The Grouch's Trash Pile [Baldur's Gate 3]

Thank you! We did all the family stuff last night (which was fine, just loud and I am so not a fan of Christmas music) and got sent home with plenty of leftovers for today. I have a new game to play (if I can pull myself away from my current Sims drama :3), fancy new coffee thanks to Aud, and I think I'll make myself a pumpkin pie later. My little terrors have also been letting me sleep, so they get a treat stick later (and Gordon got some brushies earlier).

Oh, and my eyelid is finally getting less gross, so that's good too.

I hope the day treats you well and you can relax without too many obligations.

 

I wasn't going to ask J to get me a game (I have SO MANY I still need to play) but I made the mistake of looking at my wishlist and realizing I had a huge craving for some classic jRPG goodness so I told him "... maybe game?" and he got me Dragon Quest XI. I'm about four hours in and it's exactly what I was wanting.

 

When Peaches got his chocobo, I stared at the naming box for a sec and then was like, you know what, I'll figure it out later, and just named it the first word that came to mind -- Duck. Now he's mid-SB and the chocobo is still named Duck, so I've just decided to lean into it as part of his lore -- his mind blanked and he was like "uhhh, Chocobo? Wait fuck I can't name him after what he IS, that's dumb, um, fuck, bird names, bird names... DUCK!"

Peaches may be a bit of a himbo.

 

New acquaintences, it is very sweet you would like me to go to the thing you and some other people will be going to, but it was awkward and frustrating that my soft pedaling of having too many obstacles in my way was seen as an invitation to explain how I could totally do it. We're still on the 'polite acquantences' level of friendship, for one thing; you don't actually know if you like me and I don't know if I like you enough to be actual friends, either.

I probably shouldn't have soft-pedaled it with "I'm disabled and broke" and should have just flatly said "I'm too fucking poor." Sorry buds but my 13€ a month for vidya gaem is the bulk of my leisure money, hundreds all at once for tickets, travel, lodging, and the logistical fucking nightmare of food is not fucking happening without a briefcase full of cash landing in my lap (and even that would have to go to other priorities -- I haven't seen my mom in 10 years and Aud in 13). As it is I'm already sweating over how much changing my name is going to cost me (the name change itself isn't much, but changing all my cards and permits and passport sure as hell is) and an eye exam and new glasses.

I'm not happy about being poor and I'm even less happy about it when people can't leave well enough alone and try to jolly me out of it. Things aren't hopeless, but they sure as fuck are difficult and complicated, and I don't care to get into it with near-strangers no matter how well meaning.

 

In happier news, Aud sneakily got me a Goblin King t-shirt and it arrived yesterday. I love it and J is super envious. X)

 

I have got to stop reading the FFXIV subreddit. The more popular the game gets, the whinier and bitchier the takes there are, out of all proportion to reality. There's not enough to do, the MSQ is boring and too short (I enjoyed it, and it's about the same length as the other EW patches) the new alliance raid is way too easy, the easiest since Void Ark (It's much harder mechanically than the Gold Standard for difficult Alliance Raids, Orbonne; it's just not as unforgiving if one alliance can't hack it, and if you go with a bunch of regular folks and not raiders, you'll see plenty of mechanics... bet these same clowns are going to be whining about that next, though), the armor is ugly (it's getting progressively more detailed, with high-quality textures), so on and so forth.

Overall I spent about as much time on this patch as I do any other patch, and other than being really tired (why do I never get enough sleep on patch days?? It's a mystery) I enjoyed it. Hopefully if I do start getting really dissatisfied with patches, I will have the good sense to just fucking quit playing rather than piss and moan about every single thing.

 

It's my BOY!!!

 

Paraphrased from last night:

J: So, your birthday is next week.
Me: Yes!
J: And for years, you have put off asking for presents saying you didn't know what you wanted, and never gotten anything.
Me: ... yes? :D;;
J: So next week we're GOING TO HELSINKI AND GETTING YOU SOME FUCKING PRESENTS.
Me: I do have a bit of a backlog built up, don't I...

Fortunately this year I actually have some ideas lol but the game store seems to be out of all the FFXIV books... having a birthday in January problems :/

 

As J and I were preparing to go out and get groceries today, we were talking about how it's going to be wet and possibly rainy tomorrow and I grumbled, "happy birthday Mercury, the weather's SHIT."

J laughed and told me, "Don't be so Harry du Bois about it!" which of course cracked me up and lightened my mood considerably. XD

 

My body gave me insomnia for my birthday and I am trying not to get all Harry du Bois about it but I'm a bit grumpy about it all the same as there's no point in going out feeling this tired, I'd be miserable the entire time. However, the weather is atrocious, so I mind staying home quite a bit less than I would otherwise.

J fussed at me about it ("You have to have presents!!") but we'll just have to go out later in the week. :P We were always going to order dinner in so no changes there.

 

I got a decent night of sleep!! *throws confetti* This despite my little monster's best efforts, too!

 

I was feeling meh about the art books (esp finding out the latest ones have a bad habit of printing art in the middle of two pages) since there's just so damn many of them, the Encyclopedia Eorzeas (that I'm more interested in than the art books) looks like they're really hard to find, and Fantasiapelit looks to not even carry one of the Fullmetal Alchemist 3-in-1s I'm missing (need to email them about that), buuuuut we were able to order all four of the books about death I've been wanting from the bookstore in the mall, so I call that good. I'm a lot more invested in having those than I am the others, although I would like to complete my Fullmetal Alchemist collection someday (I'm missing 22 through 27).

It was kind of hilarious giving J the list of books and seeing his eyes get big and him going, "I didn't know you wanted those kinds of books!" lol. lmao. I said they're for research... X)

 

There's a person in one of the Discord servers I'm in who has a tendency to be an annoying fandom/minor celebrity gossip, which is kind of uncomfortable to begin with but gets real uncomfortable when she posts a 'look at this asshole' link to a post a friend or a friend-of-a-friend of mine made. Yes, sure, let's rag on people like Muskrat who are making objectively awful decisions, but gleefully crowing about Neil Gaiman's marriage looking rocky because you have issues with Amanda Palmer is some bullshit. She did stop that cold when I (completely truthfully) said that Neil is a friend of a friend and has been nothing but kind in personal interactions, acting like this is some 'just desserts' because he married someone you don't like is creepy, knock it off.

She more recently posted a link and ragged on a post a personal friend of mine made and I just kind of made a face since I didn't see it for like 12 hours after it was posted, but jfc.

This woman is my mom's age and has been in fandom since before I was born, she should know better than to do this gossipy high school girl bullshit. =_=

 

In other news, taking half an antihistamine pill in a desperate attempt to get some rest after cats spent almost THREE HOURS being little shitfucks instead of letting me go back to sleep after I fed them worked, but at the cost of me only struggling out of bed at 1 pm and being a groggy mess. Urgh.

 

I recently reconnected with my high school best friend via email, which has been fantastic as she's just as funny and smart as ever. However, it's come with repeated unsettling revelations about what a poor state so many of our former classmates ended up in. A lot of alcoholism going around, including a recent death from complications due to severe alcoholism; he was all of 41 or 42.

This isn't the first time I've gotten such news, but it's still sad as hell and makes me INCREDIBLY glad that I (and she!) got out of that town as undamaged as we did -- which was still plenty damaged, mind you, but like. Not down the gaping pit that substance abuse tends to dig. I feel so bad for the kids those people used to be, they deserved better.

 

I know I've complained/laughed about how silly FFXIV bros are about complaining that FFXIV is the 'horniest' fandom, but I just got a fantastic example of how dumb that is in the Sims 4 subreddit:



1k upvotes and 650+ comments... lmao

 

the more people complain that a group is full of horny reprobates, the smaller the ratio between horny reprobates and prudes in the fandom is :D

 

I don't know WHY I want to play a lala so badly alluvasudden. *SIGHS*

Anyway, haunted pierrot doll lala:



I saved their template but tbh I should get over my MUST HAVE HAUNTED DOLL by harlequining up one of my existing characters...

 

I gave in to temptation...

 

LOOK at my child.

Madu: I am a voidsent and I'm thousands of years old!

My precious little darling!

Madu: This is a DOLL BODY.

My tiny cute little baby :) :) :)

Madu: *ANGRY LALA NOISES*

Anyway.

I've been having more fun dinking around doing hunting logs than I have rushing MSQ again, so I may just suck it up and buy a story skip to SB.