Not A Great Monday
Dec. 15th, 2025 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickBetween the crappy weather (it was one of those days where it never got above freezing, and the wind made it feel even colder) and the crappy news (there was a shooting at Brown University over the weekend -- two dead, nine others injured, and they're still searching for the shooter), plus my own burgeoning PMS, it just wasn't a very nice day. Though I did get some stuff done, as the write-up will show:
Work – It was a pretty “eh” start to the work week, all told:
A) First off, I had to make my lunch for the day this morning instead of last night (the buns weren’t ready, and by the time I got off the computer I didn’t want to spend any extra time making a sandwich), which threw off my routine and resulted in me forgetting my granola bar snack for the day. :( We had a bit of candy at work, so I had a mini-Hershey’s Special Dark instead, but it still annoyed me.
B) Then, my commute in consisted in large part of someone riding on my ass, because Rhode Island drivers are impatient dickwads >(
C) Then, during the workday, my new supervisor told me that the Christmas Luncheon thing we were supposed to have tomorrow (consisting of us sitting around in a conference table eating ordered-in food) was canceled because my old supervisor (now the leader of the office that handles bequests and stuff, who were were having the lunch with) was sick with the flu, having caught it from his kid. And while I don’t particularly mind missing out on having to listen to my coworkers yak, I was kind of looking forward to not having to take in a lunch tomorrow and instead get a chicken parm sandwich. (Mom felt bad when I told her, and offered to make me a chicken parm sandwich for lunch – I told her to make it for my birthday instead :P)
D) Then, when updating someone’s credit card on their recurring gift, I ran into a problem where the credit card people’s site wouldn’t sync with our database, forcing me to log into their site directly and put the info in there – fortunately, I was able to copy and paste the card number, but it meant that the call took a LOT longer thanks to how slowly the site loads on the dedicated credit card computer! The donor didn’t seem upset, fortunately, but it sure annoyed me!
E) Then, after removing someone’s returned check (as per Fiscal) and typing up a letter to let them know about the failure, I ended up having to fight with the printer we use for envelopes when it refused to let me actually put something through the envelope feeder...and then, once I finally convinced it to do so, had to turn it off and on again to stop it constantly wanting to print endless waves of instructions on how to clear paper jams for some reason
F) Then, my drive home ALSO involved people riding on my ass, because, again, asshole RI drivers
Yeah – not exactly a great day. I mean, I got a fair amount done, I suppose – the GL, that credit card update, the rest of the obituaries I was working on, fixing up some other payments – but – meh. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little better!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the TV adaptation of Hogfather! The Discworld shenanigans continued with:
A) DEATH realizing that something is wrong as he finds all the life timers for the guards who were being murdered by Teatime and his gang in the Tooth Fairy’s castle, and the door to Mythological Wing opening...revealing to him and his servant Albert that the Hogfather’s life timer was running out
B) Susan trying to settle in for the night – only to hear what sounded like cries for help coming out of one of Twylla’s pictures of a house, confusing her; as it turned out, what she was hearing was Violet, the Tooth Fairy the gang had kidnapped, struggling in her rug and then getting rolled out to meet Teatime, who encouraged her to think of him as a “friend...”
C) Teatime, having gotten no useful info out of Violet (who kept trying to talk even while gagged), tying her up and leaving her be while he lead the team to their goal – the cases of teeth in the castle; cue him getting the others to take all the teeth and heap them up in a pile in the middle of the first floor, informing Medium Dave when he asked that the idea was to make people – specifically, people like child-like Banjo – stop believing in the Hogfather (not in so many words, but you got the picture)
D) DEATH visiting the Hogfather’s Castle of Bones, and finding a drunken pixie enjoying his first Hogswatch off in a thousand years, the sleigh pulled by four great boars, and the red robe of the Hogfather – but no Hogfather himself
E) Archancellor Ridcully trying out his newly-reopened bathroom, and rather enjoying it...until he foolishly turns on the tap called “Old Faithful” XD He decides to leave that one alone in future
F) Teatime’s gang working away – Mr. Brown cracking open doors, Sydney working on the spell to use the teeth, and Banjo, Chickenwire, and Medium Dave gathering and piling teeth, with Chickenwire getting increasingly nervous about Teatime (because he has a brain)
G) DEATH taking on the role of the Hogfather and going around delivering presents to help bolster belief in him and stop him from fading out entirely – this involves a fake beard, a cushion up his front, and Albert (as his pixie companion) dealing with all the pork pies and glasses of sherry (very gleefully)
H) Ridcully getting himself sorted after his shower as Modo the groundsman checks out the pipes in the bathroom, and jokingly talking to another wizard about the “veruca gnome,” a figure his father made up to explain why people got veruca warts in shared baths – cue a little tinkling outside, and the veruca gnome suddenly being VERY real
I) DEATH visiting Susan’s employer’s house in his new role, and Susan being very confused and annoyed as to why HE’S there instead of the Hogfather himself; DEATH, however, refuses to explain (other to tell her that the Hogfather is gone) and tells her to forget all about it, as she made it clear she wanted a normal life. Yes, it’s made clear five seconds later once he and Albert are safely on the roof that he was using reverse psychology on her to force her to get involved XD
J) Susan indeed getting involved, stopping time with her inherited touch of weirdness and riding out to DEATH’s Domain (observed by the Auditors, who foolishly think she’s no threat); cue her finding the Hogfather’s now-shattered hourglass in the Mythological Wing and getting quite worried that her grandfather has taken him out for some reason
K) And Albert coming up with the idea of getting DEATH as the Hogfather to do a public appearance in a department store, Crumley’s, to REALLY bolster belief – cue his boars smashing apart the cute fake ones the store put up outside its Hogfather Grotto (to the delight of the children) and DEATH himself plopping himself down on the throne (the actor hired to play the Hogfather storming away in a huff) to talk to the kiddos – I left off with him preparing to ask a young boy what he wanted for Hogswatch
Good stuff – I don’t think I did it justice with my recap here, but then, there’s a LOT going on! All intercut with each other, so you’re constantly jumping from area to area and mini-plotline to mini-plotline. But it’s really good, and definitely puts you in the right festive mood. Looking forward to watching DEATH’S turn as a “mall Hogfather” tomorrow!
2. Work on Christmas Gift Fic: Check – I was hoping to get something else done, maybe return to “The Van Dort Vacancy,” but between the long write-up above and a long OXmas episode below, I just didn’t have the time. So instead I gave Satirical Demon’s gift fic one more coat of polish – tweaking a few phrases here and there, deleting a bit that didn’t quite work, and working in a reference to the “rose beef” flowers because I really wanted to reference the “rose beef” flowers. They’re so Queen of Hearts-y! XD The resultant final draft is the longest of the bunch, but given how much fun I had writing it, I guess that’s not a surprise. XD So tomorrow we’ll see if I can get back to my beloved Valicer In The Dark. (That is, depending on whether or not Newt, who never gave me a prompt at all, ever gets back to me…)
3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – on the third day of OXmas, FreeTube gave to me “XMAS CHALLENGE Day 3: Jane | EA Sports FC 26 Giant Killing Challenge ⚽️” by OXBox! Yup, after getting a few years off, Jane drew the “use a EFL League Two team (aka a terrible team) to defeat a Premier League team (aka an excellent team) over the course of one (1) soccer match in EA Sports FC 26” challenge this year! Everyone immediately began joking about how the comments would start declaring that she gets it every year and that the draw was rigged. XD Anyway, after looking through the teams on offer and being briefly tempted by Bristol (who had a great piratical logo but awful stats), Jane listened to the wisdom of Cameraman James and picked as her team the current real-life leaders of the EFL League Two, Swindon! Who boast a one-and-a-half star rating in the game, and the honor of being Andy’s birthplace in reality (apparently his dad was working there when he was born). Their hated enemies in the match? Burnley, who had three-and-a-half stars and a logo that reminded Andy of an old school video game level (since there was a weird blocky pyramid shape over the lion in the middle). The kits were thus picked – festive red for Swindon, cool blue for Burnley – the opening intro video seen very briefly, and the match begun! How did it go?
Chaotically. Though that was only to be expected – as Jane said, she couldn’t have forgotten anything about playing any of the FC games because she’d never learned anything in the first place. XD Girl proved to have a real problem with figuring out which player she was controlling right from the start, following the player she thought she was controlling while her actual player ran off in the wrong direction – Andy eventually resorted to telling her that the guy she was controlling was the one with the “angry pizza” (bright red triangle) over his head, not the “slightly annoyed pizza” (white triangle with red border, indicates the closest player she can switch to I think). Add in some general struggling with the controls (she eventually mastered the “ground pass,” but that was about it) and a bit of flailing about, and it’s no wonder that she didn’t score a goal for the longest time.
Which made the moment where she did score a goal all the sweeter. :D Everyone was cheering and clapping and waving their arms in the scorer’s “signature celebration.” XD Even better, she managed to keep Brunley from scoring with her antics and their tendency to miss her goal, meaning that she did indeed slay the giant and earn herself a Christmas point! So both ladies are on the board now – tomorrow, we find out if Andy can get himself a point with his challenge! Not sure what it’ll be, but I’m sure it’ll be interesting...
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – I didn’t do anything with my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue, but I did straight-up reblog two pieces of fanart my friend Nebby put up – one featuring Living!Dan and Living!Kiya from the MediEvil games in a screenshot redraw of a scene from The Thief and The Cobbler (showing the princess and the cobbler looking startled by something – Dan and Kiya looked similarly surprised), and one showing Living!Kiya sitting in a room with all of her fellow mistresses to the Pharaoh, all of them dressed in glittering gold (dresses, jewelry, all of it). They were both really good pieces – she does really nice art! And it’s nice to boost a friend. :)
So yeah -- some nice moments, I suppose (and you really have to hold onto those in these times), but -- I'm happy enough to go to bed. Here's hoping that they finally find that shooter, and the people who were injured make full recoveries. Ugh. *sigh* Night all.
Work – It was a pretty “eh” start to the work week, all told:
A) First off, I had to make my lunch for the day this morning instead of last night (the buns weren’t ready, and by the time I got off the computer I didn’t want to spend any extra time making a sandwich), which threw off my routine and resulted in me forgetting my granola bar snack for the day. :( We had a bit of candy at work, so I had a mini-Hershey’s Special Dark instead, but it still annoyed me.
B) Then, my commute in consisted in large part of someone riding on my ass, because Rhode Island drivers are impatient dickwads >(
C) Then, during the workday, my new supervisor told me that the Christmas Luncheon thing we were supposed to have tomorrow (consisting of us sitting around in a conference table eating ordered-in food) was canceled because my old supervisor (now the leader of the office that handles bequests and stuff, who were were having the lunch with) was sick with the flu, having caught it from his kid. And while I don’t particularly mind missing out on having to listen to my coworkers yak, I was kind of looking forward to not having to take in a lunch tomorrow and instead get a chicken parm sandwich. (Mom felt bad when I told her, and offered to make me a chicken parm sandwich for lunch – I told her to make it for my birthday instead :P)
D) Then, when updating someone’s credit card on their recurring gift, I ran into a problem where the credit card people’s site wouldn’t sync with our database, forcing me to log into their site directly and put the info in there – fortunately, I was able to copy and paste the card number, but it meant that the call took a LOT longer thanks to how slowly the site loads on the dedicated credit card computer! The donor didn’t seem upset, fortunately, but it sure annoyed me!
E) Then, after removing someone’s returned check (as per Fiscal) and typing up a letter to let them know about the failure, I ended up having to fight with the printer we use for envelopes when it refused to let me actually put something through the envelope feeder...and then, once I finally convinced it to do so, had to turn it off and on again to stop it constantly wanting to print endless waves of instructions on how to clear paper jams for some reason
F) Then, my drive home ALSO involved people riding on my ass, because, again, asshole RI drivers
Yeah – not exactly a great day. I mean, I got a fair amount done, I suppose – the GL, that credit card update, the rest of the obituaries I was working on, fixing up some other payments – but – meh. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little better!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the TV adaptation of Hogfather! The Discworld shenanigans continued with:
A) DEATH realizing that something is wrong as he finds all the life timers for the guards who were being murdered by Teatime and his gang in the Tooth Fairy’s castle, and the door to Mythological Wing opening...revealing to him and his servant Albert that the Hogfather’s life timer was running out
B) Susan trying to settle in for the night – only to hear what sounded like cries for help coming out of one of Twylla’s pictures of a house, confusing her; as it turned out, what she was hearing was Violet, the Tooth Fairy the gang had kidnapped, struggling in her rug and then getting rolled out to meet Teatime, who encouraged her to think of him as a “friend...”
C) Teatime, having gotten no useful info out of Violet (who kept trying to talk even while gagged), tying her up and leaving her be while he lead the team to their goal – the cases of teeth in the castle; cue him getting the others to take all the teeth and heap them up in a pile in the middle of the first floor, informing Medium Dave when he asked that the idea was to make people – specifically, people like child-like Banjo – stop believing in the Hogfather (not in so many words, but you got the picture)
D) DEATH visiting the Hogfather’s Castle of Bones, and finding a drunken pixie enjoying his first Hogswatch off in a thousand years, the sleigh pulled by four great boars, and the red robe of the Hogfather – but no Hogfather himself
E) Archancellor Ridcully trying out his newly-reopened bathroom, and rather enjoying it...until he foolishly turns on the tap called “Old Faithful” XD He decides to leave that one alone in future
F) Teatime’s gang working away – Mr. Brown cracking open doors, Sydney working on the spell to use the teeth, and Banjo, Chickenwire, and Medium Dave gathering and piling teeth, with Chickenwire getting increasingly nervous about Teatime (because he has a brain)
G) DEATH taking on the role of the Hogfather and going around delivering presents to help bolster belief in him and stop him from fading out entirely – this involves a fake beard, a cushion up his front, and Albert (as his pixie companion) dealing with all the pork pies and glasses of sherry (very gleefully)
H) Ridcully getting himself sorted after his shower as Modo the groundsman checks out the pipes in the bathroom, and jokingly talking to another wizard about the “veruca gnome,” a figure his father made up to explain why people got veruca warts in shared baths – cue a little tinkling outside, and the veruca gnome suddenly being VERY real
I) DEATH visiting Susan’s employer’s house in his new role, and Susan being very confused and annoyed as to why HE’S there instead of the Hogfather himself; DEATH, however, refuses to explain (other to tell her that the Hogfather is gone) and tells her to forget all about it, as she made it clear she wanted a normal life. Yes, it’s made clear five seconds later once he and Albert are safely on the roof that he was using reverse psychology on her to force her to get involved XD
J) Susan indeed getting involved, stopping time with her inherited touch of weirdness and riding out to DEATH’s Domain (observed by the Auditors, who foolishly think she’s no threat); cue her finding the Hogfather’s now-shattered hourglass in the Mythological Wing and getting quite worried that her grandfather has taken him out for some reason
K) And Albert coming up with the idea of getting DEATH as the Hogfather to do a public appearance in a department store, Crumley’s, to REALLY bolster belief – cue his boars smashing apart the cute fake ones the store put up outside its Hogfather Grotto (to the delight of the children) and DEATH himself plopping himself down on the throne (the actor hired to play the Hogfather storming away in a huff) to talk to the kiddos – I left off with him preparing to ask a young boy what he wanted for Hogswatch
Good stuff – I don’t think I did it justice with my recap here, but then, there’s a LOT going on! All intercut with each other, so you’re constantly jumping from area to area and mini-plotline to mini-plotline. But it’s really good, and definitely puts you in the right festive mood. Looking forward to watching DEATH’S turn as a “mall Hogfather” tomorrow!
2. Work on Christmas Gift Fic: Check – I was hoping to get something else done, maybe return to “The Van Dort Vacancy,” but between the long write-up above and a long OXmas episode below, I just didn’t have the time. So instead I gave Satirical Demon’s gift fic one more coat of polish – tweaking a few phrases here and there, deleting a bit that didn’t quite work, and working in a reference to the “rose beef” flowers because I really wanted to reference the “rose beef” flowers. They’re so Queen of Hearts-y! XD The resultant final draft is the longest of the bunch, but given how much fun I had writing it, I guess that’s not a surprise. XD So tomorrow we’ll see if I can get back to my beloved Valicer In The Dark. (That is, depending on whether or not Newt, who never gave me a prompt at all, ever gets back to me…)
3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – on the third day of OXmas, FreeTube gave to me “XMAS CHALLENGE Day 3: Jane | EA Sports FC 26 Giant Killing Challenge ⚽️” by OXBox! Yup, after getting a few years off, Jane drew the “use a EFL League Two team (aka a terrible team) to defeat a Premier League team (aka an excellent team) over the course of one (1) soccer match in EA Sports FC 26” challenge this year! Everyone immediately began joking about how the comments would start declaring that she gets it every year and that the draw was rigged. XD Anyway, after looking through the teams on offer and being briefly tempted by Bristol (who had a great piratical logo but awful stats), Jane listened to the wisdom of Cameraman James and picked as her team the current real-life leaders of the EFL League Two, Swindon! Who boast a one-and-a-half star rating in the game, and the honor of being Andy’s birthplace in reality (apparently his dad was working there when he was born). Their hated enemies in the match? Burnley, who had three-and-a-half stars and a logo that reminded Andy of an old school video game level (since there was a weird blocky pyramid shape over the lion in the middle). The kits were thus picked – festive red for Swindon, cool blue for Burnley – the opening intro video seen very briefly, and the match begun! How did it go?
Chaotically. Though that was only to be expected – as Jane said, she couldn’t have forgotten anything about playing any of the FC games because she’d never learned anything in the first place. XD Girl proved to have a real problem with figuring out which player she was controlling right from the start, following the player she thought she was controlling while her actual player ran off in the wrong direction – Andy eventually resorted to telling her that the guy she was controlling was the one with the “angry pizza” (bright red triangle) over his head, not the “slightly annoyed pizza” (white triangle with red border, indicates the closest player she can switch to I think). Add in some general struggling with the controls (she eventually mastered the “ground pass,” but that was about it) and a bit of flailing about, and it’s no wonder that she didn’t score a goal for the longest time.
Which made the moment where she did score a goal all the sweeter. :D Everyone was cheering and clapping and waving their arms in the scorer’s “signature celebration.” XD Even better, she managed to keep Brunley from scoring with her antics and their tendency to miss her goal, meaning that she did indeed slay the giant and earn herself a Christmas point! So both ladies are on the board now – tomorrow, we find out if Andy can get himself a point with his challenge! Not sure what it’ll be, but I’m sure it’ll be interesting...
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – I didn’t do anything with my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue, but I did straight-up reblog two pieces of fanart my friend Nebby put up – one featuring Living!Dan and Living!Kiya from the MediEvil games in a screenshot redraw of a scene from The Thief and The Cobbler (showing the princess and the cobbler looking startled by something – Dan and Kiya looked similarly surprised), and one showing Living!Kiya sitting in a room with all of her fellow mistresses to the Pharaoh, all of them dressed in glittering gold (dresses, jewelry, all of it). They were both really good pieces – she does really nice art! And it’s nice to boost a friend. :)
So yeah -- some nice moments, I suppose (and you really have to hold onto those in these times), but -- I'm happy enough to go to bed. Here's hoping that they finally find that shooter, and the people who were injured make full recoveries. Ugh. *sigh* Night all.
