoping to capture it or at least see where it was going!
“But wait,” I hear you cry, “what about magic’s due?” Well, as it turned out, magic didn’t have it fully out for Morven today – when Andy opened the envelope he’d gotten from the last rolling rite, he found that the spell had warped Morven’s (and by extension Robin’s) bones, making them sturdier but also older and more weary. So Morven/Robin now has +2 to their normal AC – except when it rains, where – even indoors – they have -2 instead. Basically, the joints be achy in bad weather now! Andy didn’t seem to consider that much of a minus. :P
B) Lug, Willowfine, and Morven chasing the – Johnny has not given them an official name yet, so I’m going to call them “barksatyrs” for now – barksatyr to a clearing! Where they found dozens more barksatyrs going about their business (under the orders of a superior one with more ornate bark and a bad temper – he smacked around the one who ran in and presumably gave him the bad news about his companion being ashed) – and a giant pit in the midst of it all –
Into which was dumped Cressida! Yes, Cressida and Happen were back (Ellen and Luke having been welcomed back into the room), and they were at the bottom of a fifty-foot pit, which was surrounded on all sides by a strange woven thing of vines and panels of bark. They both had a look around, and, on a good Perception check, they were able to find a small note tucked into the bark by the author of the journal they were given before, Edie (not Etta, as I misremembered – Ellen was very pleased with the name, and Johnny and I both went “oh yeah” as we remembered that’s the name of her character from Oxventure: Deadlands XD)! The note explained that the North Team had been reunited in the pit, and questioned by the barksatyrs, who were apparently trying to figure out what had happened to the “Shimmering Lady,” the spirit who looks after the river that feeds this part of the forest. They were convinced that North Team had something to do with her disappearance, and weren’t pleased by the fact that the team couldn’t answer their questions. Edie then explained that they hoped to escape the pit and send a message to the Northwest Team using the one copestone the first team member to vanish, Kole, had managed to keep a hold of. Given what we know happened to the copestone later, seems like that escape didn’t go as well as they’d hoped. :( But it did make Cressida and Happen note that, despite the kidnappings and the being thrown into a pit, the barksatyrs and them might not actually be enemies, as they too wanted to figure out what was going on with the river…
C) The barksatyrs haltingly questioning Cressida and Happen about the whereabouts of the Shimmering Lady (while Lug, Willowfine, and Morven tried to figure out how to send a message to them – Morven said she could communicate telepathically with them if she was within 30 feet, but then Lug pointed out they were in a deep pit, and things just got more complicated from there XD)! The pair tried to communicate that they hadn’t done anything with the Shimmering Lady, and that they were seeking her themselves – and fortunately, Cressida putting on her best customer service smile as she explained this at least convinced the guy who initially questioned them to go and get their superior. Unfortunately, despite Cressida’s best efforts to explain that they didn’t really know the people who were here before, and that she didn’t know where their current companions were as she’d been, you know, paralyzed, kidnapped, and thrown down a pit, but they were willing to help find the Shimmering Lady if they’d just let them out (aka rolling a 19 when the DC to beat was a 20), the superior was unimpressed. He smacked his underling upside the head, turned to go, and made a mysterious signal with his hand to something –
Cue Happen yelling, “we have the Shimmering Lady, release us if you ever want to see her alive again!” Cressida and Johnny were both like “…” XD However, it was too little, too late, as the strange vine-and-bark covering surrounding them suddenly began to move, pulling itself off the walls and reconfiguring itself into a giant displacer-beast-like bark-and-vine bear! Which, let’s face it, is a pretty epic monster. :D Good work on that, Johnny!
D) The gang rolling initiative as they prepared to fight the bear (Happen and Cressida) and head toward their friends to help them (Morven, Willowfine, and Lug)! Here’s how that’s going so far:
I. In the pit, Happen opened strong by rolling a twenty on the Cadence die, which resulted in him shooting the bear, his sprites zooming in and basically throwing the bear into the air, Happen hitting it with ANOTHER arrow, and then the bear crashing to the ground, taking five extra points of bludgeoning damage and ending up prone. Luke tried to negotiate for a little extra damage from an arrow getting shoved deeper in, but Johnny wouldn’t let him have it. XD
II. This was followed up by Morven running toward the pit and then attempting to Reduce its size with her magic to make it shallower and easier to get out of – and when Johnny vetoed that because Reduce only works on people and objects, and a hole is more a lack of an object, switched plans to instead Enlarge the soil at the bottom of the hole to get the same effect. Johnny allowed it, knowing they would regret it (XD), and stated that this halved the depth of the hole, meaning it was now 25 feet deep instead of 50. Cressida and Happen naturally got a bit of a jolt from the ground suddenly rising beneath their feet, and Luke tried AGAIN to get some extra damage on the bear from the enlarged soil pushing the arrow in. (Johnny: “No! This is no longer G’eth!” XD)
III. And, when I left off, Willowfine had sprinted toward the edge of the hole and cast Spirit Guardians on herself, surrounding herself with orbs of light that could do radiant damage and slowed any enemies nearby! Which, there were sure to be a lot of soon, as the other barksatyrs, hearing the sounds of combat, were rushing toward the hole to get a good view of the show. XD (Though they wouldn’t arrive until the end of the round, thanks to their shitty initiative roll.) However, as you might have noticed, Spirit Guardians is MAGIC, and that means it’s time for Jane to open her envelope… Tomorrow, we see what effect Willowfine gets from magic taking its due, and finish off the episode! And now I’m wondering if the mystery woman who was so tormenting North Team was in fact the Shimmering Lady everyone’s seeking...
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – and hey, happily I was able to channel my annoyance at everything into writing Alice being annoyed at everything! Specifically, the scene where she arrives back at Venture Tower and reports in about Grout, snapping at LaCroix that he’s dead, was dead before she got there, is really dead now that someone’s blown up his house, and who the fuck is this Bach asshole who tried to set her on fire? XD LaCroix tried to lecture her about her tone, but Alice brushed him off with a “this is as polite as I can be right now; throw me out if you must, but this is as good as you’re getting for now” and he let it go with a “I guess I appreciate your honesty.” XD Anyway, he told her about his and Bach’s beef (namely, that he killed Bach’s grandfather and father) and the Society of Leopold (bunch of super-pious hunter jerks), while also implying that Bach must have killed Grout to draw him out. Except Alice knows what she saw and heard in the mansion, and Bach was very surprised to learn Grout was dead… Next time, Alice gets pissy all over again about what was going on in the mansion with the ghouls – causing her to slip up and mention a name she REALLY shouldn’t have...
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – continued chipping away at my collected OXBoxtra list videos tonight with “7 Annoying Sentient Weapons That Made Us Pacifists!” Andy, Mike, and Jane taking the viewers through a bunch of chatty weapons that will very rapidly get on your last nerve. Such as Skippy, the gun with its own bullet-shaped version of Clippy installed, from Cyberpunk 2077 – which, despite its annoying chatter, looks useful because it has an auto-aim feature that always targets the head...except if you choose THAT mode over its “go for the legs” mode, once you hit fifty kills it’ll switch permanently into “go for the legs” mode, thus robbing it of its main utility (basically, you HAVE to choose the more “pacifist” mode first so it’ll swap instead into all headshots all the time). Or Lilacror, a talking sword from Baldur’s Gate II, which is either possessed by the spirit of a notorious village idiot or simply acts just like him, and whose hobbies include encouraging to you to hack and slash your way to fortune by killing richer and richer people. Or every weapon in High On Life, as they’re all sentient, very chatty aliens, and whether or not you’ll be able to stand them depends a LOT on if you like Rick and Morty and its style of humor. Me, I do not, and thus I wanted to slap all the weapons in this clip. *shakehead* Give me a nice weapon that does NOT have a mind of its own any day of the week! I do not need my Two-Shot Combat Sniper from Fallout 4 to talk in order to love it.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – as I finished up everything on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)’s queue last night, I just had Valice Multiverse to worry about today – and that had one anon ask that consisted of the following: “You can't spell advertisements without putting semen between tits.” Which – interesting observation. I had Cuddlepile!Alice respond with a raised eyebrow, then a groan as she looked at the word again and realized the anon was technically right. More reason to call them ads, I suppose!
And there we have it -- the end of July being very annoying. I'm going to go hit the sack, HOPEFULLY without having to deal with any insect shit in the bathroom. *sigh* Night all.
Well, anyway -- here's the typical nightly write-up:
Work – A somewhat-annoying day at work, I must admit – though that’s probably at least partly because I arrived in a bad mood thanks to the lack of sleep from the bug shenanigans. But yeah, it was a day full of things that irritated me, such as:
A) Looking over the report of one-time gifts that had to be moved to the new Appeal year and pledge overpayments that had to be fixed with my coworker and listening to her go on about how the recurring gifts were hard to spot when they didn’t have the recurring gift source code (which was a legit complaint, but she kept going on about it in a way that suggested she expected me to have all the answers, which, I don’t)
B) Trying to call one of our database people to answer some questions about the report and the call not connecting for unknown reasons, then e-mailing her to let her know we had some questions, only for her to call back right before lunch (fortunately it wasn’t a LONG call, and it gave us the answers we needed, but still)
C) Having to e-mail our credit card people after lunch to get them to sort out the source codes on their end (who knows when THAT will fucking happen, because they’re useless idiots)
D) Having to coach my coworker through the reversals on the one-time gifts because for some reason she couldn’t figure out which gifts should get which updated source codes (hint: only the RECURRING GIFTS get the RECURRING SOURCE CODE)
E) Having to send an e-mail to my supervisor to ask his opinion on what I should do about some partial overpayments on credit cards (which are a pain in the ass to deal with)
F) And contacting a guy to let him know that we couldn’t process his credit card information to update his capital campaign pledge because of an error (known one on our end), but I could take it for him over the phone (since I could do a work-around to get around the error)...and him not calling back until RIGHT BEFORE IT WAS TIME TO GO (fortunately he did NOT make me leave late, but still)
Yeaaaah, it was a bitchy day. I mean, some very important stuff got done, but not without me being in a very bad mood throughout. *sigh* At least tomorrow’s only a half day...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 6: Shapes in the Mist!” Tonight’s chunklet featured:
A) Lug, having guessed that the magical melody on the air was the cause of all their woes, and seeing that Morven was paralyzed and unable to cover her ears, getting some moss and plugging up her ears (and his, as Johnny assumed – Willowfine just covered hers) to save her from the tune’s effects. This rendered Morven able to move again –
Just in time, as the fey creatures making the creepy folk music – a pair of satyr-like beings covered in bark, with legs hairy with lichen, one of which was carrying pan pipes – appeared from behind some trees, looking very annoyed that Lug had spoilt all of Johnny’s plans to whisk the group away one by one. XD Morven promptly got out the Sorcerous Blast and straight-up incinerated the one with the pan pipes, reducing it to ashes. Like, this thing just WENT UP. Naturally, the other one was like “oh fuck this” and BOOKED it away, and the remaining three members of our team gave chase, hoping to capture it or at least see where it was going!
“But wait,” I hear you cry, “what about magic’s due?” Well, as it turned out, magic didn’t have it fully out for Morven today – when Andy opened the envelope he’d gotten from the last rolling rite, he found that the spell had warped Morven’s (and by extension Robin’s) bones, making them sturdier but also older and more weary. So Morven/Robin now has +2 to their normal AC – except when it rains, where – even indoors – they have -2 instead. Basically, the joints be achy in bad weather now! Andy didn’t seem to consider that much of a minus. :P
B) Lug, Willowfine, and Morven chasing the – Johnny has not given them an official name yet, so I’m going to call them “barksatyrs” for now – barksatyr to a clearing! Where they found dozens more barksatyrs going about their business (under the orders of a superior one with more ornate bark and a bad temper – he smacked around the one who ran in and presumably gave him the bad news about his companion being ashed) – and a giant pit in the midst of it all –
Into which was dumped Cressida! Yes, Cressida and Happen were back (Ellen and Luke having been welcomed back into the room), and they were at the bottom of a fifty-foot pit, which was surrounded on all sides by a strange woven thing of vines and panels of bark. They both had a look around, and, on a good Perception check, they were able to find a small note tucked into the bark by the author of the journal they were given before, Edie (not Etta, as I misremembered – Ellen was very pleased with the name, and Johnny and I both went “oh yeah” as we remembered that’s the name of her character from Oxventure: Deadlands XD)! The note explained that the North Team had been reunited in the pit, and questioned by the barksatyrs, who were apparently trying to figure out what had happened to the “Shimmering Lady,” the spirit who looks after the river that feeds this part of the forest. They were convinced that North Team had something to do with her disappearance, and weren’t pleased by the fact that the team couldn’t answer their questions. Edie then explained that they hoped to escape the pit and send a message to the Northwest Team using the one copestone the first team member to vanish, Kole, had managed to keep a hold of. Given what we know happened to the copestone later, seems like that escape didn’t go as well as they’d hoped. :( But it did make Cressida and Happen note that, despite the kidnappings and the being thrown into a pit, the barksatyrs and them might not actually be enemies, as they too wanted to figure out what was going on with the river…
C) The barksatyrs haltingly questioning Cressida and Happen about the whereabouts of the Shimmering Lady (while Lug, Willowfine, and Morven tried to figure out how to send a message to them – Morven said she could communicate telepathically with them if she was within 30 feet, but then Lug pointed out they were in a deep pit, and things just got more complicated from there XD)! The pair tried to communicate that they hadn’t done anything with the Shimmering Lady, and that they were seeking her themselves – and fortunately, Cressida putting on her best customer service smile as she explained this at least convinced the guy who initially questioned them to go and get their superior. Unfortunately, despite Cressida’s best efforts to explain that they didn’t really know the people who were here before, and that she didn’t know where their current companions were as she’d been, you know, paralyzed, kidnapped, and thrown down a pit, but they were willing to help find the Shimmering Lady if they’d just let them out (aka rolling a 19 when the DC to beat was a 20), the superior was unimpressed. He smacked his underling upside the head, turned to go, and made a mysterious signal with his hand to something –
Cue Happen yelling, “we have the Shimmering Lady, release us if you ever want to see her alive again!” Cressida and Johnny were both like “…” XD However, it was too little, too late, as the strange vine-and-bark covering surrounding them suddenly began to move, pulling itself off the walls and reconfiguring itself into a giant displacer-beast-like bark-and-vine bear! Which, let’s face it, is a pretty epic monster. :D Good work on that, Johnny!
D) The gang rolling initiative as they prepared to fight the bear (Happen and Cressida) and head toward their friends to help them (Morven, Willowfine, and Lug)! Here’s how that’s going so far:
I. In the pit, Happen opened strong by rolling a twenty on the Cadence die, which resulted in him shooting the bear, his sprites zooming in and basically throwing the bear into the air, Happen hitting it with ANOTHER arrow, and then the bear crashing to the ground, taking five extra points of bludgeoning damage and ending up prone. Luke tried to negotiate for a little extra damage from an arrow getting shoved deeper in, but Johnny wouldn’t let him have it. XD
II. This was followed up by Morven running toward the pit and then attempting to Reduce its size with her magic to make it shallower and easier to get out of – and when Johnny vetoed that because Reduce only works on people and objects, and a hole is more a lack of an object, switched plans to instead Enlarge the soil at the bottom of the hole to get the same effect. Johnny allowed it, knowing they would regret it (XD), and stated that this halved the depth of the hole, meaning it was now 25 feet deep instead of 50. Cressida and Happen naturally got a bit of a jolt from the ground suddenly rising beneath their feet, and Luke tried AGAIN to get some extra damage on the bear from the enlarged soil pushing the arrow in. (Johnny: “No! This is no longer G’eth!” XD)
III. And, when I left off, Willowfine had sprinted toward the edge of the hole and cast Spirit Guardians on herself, surrounding herself with orbs of light that could do radiant damage and slowed any enemies nearby! Which, there were sure to be a lot of soon, as the other barksatyrs, hearing the sounds of combat, were rushing toward the hole to get a good view of the show. XD (Though they wouldn’t arrive until the end of the round, thanks to their shitty initiative roll.) However, as you might have noticed, Spirit Guardians is MAGIC, and that means it’s time for Jane to open her envelope… Tomorrow, we see what effect Willowfine gets from magic taking its due, and finish off the episode! And now I’m wondering if the mystery woman who was so tormenting North Team was in fact the Shimmering Lady everyone’s seeking...
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – and hey, happily I was able to channel my annoyance at everything into writing Alice being annoyed at everything! Specifically, the scene where she arrives back at Venture Tower and reports in about Grout, snapping at LaCroix that he’s dead, was dead before she got there, is really dead now that someone’s blown up his house, and who the fuck is this Bach asshole who tried to set her on fire? XD LaCroix tried to lecture her about her tone, but Alice brushed him off with a “this is as polite as I can be right now; throw me out if you must, but this is as good as you’re getting for now” and he let it go with a “I guess I appreciate your honesty.” XD Anyway, he told her about his and Bach’s beef (namely, that he killed Bach’s grandfather and father) and the Society of Leopold (bunch of super-pious hunter jerks), while also implying that Bach must have killed Grout to draw him out. Except Alice knows what she saw and heard in the mansion, and Bach was very surprised to learn Grout was dead… Next time, Alice gets pissy all over again about what was going on in the mansion with the ghouls – causing her to slip up and mention a name she REALLY shouldn’t have...
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – continued chipping away at my collected OXBoxtra list videos tonight with “7 Annoying Sentient Weapons That Made Us Pacifists!” Andy, Mike, and Jane taking the viewers through a bunch of chatty weapons that will very rapidly get on your last nerve. Such as Skippy, the gun with its own bullet-shaped version of Clippy installed, from Cyberpunk 2077 – which, despite its annoying chatter, looks useful because it has an auto-aim feature that always targets the head...except if you choose THAT mode over its “go for the legs” mode, once you hit fifty kills it’ll switch permanently into “go for the legs” mode, thus robbing it of its main utility (basically, you HAVE to choose the more “pacifist” mode first so it’ll swap instead into all headshots all the time). Or Lilacror, a talking sword from Baldur’s Gate II, which is either possessed by the spirit of a notorious village idiot or simply acts just like him, and whose hobbies include encouraging to you to hack and slash your way to fortune by killing richer and richer people. Or every weapon in High On Life, as they’re all sentient, very chatty aliens, and whether or not you’ll be able to stand them depends a LOT on if you like Rick and Morty and its style of humor. Me, I do not, and thus I wanted to slap all the weapons in this clip. *shakehead* Give me a nice weapon that does NOT have a mind of its own any day of the week! I do not need my Two-Shot Combat Sniper from Fallout 4 to talk in order to love it.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – as I finished up everything on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)’s queue last night, I just had Valice Multiverse to worry about today – and that had one anon ask that consisted of the following: “You can't spell advertisements without putting semen between tits.” Which – interesting observation. I had Cuddlepile!Alice respond with a raised eyebrow, then a groan as she looked at the word again and realized the anon was technically right. More reason to call them ads, I suppose!
And there we have it -- the end of July being very annoying. I'm going to go hit the sack, HOPEFULLY without having to deal with any insect shit in the bathroom. *sigh* Night all.
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