Not The Greatest Monday
Aug. 18th, 2025 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickLike, it wasn't horrible, but between getting to sleep WAY later than I wanted this morning thanks to a bug flying around my room that I had to team up with Mom to get because it kept fluttering away to the ceiling (one that looked like a hornet or weird mosquito no less, blech), and me having to deal with my stupid body being in "overheat" mode despite the cool day -- I've had better. And as I don't want to go to bed absurdly late AGAIN tonight, let's dive right into the daily write-up:
Work – A busy-ish first day back at work this week – I did the GL; I went through the people who needed to be contacted about their failed credit cards and sent out some e-mails; I helped one lady update her credit card; I went through the QC file for the next capital campaign pledge billing; and I got a call back from one of the people I’d sent an e-mail to and updated HIS card after determining we never got the new number because his bank was routing payments using the old card number through the new one. And also I had to do it via the work-around method because I got an error when I tried to do it the “proper” way. *grumbles* Nothing too exciting, but it all made the day go by! We’ll see what happens tomorrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to the Oxventure One-Shots for the moment, with “Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork | Oxventure One-Shot | (ft. Dominic Allen)!” As you might imagine, as a Discworld fan, I was eager to see what this one entailed – and to my surprise, it was not the gang playing GURPS Discworld, which is the Discworld RPG I own and what I assumed they’d be using! Instead, it turned out that Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork was the name of the RPG they were playing (which, well, I should have guessed, given most of their one-shots ARE named after the RPG that features in them), which was being funded on Kickstarter at the time (I checked the link a little while ago – the creators ended up raising over two million pounds, damn!) and which our brave Oxventurers, plus guest star, were promoting! Andy was the DM for the session, while Jane, Johnny, Mike, and guest Dominic Allen (from “Chaotic Neutral” and “No Rolls Barred”) played a quartet of City Watch members – specifically:
Dom played Constable Surly Underhand, a dwarf crime scene iconographer (aka photographer), whose traits included “curious enough to make cats nervous” and “virulently infectious personality”
Jane played Constable Igorina, one of the many patchwork Igors from Uberwald who specialized in applied forensics, and whose traits included “a stitch in time saves nine” and “happy to call a head wound a head wound
Mike played Detective Bartholemew Hamrahan, a zombie investigator, whose traits included “the law is more of a guideline really” and “remembers the good bad old days”
And Johnny played Constable Cliff, a troll (raised by human parents) whose niche was public relations (yes, really, the troll), and whose traits included “a winning smile and chisseled [sic] features” and “simple but not stupid.”
A very Discworldian set of Watchmen, as I feel you would agree. :p And of course, given everyone was playing members of the Watch, the one-shot revolved around the quartet investigating a crime – a break-in at the Sunshine Sanctuary For Sick Dragons! The four were assigned to the case by Sir Samuel Vimes himself (who probably felt he couldn’t go down there because of a conflict of interest as his wife OWNS the place), who told them to figure out what happened, to protect the citizenry of the city, and to NOT make any more paperwork than was strictly necessary. XD And so they headed down to Morphic Street, where we got through the following:
A) Surly taking a picture of the sad papier-mâché dragon at the entrance, with Cliff standing next to it for scale, and it being ruled that, right after Cliff asked if he could blink, the iconograph went off, causing the imps to paint only pictures with Cliff blinking XD
B) Igorina discovering an unconscious guard dragon by the front door, next to a mug of whiskey in a cup labeled “The Lamp And Needles,” deciding the dragon was a drunk, and attempting to wake it – one poor roll against the Narrativium die later (as dice rolls in this game consist of “the player chooses to do something and tries to justify how they’d be good at it using one of their traits; the DM decides whether they get to roll a D4, D6, D10, or D12 depending on how well they sell it; and then the player rolls the die they got while the DM rolls a D8 ‘Narrativium’ die – if the player meets or beats the DM’s result, they succeed; if they don’t, they fail and gain a consequence”), the dragon had exploded, and Igorina had picked up the trait “covered in dragon viscera.” XD On the plus side, Surly got an amazing picture of the moment of the explosion on a successful die roll?
C) The gang discovering wheel ruts near the loading bay in the front garden, and Bartholemew showing how the law is just a guideline to him by wrecking the scene looking for evidence of what might have been taken – Cliff noted the “for-en-sics” guys were going to be sooo mad :P
D) The gang proceeding into the actual building and discovering a bunch of the Interchangeable Emmas who work there and the current person in charge, Rosie DuMont Volay, trying to wrangle all the dragons that escaped during the break-in – cue Cliff showing off WHY he’s in public relations by gently taking the hand of one of the Emmas and patting it, assuring her that she’s appreciated and she’s doing an excellent job, awww. :) There were jokes about it being a “politician in a hi-vis vest and hard hat in a disaster area” moment, but it still came off as rather genuinely sweet!
E) The gang discovering that what had been stolen from the Sanctuary were a bunch of dragons – including one, Gunter, who thanks to his breed had particular tummy troubles and needed to get his special nutritional supplements in exactly eight hours or else he would explode rather violently. Which, uh, would NOT be a good thing! Surly’s comments about how one could use a tied-up dragon as a bomb got Cliff thinking he was their first suspect, while Bartholemew got a vial of the supplements from Rosie (after Surly got a picture of her holding it – she was quite pleased and asked for a copy for their newsletter) and eventually ended up sticking it into the crossbow wound that killed him for safekeeping after Rosie warned him not to pat it too hard. XD
F) The gang learning from Rosie that she often went to The Lamp And Needles for her supper and had been seeing a man named “John” there, who’d shown quite a lot of interest in her and her work – Rosie had assumed he’d been trying to woo her, but now… :( Unfortunately, her description of him was hampered by the fact that he was apparently utterly nondescript, wearing normal clothes and being of a normal height. Surly, the dwarf, was like “what do you mean, NORMAL height?” and Rosie hastily clarified that she meant normal height for a HUMAN, her apologies. XD Still, combined with the cup they’d found, it was a lead, and led to –
G) The gang heading to The Lamp And Needles tavern, a historic place that was thus allowed to lean dangerously over the street. XD Bartholemew broke them into the place (since it WAS morning, meaning the tavern wasn’t yet open), and they discovered a cushy place full of overstuffed armchairs and trinkets on the wall for the well-to-do, respectable reveler. :P Surly mentioned that figuring out the case should be pretty straightforward, as Rosie mentioned the man was utterly normal, and he’d never MET a normal person before, so this “John” should stand out like a sore thumb (sorry Bartholemew XD); Bartholemew agreed and started looking around the place for anything amiss, and to determine if the landlord slept upstairs –
Only to roll badly and thus knock over a barstool. Summoning the very hard-of-hearing owner, Rufus, downstairs. (Guess he did at least determine the guy slept upstairs!) Bartholemew eventually managed to convince the guy he was with the Watch by writing down who he was, but Rufus was reluctant to give up any information on his patrons. Bartholemew tried to convince him to tell them about John by invoking his “better it happen to me than you” trait, saying that it would be in Rufus’s best interest if Bartholemew found this guy and thus was the one to risk exploding –
Only to roll a 1 and thus utterly fail against Andy’s 3. XD Mike was prepared to spend a luck token to lessen the consequences, but Andy said that one of the others could roll to help Bartholemew out if they wanted and try to turn this into a success – cue Surly jumping in with his “virulently infectious personality” and babbling on to Rufus about how important it was to preserve the pub and how it could go sky-high if John showed up with the dragon tonight to drink –
And rolling a 5, which just beat Andy’s 3, yay! :) Tomorrow, we pick up with Rufus hopefully now being willing to share some info with this motley crew – I am very curious to see where exactly this is gonna go! Probably in a weird direction – it IS Discworld. :P
2. Start final edits on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 5: Check – I have made my way through to page 10 of 54 (eeek), making little tweaks to Alice getting ready for the trip, talking with Victor, and leaving the apartment to go on her “error” (current favorite typo I’ve fixed); Alice arriving at Grout’s and being surprised and confused by Nines’s appearance; Alice getting into the mansion, making it past the first few ghouls, and getting absolutely pissed off by Grout’s first audio diary; and Alice making it into the library and knocking out the ghoul in there with a dictionary before preparing to take on Grout’s candle puzzle. *nods* Not too shabby! Hopefully tomorrow we can get up to page 20 – keep your fingers crossed!
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – and I had an actual Subs video to watch too: “Fun With Shorts: He Didn't Have Time [PATREON EXCLUSIVE!]” by Josh Way! One of his old Patreon-only shorts now released to general audiences, this one told the story of a man who didn’t have time to replace the balding tires on his car with better ones when the gas station attendant warned him they were bad, and how that led to him having a wreck and nearly killing his kid –
And which was sponsored by FIRESTONE TIRES. For context, literally the only thing I know about Firestone is that the guys on Whose Line Is It Anyway? (back in the Drew Carey era) kept making jokes about what shit tires they made. XD So this whole short had an extra level of hilarity for me, quite apart from Josh’s riffs (which often centered on the fact that the term “blow-out” can be used both to describe a tire bursting or a toddler’s potty emergency). Good times! :P
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A, as per usual on Mondays – every time I think I might be able to get something done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and every time I am proven wrong. Ah well.
Other: Being as it was a nice day, we did go out and play beanbags this afternoon – and I was blessed with good throws today, winning two out of three games, yay! Dad won the other, and Mom came last twice and managed second once. Just not her day – though, admittedly, her back was hurting, so that couldn’t have helped. Final scores were me W-2-W; Dad 2-W-3; and Mom 3-3-2. We’ll see if things get a little more equal tomorrow!
*nods* And there we have it, and I am heading to bed. So long as I don't discover anything flying around my light again. *sigh* Here's hoping for a better night's sleep and thus a better Tuesday -- night all!
Work – A busy-ish first day back at work this week – I did the GL; I went through the people who needed to be contacted about their failed credit cards and sent out some e-mails; I helped one lady update her credit card; I went through the QC file for the next capital campaign pledge billing; and I got a call back from one of the people I’d sent an e-mail to and updated HIS card after determining we never got the new number because his bank was routing payments using the old card number through the new one. And also I had to do it via the work-around method because I got an error when I tried to do it the “proper” way. *grumbles* Nothing too exciting, but it all made the day go by! We’ll see what happens tomorrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to the Oxventure One-Shots for the moment, with “Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork | Oxventure One-Shot | (ft. Dominic Allen)!” As you might imagine, as a Discworld fan, I was eager to see what this one entailed – and to my surprise, it was not the gang playing GURPS Discworld, which is the Discworld RPG I own and what I assumed they’d be using! Instead, it turned out that Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork was the name of the RPG they were playing (which, well, I should have guessed, given most of their one-shots ARE named after the RPG that features in them), which was being funded on Kickstarter at the time (I checked the link a little while ago – the creators ended up raising over two million pounds, damn!) and which our brave Oxventurers, plus guest star, were promoting! Andy was the DM for the session, while Jane, Johnny, Mike, and guest Dominic Allen (from “Chaotic Neutral” and “No Rolls Barred”) played a quartet of City Watch members – specifically:
Dom played Constable Surly Underhand, a dwarf crime scene iconographer (aka photographer), whose traits included “curious enough to make cats nervous” and “virulently infectious personality”
Jane played Constable Igorina, one of the many patchwork Igors from Uberwald who specialized in applied forensics, and whose traits included “a stitch in time saves nine” and “happy to call a head wound a head wound
Mike played Detective Bartholemew Hamrahan, a zombie investigator, whose traits included “the law is more of a guideline really” and “remembers the good bad old days”
And Johnny played Constable Cliff, a troll (raised by human parents) whose niche was public relations (yes, really, the troll), and whose traits included “a winning smile and chisseled [sic] features” and “simple but not stupid.”
A very Discworldian set of Watchmen, as I feel you would agree. :p And of course, given everyone was playing members of the Watch, the one-shot revolved around the quartet investigating a crime – a break-in at the Sunshine Sanctuary For Sick Dragons! The four were assigned to the case by Sir Samuel Vimes himself (who probably felt he couldn’t go down there because of a conflict of interest as his wife OWNS the place), who told them to figure out what happened, to protect the citizenry of the city, and to NOT make any more paperwork than was strictly necessary. XD And so they headed down to Morphic Street, where we got through the following:
A) Surly taking a picture of the sad papier-mâché dragon at the entrance, with Cliff standing next to it for scale, and it being ruled that, right after Cliff asked if he could blink, the iconograph went off, causing the imps to paint only pictures with Cliff blinking XD
B) Igorina discovering an unconscious guard dragon by the front door, next to a mug of whiskey in a cup labeled “The Lamp And Needles,” deciding the dragon was a drunk, and attempting to wake it – one poor roll against the Narrativium die later (as dice rolls in this game consist of “the player chooses to do something and tries to justify how they’d be good at it using one of their traits; the DM decides whether they get to roll a D4, D6, D10, or D12 depending on how well they sell it; and then the player rolls the die they got while the DM rolls a D8 ‘Narrativium’ die – if the player meets or beats the DM’s result, they succeed; if they don’t, they fail and gain a consequence”), the dragon had exploded, and Igorina had picked up the trait “covered in dragon viscera.” XD On the plus side, Surly got an amazing picture of the moment of the explosion on a successful die roll?
C) The gang discovering wheel ruts near the loading bay in the front garden, and Bartholemew showing how the law is just a guideline to him by wrecking the scene looking for evidence of what might have been taken – Cliff noted the “for-en-sics” guys were going to be sooo mad :P
D) The gang proceeding into the actual building and discovering a bunch of the Interchangeable Emmas who work there and the current person in charge, Rosie DuMont Volay, trying to wrangle all the dragons that escaped during the break-in – cue Cliff showing off WHY he’s in public relations by gently taking the hand of one of the Emmas and patting it, assuring her that she’s appreciated and she’s doing an excellent job, awww. :) There were jokes about it being a “politician in a hi-vis vest and hard hat in a disaster area” moment, but it still came off as rather genuinely sweet!
E) The gang discovering that what had been stolen from the Sanctuary were a bunch of dragons – including one, Gunter, who thanks to his breed had particular tummy troubles and needed to get his special nutritional supplements in exactly eight hours or else he would explode rather violently. Which, uh, would NOT be a good thing! Surly’s comments about how one could use a tied-up dragon as a bomb got Cliff thinking he was their first suspect, while Bartholemew got a vial of the supplements from Rosie (after Surly got a picture of her holding it – she was quite pleased and asked for a copy for their newsletter) and eventually ended up sticking it into the crossbow wound that killed him for safekeeping after Rosie warned him not to pat it too hard. XD
F) The gang learning from Rosie that she often went to The Lamp And Needles for her supper and had been seeing a man named “John” there, who’d shown quite a lot of interest in her and her work – Rosie had assumed he’d been trying to woo her, but now… :( Unfortunately, her description of him was hampered by the fact that he was apparently utterly nondescript, wearing normal clothes and being of a normal height. Surly, the dwarf, was like “what do you mean, NORMAL height?” and Rosie hastily clarified that she meant normal height for a HUMAN, her apologies. XD Still, combined with the cup they’d found, it was a lead, and led to –
G) The gang heading to The Lamp And Needles tavern, a historic place that was thus allowed to lean dangerously over the street. XD Bartholemew broke them into the place (since it WAS morning, meaning the tavern wasn’t yet open), and they discovered a cushy place full of overstuffed armchairs and trinkets on the wall for the well-to-do, respectable reveler. :P Surly mentioned that figuring out the case should be pretty straightforward, as Rosie mentioned the man was utterly normal, and he’d never MET a normal person before, so this “John” should stand out like a sore thumb (sorry Bartholemew XD); Bartholemew agreed and started looking around the place for anything amiss, and to determine if the landlord slept upstairs –
Only to roll badly and thus knock over a barstool. Summoning the very hard-of-hearing owner, Rufus, downstairs. (Guess he did at least determine the guy slept upstairs!) Bartholemew eventually managed to convince the guy he was with the Watch by writing down who he was, but Rufus was reluctant to give up any information on his patrons. Bartholemew tried to convince him to tell them about John by invoking his “better it happen to me than you” trait, saying that it would be in Rufus’s best interest if Bartholemew found this guy and thus was the one to risk exploding –
Only to roll a 1 and thus utterly fail against Andy’s 3. XD Mike was prepared to spend a luck token to lessen the consequences, but Andy said that one of the others could roll to help Bartholemew out if they wanted and try to turn this into a success – cue Surly jumping in with his “virulently infectious personality” and babbling on to Rufus about how important it was to preserve the pub and how it could go sky-high if John showed up with the dragon tonight to drink –
And rolling a 5, which just beat Andy’s 3, yay! :) Tomorrow, we pick up with Rufus hopefully now being willing to share some info with this motley crew – I am very curious to see where exactly this is gonna go! Probably in a weird direction – it IS Discworld. :P
2. Start final edits on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 5: Check – I have made my way through to page 10 of 54 (eeek), making little tweaks to Alice getting ready for the trip, talking with Victor, and leaving the apartment to go on her “error” (current favorite typo I’ve fixed); Alice arriving at Grout’s and being surprised and confused by Nines’s appearance; Alice getting into the mansion, making it past the first few ghouls, and getting absolutely pissed off by Grout’s first audio diary; and Alice making it into the library and knocking out the ghoul in there with a dictionary before preparing to take on Grout’s candle puzzle. *nods* Not too shabby! Hopefully tomorrow we can get up to page 20 – keep your fingers crossed!
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – and I had an actual Subs video to watch too: “Fun With Shorts: He Didn't Have Time [PATREON EXCLUSIVE!]” by Josh Way! One of his old Patreon-only shorts now released to general audiences, this one told the story of a man who didn’t have time to replace the balding tires on his car with better ones when the gas station attendant warned him they were bad, and how that led to him having a wreck and nearly killing his kid –
And which was sponsored by FIRESTONE TIRES. For context, literally the only thing I know about Firestone is that the guys on Whose Line Is It Anyway? (back in the Drew Carey era) kept making jokes about what shit tires they made. XD So this whole short had an extra level of hilarity for me, quite apart from Josh’s riffs (which often centered on the fact that the term “blow-out” can be used both to describe a tire bursting or a toddler’s potty emergency). Good times! :P
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A, as per usual on Mondays – every time I think I might be able to get something done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and every time I am proven wrong. Ah well.
Other: Being as it was a nice day, we did go out and play beanbags this afternoon – and I was blessed with good throws today, winning two out of three games, yay! Dad won the other, and Mom came last twice and managed second once. Just not her day – though, admittedly, her back was hurting, so that couldn’t have helped. Final scores were me W-2-W; Dad 2-W-3; and Mom 3-3-2. We’ll see if things get a little more equal tomorrow!
*nods* And there we have it, and I am heading to bed. So long as I don't discover anything flying around my light again. *sigh* Here's hoping for a better night's sleep and thus a better Tuesday -- night all!
