singing in polyphonic harmony

It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible, and sometimes that'll do. *nods* So let's just get right into the write-up:

Work – Well, we didn’t get let out early, sadly, but at least it wasn’t a super-stressful end to the work week – my time at the office was mostly spent:

A) Doing the GL, which didn’t take very long at all (though I suspect the one on Tuesday will be meatier, as a few batches that were in limbo for the last few days were finally posted this afternoon)

B) Looking through the obituaries in the paper and seeing if any the people were in our database, marking them deceased if they were – this led to me finding some other roster maintenance issues to clean up, which helped kill more time

C) Taking a credit card call from one lady who wanted to set up her pledge in a specific way that couldn’t be done on the website, and helping my coworker update a recurring gift after she took a call from another guy whose card had been hacked

D) Looking up obituaries on a specific funeral home’s website to see if anyone from THAT list was on our database, and again cleaning up any other roster maintenance issues I found along the way

E) Calling the lady who might have sent in the mystery credit card gift – only for her to say she doesn’t really go to church anymore, eliminating her from the running. *shrug* All right then – I did my due diligence there! Next time, mystery donor, put more information on the form!

F) ...and, again, doing newspaper puzzles during my spare time. *shrug* If I don’t have that much else to do…

Nothing too interesting, but nothing too infuriating either. And now I have three days off, yay~ Hopefully they are enjoyable!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike this week saw me pedal my way through –

A) The last seven-odd minutes of “Fallout: New Vegas - Dust - Part 2 - The Ghost Town!” Which featured two incidents of note:

I. Doc Mitchell finding his way to Sloan, and discovering that it was a camp absolutely chock-full of cannibals (wearing a mix of NCR, Legion, and Brotherhood outfits – apparently the factions have united in their love of human flesh!)...and confirming that it was way too many people for him to try and take one when one of the cannibals noticed him spying on them from the edge of town and began shooting. Doc M tried to take a few down with him, but simply wasn’t fast enough on the reload – and anyway, one of them had somehow gotten their hands on an alien blaster, so he wasn’t surviving that confrontation anyway!

II. Doc Mitchell reloading into Goodsprings and going to look at his old house again as Jon noted how weird and slightly creepy it was for it to be the only house still lit up in town...leading to him discovering that the back door was unlocked. (In Jon’s defense, apparently this back door simply cannot be used in the regular version of the game!) Cue him ending the episode by wandering his home, looking at everything (including the dead plague patient on the floor of the clinic – his last patient, probably) and looting whatever useful stuff was left (which wasn’t much, but did include at least one stimpack and some RadAway). And, fortunately, not coming across his own NPC self’s corpse and breaking our immersion. XD It was a rather somber way to end the episode, really – Doc Mitchell coming back to the town he couldn’t save and saying one last goodbye to his old life before he attempted to finally escape the hellhole the Mojave had become. *nods* We’re rooting for you, Doc M. I look forward to seeing where Jon takes you in the next episode! (Which, considering it’s called “Eat Or Be Eaten,” might suggest toward more cannibals...)

( Ellen pitches an old favorite and James plays a new favorite )

2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – the trip through The Chapter That Will Eventually Be Split In Twain continued today, covering –

A) Victor starting to lead the group towards the tradesman’s entrance, checking for trouble as he went and reviewing his mental map to be sure he had the route right...which led to him starting to panic as he realized that he wasn’t 100% sure where he should turn left and where he should go straight. Like, he was pretty certain, but he was also hyperaware a mistake could lead to them all being caught, so...fortunately, Smiler was there to knock him out of his racing thoughts with a gentle squeeze on his arm (having noticed him reaching for his tie again). Victor thanked them and said that he was just concentrating very hard on getting everyone to the right place – Alice assured him that they appreciated it, but they didn’t want him working himself into a fit, with Kasimir agreeing that nerves were the worst thing for sneaking and saying he was pretty sure deep breaths were supposed to help. Barnaby took the opportunity to brag that he got massages when he was stressed –

Causing Victor to give him a smirk and let him know he was welcome to rub his shoulders anytime. Cue Alice and Smiler having to hastily muffle their laughter and Kasimir clearing his throat to hide a grin. XD You walked into that one, Barnaby!

B) Barnaby getting his own back by telling Victor that he didn’t have shoulders – Victor, self-conscious, protested he did, while Alice took the middle ground of noting they were extremely sloped, but they did still exist. Smiler assured Victor he was a fine specimen of humanity and urged him to ignore Barnaby, who was just cranky. Barnaby retorted that he was cranky for a reason – not only had he been forced to mingle with the middle class, he’d also had to do things! He complained that the world of work was not for him, asking Kasimir to confirm he’d heard him say that before, which Kasimir did –

Before reminding him that it had never stopped any of the other members of the gang from getting him up off his arse to help. And that if he wanted to stop having to do things, he would have to quit the gang (adding that he and the others would gladly hold the door open for him on his way out) – but Kasimir knew he would never do that, because Barnaby would get too bored sitting in his big house all alone. Barnaby reluctantly admitted that all the crime was a lark, but that he just wished more of it involved talking to people of his own class – Kasimir said that maybe they’d get to rob an opera house one day, who knew. :p (Which is funnier if you remember the first score of Season 2 involves them making a hash of an opera to get the fancy necklace around the lead’s throat…)

C) And, at the point where I left off, Victor assuring Barnaby that soon he could leave and go back to eating all his parents’ canapes as he got them to the tradesman’s entrance – only for a familiar voice to declare “THERE you are!” Because, unfortunately, it appears that Nell Van Dort has been looking for her wayward son...next week, we’ll see her confront the group, and Barnaby nearly charm her away – only for a maid to rush in and ruin everything...

3. Watch something on YouTube: Usual Technical Check featuring the videos I watched to get me in the mood for “The Van Dort Vacancy” –

A) The last couple of minutes of “Colouring Books, Trains, and A Great Big Dog – The OX Crew Play BITD” by CaitlinRC (featuring the Oxventure Skeletons as deathlands scavengers and Andy/Edvard choosing EXACTLY the wrong last name for one of his disguises – aka, the last name of the guy Kasimir and Zillah helped flee town a couple of episodes ago)

B) And the one-minute-45-seconds of “victor van dort being tragically relatable” by dehydrated poet (a collection of clips of Victor being awkward/cute/both, including him meeting Victoria, various moments of him screwing up the vows in the rehearsal and failing to light the candle, and him getting tickled by the spiders in “The Wedding Song”)

So that was fun. :)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing for me to do over on Valice Multiverse, but I did choose what I wanted to post for Song Saturday over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) this morning! Mostly by going to page 41 of my “#song saturday” tag, seeing the song “Smile” by Uncle Kracker at the very top of said page, realizing that I hadn’t listened to or reblogged that song in a while, going to the latest iteration of it on my blog, and reblogging it straight into my queue. XD Well, that was nice and easy! :P

Yeah, I'd say that's pretty decent indeed. :) But now I should really head to bed and try to get some sleep now that it's cooled off. Goals for tomorrow include working on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; playing some Baldur's Gate III (specifically looting what's left of the tollhouse and then heading back to camp for cutscenes); and probably watching the next CaFae Latte compilation (if not, I do have an OXBox list video to catch up on). We'll see how all of those go -- night all!